Aliens

[jamsy42]

If two roughly equally advanced sentient species came into contact would they have anything to discuss? Any species would be so different that the psychological barrier would be far to difficult to overcome, sure some basic ideas could be communicated but would there be any point?

[Sarevok]

Technological and scientific discoveries would be a valuable exchange. Imagine if a benovalent alien race SETI contacted decided to broadcast the designs of a working fusion reactor to us. It would greatly improve quality of life for all humans.

[jamsy42]

True but in that circumstance what would the aliens want from us after all we would be primitive compared to them.

[Sarevok]

Information on our ecosystem maybe ? If we sent everything we know about our planet it would be quite a lot. it would save them the trouble of an expensive interstellar probe mission to the Sol system.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Our own history and philosophy, no matter how alien it is to them. In fact, the more alien and incomprehensible the better, since that's going to be more interesting to study. Even if all we can send that they can understand at first is the naked physical facts of what happened and where.

[jamsy42]

Our own history and philosophy, no matter how alien it is to them. In fact, the more alien and incomprehensible the better, since that's going to be more interesting to study. Even if all we can send that they can understand at first is the naked physical facts of what happened and where.

Maybe but "more interesting to study" I don't think many species would share our curiosity in the alien

[open_sketchbook]

Why not? If they have technology, then they are almost certain to have a certain degree of curiousity. After all, it's hard to develop any sort of science if nobody ever wonders "Why is that?" or "How does that work?"

[Sarevok]

Yep. If any species bothered to send probes to other star systems or use radio to seek out other civilizations they did it because they were extremely curious.

[Big Orange]

I've started a thread on hypothetical alien contact over at SLAM.

[Feil]

Just because species have approximate technological parity doesn't mean they have all the same scientific knowledge. One has only to look at the constant exchange of information and discoveries between modern human nations to see that two heads (or a head and an astoundingly intelligent pseudopod) are better than one.

[Shroom Man 777]

What if they breathe greenhouse gasses, and when they find us Earth is so polluted by our standards but by their standards our pollution is like paradise. Whereas THEIR own world is polluted with bad things like "oxygen" and stuff, that is hazardous to them but is like totally wonderful for us! Then we swap worlds with the aliens! Hooray!

[Havok]

Why has nobody in this thread questioned the assertions made in the OP?

If two roughly equally advanced sentient species came into contact would they have anything to discuss?

I would imagine quite a fucking bit. 'Hey we just discovered civilization advanced as our own... in space...enh, whatever.'

Any species would be so different that the psychological barrier would be far to difficult to overcome,

And you know this how? Also the question 'why' comes to mind.

sure some basic ideas could be communicated but would there be any point?

What kind of fucking moron are you? Is there any point to this thread? Not a single one, but you posted it fucking anyway right?
So something as utterly insignificant and pointless as this question can be pursued, but one advanced culture comes across a completely new one that also represents previously unknown sentient life and you ask 'what would be the point?' of trying to communicate with them. You are an idiot.

[jamsy42]

Why has nobody in this thread questioned the assertions made in the OP?

If two roughly equally advanced sentient species came into contact would they have anything to discuss?

I would imagine quite a fucking bit. 'Hey we just discovered civilization advanced as our own... in space...enh, whatever.'

Any species would be so different that the psychological barrier would be far to difficult to overcome,

And you know this how? Also the question 'why' comes to mind.

sure some basic ideas could be communicated but would there be any point?

What kind of fucking moron are you? Is there any point to this thread? Not a single one, but you posted it fucking anyway right?
So something as utterly insignificant and pointless as this question can be pursued, but one advanced culture comes across a completely new one that also represents previously unknown sentient life and you ask 'what would be the point?' of trying to communicate with them. You are an idiot.

Sorry for being completely retarded.

[jamsy42]

Why has nobody in this thread questioned the assertions made in the OP?

If two roughly equally advanced sentient species came into contact would they have anything to discuss?

I would imagine quite a fucking bit. 'Hey we just discovered civilization advanced as our own... in space...enh, whatever.'

Any species would be so different that the psychological barrier would be far to difficult to overcome,

And you know this how? Also the question 'why' comes to mind.

sure some basic ideas could be communicated but would there be any point?

What kind of fucking moron are you? Is there any point to this thread? Not a single one, but you posted it fucking anyway right?
So something as utterly insignificant and pointless as this question can be pursued, but one advanced culture comes across a completely new one that also represents previously unknown sentient life and you ask 'what would be the point?' of trying to communicate with them. You are an idiot.

Okay the example used was a little extreme I was just trying to say that contact with aliens will be incredibly different to anything we can ever imagine and some encounters could end in the way I described.

[Iosef Cross]

If two roughly equally advanced sentient species came into contact would they have anything to discuss? Any species would be so different that the psychological barrier would be far to difficult to overcome, sure some basic ideas could be communicated but would there be any point?

Of course they would. That would have been probably the case of greatest mutually benefit. If one civilization is much more advanced than the other, the benefit for that civilization of contact is much smaller than if they are in the same level.

[Dark Hellion]

Havok, while the OPs caveats may be poorly worded they are not as trivial as you are dismissing them as. Meaningful communication is actually a major hurdle. While there are certain conceptual and psychological conditions that a civilization needs to possess to achieve interstellar travel (cooperation, a scientific method, mathematics, industrialization, etc.) there is also a large amount of room for differences in society and biology. These differences are a form of answer to the OPs question, but are also the source of potential communication difficulties.

The framework of human communication is not just based upon human society but is also inseparably linked to our biology. Communication is not simply a difficulty of language but of getting the receiver to understand and relate to the concepts they are being given. We can see this from how certain concepts in one human language are incredibly hard to put into another, and it gets understandably worse when you have an alien with entirely different biological basis for society.

A simple but very meaningful example is the human notion of good and bad. If I describe someone as a good person you can be pretty sure of what I mean to convey but if I asked you to define good or bad in purely definitional terms you would have a huge amount of trouble doing so in anything approaching a complete manner. This is partly because good and bad as concepts have an important tie to our evolved empathy. An alien may not share this type of empathy. Let's just hypothesize that instead of this empathetic instinct that our aliens evolved a much stronger aversion to killing each other than humans did and a much strong altruistic instinct as well. The human concept of good and bad or maybe even the entire human concept of morality would be completely foreign to such a species. They simply do not have the same biological need for a systematic concept of morality to keep from fucking over their peers. They will probably have a somewhat analogous system of social organization but it won't carry the sense of judgment and condemnation that human morality does. And good and bad are only two of a host of fundamentally important human concepts that defy any easy or simple definition.

It actually gets even trickier than this. Not only are their major obstacles in communicating concepts, there are very basic acts of communication that are purely based upon Terran biological properties. Our communication methods are based upon how our bodies can interact with sensory experience. Humanity does not only transfer information through words but symbols and gestures as well.

Again for a simple example, arrows that point at something or the very act of pointing itself. Pointing seems completely rudimentary to us, babies can point at objects they recognize or desire when they possess almost no ability for complex vocal communications. We can generally interpret this pointing with a minimum of trial and error. Now lets look at cats, another mammal with a relatively recent common ancestor cosmologically speaking. They have a rather wide range of concepts they can communicate with vocalizations compared to a child. They also have no clue what pointing means and can never actually learn the concept. Now, cats can't learn it because they are pretty dumb and it would be foolish to expect that an alien civilization capable of interstellar flight can't learn such a damn simple thing, but said species may not enter the conversation with this concept. For a hypothetical species for this, imagine one with a much stronger than human intuitive sense of direction and a different chemical detection sense. Such a species might use pheromones to communicate angle from a set of references instead of using a symbolic representation.

And none of these proposed biological features of the alien civilizations are unreasonable, they all already exist on Earth. Since psychology has a great deal to do with biology it is a very obvious and important concern. Just look at how long it has taken us to understand animal societies like wolf packs and then look at the fact that wolves are fucking retards next to any species that can build big ass rockets that can escape a planets gravity. Assuming neither side starts shooting it may still take years or even decades to get to the point that we can really "talk" as opposed to transferring mathematical or graphically representable information. We should be able to learn the solutions to math, physics or chemistry questions they have answers to and provide the same back within a relatively short-time after opening channels. It may take a great deal of time before we can discuss political theory or sociology. We may never be able to discuss literature or metaphysics. There exists a possibility that we can learn just as much from each other in trying to figure out how to talk as we do from sharing scientific knowledge.

The possibility for psychological differences impairing communications and relations is not simply the act of plot or gaffe that pop sci-fi treats it as. It is a very real concern and a great source of storytelling potential.

[Havok]

Havok, while the OPs caveats may be poorly worded they are not as trivial as you are dismissing them as.

I'm dismissing nothing. I was questioning why the retarded assertions of the OP were not being questioned.

Meaningful communication is actually a major hurdle. While there are certain conceptual and psychological conditions that a civilization needs to possess to achieve interstellar travel (cooperation, a scientific method, mathematics, industrialization, etc.) there is also a large amount of room for differences in society and biology. These differences are a form of answer to the OPs question, but are also the source of potential communication difficulties.

I agree that communication would be difficult and given some evolutionary tracts that are in the realm of possibility, exceedingly so. However to merely state that it "would be far too difficult to overcome' is asinine.

The framework of human communication is not just based upon human society but is also inseparably linked to our biology. Communication is not simply a difficulty of language but of getting the receiver to understand and relate to the concepts they are being given. We can see this from how certain concepts in one human language are incredibly hard to put into another, and it gets understandably worse when you have an alien with entirely different biological basis for society.

True, but the simple fact that they have a society is a common ground and a jumping off point. Clearly, space travel is a societal undertaking, along with the information (mathematics, engineering, metallurgy etc.) that needs to be collected and used over the course of that societies existence to use it.

A simple but very meaningful example is the human notion of good and bad. If I describe someone as a good person you can be pretty sure of what I mean to convey but if I asked you to define good or bad in purely definitional terms you would have a huge amount of trouble doing so in anything approaching a complete manner. This is partly because good and bad as concepts have an important tie to our evolved empathy. An alien may not share this type of empathy.

They may not share the empathy, but sure as shit they will know what 'good' and 'bad' are. They are going to have to understand concepts like that just to get into space. Good is when your ship does what it is designed to. Bad is when your ship blows up on the launch pad. They will have to understand that. Concepts like that will help establish lines of communication.

Let's just hypothesize that instead of this empathetic instinct that our aliens evolved a much stronger aversion to killing each other than humans did and a much strong altruistic instinct as well. The human concept of good and bad or maybe even the entire human concept of morality would be completely foreign to such a species. They simply do not have the same biological need for a systematic concept of morality to keep from fucking over their peers. They will probably have a somewhat analogous system of social organization but it won't carry the sense of judgment and condemnation that human morality does. And good and bad are only two of a host of fundamentally important human concepts that defy any easy or simple definition.

And again, I am not asserting that anything will be easy, just not so difficult that we wouldn't even try and just go back along on our merry ways.

It actually gets even trickier than this. Not only are their major obstacles in communicating concepts, there are very basic acts of communication that are purely based upon Terran biological properties. Our communication methods are based upon how our bodies can interact with sensory experience. Humanity does not only transfer information through words but symbols and gestures as well.

Again for a simple example, arrows that point at something or the very act of pointing itself. Pointing seems completely rudimentary to us, babies can point at objects they recognize or desire when they possess almost no ability for complex vocal communications. We can generally interpret this pointing with a minimum of trial and error. Now lets look at cats, another mammal with a relatively recent common ancestor cosmologically speaking. They have a rather wide range of concepts they can communicate with vocalizations compared to a child. They also have no clue what pointing means and can never actually learn the concept. Now, cats can't learn it because they are pretty dumb and it would be foolish to expect that an alien civilization capable of interstellar flight can't learn such a damn simple thing, but said species may not enter the conversation with this concept. For a hypothetical species for this, imagine one with a much stronger than human intuitive sense of direction and a different chemical detection sense. Such a species might use pheromones to communicate angle from a set of references instead of using a symbolic representation.

Nonsense. No matter how they do it, at some point, somewhere, one of them said, in whatever method of communication they use, "I'm going to go that way and see what is over there." If they hadn't, they wouldn't be in space in the first place. So while the tools they use may be as alien as possible, but the concept is... has to be, there. And seriously if they understand travel, which obviously, they do, they will understand when I point at a spot, then walk to it, then point back at the spot I was at, and walk back to it.

And none of these proposed biological features of the alien civilizations are unreasonable, they all already exist on Earth. Since psychology has a great deal to do with biology it is a very obvious and important concern. Just look at how long it has taken us to understand animal societies like wolf packs and then look at the fact that wolves are fucking retards next to any species that can build big ass rockets that can escape a planets gravity. Assuming neither side starts shooting it may still take years or even decades to get to the point that we can really "talk" as opposed to transferring mathematical or graphically representable information. We should be able to learn the solutions to math, physics or chemistry questions they have answers to and provide the same back within a relatively short-time after opening channels. It may take a great deal of time before we can discuss political theory or sociology. We may never be able to discuss literature or metaphysics. There exists a possibility that we can learn just as much from each other in trying to figure out how to talk as we do from sharing scientific knowledge.

Well for one, we have understood the dynamic of wolf packs for quite a long while, basically, since we decided we wanted to know. That aside, the fact that they are not retards is a point in favor of a mutual understanding, not against it. You also seem to assume that this race, whoever they may be are going to be of a completely singular mind about everything like some generic Star Trek TNG race. The evidence we have is that when intelligence evolves in a species, there is no instant consensus on anything.
You have a multitude of ideas and philosophies which can dictate how entire civilizations rise, live and fall. Now, I'm not saying that any race that has achieved interstellar travel has gotten there on the same path we would have, but there is more reason to assume that it is similar than dissimilar. Add that to the fact that they will have an extensive understanding of mathematics, physics and other necessary skills to space travel and recognize that we must also have that same understanding and you have a huge common ground on which to begin communication.

The possibility for psychological differences impairing communications and relations is not simply the act of plot or gaffe that pop sci-fi treats it as. It is a very real concern and a great source of storytelling potential.

Of course it is, but such a concern that we don't even bother? Not even try? Not likely.

[Dark Hellion]

They may not share the empathy, but sure as shit they will know what 'good' and 'bad' are. They are going to have to understand concepts like that just to get into space. Good is when your ship does what it is designed to. Bad is when your ship blows up on the launch pad. They will have to understand that. Concepts like that will help establish lines of communication.

I think you missed what I was trying to get at with using good and bad. A ship doing what it is supposed to is simply success, it blowing up is failure. Something being good goes beyond simply being successful. A successful genocide is not good, even though it is a success. English speaking humans have tied a great deal of different concepts and definitions into our overall concepts of what good and bad mean. Attempting to explain this to some hypothetical alien intelligences could be a monumental task especially because this type of categorization has strong connections to the way we do moral thinking and form ethical judgments, which is something that we probably wish to discuss with other species.

Nonsense. No matter how they do it, at some point, somewhere, one of them said, in whatever method of communication they use, "I'm going to go that way and see what is over there." If they hadn't, they wouldn't be in space in the first place. So while the tools they use may be as alien as possible, but the concept is... has to be, there. And seriously if they understand travel, which obviously, they do, they will understand when I point at a spot, then walk to it, then point back at the spot I was at, and walk back to it.

Again, you are anthropomorphizing the concepts. Yes, pointing will probably be something that is rather trivial to explain (we can just use the notion of vectors because these are necessary for space travel) but the act of pointing and the symbolic representation with an arrow may not be in the alien vocabulary. They may not use sight as a primary sense or their brains may find cylindrical or spherical coordinate systems easier to work in than Cartesian. You may point and they think you are representing the Right Hand Rule and start looking for magnetic poles!

Anyway, pointing was only a singular specific example because its understanding is varied through the animal kingdom. Dogs can understand pointing but cats can't. The broader idea is that many basic nuances of human communication are based upon traits that aren't necessary for interstellar flight and could easily be points of confusion to an alien species.

Well for one, we have understood the dynamic of wolf packs for quite a long while, basically, since we decided we wanted to know. That aside, the fact that they are not retards is a point in favor of a mutual understanding, not against it. You also seem to assume that this race, whoever they may be are going to be of a completely singular mind about everything like some generic Star Trek TNG race. The evidence we have is that when intelligence evolves in a species, there is no instant consensus on anything.
You have a multitude of ideas and philosophies which can dictate how entire civilizations rise, live and fall. Now, I'm not saying that any race that has achieved interstellar travel has gotten there on the same path we would have, but there is more reason to assume that it is similar than dissimilar. Add that to the fact that they will have an extensive understanding of mathematics, physics and other necessary skills to space travel and recognize that we must also have that same understanding and you have a huge common ground on which to begin communication.

We actually haven't understood wolf packs as well as you are implying. There has been study even in very recent decades suggesting much more nuance to the hierarchy than Alpha Male and followers. There are many steps and a complicated delineation of certain tasks as well as many layers of intragroup interactions. This can be much worse in a species capable of more complexity of thought than wolves.

You also seem to be making a very broad assumption that intelligence is a singular quantity, instead of an amalgamation of different abilities. We can again look to the animal kingdom to see this isn't the case. Chimps are very smart, they use tools, pass down knowledge, and even are capable of altruistic action. In spite of all this, squids have much better spatial reasoning skills, they are amazing at many spatial tasks and yet are invertebrates. There are talents needed in space flight that squids would be better suited for than a chimp. The fact that an interstellar species needs certain abilities and a certain type of intelligence does not suggest that they are necessarily going to be easier to understand than a terrestrial species. The manner in which they possess these necessary intelligences can be entirely foreign to us, just like a squid's 3-D reasoning is.

The main thing is that while yes, we will both have very similar skills in the areas of science and engineering necessary to build a space-fairing civilization it would be foolhardy to assume that this translates over into the kind of skills that are necessary for interspecies communication. Humans are also poorly equipped to do so as well. We have a huge tendency to anthropomorphize concepts and think that our path is the best or only path to something.

The biggest thing to take from this is that we actually do have a great deal to discuss because of these difficulties. Attempting to understand and overcome these communication barriers could be unendingly interesting. To discover all those little things they do that we don't and to show them all the inconsequential things we don't even think about but they find utterly fascinating. The science exchange is nice, its something that is easy because it will generally just be math, but the cultural exchange is were all the story is at. The stupidity of Jamsy's statement is in thinking that the psychological barriers are the impediment to the discussion, when they are the entire point for the discussion.

[Starglider]

I'm sure the pure mathematicians would love to swap notes. Technological development will vary somewhat due to resource availability and differing priorities, but the same basic solutions are likely to be discovered and used, just in different orders. I suspect the rate and directions of advancement in abstract maths is much more dependent on a species particular mindset/worldview, yet all the work is still in principle universally communicable via derivation from basic axioms.

Philsophers too, but (a) alien philosophy may genuinely be incomprehensible and (b) IMHO most worthwhile bits of philosophy have long since migrated to other fields.

[Havok]

They may not share the empathy, but sure as shit they will know what 'good' and 'bad' are. They are going to have to understand concepts like that just to get into space. Good is when your ship does what it is designed to. Bad is when your ship blows up on the launch pad. They will have to understand that. Concepts like that will help establish lines of communication.

I think you missed what I was trying to get at with using good and bad. A ship doing what it is supposed to is simply success, it blowing up is failure. Something being good goes beyond simply being successful. A successful genocide is not good, even though it is a success. English speaking humans have tied a great deal of different concepts and definitions into our overall concepts of what good and bad mean. Attempting to explain this to some hypothetical alien intelligences could be a monumental task especially because this type of categorization has strong connections to the way we do moral thinking and form ethical judgments, which is something that we probably wish to discuss with other species.

No I get what you are saying. My point is that if they understand good and bad, or success and failure as you correctly put it, they will have a basis for understanding how we use the words and integrate them into our lives. Of course they will have no idea what we would be saying at first, but I am pointing out that the basis is already there to form an understanding. You seem to think that because I am saying there is a basis for understanding that they will instantly get every nuance of the concept. I am not.

Nonsense. No matter how they do it, at some point, somewhere, one of them said, in whatever method of communication they use, "I'm going to go that way and see what is over there." If they hadn't, they wouldn't be in space in the first place. So while the tools they use may be as alien as possible, but the concept is... has to be, there. And seriously if they understand travel, which obviously, they do, they will understand when I point at a spot, then walk to it, then point back at the spot I was at, and walk back to it.

Again, you are anthropomorphizing the concepts. Yes, pointing will probably be something that is rather trivial to explain (we can just use the notion of vectors because these are necessary for space travel) but the act of pointing and the symbolic representation with an arrow may not be in the alien vocabulary. They may not use sight as a primary sense or their brains may find cylindrical or spherical coordinate systems easier to work in than Cartesian. You may point and they think you are representing the Right Hand Rule and start looking for magnetic poles!

And again, I'm not saying it is an instant understanding, but if I point and go in that direction, that should be a concept they understand no matter what senses they use. (and there has to be some sort of vision as a sense or they are not traveling into space. You can't navigate by smell or sound in space man) What I am saying is that there are concepts, that as space travelers that they will have to share with us and that those concepts will be a basis for forming an understanding and forging communication.

Anyway, pointing was only a singular specific example because its understanding is varied through the animal kingdom. Dogs can understand pointing but cats can't. The broader idea is that many basic nuances of human communication are based upon traits that aren't necessary for interstellar flight and could easily be points of confusion to an alien species.

Again, not saying that there will not be confusion and I wouldn't expect that the nuances of either species would be immediately understood, but the foundation is there.

Well for one, we have understood the dynamic of wolf packs for quite a long while, basically, since we decided we wanted to know. That aside, the fact that they are not retards is a point in favor of a mutual understanding, not against it. You also seem to assume that this race, whoever they may be are going to be of a completely singular mind about everything like some generic Star Trek TNG race. The evidence we have is that when intelligence evolves in a species, there is no instant consensus on anything.
You have a multitude of ideas and philosophies which can dictate how entire civilizations rise, live and fall. Now, I'm not saying that any race that has achieved interstellar travel has gotten there on the same path we would have, but there is more reason to assume that it is similar than dissimilar. Add that to the fact that they will have an extensive understanding of mathematics, physics and other necessary skills to space travel and recognize that we must also have that same understanding and you have a huge common ground on which to begin communication.

We actually haven't understood wolf packs as well as you are implying. There has been study even in very recent decades suggesting much more nuance to the hierarchy than Alpha Male and followers. There are many steps and a complicated delineation of certain tasks as well as many layers of intragroup interactions. This can be much worse in a species capable of more complexity of thought than wolves.

That is fine. My point still stands. We have understood them for as long as we have wanted to understand them, i.e., as long as we have dedicated time and effort to understanding their behavior, we have. I also doubt we are going to trust the word of some frontiersmen and trappers for centuries when it comes to a new alien sentient species.
And we don't have to understand the complete breakdown of every part of the alien's culture and society to have communication with them.

You also seem to be making a very broad assumption that intelligence is a singular quantity, instead of an amalgamation of different abilities. We can again look to the animal kingdom to see this isn't the case. Chimps are very smart, they use tools, pass down knowledge, and even are capable of altruistic action. In spite of all this, squids have much better spatial reasoning skills, they are amazing at many spatial tasks and yet are invertebrates. There are talents needed in space flight that squids would be better suited for than a chimp. The fact that an interstellar species needs certain abilities and a certain type of intelligence does not suggest that they are necessarily going to be easier to understand than a terrestrial species. The manner in which they possess these necessary intelligences can be entirely foreign to us, just like a squid's 3-D reasoning is.

Well at some point they have to be a terrestrial species. And one more time, since you didn't gather it from the times I already said it... I'm not saying it is going to be easy, just that there will be common ground from where we can start.

The main thing is that while yes, we will both have very similar skills in the areas of science and engineering necessary to build a space-fairing civilization it would be foolhardy to assume that this translates over into the kind of skills that are necessary for interspecies communication. Humans are also poorly equipped to do so as well. We have a huge tendency to anthropomorphize concepts and think that our path is the best or only path to something.

Why, even after I already said it multiple times, do you keep assuming that I think that this will be easy or instant? I get that this would be an exceedingly difficult task to undertake. There are going to be incredible obstacles to overcome, especially if they communicate in a way other than audible speech. There may be cultural differences so vast as to be almost unimaginable, but that does not in any way shape or form mean that we will not even try.

The biggest thing to take from this is that we actually do have a great deal to discuss because of these difficulties. Attempting to understand and overcome these communication barriers could be unendingly interesting. To discover all those little things they do that we don't and to show them all the inconsequential things we don't even think about but they find utterly fascinating. The science exchange is nice, its something that is easy because it will generally just be math, but the cultural exchange is were all the story is at. The stupidity of Jamsy's statement is in thinking that the psychological barriers are the impediment to the discussion, when they are the entire point for the discussion.

Agreed.

[Dark Hellion]

I think I read a bit to much into what you were saying because I agree with you on all points. Its sometimes hard not to assume that people are thinking in the terrible pop sci-fi way of treating all alien civilizations as fundamentally human that you just need an alien to English dictionary and a 10 page travel guide.

[Kwizard]

I suspect the rate and directions of advancement in abstract maths is much more dependent on a species particular mindset/worldview, yet all the work is still in principle universally communicable via derivation from basic axioms.

I think "in principle" would be the key phrase there. This academic term I've been participating in a reading seminar hosted by a mathematics grad student here at my university (ostensibly titled "The Mathematical Experience"), and there's a consensus among the grad students and faculty members involved that truly axiomatizing a body of mathematics would take an enormous amount of effort. When the idea of launching such a project came up for discussion, it wasn't met with much interest from the geometers and there was even some overall skepticism about the feasibility of creating software that could take the kind of proof that's published in a journal and "compile" it down to a sequence of strings in, say, ZFC.

There would probably be an increased demand for deep formalization of mathematical ideas after contact with alien mathematicians, but it seems like initially there would be massive headaches involved in figuring out which alien abstractions actually map onto human abstractions.

[Starglider]

There would probably be an increased demand for deep formalization of mathematical ideas after contact with alien mathematicians, but it seems like initially there would be massive headaches involved in figuring out which alien abstractions actually map onto human abstractions.

Maybe, maybe not. I have some exposure to automated proving techniques and frankly mathematicians have a tendency to overkill when seeking 'basic fundamental principles' (unsurprisingly ). I strongly suspect ZFC would be unnecessarily low-level, humans and any other species that can handle sophisticated maths should be able to pattern-recognise the equivalent structures in the relatively simple maths that would be developed by any species trying to make sense of the physical world (e.g. set operations, 2D/3D geometry, calculus, the fields and functions of integer/real/complex arithmetic - the kind of 'basic maths knowledge' we try to put into AIs).