Re: 11 Things I Will Serve My Best Never to Put In A Fantasy/SF Novel..

Tina Hall wrote:
David Friedman <ddfr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Tina_Hall@xxxxxxxxxxx (Tina Hall) wrote:

David Friedman <ddfr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Since the theory that generated the predictions doesn't depend on
what planet the living creatures evolved on, the same predictions
should apply to alien creatures.

That "doesn't depend on what planet" is the very assertion I ask to
be backed up. How many other planets with life have you examined?


None.


Where do you get your idea then, with only one sample where you have no way of telling how common or unusual it is?


What mechanism other than Darwinian evolution are you proposing
to generate life on other planets?


I'm not making any claims. I ask to back up the one that alien life must be like what we have here.

If you can't propose another mechanism that seems even vaguely plausible, his theory stands pretty strongly. The argument is this:

1) Life may take almost infinitely many forms. But unless you postulate direct, and supervised, creation, the life will have to adapt to its world.

2) Again, unless you postulate some kind of supervision of this adaptation, it will proceed according to some form of natural selection; those things that survive to reproduce will be passing on characteristics that increase their survival chances. It doesn't matter for the purposes of this argument how those characteristics are expressed or passed on; it could be DNA, some other molecule, or some form of characteristic encoding and expression we haven't thought of yet.

3) Given the above, all life will evolve in a manner that maximizes overall survival chances for the various types of life in question. These will naturally end up in competition for resources with each other, so that the optimal survival behavior for one species isn't likely optimal survival behavior for all the others.

4) If intelligence evolves, it can be assumed to have provided the species in question with a considerable survival advantage over the species' relatives which did not evolve intelligence. The most obvious of these advantages is the ability to envision ways to either modify ones' environment or situation in a manner advantageous to you and disadvantageous to competitors/predators. There are of course other advantages -- but all of them would be similarly present in any species with intelligence. The WAY in which the intelligence was expressed could differ -- the classic hive mind VS our singleton minds -- but if you viewed the mind as a whole, the basic advantages would be similar and relatively obvious.

5) Given these, an intelligent species will evolve behaviors which we can understand by analogy with things we already do. These behaviors may seem very bizarre at first, but by understanding what the conditions are that drove the development of the species, and its subsequent cultures, they can be understood intellectually, if not emotionally.

6) In DEPICTING such aliens, we are limited to human language and concepts. Therefore, even if we postulate something truly incomprehensible and alien to the point that all of the above doesn't let us understand it (something I simply don't believe exists, but assume it does), in any STORY we write it will have to be filtered through, and described with, the limitations of human imagination and language.

So, bottom line: it seems exceedingly unlikely that any form of intelligence COULD manage to evolve behaviors beyond our ability to understand in analogy with similar behaviors or concepts in our own species, and if it did, we couldn't even describe them in our fiction in any way that was useful.




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Sea Wasp
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