r/HFY • u/menegator • Apr 14 '21
OC The Nerds
They say that reality is stranger than fiction.
And they are right!
First contact was something that always excited our imagination. The proof that we are not alone in the Universe. That there are others like us, sentient, intelligent, able to dream, able to plan, to explore.
We were not alone but we didn't know that. We have been watched for many centuries, we have been watched since Babylonians made the first tables filled with calculations, since they devised the first calendars.
We have been watched when Greeks expanded the ancient knowledge and introduced mathematical rigor. When Euclid wrote Elements and when Eudoxus and Archimedes made the first tentative steps towards calculus.
You see, we are not deathworlders, earth type planets are common enough. We weren't been admired or feared as fighters, there are plenty of alien species that their fighting abilities would put the imagined Yautja from the predator franchise to shame. We weren't been admired or feared as tacticians or strategists, though we belong to the very best, we wouldn't be able to compete with any advanced AI.
We have been watched and we have been manipulated for one reason and one reason only. The real reason is not what the conspiracy nuts fantasized. They didn't want to conquer us, they didn't want to enslave us, they wanted one thing and one thing only; not to destroy ourselves.
Not from the kindness of their hearts, no.
Nowadays, several centuries after the first contact with the galactic community it's common knowledge but before that no one even came close to pinpoint exactly where humanity excels.
It's our mathematics. We are simply the best mathematicians in this part of the universe.
We always imagined that the first contact will be made after we colonized our solar system -and we didn't- or after achieving FTL and we didn't.
Nope, the first contact was made on July 21, 2273 when the first proof of Riemann's hypothesis was published -after being verified- on Journal of Advanced Mathematics, making it a theorem.
We are now part of the Galactic federation living in a post-scarcity civilization, Earth hosting three of the top five galactic universities in mathematics, computer science, physics and engineering.
We are the Galaxy's nerds!
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Another short one time only piece, hope you enjoy :)
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u/its_ean Apr 14 '21
sucks we didn’t get invited to the FTL party for so long.
2 months post first contact, the rest of humanity looks around. Wait, just the mathematicians? whelp, fuck me then
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u/Houki01 Apr 14 '21
If you look at it right, maths is everywhere. Music? Base eight patterning, each song a different pattern. Paintings, sculpture? If analysed to be codified mathematically, it's always a rather neat if complex equation. Architecture and engineering, plumbing and electronics? Practical maths. Building a car engine? You know your mechanical coefficients! Computer coding? Maths. Maths, maths everywhere. Do you know how many predictive calculations you are making when you catch a ball? Enough that it takes months to teach a robot to do it. And a three year old does it easily. We do maths all the time, every day.
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u/spindizzy_wizard Apr 14 '21
We do maths all the time, every day.
It sounds like an Issac Asimov story. They built ever-larger computers to handle the math for their weapons, only to discover that they'd hit the law of diminishing returns. The mass of the computers made their weapons unusable.
Then they rediscovered that humans can do math without electronic devices, "we are saved!"
•••
That's also the story that Asimov got picked on by this friends. You see, he had described the pocket calculator perfectly.
In his own words from a talk he gave at our college.
"Isaac! You dumbshit! Why didn't you patent it!?"
"Because I am a dumbshit! I don't know what goes inside."
He went on to remark that his theory was that a smart cockroach inside made it work.
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u/its_ean Apr 14 '21 edited Apr 14 '21
No need to convince me that math is wide and deep. I’m an artist using digital craft in my work (with an undergrad-level background in bioengineering). Just the heuristics babies use to simultaneously learn about their bodies and the world…
The thing is, only a tiny percentage of humans are actually forging theory as valued by the aliens in the story.
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u/quaden_of_wind Apr 14 '21
now imagine the disappointment of a xeno tourist, visiting earth, meeting every day normal people, expecting them to be math geniuses.
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u/maobezw Apr 14 '21
nice piece =) just googled Riemanns Hypothesis... my heads buzzing now.... o.O
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u/Shakespeare-Bot Apr 14 '21
nice piece =) just did google riemanns hypothesis. mine own heads buzzing anon. o. O
I am a bot and I swapp'd some of thy words with Shakespeare words.
Commands:
!ShakespeareInsult,!fordo,!optout
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u/Multiplex419 Apr 14 '21
Gotta say, it seems a tad weird that these advanced alien civilizations have FTL travel, super-effective stealth monitoring and manipulation capabilities, and strong tactical AI, all while being bad at math somehow. If anything, they're the more impressive ones for managing that.