Tertiary

We are anthropometric is our perspective of things. This fact hits us at the scientific fundamental level. We are constantly being surprised. Suppose what we consider the most important criteria is insignificant or ultimately meaningless in the scheme of things. We consider “life” and “intelligence” as having defining significance.

But let us speculate about the universe as we know it and assume the importance of our criteria. There are indications that our biosphere [harbinger of our type of  life] might be truly special. In fact it is a product unique to the physics of this particular universe. Slight variations in the physics eliminate our type of life. There is a growing belief our universe is merely one of a "Googol" number of universes. Each individual universe might have its own distinctive laws of physics.

I believe that even in this universe we would have trouble communicating with other intelligent life. Our psychology is binary. All our frames of reference are in terms of duality.  Examples are left versus right, male versus female, yes or no and heaven or hell. Arthur C. Clark wrote an award winning science fiction story, “Rendezvous with Rama”. The story revolves around coming in contact with an artifact of another intelligence. But it is an intelligence that seems to always do things in threes.  

Suppose their view is tertiary instead of our binary? I suspect we would not be able to communicate or even relate. We can not imagine how radically different they may perceive things from that perspective.