> real number, complex numbers, calculus, etc Some humans believe that the prominence of real numbers is a historical accident. It seems quite plausible to me

> real number, complex numbers, calculus, etc Some humans believe that the prominence of real numbers is a historical accident. It seems quite plausible to me that a human society, much less an alien one, would go down a mathematical evolutionary path based on the constructable numbers and the computable numbers. Regardless of whether we eventually find the same structures, there are things that we might consider basic which they find esoteric and vice-versa. Heaven forbid we encounter an alien civilization that discovered an O(log n) algorithm for integer factorization before they invented steam power.