No, for this to be plausible, you would need to have some theory of why the two notes matched with each other. There is no such theory; they have been chosen to be as unmatched as possible.
> nobody in 1800 would imagine we'd enjoy listening to punk, hip hop, or Death Metal
This is false.
>> That hypothetical species wouldn't recognize two notes an octave apart as being similar
> Note how I said that this imagined alien race would consider the "divisions in 12-tet as perfect". Note how those do include a perfect octave, that we already recognize as such. The alien race wouldn't change that
Sure. In that case, we can also imagine an alien race that perceives all and only the light that fails to reach its eyes.
Then again, perhaps being able to form a sentence describing something doesn't guarantee that the situation described is possible.
This is both pedantic, condescending, and unwilling to entertain an idea.
In any case, just for anybody interested:
>No, for this to be plausible, you would need to have some theory of why the two notes matched with each other. There is no such theory; they have been chosen to be as unmatched as possible.
Nothing has in 12-tet has been "chosen to be as unmatched as possible". Instead, we've chosen it to match the ratios as close as we can, given the compromises we had (simpler instruments, larger range, etc.).
The 12-tet values still has strict mathematical properties, it's not just some random off collection of pitches - and it could be that, which is perceived as "perfection" by the imaginary alien race (that it is equally spaced values on a logarithmic scale).
> The 12-tet values still has strict mathematical properties, it's not just some random off collection of pitches - and it could be that, which is perceived as "perfection" by the imaginary alien race (that it is equally spaced values on a logarithmic scale).
This is an analysis you can't even apply to two notes. Every pair of notes is "equally spaced along a logarithmic scale", for the same reason that every pair of geographic locations is "equally spaced" along a linear scale, and of course also equally spaced along a scale with sinusoidal spacing. You have a single data point, and it's equal to itself. The claim has no meaning unless you're simultaneously evaluating more than two things.
In reality, of course, we perceive sounds as being related to each other when they have frequencies that are related to each other. This removes the need to evaluate them against imaginary background standards.
And two notes drawn from a 12-tet scale cannot have related frequencies unless they are separated by an integer number of octaves. The period of the combination of a note with its own fifth is double the period of the base note. The combination of a note with its 12-tet fifth is aperiodic.
> Nothing has in 12-tet has been "chosen to be as unmatched as possible".
No, for this to be plausible, you would need to have some theory of why the two notes matched with each other. There is no such theory; they have been chosen to be as unmatched as possible.
> nobody in 1800 would imagine we'd enjoy listening to punk, hip hop, or Death Metal
This is false.
>> That hypothetical species wouldn't recognize two notes an octave apart as being similar
> Note how I said that this imagined alien race would consider the "divisions in 12-tet as perfect". Note how those do include a perfect octave, that we already recognize as such. The alien race wouldn't change that
Sure. In that case, we can also imagine an alien race that perceives all and only the light that fails to reach its eyes.
Then again, perhaps being able to form a sentence describing something doesn't guarantee that the situation described is possible.