5.4 KiB
[HSF][BST] Wildbow on realistic aliens
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Author: u/None *
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Score: 29
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Created: 2015-08-01T13:26:07
Post:
Comments:
u/Nepene [+16] (2 hours later)
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StarfishAliens
This serves as a list of stories with this sort of story in it for any who want more.
Wildbow remains awesome.
u/None [+3] (4 hours later)
[deleted]
u/Nepene [+1] (2 days later)
You're welcome, glad to be of service.
u/Ishamoridin [+3] (2 days later)
WARNING: CRITICAL TAB DENSITY REACHED
u/None [+7] (13 hours later)
[deleted]
u/tvcgrid [+2] (15 hours later)
Check out Blindsight by Peter Watts, you'll likely enjoy a certain part of it.
u/Kishoto [+1] (14 hours later)
In our universe, yes. But if you have a story that crosses universes, isn't it plausible that the aliens wouldn't be able to be modeled by anything we use now? At least without significant observation of their universe and how its laws are similar/different to our own?
u/philip1201 [+1] (a day later)
It's impossible that there is no model for something. At worst, the best model is perfect noise. There are game theoretical strategies against opponents whose actions are perfectly random, as for everything else.
u/Kishoto [+1] (2 days later)
It's impossible in our universe, as we live in one that follows certain rules. There isn't a guarantee of that, if we cross universes. Our universe has certain rules but that isn't to say other universes will have them.
u/philip1201 [+3] (2 days later)
We are part of our universe. Our maps are part of our universe, even when mapping stuff outside it, so the maps still obey the rules of this universe, QED.
Or, as a Socratic question: What kind of evidence would you expect to see if an alien "can't be modeled"?
u/Kishoto [+2] (3 days later)
The easiest thing that I can think of would be an alien that exists in a non-causal universe. In our universe, our laws and our physics are governed by cause and effect. Even for things not readily apparent or able to be perceived, we can devise causal links in them. How would you model without causal linkage?
u/philip1201 [+3] (3 days later)
A non-causal object is, by definition, not influenced by me. The 'alien' would therefore be modelled as a random number generator with unknown probability distribution (which is pinned down through priors and observations).
I'll ask again: What kind of evidence would you expect to see if an alien "can't be modeled" or "is not causal"?
(If you disagree with my definition of 'non-causal', I would expect your answer to this question to be necessary and hopefully sufficient to resolve that problem).
u/None [+2] (4 days later)
Kishoto, baby, I love you, but you need to reread the Sequences, like, yesterday
u/None [+4] (4 minutes later)
This is one of the reasons why I like Peter Watts' stories so much.
u/Ziquaxi [+3] (18 hours later)
Shout out to the fact that Wildbow has written the best sci-fi story I've ever read with the best incorporation of aliens I have ever read.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (2 days later)
Which one is that?
u/ContessaPlots [+1] (3 days later)
u/eaglejarl [+2] (3 days later)
Really? Wow. I didn't read them that way at all. They strike me as Standard Assimilator Race #21849 with a side order of Conflict Ball.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+2] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (22 minutes later)
Barrington Bailey, "Sporting with the Chid"
Karl Schroeder's aliens in "Permanence" or "Ventus".
u/None [+3] (3 hours later)
Stanisław Lem's Solaris?
u/None [+5] (4 hours later)
[deleted]
u/Cruithne [+1] Light Sith epistemologist (14 hours later)
I was going to suggest this. Ted Chiang is incredible and he just...Gets things. I feel like he would be the sort of person that, if you had to explain something to, you would have absolutely no worry that he would understand whatever you were trying to explain, and then he would probably be able to explain it back to you better than you told it to him originally.
u/IWantUsToMerge [+0] (20 hours later)
Starting in unnatural universes as a stipulation of writing fanfiction is one thing, but if your object of study is xenobiology, you can't just stipulate an alternate evolutionary pathway without having natural reasons to consider it plausible. It is very difficult to point to a major locus in our evolutionary history and say "This was a fluke, there was a good chance this adaptation would never have been developed, and life could have taken a completely different course". Everything from multicelularity to fur to mathematics has a strong reason rooted in game theory or material science for emerging.
The premise that aliens evolved under the same physical laws as us could be significantly different from us is in and of itself questionable.