So the moral of the story is that having history and cultures is… bad somehow? Or at least weird? The way I see it, a realistic alien would be more likely to a

So the moral of the story is that having history and cultures is… bad somehow? Or at least weird? The way I see it, a realistic alien would be more likely to answer "You think that's complicated? Our own calendar has to track our lifecycle according to the orbit of a planet that doesn't exist any more!" Or maybe: "Ah, of course, you tend to use base-10 because you have ten fingers. I keep forgetting about those." …while apologetically waving a mass of tentacles in the air :D Incidentally, I wonder where this trope of aliens as hyperrational observers came from? Because it does not match at all the one instance of a space-going species that we know about (us).