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This depends a lot on how different you imagine this universe could be. For example, in this different universe, if I have an apple and you give me another app
by tsimionescu 3y ago
This depends a lot on how different you imagine this universe could be.
For example, in this different universe, if I have an apple and you give me another apple, how many apples do I have? If I have 2, just like in our own universe, then you're probably right. But what if I have 3 apples? What if I still have 1 apple?
We can certainly create number systems that don't behave like the integers, or addition operations where 1 + 1 = something other than 2. We haven't explored many of those too much because they're not very interesting, but they still have structure and may have similar concepts to what we call prime numbers etc. The integers and regular addition happen to be much more useful for understanding our world than all of these other systems.
In a vastly different universe, the opposite may happen: if they studied this weird operation where 1+1=2, they would reach the same conclusions as we do. But they never study it, because it doesn't match their universe at all.