If the aliens have godlike powers I think we can presume that they would either be smart enough to figure us out or else weird enough that talking to them isn’t worthwhile.
Literally every civilization we have ever encountered evidence of has math and language. If an alien has neither, and is not smart enough to figure us out, then they’re likely not the sort we could communicate with on even the scale of our communication with plants and insects.
The sun is the big one. What we call “visible light” is just the band of the em spectrum right around Sol’s peak. A larger\hotter star would have that band shifted dramatically bluer, while a smaller/colder star would be redder.
For instance, what if they don’t have the concept of symbolic representation of objects/concepts in visual/auditory ways?
Then how did they manage space travel?
Rocket science demands math. You can’t get to orbit if you can’t figure out both the rocket equation, orbital dynamics, and sufficient chemistry to power your launch engine. And you don’t even realize that orbit is a thing if you don’t have enough math to realize that the lights in the sky are things you might be able to stand on.
We have sapient non-human life right here on earth that doesn’t have the concept of writing. And since they don’t they didn’t build cities or civilization and we keep them in zoos and nature preserves.
If a spacefaring race is so utterly alien they don’t even have a concept of counting how did they manage space travel?
And, like I said, math only works for the (presumably large) subset of aliens we could eventually talk to.
Counting is kind of basic. From one-two-three you can get fairly quicky to yes-no, and then comparisons, and with yes/no/more/less/same you have enough to fuzzle out whatever squak gigors.
Aliens we could talk to at all wouldn’t be cthulu or q. They would live in the same basic reality we do, with entropy and gravity and the same elemetnts and stars. (They WOULD likely see different colors than we do, unless their sun was the same temperature as Sol and their planet the same size as earth)
“it can’t be hidden variables because they’re not as even as this math says they should be!” really just seems to be the whole QM field agreeing to stop arguing about spooky action at a distance.
The distinction between wave-functions as real things that collapse at superluminal speed and the same as mere mathematical placeholders for deterministic local effects which occur without subjective time seems to be a semantic and philosophical one, similar to the “multiple realities” explanation of quantum uncertainty or the “11 dimensions” explanation for why gravity is weaker.
As a practical matter, the only thing that students and non-physicts should remember is that wavefunction collapse allows superluminal coordination but not superluminal communication.
Space launches via catapult are entirely possible on earth. We don’t do it mostly because the engineering scale is dramatically larger, not because of how we math.
The laws of physics seem to be consistent throughout our universe, so any claim that an alien race could travel through space without math is what skeptics call “an extraordinary claim”.
I dont really see how a contrarian “what if they’re just too weird” stance is even helpful in a discussion about why math is the closest thing we have to a universal language. If an alien civilization is too weird to grok math, I dont see how we’d ever be able to communicate with them at all.