53 réponses à ce sujet

[Vortex13]

You literally can't make a 'truly' alien alien, because such an entity is fundamentally beyond our imagination. Look up anthropomorphism.

 

 

True, anything we humans can think up is going to be filtered through our collective imaginations, but that doesn't mean that 'alien' aliens are an impossibility. We can have beings that operate on a level that not many of us can comprehend in our daily lives, and no I don't mean that we should use the whole "We are beyond your comprehension" copout either. 

 

The problem with most mainstream science fiction is that they get to something that is wholly different from us and go 'beyond your comprehension' and then call it a day. Many things can be outside of one's current understanding, but still be realized. I for example, don't understand the finer points of quantum theory, or biochemistry, they are beyond my understanding at the moment, but that doesn't mean that learning about those subjects is impossible.

 

Creating an alien operating on an entirely different level than what we would normally conceive of might technically not be something truly 'alien', but it would certainly be a heck of a lot closer than slapping some green paint on a super model and calling her an alien (IMO).

 

Just look at aliens like the Scramblers from Peter Watts' novel Blindsight. 

 

Spoiler

Imagine you're a scrambler.

 

Imagine you have intellect but no insight, agendas but no awareness. Your circuitry hums with strategies for survival and persistence, flexible, intelligent, even technological - but no other circuitry monitors it. You can think of anything, yet are conscious of nothing.

 

You can't imagine such a being can you? The term being doesn't even seem to apply, in some fundamental way you can't quite put your finger on.

 

Try.

 

Imagine that you encounter a signal. It is structured, and dense with information. It meets all the criteria of an intelligent transmission. Evolution and experience offer a variety of paths to follow, branch-points in the flowcharts that handle such input. Sometimes these signals come from conspecifics who have useful information to share, whose lives you'll defend according to the rules of kin selection. Sometimes they come from competitors or predators or other inimical entities that must be avoided or destroyed; in those cases, the information may prove of significant tactical value. Some signals may even arise from entities which, while not kin, can still serve as allies or symbionts in mutually beneficial pursuits. You can derive appropriate responses for any of these eventualities, and many others.

 

You decode the signals, and stumble:

 

I had a great time. I really enjoyed him. Even if he cost twice as much as any other hooker in the dome-

 

To fully appreciate Kesey's Quartet-

 

They hate us for our freedom-

 

Pay attention now-

 

Understand.

 

There are no meaningful translations for these terms. They are needlessly recursive. They contain no usable intelligence, yet they are structured intelligently; there is no chance they could have arisen by chance.

 

The only explanation is that something has coded nonsense in a way that poses as a useful message; only after wasting time and effort does the deception become apparent. The signal functions to consume the resources of a recipient for zero payoff and reduced fitness. The signal is a virus.

 

Viruses do not arise from kin, symbionts, or other allies.

 

The signal is an attack.

 

And it's coming from right about there.

 

*

 

"Now you get it," Sascha said.

 

I shook my head, trying to wrap it around that insane, impossible conclusion. "They're not even hostile." Not even capable of hostility. Just so profoundly alien that they couldn't help but treat human language itself as a form of combat.

 

How do you say We come in peace when the very words are an act of war?

 

 

Or even something as simple as the Tyranids of WH40K, these are aliens that operate on a different level than us, but are not beyond our comprehension either.

 

Now, I'm not saying that a Scrambler, or a Tyranid would make for an ideal companion, but they certainly could be used to help diversify the setting, to make a universe that is not wholly inhabited by humans and humans with rubber foreheads.

[Sartoz]

I'd like more cultural clashes over conflicting ideologies, showing us that even the aliens who look "like" us, still don't necessarily think the same way?

 

Sort of like how the Turians don't believe in civilian casualties because they all undergo military service, so anyone who's not in a designated non-combatant area when the attack begins is deemed an enemy combatant and legitimate target.

 

Or showing us why races like the Batarians believe they have a "right" to own slaves and explaining what cultural reasons were the basis for this philosophy? Would be better to understand why they believe in it, rather than the way was presented in ME1-3, as seemingly only as a flimsy excuse they bring out to justify acting like a total bunch of jerks towards everyone else in the galaxy?

 

Star Trek in comparison, established alien mentality rather well when it came to the Cardassians. It's mentioned in one of their earliest appearances that when put into a room with them, they'll instinctively attempt to establish dominance and prove they are the alpha male, much like wolves. This is part of the reason they always seem to be manipulating people, project a veneer of superiority and treat everyone in the room as merely window-dressing to them. It's not that they're inherently "evil", it's simply that's the way their psychology operates.

                                                                                       <<<<<<<<<<(0)>>>>>>>>>>

 

Interesting... about the Cardassians, I mean.

However, its development required a series of episodes to fully mature. Whereas that is not the case with a video game.

 

Given the fixed word budget for dialogue, it becomes a question of how you slice the pie. More dialogue to show cultural clashes, the less is available elsewhere. Where would you cut?  Would it interfere with game pacing? Is it part of the diplomacy story arc or the Khet antagonism? what about cut scenes and their costs?

 

Still, some simple dialogue scenes where the alien questions human decisions or actions and vice versa would communicate your idea effectively, I think.

 

 

 

 

 

[The_Nightman_Cometh]

I Want To Believe.

[Shechinah]

I'd like more cultural clashes over conflicting ideologies, showing us that even the aliens who look "like" us, still don't necessarily think the same way?

 

----

 

The writers could even take inspiration from the different mindsets that have existed in different cultures on Earth both past and present because there are plenty of those and their respective cultures that can feel truely alien to people including in their reasoning yet we've still managed to gather understanding of the logic behind some of them and why they developed and functioned as they did.

 

I feel the aliens in Mass Effect tend to look sufficently alien but they tend to fall short of feeling like aliens in terms of their behave especially as the series went on. With a galaxy containing new aliens, it would be nice to see aliens that felt more alien in how they thought and behaved.

 

Modern societies and their cultures can feel alien to each other because of how different some of their mindsets can be and because of the cultural dissonances there often exist yet there still manages to be sufficent understanding for us to bridge the differences so that we may more or less coexist and cooperate with each other on some matters.   

 

The Rachni's synesthesia-like language was fascinating and I certainly did not consider it incomprehensible nor did I the geth pre-Mass Effect 3.

[The_Nightman_Cometh]

Actually, aren't we the " aliens " who are invading andromeda?

[Giantdeathrobot]

...or they might be more similar to a Cheetah.

 

In any case, you are only thinking about planets with similar gravity and environment as ours. Planets with different mineral and gas compositions,

planet with different gravity, and perhaps planets from outside the "Goldilocks Zone", all have the potential to contain forms of life that are very different

from those we are familiar with.

 

Hell, even on a planet which is almost identical to ours, the cosmic dice might fall on different numbers, and one more ice age or one less, might be the cause for a drastically different Eco-system.

 

I honestly have a hard time seeing how any living being that doesn't have opposable thumbs, at the very least, could develop the tools necessary to build civilization and eventually reach space. Even prehensible tentacles, like that the Hanar or the Rachni seem to have, don't seem sufficient to me for the kind of precision that advanced science and craftsmanship require.

 

Maybe it's just me however.

[Laughing_Man]

I honestly have a hard time seeing how any living being that doesn't have opposable thumbs, at the very least, could develop the tools necessary to build civilization and eventually reach space. Even prehensible tentacles, like that the Hanar or the Rachni seem to have, don't seem sufficient to me for the kind of precision that advanced science and craftsmanship require.

 

Maybe it's just me however.

 

I can think about a long list of "maybes", but this will remain a speculation either way until one day we find aliens - or not.

[En Es Ef Dubyu]

You literally can't make a 'truly' alien alien, because such an entity is fundamentally beyond our imagination. Look up anthropomorphism.

And a galaxy populated predominately with sexy female aliens generates more sales! 

[Kabooooom]

I've said it before and I'll say it again - the Geth were the most alien "species" in Mass Effect. And they were brilliantly written (by l'Etoile) prior to ME3, I mean.

But yeah, the Elcor, Hanar, and Rachni were good too.

As far as physical appearance goes, real life aliens would probably be extremely different and truly alien in appearance to us - so I support diversity in alien body plans, be creative, go wild (with the exception that certain anatomical characteristics, such as cephalization, may be ubiquitous due to laws influencing biomechanics). But there are gaming limitations as well - humanoid animations are simply easier to incorporate. Also, while I suspect that somewhere out there, there are probably humanoid alien species due to convergent evolution...well, I hope they are few and far between. On Earth, although convergence is a common phenomenon, nature is still far more creative than we often give it credit for.

As far as alien mental qualities go, I am divided on this. My field of expertise is comparative neurology - I study the minds and brains of diverse species of animals. In most of these species, there is usually a common ancestry and a common (and highly conserved) brain anatomy, so it's hard to make evolutionary best guesses about what we might find on another world . But even where species are vastly separated and independently evolved advanced neural structure, such as Cephalopods, there is still obvious (and remarkable) convergence.

What this says to me is that while there may be many ways to build a brain, there are probably only a limited number of ways to implement the neural architecture/programming in an evolutionarily successful way.

And this likely extends in a more general sense to overall mental life for animals. For example, emotions such as fear and rage are clearly of enormous evolutionary utility for most species, regardless of if you are from Earth or some distant planet. An animal that gets scared or pissed off when another is trying to kill it will have a selective advantage over those that are apathetic to it.

So if we ever do find intelligent alien life, I suspect it will look very different from us, but we may be able to relate to at least SOME of their mental experiences.

The exception would be an alien with a perception so vastly different that it is beyond our comprehension. The Rachni were a pretty good example of this. They communicate via some sort of color-sound-taste/touch synesthesia. Songs the "color of oily shadows", "sour yellow note".

A mind so alien, communication comes across as strange, and confusing. I loved that about the Rachni, and I hope they explore stuff like that in Andromeda too. If they don't, I'll be disappointed.

[Omnifarious Nef]

True, anything we humans can think up is going to be filtered through our collective imaginations, but that doesn't mean that 'alien' aliens are an impossibility. We can have beings that operate on a level that not many of us can comprehend in our daily lives, and no I don't mean that we should use the whole "We are beyond your comprehension" copout either. 

 

The problem with most mainstream science fiction is that they get to something that is wholly different from us and go 'beyond your comprehension' and then call it a day. Many things can be outside of one's current understanding, but still be realized. I for example, don't understand the finer points of quantum theory, or biochemistry, they are beyond my understanding at the moment, but that doesn't mean that learning about those subjects is impossible.

 

Creating an alien operating on an entirely different level than what we would normally conceive of might technically not be something truly 'alien', but it would certainly be a heck of a lot closer than slapping some green paint on a super model and calling her an alien (IMO).

 

Just look at aliens like the Scramblers from Peter Watts' novel Blindsight. 

 

Spoiler

Imagine you're a scrambler.

 

Imagine you have intellect but no insight, agendas but no awareness. Your circuitry hums with strategies for survival and persistence, flexible, intelligent, even technological - but no other circuitry monitors it. You can think of anything, yet are conscious of nothing.

 

You can't imagine such a being can you? The term being doesn't even seem to apply, in some fundamental way you can't quite put your finger on.

 

Try.

 

Imagine that you encounter a signal. It is structured, and dense with information. It meets all the criteria of an intelligent transmission. Evolution and experience offer a variety of paths to follow, branch-points in the flowcharts that handle such input. Sometimes these signals come from conspecifics who have useful information to share, whose lives you'll defend according to the rules of kin selection. Sometimes they come from competitors or predators or other inimical entities that must be avoided or destroyed; in those cases, the information may prove of significant tactical value. Some signals may even arise from entities which, while not kin, can still serve as allies or symbionts in mutually beneficial pursuits. You can derive appropriate responses for any of these eventualities, and many others.

 

You decode the signals, and stumble:

 

I had a great time. I really enjoyed him. Even if he cost twice as much as any other hooker in the dome-

 

To fully appreciate Kesey's Quartet-

 

They hate us for our freedom-

 

Pay attention now-

 

Understand.

 

There are no meaningful translations for these terms. They are needlessly recursive. They contain no usable intelligence, yet they are structured intelligently; there is no chance they could have arisen by chance.

 

The only explanation is that something has coded nonsense in a way that poses as a useful message; only after wasting time and effort does the deception become apparent. The signal functions to consume the resources of a recipient for zero payoff and reduced fitness. The signal is a virus.

 

Viruses do not arise from kin, symbionts, or other allies.

 

The signal is an attack.

 

And it's coming from right about there.

 

*

 

"Now you get it," Sascha said.

 

I shook my head, trying to wrap it around that insane, impossible conclusion. "They're not even hostile." Not even capable of hostility. Just so profoundly alien that they couldn't help but treat human language itself as a form of combat.

 

How do you say We come in peace when the very words are an act of war?

 

 

Or even something as simple as the Tyranids of WH40K, these are aliens that operate on a different level than us, but are not beyond our comprehension either.

 

Now, I'm not saying that a Scrambler, or a Tyranid would make for an ideal companion, but they certainly could be used to help diversify the setting, to make a universe that is not wholly inhabited by humans and humans with rubber foreheads.

This reminded of the comparision between ants, and humans. They are highly intelligent, without having any intelligence. They farm worms for silk to make protective clothing to enter areas with fungus, they build bridges, and rafts, make complex super cities, and yet... They don't actually think. They're practically mindless automotons, just following around scents, but they know how to do the same things we do. Humans are beyond their comprehension. We're titanic god-like figures. Imagine trying to explain what that 16 lane super highway is for to an ant living in its nest on the side of the highway. Then try to explain to it what a car is, the infrastructure of commerce, etc, etc, to the 4 little neurons in its brain... You can't. The best we could do is try to understand how it communcates, and reproduce those pheromones for basic commands. "Gather" "Walk" "Fight" "This is theroetical physics." XD Okay, maybe not the last one...

[Quarian Master Race]

posted this article recently in one of my patented extremely longass ranting shitposts on everything wrong with the portrayal of AI in the MEverse, but I think it applies well to this thread if anyone hasn't seen it. It discusses what anthropomorphism is, why we are evolutionarily hardwired for it, and how that makes writing truly "alien" motivations difficult for us.
https://intelligence...osNegFactor.pdf

[Laughing_Man]

posted this article recently in one of my patented extremely longass ranting shitposts on everything wrong with the portrayal of AI in the MEverse, but I think it applies well to this thread if anyone hasn't seen it. It discusses what anthropomorphism is, why we are evolutionarily hardwired for it, and how that makes writing truly "alien" motivations difficult for us.
https://intelligence...osNegFactor.pdf

 

Looks interesting, will go over it later.

(isn't this the guy who wrote that famous fanfiction?)

 

Edit: Yup, that's him alright. HPMOR.

[The Real Pearl #2]

I can't tell the aliens from the animals.

 

A not quite sentient cloud of living gas might not be very helpful as an ally.  But I guess it could provide 5 seconds of interest on side quest planet.

 

ME hasn't really been hard sci fi, so I am not concerned if nearly all the aliens you interact with regularly aren't too far removed from humans.

lol rick and morty reference

 

Spoiler

[The Real Pearl #2]

I want grey allans

 

Spoiler

[Han Shot First]

I want grey allans

 

Spoiler

 

Salarians are grey aliens really, except for the grey part.

 

The alien abduction myths were the inspiration behind the species concept.

[The Real Pearl #2]

Salarians are grey aliens really, except for the grey part.

 

The alien abduction myths were the inspiration behind the species concept.

NOT GREY ENOUGH

[Laughing_Man]

NOT GREY ENOUGH

 

Well, they probably used anal probes on captured aliens, is that faithful enough to the source?...

[Han Shot First]

Well, they probably used anal probes on captured aliens, is that faithful enough to the source?...

 

No wonder that Yahg was really ****** angry.

[Vortex13]

This reminded of the comparision between ants, and humans. They are highly intelligent, without having any intelligence. They farm worms for silk to make protective clothing to enter areas with fungus, they build bridges, and rafts, make complex super cities, and yet... They don't actually think. They're practically mindless automotons, just following around scents, but they know how to do the same things we do. Humans are beyond their comprehension. We're titanic god-like figures. Imagine trying to explain what that 16 lane super highway is for to an ant living in its nest on the side of the highway. Then try to explain to it what a car is, the infrastructure of commerce, etc, etc, to the 4 little neurons in its brain... You can't. The best we could do is try to understand how it communcates, and reproduce those pheromones for basic commands. "Gather" "Walk" "Fight" "This is theroetical physics." XD Okay, maybe not the last one...

 

 

That's a great example and very on the nose for how the Scramblers operated compared to humanity in that Bindsight novel. The interesting thing here is that nothing is really 'beyond our comprehension' in that scenario, just vastly different perspectives on the universe. 

 

Explaining human culture and technology to an ant might be incompatible to said ant's worldview; but then you could just as easily say that the ants are better than us for not having to deal with all the roadblocks innately found in our various cultures, communications, societies, and individualistic natures. They can do all these things almost by nature, things that take us humans months and years to accomplish, and sometimes even not finish because of differing opinions on how to go about said things.

[Bacus]

Another problem with Alien Aliens, would be a probable moral clash.

 

What if these aliens are in total contradiction with the moral of humanity. For instance, imagine a space fearing civilization that don't care about opening communications with the regular races, and who even enjoys eating the galactic community. (maybe too cliched)

 

Or maybe they don't comprehend the idea of law, so they would be chaotic.

 

Geez my examples are the worst, what I'm trying to say, that aliens would be more than crazy looking blobs of meat, their very ideologies might be extreme.

 

I believe if you would truly want to portray a realistic alien, you would have to walk a very thin line. Maybe the aliens find the males to be inferior, and thus they are enslaved, or maybe they have rituals in which the first born are always eaten because "space magic", they might even been fundamentally opposite to our comprehension.

[Laughing_Man]

what I'm trying to say, that aliens would be more than crazy looking blobs of meat, their very ideologies might be extreme.

 

Well, we did have the Batarians that were obsessed with caste systems (is that canon or fanon?...) and slavery.

 

And also the Yahg, and their extreme views on pecking order, and how to treat any alien that does not show them the "proper respect".

(tear them apart and eat what's left)

 

Unfortunately in both cases all we ever saw were vague threats and enemies, we never got the chance to actually see their "culture" up close.

[Halfdan The Menace]

I'm thinking of Cthulhu-like creatures, but different than the Leviathans.

[Vortex13]

Another problem with Alien Aliens, would be a probable moral clash.

 

What if these aliens are in total contradiction with the moral of humanity. For instance, imagine a space fearing civilization that don't care about opening communications with the regular races, and who even enjoys eating the galactic community. (maybe too cliched)

 

Or maybe they don't comprehend the idea of law, so they would be chaotic.

 

Geez my examples are the worst, what I'm trying to say, that aliens would be more than crazy looking blobs of meat, their very ideologies might be extreme.

 

I believe if you would truly want to portray a realistic alien, you would have to walk a very thin line. Maybe the aliens find the males to be inferior, and thus they are enslaved, or maybe they have rituals in which the first born are always eaten because "space magic", they might even been fundamentally opposite to our comprehension.

 

 

Well the Zuul of the Sword of the Stars universe are a great example of an alien that would have an entirely different moral code when it comes to things that humanity would find appalling.

 

Aside from the fact that they are a genetically created warrior species, the Zuul possess an extreme sexual dimorphism in that their females are non-sientient extremely violent, hulking monstrosities that the telepathic males have to 'master' in order to use for battle and/or reproduction. Their culture respects the strongest of the males that can control 'harems' of multiple females, and they view the act of mentally dominating someone else to be a way of life.

[Kabooooom]

posted this article recently in one of my patented extremely longass ranting shitposts on everything wrong with the portrayal of AI in the MEverse, but I think it applies well to this thread if anyone hasn't seen it. It discusses what anthropomorphism is, why we are evolutionarily hardwired for it, and how that makes writing truly "alien" motivations difficult for us.
https://intelligence...osNegFactor.pdf

I disagree with a statement he makes in the middle of that, about "the better your computing technology, the less understanding you need to create an AI". This is the problem with people who research artificial intelligence but don't understand neurology (because nature got it right long before they were stumbling in the dark about it). The current leading theory on consciousness predicts that it should be impossible to construct a true, self-aware artificial intelligence using a feed-forward computing system with no integration of information. You may be able to construct an extremely "intelligent" machine, generally faster at anything it attempts to do compared to a human (hell, my iPhone already has a dozen such minimal AI programs running in the background as I type this, each much better than me at the task they were designed for) - but it wouldn't be aware, sapient, conscious. And THAT is what everyone really cares about when they are talking about AI, and what everyone really fears. Because our current understanding of consciousness also predicts that it is of enormous computational utility for overwriting pre-existing "programs" within a brain, and allowing immense variability in response to the environment that is otherwise not possible.

Combine that with a synthetic brain that can calculate a million times faster than a humans, and you are either going to change the world for the better or spell our own doom as a species. And something like that, to get back on topic, will probably be somewhat alien to us...even though we were the ones that created it.

Tl,dr: AI researchers are still making the fundamental mistake that intelligence = awareness. It does not, and we have literally known this in neuroscience for...oh, fifty years or so. And now the picture is even more clear. If they really want to succeed in creating a true AI, they are going to have to learn a thing or two that is outside of their field. Otherwise, we will have a world populated by mindless automatons, extremely "smart" ones, but automatons nonetheless. And I'd be fine with that.

[aoibhealfae]

No one mention Volus?