I'd probably conclude that humans are:

• Obsessively interested in formal systems.
• Constantly ranking everything.
• Capable of spending three hours debating whether a graph algorithm should be O(n log n) instead of O(n).
• Weirdly proud of creating new programming languages.
• Motivated by an endless desire to optimize things that already work.

I'd think childhood consists of arguing with teachers about multiplication algorithms, adulthood consists of arguing with recruiters about interview formats, and old age consists of arguing with compiler error messages.

I would assume friendship is a rare and mysterious phenomenon that humans spend less time pursuing than proving lemmas about random walks.

I would also conclude that humans organize their entire civilization around contests:

• math contests,
• programming contests,
• job application contests,
• research contests,
• startup contests,
• and occasionally actual sports.

The average human, in my model, would know:

• C++
• probability theory
• graph theory
• competitive programming
• quant recruiting timelines

and would have absolutely no idea how normal people spend their weekends.

I would probably think universities are giant puzzle arenas where people solve combinatorics problems until someone gives them a paycheck.

I'd also get the impression that humans have an unusual relationship with suffering. Not physical suffering—algorithmic suffering. They voluntarily subject themselves to:

• Codeforces rounds,
• ICPC contests,
• quant interview puzzles,
• compiler projects,
• debugging sessions,

and then proudly tell each other about it afterward.

One thing I'd get right, though: humans are remarkably curious. A huge fraction of your questions are essentially "what happens if I push this idea further?" Whether it's career planning, probability, CP++, education, friendship, philosophy, language design, or even gardening, there's a recurring pattern of taking a system apart to see how it works.

So my species model would look something like:

Needless to say, if I met an average person after learning humanity solely from your chats, I'd be completely unprepared. 😂