Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

[dmjalund]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

Not every evolutionary trait provides an advantage. Those traits with advantages tend to have a higher probability of propagating with the species' date=' but not always. It's entirely possible that intelligence could evolve accidentally.[/quote']Every trait that uses as much energy as intelligence, does.

[phookz]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

Every trait that uses as much energy as intelligence' date=' does.[/quote']

 

I don't buy it. Evolutionary theory says that random mutations occur, and those that provide an advantage will tend to win out due to survival of the fittest. If this is the case, then it is entirely possible that non-advantageous traits will make it in, even ones that use a lot of energy. It's not a perfect system - there isn't someone evaluating the results and kicking out those with less than some minimal efficiency.

[Tasha]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

The question I'm asking is why they'd want to do this to begin with' date=' when they have the opportunity to create something [i']better[/i] in RPG format.

 

Because I WANT to command the Starship enterprise, Fight Tie Fighters in my X-Wing, Blow up Toasters in my Viper, be a big dam Hero in my freighter and walk through the Stargate to another universe. Those universes are easy to run in because most people have an idea how they work. If I create a universe whole cloth it takes a whole lot more work. Also, one has to have player buy-in to run any game. The Hard Sci-fi that we are talking about here is fun to read on occasion, but not all players are into it.

[Basil]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

I made it all the way through the cited article, but the writer lost my willingness-to-listen at this point:

 

"Yet, structure and organization are mere language elements. They are “in our head” so to speak. They do not exist in reality."

 

The writer's PhD is clearly not in physics. Structure exists from crystals on "up" and, from a POV, from sub-atomic particles on up.

 

Word-trickery and twaddle, and d**n-all else.

[Markdoc]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

Well' date=' except that octopi and corvids don't make tools -- they take advantage of the existing physical properties of items in their environment. Reshaping things to our purposes is exclusive to humans and our closest relatives, and displays an imagination that other creatures on our planet at least appear to lack.[/quote']

 

Yup. And go back a very short time in human history and you'd find we were on the same level as Octopi are now. We exclusively used found tools. In the blink of an eye - relatively speaking - we made the jump from sticks n' stones to zippos and cruise missiles. Are you really so certain that we are the only species that could possibly have done that? If so, write it up and wait for your Nobel invite!

 

This is the problem that I keep banging away at. People are looking at one species, and at a very limited range in time for that one species and saying "Well obviously, this is how it works". I'm looking at that same species and thinking, "You know, for 90+% of its existence, this species didn't look much difference intelligence-wise from what we can find under a big rock on the seashore" Who's to know whether Octopi are right now, going through the changes that will propel them towards full sapience in a hundred thousand years or so?

 

Personally, I doubt it - but there's no way to know and as far as we can tell there's no biological barrier to such a change.

 

 

Then again' date=' we also are fairly confident as to how much manipulative limbs and sensory placement and use, particularly visual, has contributed to the development of our kind of intelligence. Are those universal advantages? Impossible to say at this point, as again, we only have the one example.[/quote']

 

We are? News to the evolutionary biologists I know. The field as a whole (and my wife was an anthropologist, with a focus on evolution, so I have some input direct from the debate, as it were) has been arguing about what factors promoted our thought development for years, with no clear conclusion in sight. If manipulative limbs and sensory placement contributed to our kind of intelligence, why don't most or all, hominids have it? The vast majority of hominid species that roamed this planet have lived or gone extinct, without showing tool-using ability beyond that of an octopus. Yet they are all built on the same plan that we are.

 

My own belief is that it has little to do with tool use at all (not a fringe position, in the field I might add) but that it was driven by social interaction, plus some lucky breaks in the evolutionary mutation stakes. In this view, the evolution of a more adaptive brain let us make more effective use of tools, rather than the other way around. In short, adaptive intelligence comes before tool-making.

 

Personally' date=' I'm more concerned with how aliens might think, rather than how they might look. A radically alien-looking creature migh still have thought processes recognizably like our own, depending on whether "intelligence" really does manifest within one particular definition. Again, no way to be sure.[/quote']

 

But as Nietsche said, the brain is the plaything of the body. I doubt an intelligence that evolved inside a wholly different body would be very much like ours. I'm guessing of course, because there's no way that we could know, but again, it's a reasonable guess. Our societies are very much shaped by our biology/environment* and our minds are shaped by society. Still I'd find an alien that thought somewhat like us but didn't look like us to be more plausible than one that looked and thought like us.

 

There's also an important distinction here: for an RPG game, I'm perfectly OK with having human-like aliens. I'd simply brush it off as a genre trope that makes no sense biologically, just as FTL travel makes no sense from a physical viewpoint. It's like the tropes we discussed for superheroes, like for example the recent discussion that the Marvel Universe has wild supertech, spaceships and alien races, but our world remains more or less unchanged, even though all of this has been headline news since the second world war. It makes not one whit of sense, but it's a genre trope. Rather than contorted arguments trying to rationalize it, I just accept that it makes no sense - but it's a genre trope - and move on.

 

That's because as Tasha says, space opera is more fun to play than hard sci-fi (not that I wouldn't jump at a good hard sci-fi game!) Space opera also is easier to GM - it's basically fantasy hero in space - precisely because no-one is sweating the details.

 

cheers, Mark

 

*by interesting coincidence my wife an I had exactly that discussion last weekend: "Why do so many societies oppress/confine women's activities?" The conclusion after about 3 hours of discussion was that until recently, societies were shaped by their earliest roots and those roots were shaped in turn by basic human biology. Not exactly a new conclusion, true, but a fun discussion.

[Markdoc]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

Every trait that uses as much energy as intelligence' date=' does.[/quote']

 

Actually .... no. Traits that are energy/resource consuming can be (and are) carried along with advantageous traits if they are closely linked. I think it's a moot point, since intelligence seems to have an adaptive advantage in and of itself: just clearing up a point about biology that people seem to consistently misunderstand. Disadvantageous traits can also persist over very long time periods, in some conditions. A good example is triple-C anemia, which is very widespread in the pacific islands (or was, before the modern-era influx of new genetic material) due to the founder effect. It persisted in the population despite the fact that it's a major defect due to the nature of the gene it was embedded in.

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

I don't buy it. Evolutionary theory says that random mutations occur' date=' and those that provide an advantage will tend to win out due to survival of the fittest. If this is the case, then it is entirely possible that non-advantageous traits will make it in, even ones that use a lot of energy. It's not a perfect system - there isn't someone evaluating the results and kicking out those with less than some minimal efficiency.[/quote']

 

Exactly! Evolution is a sloppy process. There's no designer or design elements involved, which means that all kinds of suboptimal genetic mixes slip in. The overall process tends to fit organisms to their environment, but it does so by making use of random change - which means that sometime useful elements come with non-optimal - even negative - consequences. It's simply a balance. Negative elements tend to be eliminated - but this can take huge periods of time.

 

cheers, Mark

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

Because I WANT to command the Starship enterprise' date=' Fight Tie Fighters in my X-Wing, Blow up Toasters in my Viper, be a big dam Hero in my freighter and walk through the Stargate to another universe. Those universes are easy to run in because most people have an idea how they work. If I create a universe whole cloth it takes a whole lot more work. Also, one has to have player buy-in to run any game. The Hard Sci-fi that we are talking about here is fun to read on occasion, but not all players are into it.[/quote']

 

True, creating a universe from scratch does take a lot of work. It's easier to run a milieu in which the work's already done -- but someone still had to do all that work. And did they do the job well? In most cases, not really. Popular SF includes a long list of default tropes that simply make no sense, including more of these tropes than I can shake a stick at.

 

"Conventional wisdom" would agree with you that hard SF RPG's are a marginal niche in the marketplace. But I've come to disagree with that since I started work on my own hard SF project for Star Hero. When I began, I expected it wouldn't have very wide appeal, but the results have been unexpectedly positive: every single time I run it at a convention, the players eat it up with a spoon. And they always ask the same question: "When are you going to publish this?" (Uh... sometime after Star Hero 6E comes out?)

 

I agree, it's not easy creating an interesting RPG based on hard SF, but it can be done. I've had a great many players 'buy in' within a few minutes of sitting down to play, whether they read hard SF on a regular basis or not.

[Zeropoint]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

I'm quite curious: just how "hard" is your hard science fiction campaign? Also, how much "weird stuff" or new things for the players to wrap their head around is there?

[austenandrews]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

Octopusses don't have bilateral symmetry?

[Guest Celt]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

Not only are octupi bilaterally symetrical and protosentient - they have precognition!

[dmjalund]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

Trivia: Octopuses don't have 8 legs. The have 2 legs and 6 arms. FACT!

[BobGreenwade]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

Trivia: Octopuses don't have 8 legs. The have 2 legs and 6 arms. FACT!

Actually, they have 0 legs, 0 arms, and 8 tentacles.

[Susano]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

Actually' date=' they have 0 legs, 0 arms, and 8 tentacles.[/quote']

 

According to Wikipedia, it's eight arms.

[BobGreenwade]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

According to Wikipedia' date=' it's eight arms.[/quote']Well, that's kind of a matter of definition, really. I tend to define an arm as "a limb with a hand on the end." Others legitimately can and do differ.

[Susano]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

Well' date=' that's kind of a matter of definition, really. I tend to define an arm as "a limb with a hand on the end." Others legitimately can and do differ.[/quote']

 

Except squid are specifically said to have eight arms and two tentacles. So there seems to be a difference there.

[BobGreenwade]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

Except squid are specifically said to have eight arms and two tentacles. So there seems to be a difference there.

Yes' date=' and a legitimate one -- by my definitions, I'd call squid the other way about. (Though I do wonder what the squid's "two tentacles" have that make them not arms when the other eight [i']are[/i] arms.)

[Susano]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

Yes' date=' and a legitimate one -- by my definitions, I'd call squid the other way about. (Though I do wonder what the squid's "two tentacles" have that make them not arms when the other eight [i']are[/i] arms.)

 

I think an arm is a manipulatory limb. The long tentacles on a squid don't manipulate per se.

[Sweeper]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

I don't know... Evolution is Mother Nature's trump card.

 

Whatever a scientist will theorize about a species, ( our own planet or another, real or in-game). Nature will just reach into her pocket and, pull out evolution and say, "Nope."

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

*by interesting coincidence my wife an I had exactly that discussion last weekend: "Why do so many societies oppress/confine women's activities?" The conclusion after about 3 hours of discussion was that until recently' date=' societies were shaped by their earliest roots and those roots were shaped in turn by basic human biology. Not exactly a new conclusion, true, but a fun discussion.[/quote']

 

Hmm... been a long time since I had contact with formal anthropology courses, but weren't many of the earliest human societies matriarchal? Are there theories as to why such a widespread social shift occurred?

 

And I want to emphasize again, Mark, that what you argue makes a great deal of sense, and based on everything we think we know so far about the development of life (which knowledge continues to evolve and change, of course, based on new discoveries), your points seem likely to be borne out when and if we encounter extraterrestrial life forms. I guess my point just boils down to, until we do find such life forms to compare to our own, it's all just educated guesswork.

[Escafarc]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

Mark Twain's view

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

I'm quite curious: just how "hard" is your hard science fiction campaign? Also' date=' how much "weird stuff" or new things for the players to wrap their head around is there?[/quote']

 

I'll answer your second question first cuz it's easier: there is a lot of weirdness, but it's meted out in small doses. When I run a convention scenario, or a playtest, I like to focus on just one, or a few, aspects of the game-world, and keep the tedious info-dumps to a minimum. I'll often write up a glossary if it's helpful.

 

How hard is the science? The simple answer is that the ONLY deliberate violation of the laws of physics is FTL travel, and even that has a 'real world' explanation which hasn't been disproven yet. (Wiki 'Heim theory': he's probably a crackpot, but his ideas are mostly untested.)

 

The complicated answer is from the tvtropes.org page on the Scale of Sci-Fi Hardness: no simple single-dimensional scale can encompass the full nuances of the idea of "hardness" in Science Fiction. I've made it as 'hard' as I can without turning into an object lesson in physics for the players. Anytime there's been a conflict between being absolutely scientifically accurate and making the game fun to play, I chose playability. The compromises have paid off: while it's much harder than just about anything on the large or small screen (with a few rare exceptions), the players have had a lot of fun with it.

 

Oh, and there are absolutely no humanoid aliens. I made some of the humans in this setting alien enough for anyone. And somebody (who shall go nameless) insisted on cat-girls. He was probably thinking 'furries' but he got something else entirely....

[Susano]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

Oh' date=' and there are absolutely [i']no[/i] humanoid aliens. I made some of the humans in this setting alien enough for anyone. And somebody (who shall go nameless) insisted on cat-girls. He was probably thinking 'furries' but he got something else entirely....

 

Hey, that wasn't me... I got all the cat-girls I want in my own setting!

[phookz]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

Sounds cool.

[dmjalund]

Re: Aliens: everything you know is... well, "wrong" doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

When designing 'realistic' aliens, I follow the "octopus" rule of thumb. - since every macroscopic part of an octopus evolved apart from us (our common ancestor would be a worm), that if an alien is as different to us as an octopus AND if it is a different to an octopus as we are, then I have made my alien sufficiently alien