Is there any way to justify human-ish aliens besides "someone engineered multiple planets to have sentient life that evolves like this?"
Convergent evolution.
>>47563135
"Shut the fuck up and stop thinking so hard."
>>47563135
limited budget for costumes, CG and other special effects
>>47563135
In a universe where all things are equally possible, this is just how it worked out. Or that's just the best form for spacefaring life to take
>>47563135
Aside from stupid shit like forehead wrinkles, similar evolutionary factors that ptentially lead to similar forms being adopted.
I say similar because there's nothing that says you can have a civilization of land dwelling octopi for example
>>47563135
Something something sentient beings seem to have the same/similar traits in common something something chemistry and culture and shit. or just complete chance, the universe is a big place.
>>47563135
That is the best possible justification, and the one Star Trek eventually settled on after having left it a hanging mystery for so long.
All of the other possible ideas are ok I guess, but not as likely to occur.
It's hard to do science and shit, thus get smarter, if you don't got hands.
>>47563135
No, but there's no good way to justify actual humans either.
>and they all speak english
fuck you
>>47563135
but anon, that's how aliens DO look
otherwise how would they blend in among goverment officals so easily?
>>47563290
DELETE THIS
>>47563135
The best explanation I've heard is that the humanoid form is the best one suited for higher levels of thought/intelligence, along with the proper limbs/digits to use tools (ie., opposable thumbs).
Most everything else will be situational stuff based upon how they evolved on their planet (in theory humans came from primates. Maybe on some random planet they evolved from reptiles or birds).
>>47563151
Literally this.
>>47563151
Shit cop-out answer.
>>47563135
Humanoid alien races will be a thing after a couple generations of humans living in different gravity/conditions.
Have them be humans. Set your story during the second or third wave of human space exploration, and say the first wave did a lot of genetic screwin' around. So now there are higrav humans and hivemind humans and cyborg implant-dependent humans and long-lived humans and blue humans and all that stuff you want.
If you include actual aliens, be a little creative and make them actually alien. If your "aliens" look more like humans than chimpanzees do, try again.
>>47563151
Counterpoint, niche diversification and random speciation
>>47563359
Not the best answer, but I'd rather see a straight forward accepted explanation than the OP try to offer a factually wrong conclusion based on pseudo science.
It's like the FTL problem. We know it's impossible. But I'd rather see the GM present it as just warp drives or some shit than extrapolate on how he "solved" faster than light using incorrect science.
>>47563373
No it won't, because we won't let the inadapted babies die.
Humanity is stopping evolving during these centuries.
>>47563405
The question is how they ended up like they did, not what mechanisms could have made them end up differently.
>>47563172
This. I always imagine that the aliens in sci fi actually look wildly different but it's just easier for actors to portray them with a rubber forehead on. Maybe Klingons are actually chitinous lobster-creatures but it's easier to identify with them and write stories about them when you can see their facial expressions, etc.
>>47563420
>>47563228
>and the one Star Trek eventually settled on after having left it a hanging mystery for so long.
This shit was explained in TOS, look up the Preservers in "The Paradise Syndrome".
>>47563135
>>47563135
Low costume\cgi budget
>>47563420
Selection doesn't need to kill babies for evolution to work, it merely needs to make different people have different number of offspring. A kid that isn't concieved in the first place won't pass on your genes any more than one that died.
>>47563439
>how they ended up like they did
Random assortment and weeding out due to selective pressures. Evolution is not some complicated plan with numerous preset limitations as to what phylogenic branches can arise, its mostly a multi generational practice in throw genes at the wall and seeing what sticks. Meaning we can't really put the carriage before the horse in these instances as people usually are want to do when discussing evolution
>>47563420
Evolution does not equal natural selection and the entailed pressures, it is only one of the many methods for speciation, niche fulfillment, and genetic isolation to occur.
So stop being a retard edgelord
>>47563250
Translator microbes that colonize the stem of your brain
>>47563665
That sounds fucking horrifying.
>>47563471
no it wasn't the Preservers SEEDED small groups of existing and endangered slow-changing cultures of already evolved species on isolated worlds
the preponderance of Humanoid life is a result of the First Humanoids seeding their dna into the primordial soup of most of the Galaxy
>>47563701
Fucking Farscape, man. It can be pretty gross
>>47563135
Think about this for a second. We humans perceive the world mainly through our eyes which is at 150 to 1000 fps of the 390 to 700 nm spectrum of light. Aliens evolving under a different star might have for example slower fps, essentially making us invisible unless we are standing still. Or they see in IR or UV or don't see at all. This is only eyesight. We haven't even gone into the problem of communication or even the definition of sentience. So, if you want to write a hard sci fi novel, go ahead. But if you want to play a game, then forehead of the week aliens will have to do.
>>47563359
Bilateral symmetry practically guarantees anything we run into will have two legs, two manipulators, and two eyes.
They wear human forms to explore the earth, interact with humans, speak, breathe the atmosphere, etc., etc.
What is the setting with the aliens that look like humanoid lions and are constantly getting pissed off at humans because humans can't help seeing them as "those cat-people"?
>>47563201
No. This is unwarranted conclusion. We see similar forms in Earth organisms because we (Archaea, Eukarya, Prokarya) all share one universal unicellular ancestor. We radiated from the same root. At the DNA level (where it matters), we are not too much different from bacteria, let alone animals. DNA is stable under Earth conditions but most likely not under say, Venus or Titan environs. The answer is we don't know what realistic aliens will look like until we find them. Even then, we might not recognize them as being alive, let alone sentient because we literally could not comprehend it.
>>47563817
Again, bilateral symmetry arose when our universal unicellular ancestor used binary fission to replicate. If for example, aliens own ancestor replicate unevenly, then you won't have mirror image body forms.
What is live? When does something stop being alive and begin to be dead? Are the different parts of a cell alive? Is the DNA molecule live? Or are we just dead matter, good at transferring old data and decreasing our own entropy in exchange of increasing entropy around us?
>>47563954
Okay, you try explaining why binary fission is not the simplest and least-energy form of cellular reproduction.
>>47563982
As my EMT instructor once said:
"He ain't dead until he's warm and dead."
What are the chances of alien tits? Is the development of mammal glands a quirk of our evolution or could it happen somewhere else?
>>47563290
Thin mint pls go
>>47563954
What's more efficient than binary fission? Seems like anything that reproduced in a less-efficient way would quickly get weeded out of the pool.
>>47563135
How are we defining "human-ish"? If you're talking like, very close facial features, rubber forehead aliens, then yeah that's kinda silly.
If it's just "humanoid", though... upright, two manipulator appendages, two motion appendages, built around a central tube digestive system, sense organs at the top... well, that's just a pretty straightforward efficient design. Shouldn't be surprised to see that around, among intelligent tool-using species.
Would an alien think like us? Would it have the same set of emotions? What if he has emotions and thought patterns incomprensible to us?
>>47563420
Give it another 50 -70 years and we'll be tailoring people properly.
I'm all for it.
>>47563135
A long time ago humans spread out to colonize the universe, and lots lost contact and went sort of crazy with genetic engineering. These are the aliens you're encountering.
>>47563135
Humanoid aliens are actually humans who were abducted and uplifted by aliens 200,000 years ago. They have followed a different evolutionary path + genetic engineering from their benefactors.
>>47564025
Anything that has happened once is not impossible and therefore, in a vast universe, can conceivably happen again.
Also, an intelligent social species will generally tend to a longer period as an infant, as (barring some "they're just better" biology) the initial development of speech and tool use skills takes a long time. Some built-in arrangement for providing easily-digested food to the initial stage of development will be very effective, and since the baby will need to be carried around as well, the food provision organs will likely be around the height where the child is carried.
Assuming a humanoid frame, something vaguely akin to tits is not really too unfeasible.
>>47563135
It's a lot more convenient for the GM to describe and the players to remember.
>>47564025
The evolution of tits is a side effect of the combination of our non-cyclical reproduction cycle and our becoming bipedal.
Males were attracted to wide hips and round asses as they indicated health and breeding suitability. When we became bipedal breasts evolved as a "front butt" of sorts to attract men. Large breasts do not create milk any faster than small ones but do allow very marginally larger storage.
![screen_shot_2014-05-11_at_71346_pm-145ED90732750EB25F9[1].png](https://i.imgur.com/E5BqscI.png "screen_shot_2014-05-11_at_71346_pm-145ED90732750EB25F9[1].png")
>>47563151
>Convergent evolution.
First post. Best post.
Seriously, Convergent evolution isn't a bad reason: Nature is chaotic and produces anything it can and so forth, but there's a certain development curve based on what does and doesn't work.
We see it happen all the time even today.
>>47563135
Some aliens having a roughly humanoid configuration would make sense due to convergent evolution.
Being human enough that Kirk wants to bed their princess pretty much requires they are either related to us somehow, or have been artificially made similar.
Most life in the universe will likely take place on tidal-locked planets orbiting red dwarfs due statistical possibility. Some of these stars are older than our own galaxy and not a single one has died yet since the beginning of the universe. If these stars have planets, life could have been extinguished by random solar flares and raised again and again from the ashes on these planets.
I'm certain it's been done before but there was a precursor race to life in the galaxy that all disappeared so most spacefaring life is humanoid.There was an ancient galactic war. It was fought using self replicating robots programmed to destroy anything that shared an arbitrary DNA percentage with the opposing side. Both sides had the same idea so only backwater inbred planets were left alive.Remaining life in the galaxy is objectively dumber than the ancestors and unless they really get into perfecting genetic engineering they will never be able to reach that height again.Unfortunately, the Evil Empire is really into genetic manipulation...Unbeknownst to them, those self replication muderrobots are still active even after the uncountable passage of time since the war
>>47563751
>tfw you remember they have a worm that crawls around in your mouth to eat all the shit and leaves your mouth minty fresh.Don't swallow it..
>>47564220
>Generic, The Lore.
>>47563135
As the question starts with the baseless assumption they would not I present you with a simple observation.
We don't have the slightest god damn clue what aliens would look like or how any facet of any organism could or would work outside of earth.
Maybe they are thousand foot long solar powered clams. Maybe they are ten inch high birds with millions of small fingers. Maybe they are humans here after a hundred thousand years to pick up the survivors of that warp engine experiment left our ancestors stranded in another galaxy.
We don't have the slightest idea and until we meet and study a fair number of different species from different worlds debating the scientific merit of any of it is pointless speculation.
>>47564025
>What are the chances of alien tits?
Slim, but not impossible. A creature that has some kind of arms that hold things such as infants at about chest-level might easily have some form of mammary-structures there. The fact that we have 2 is partially a result of our bilateral symmetry, and the fact that we only have a small amount of young at a time. It might not be rare to see a creature with many radial "breasts" for nursing young, and it may not be attractive to humans, unless you're into that kind of thing.
>>47563151
>>47563135
>Convergent evolution.
First post best post.
>>47564247
Well asshole, how do you make sci fi not generic or pseudointellectual edgy wankfest?
>>47563135
"A Form you are comfortable with."
>>47563891
Traveller/Third Imperium?
>>47564579
You don't. Sci-fi is SUPPOSED to be a pseudointellectual egdy wankfest as it "examines the human condition". When it's not developed enough to be a wankfest, it's painfully generic and pointless.
This is one of the core reasons why sci-fi is honestly a pretty terrible genre, much like fantasy and cyberpunk.
>>47563201
>>47563915
I would think that a little similarity between most organic life is to be expected - the laws of physics/chemistry are the same wherever you go, and it makes sense that similar environments will give rise to only so many variations of 'life.'
Sure, some of them could get very different in overall structure, but at their cellular base, there are only so many ways that an organism could absorb energy, reproduce, move, sense and manipulate their surroundings, etc.
>>47563891
Wing Commander?
So far candidates for habitable planets are pretty big. Are you sure aliens would walk upright? A pair of manipulative "hands" sure, but you don't need to walk upright.
>>47564263
Even if they have mammary glands in their chests, that's no guarantee they'd have tits. Breasts are mostly fatty tissue, which doesn't actually have anything to do with feeding infants. The big round shape is a sexual display particular to humans.
>>47564767
That's mostly because big planets are easier to detect
>>47564656
Yeah. In fact, all genres of fiction are honestly pretty terrible. So are all genres of non-fiction. In fact, all works of any kind are terrible trash for shit taste having losers. I mean seriously, how pathetic do you have to be to like anything? Pretty pathetic.
Am I cool yet?
>>47564656
>>47564579
Write about humanity's first 300 years of warp travel.
And they can't find life anywhere, at least no complex life.
This rejuvenates long "dead" religions/theology/theism
And eventually fanaticism.
>Insert any stupid idea that could create conflict, cause humans aren't generally very rational.
Then, you could add generic sci-fi trophes like genetic manipulation or whatever.
I came up with this in 10 min.
Not very captivating yet.
>>47564649
I don't remember the Aslan particularly caring about that. It's the Vargr who get mad if you call them dog-people or wolf-people, and they're literally human-canine hybrids.
>>47563135
Common ancestors is the best one
Humans didn't Evolve on earth but migrated there in ancient times
>>47564946
Nice try Tsoukalos
>>47563135
God is an hack.
>>47564046
>>47563983
less efficient only goes extinct if a more efficient version happens to come along. Inefficient traits can often come paired with other beneficial ones during mutation and will end up both enduring as the good one is selected for and the inefficient one is merely that and not detrimental.
>>47563135
>Is there any way to justify copypasta-ish threads besides "someone engineered multiple threads to have the exact same question as this?"
>>47563135
I'd image that there's only one form of successful body structure a civilized species could have. You could have bug people for example, but they'd still walk on their hind legs, probably mate in more conventional means, and try to normalize and perfect tech for their strange eyesight.
>>47563135
Level 3 civilisations(galaxy controlling/exploiting) like to keep species that might be able to commingle close to one another as a way of placating less advanced species. This reduces their drive to explore for more exotic creatures and this keeps the aforementioned level 3 civilisations Unknown.
>>47565524
I like this.
Could add species that made themselves unknowingly like humans through genetic manipulation and shit.
>>47563135
it's a coincidence
>>47564194
Except the early universe was mostly helium and hydrogen not enough heavier elements to form rocky planets.
>>47563250
Fucking Stargate always pulling that.
>>47563800
Less fps makes something invisible. ... wut?
>>47563135
>>47563151
The Uplift universe has actually both of these. There are some species that end up being really close to humans through convergent evolution, especially the Tymbrini who are kinda like Psychic Marsupial Humans.
On the other hand give that all almost all of the species in the books (baring humans of course) are uplifted into sapience so they are engineered into two leg, two arms, and two forward facing eyes because it happens to be a pretty good body plan for sapience. But there are also some pretty weird species like the Traeki/Jophur who are made of up composite sapient plant rings, or the G'kek who have 4 eyes on stalks and are wheeled.
>>47566338
Given their budget, did they have another choice?
>>47563135
No there isn't.
At all.
TV shows went with putting putty on peoples faces or a carpet and a hula skirt over their heads, couple of ping pong balls for eyes. It's just cheaper and you shouldn't let it starve your imagination.
That ST episode where the shining fairy explained how they seeded the stars was part cool part cop-out.
Scientifically, there's no reason for life to be in any way similar when stars separate them. Still waiting to see convincing silicon based critters, or sympathetic characters that are jellies or something utterly 'alien'.
Because two grabbers two legs and a head with two eyes is just the best way to do things. Same reason most mammals and a good amount of lizards have the same basic structure.
I'm thinking of doing a Minbari race in Stellaris. Would you say they're more individualist, or collectivist? Warlike and spiritual are givens.
>>47566758
>Same reason most mammals and a good amount of lizards have the same basic structure
that's not because its the best way to do things and more because share common ancestor.
bilateral symmetry with 4 limbs is a good way to do it. but not the only good way. Cephalpods have a very different body structure and are well on their way too Intelligence in squid, octopi and cuttlefish.
>>47567204
You need to write things down to be a space traveler. You can't write underwater, so we will never see space squids.
>>47567310
yes you can, not with ink pens like ours. but pencils and crayons work underwater.
Their biggest obstacle will be difficulty with metallurgy and at the moment they have fairly short lifespans and don't actively raise their young.
>>47563135
I forget the name of it, but there's an evolutionary hypothosis that states that all or most sentient alien life would be humanoid, because the humanoid form is just the best for an intelligent, tool-using race to have from an evolutionary standpoint.
If you want evidence for this, just imagine if any other species on Earth were suddenly sentient and just as intelligent as we are. Most of them couldn't actually do anything with their newfound intellect because most animals only have the most basic manipulators for using tools, usually just their mouth. Hands or something similar are pretty much required for accomplishing the kind of shit humanity has. The only animals I can think of that could accomplish similar feats to us if they had our intelligence are octopi, squids, and maybe ants/termites.
>>47563151
I just came here to post this.
>Is there any way to justify human-ish aliens besides "someone engineered multiple planets to have sentient life that evolves like this?"
The aliens are all shapeshifters who want to get with the sexiest race in the galaxy and so shapeshift into big-titted alien bitches.
The aliens disguise themselves with holograms Galaxy Quest style; they might actually be hideous tentacle monsters but we see them as big-titted alien bitches.
The aliens can alter your perception of them Asari-style for the purposes of diplomacy; whatever they look like, you perceive them as big-titted alien bitches.
>>47563172
This. But...
>>47563135
>"someone engineered multiple planets to have sentient life that evolves like this?"
Technically, that's not seeding. So, seeding. That is, some precursor race came to Earth, grabbed a bunch of early humans, and seeded them throughout the Galaxy for reasons known only to themselves but which probably involved beer or whatever their equivalent was.
In the past million years, for example, you've got humans, neanderthals, denisovans, floresiensis, erectus, antecessor, heidelbergensis, and a bunch of other hominid species, each of which had a good shot at becoming as intelligent as humans over a few hundred thousand years while still potentially evolving in different ways to look basically human, but with a few slight differences.
>>47563135
Two words: spiral energy. The humanoid form is just better at surviving cause magic
>>47563135
God
/thread
>>47568669
But we need a reason that actually exists, anon.
>>47568669
Why does God need a starship?
>>47568285
>The only animals I can think of that could accomplish similar feats to us if they had our intelligence are octopi, squids, and maybe ants/termites.
How about kangaroos? How about already quite intelligent elephants?
>>47568633
What's, uh...what's going on here?
>>47568796
>>47568285
You'd be surprised how dexterous a moose can be with its lips, too. Also crows, racoons, squirrels. Also that Anon forgot to mention frigin' PRIMATES.
>>47568285
but you just gave the evidence that your argument is wrong. An octupus is definitely not humanoid and is already a tool using animal. At this stage all they really need is to start living longer and actively raising their young so they can start passing on and building up skills and understanding.
>>47568326
just because it comes up in a computer game doesn't devalue the logic. it's still logical.
>>47568836
Primates would become humanoid if they gained more inteligence.
>>47563701
It's alright anon I'm sure the microbes are accurately translating everything, why wouldn't they, what could they possibly have to gain from it?
>>47568880
Not necessarily. Our upright posture and loss of dexterous feet has nothing to do with our intellect and everything to do with the fact that when humans evolved, Africa was drying out as a continent thanks to India colliding with Asia and forming the Himalayan Mountains, creating a massive rain shadow that deforested much of Africa.
If the jungle had remained we may well have become sapient without evolving into the specific form we now haven and instead remaining far more simian in appearance and ability.
>>47563891
Kzin from Known Space/Ringworld? (And technically from Star Trek)
>>47563135
To be fair, in Babylon 5 they had the Vorlons constantly fucking with other races.
However, I'd say the human form - not its details but the general shape and structure of it - is probably more or less heavily selected for among intelligence races. And the reason I give for this is that it has the most dexterity, at least of vertebrates.
A sapient race should have hands that can easily manipulate tools and arms which can reach just about any part of its body. And yes, octopi would qualify.
However what wouldn't qualify is something like >>47568633
Imagine trying to scratch a fucking itch or put on some protective gear. Be terrible. And hte problem isn't the posture of it, but the fact the arms are designed wrong. It works for something that needs to grasp small prey, but not something that is going to manipulate tools and do all the shit a sentient might do with tools.
The more you can do with your hands, the more heavily intelligence and tool use will be selected for; and this becomes a vicious cycle. There's a reason why humans went bipedal. It took all sorts of shit to do it, but it was selected for a reason.
>>47568807
Why are all the planets round?
>>47563135
The "aliens" weren't engineered to evolve in any specific pattern. They are all just actual humans and hominids transported to other worlds, who were modified through various combinations of natural and artificial means.
Who put them there is a mystery, unless we're far enough into the future that humans have had space travel for quite some time. Then they just put themselves there.
>>47568807
He stepped in dinosaur shit and is panicking.
>>47569087
gravity
>>47568633
This one looks kind of dumb, probably because they wanted to use the beak as the primary manipulator. They should have gone a bit less bird-like and made use of the parts that birds lack.
I like the idea of having the Dinosauroid shaped like an actual dinosaur rather than a lizardman, but this just went too far with trying to avoid any similarities to humans.
The likehood of finding species with the same technology as us is ridiculously small. They will be either thousands or millions of years older/younger. If you want realism, don't put any aliens in your setting but Vorlons or Ewoks. That's without entering into the whole Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter.
>>47569188
Dino-ape is stupid, but so is just drawing a fluffy raptor and pretending it's an intelligent version of a dinosaur.
Intelligence changes the body significantly, both due to a need to manipulate tools and the alterations that an organized society begin to make to the environment.
Humans look nothing like the rest of the great apes for this reason, among others. So why the fuck does a sapient dinosaur look like anything like a real dinosaur? Change the posture a bit, maybe look at ravens or parrots. Do something with it.
Paleoartists have become so cancerous lately.
>>47563455
Original Recipe Klingons were just Oriental Space Soviets
>>47563891
Swat Kats?
>>47563151
But that's just re-asserting that they look like humans, not a justification or reason.
If the question is 'how do star trek transporters work' the answer isn't 'teleportation'.
The Great Filter is related to acquiring bipedal form for some reason. Everyone else faces extinction or stagnates forever.
>>47563405
Mote in gods eye?
>>47565140
Or if the less efficient option isn't robust enough to weather the environmental spikes.
>>47571125
That might explain bipeds, but not bipeds that look almost exactly like humans, with similar teeth, fingers, noses, eyes, and so forth. The biggest jump you could probably make is bipeds of similar height, but not "humans but with wrinkly noses and pointy ears".
>>47571207
because the writers want people to care about aliens and their lives, if they were just outalndishly weird looking creatures people would just think that "fuck these things, why don't we just take their planet" because surprise surprise despite all the le humans are le evil memes in media the only thing humans really care about are humans
>>47563388
underrated
>>47571207
Most of the aliens in fiction, even if human-like don't usually have very similar traits. Live action shows and movies is a bit constrained by budgetary reasons but beside shapes aliens are usually having non-human traits.
>>47564194
Wouldn't the lack of metals forged in a previous star make their ability to gain space travel nearly impossible?
How many times do you meatheaded fuckers need to be told 'convergent evolution' before you fucking get it?
>>47563201
>land dwelling octopi for example
ObGaryLarson
>>47564767
Are the numbers at the bottom about the gravity?
>>47564252
Aliens in literature aren't meant to represent actual extraterrestrial societies. They're shorthand for human social issues: racism and nationalism, mostly. They're elves and orcs with a better attempt at backstory. So "human + something else" is the obvious baseline.
>>47564925
>they're literally human-canine hybrids.
"You're only mad because I'm right."
>>47566721
>Still waiting to see convincing silicon based critters,
Star Trek managed it, even with a plywood and sweatshirt budget.
>>47566721
Isn't silicon organic very very unstable? I mean, it's an obvious choice because it's the same group as carbon, but I think it's already too far down.
>You will never meet Germanium-based life.
>>47565140
And especially if that inefficient trait doesn't really present until after the organism has a chance to reproduce.
>>47563135
The setting takes place far enough in the future that all the "alien" races are really descended from humans.
>>47564108
That would be a good justification for mammary glands, but full-blown breasts are another story. There's no good biological reason for human women to have breasts besides "the men like it"; it's purely a signal of mating fitness evolved through sexual selection, like bright plumage in male birds. Most mammals get by just fine with no appreciable enlargement of the mammary area.
So, mammalian aliens are plausible, but they'd likely be flat-chested.
>>47573705
>So, mammalian aliens are plausible, but they'd likely be flat-chested.
Even better.
>>47565012
Funny, "the gods are uncreative hacks" is my go-to explanation for fantasy kitchen sink settings. The Overgod made the first world (ie, our world), his underlings thought it was pretty rad and wanted to try world-making themselves, but they just lifted all their ideas from the original world and what its inhabitants dreamt up.
>>47573208
Because that doesn't explain shit, fucker.
It took several mass extinction events for mammals alone.
You act like Earth was some optimum environment for life and everything evolutionary wise was inevitable.
"convergent evolutiion" argument only applies to EXTREMELY modern earth like environments, like, so earth like that scientists would honestly start considering intelligent design because it would be too massive of a coincidence.
>>47571207
Once you require a specific trait, other traits are forced into necessity.
For example, if the great filter is lifespan, our size is basically set; the human body is the right spot between efficiently small and effectively large. At that point, bipedal locomotion is the most efficient option, which suggests persistence hunting which requires lacking hair ETC.
By the time you get to the end, we're going to cross paths in our evolutionary trek.
Biological compatibility is bullshit however, that requires intervention.
>>47573432
>>47573407
We have arsenic based life on earth. It's microbial, but it does exist.
>>47563135
They spread everywhere and something cut everyone off from everyone else for so long they started to evolve away from each other?
>>47571125
What if the Great Filter is ahead of us?What if we have dozens of potential extinction events ahead of us?
>>47574054
Arsenic based life was debunked iirc
>>47563151
No.
>>47566214
Wrong.
A dozen megayears after the big bang, the entire universe was at a temperature to allow rocky worlds with liquid water, despite the matter distribution being a million times denser. Another few megayears and the temperature is low enough that planets orbiting a star are still warm enough.
Until we get down to literally thousands of years after the Big Bang there will have been enough time to produce high-metallicity regions due to density fluctuations.
Sure, less than a billionth of the universe would have had a high enough metallicity to produce rocky worlds during the appropriate epoch, but we know we're in a high-density patch of universe (by definition, almost all galaxies are), so we've got odds of better than billions to one, and there's clusters nearby that are much denser than ours.
tl;dr:
Life could have developed, flourished and left its home planet nine BILLION years before we condensed out of grit.
>>47568868
No it is not.
>>47566721
Silicon is extremely unlikely as a basis for life due to how few chemical bonds it forms, and the bonds it does form are relatively monotonous rather than active the way carbon-based bonds are. Of the varieties of molecules identified in the interstellar medium, 84 are based on carbon and only 8 are based on silicon - worse still, of those 8, four of them include carbon anyway. Further, the cosmic abundance of carbon to silicon is about 10 to 1.
Finally, Earth and other terrestrial planets are relatively silicon-rich and carbon poor. Earth's Silicon:Carbon ratio is about 925:1, yet all life on Earth is carbon-based.
>or sympathetic characters that are jellies or something utterly 'alien'.
Ender's Game. If you don't feel for the bugs at the end, then you officially have no soul.
>>47574054
>>47574360
And even then, it wasn't arsenic based, it was claimed that it could substitute arsenates for phosphates. We use phosphates in our DNA, but we're not phosphorus based, now are we?
>>47574516
Nitrogen makes for a good candidate, if you don't mind having high-energy life processes and half your organic chemicals being high explosives
>>47563135
Budget
Lightness or heaviness of the sci-fi
Lack of knowledge of divergent evolution by the writer
Audience familiarity and sympathy
Obviously Mass Effect is the pinnacle of alien presentation but not everything can be ME. Especially not Babylon 5 now go watch the show again.
>>47574354
>if
They aren't calling this period of time the next great extinction for shits and giggles. Hell, in the last century, we've nearly wiped out our civilization at least three times? Due to computer errors.
>>47563135
In order to be a species able to create a culture, they probably needed humanoid hands, wich is pretty much the best appendice for the job. So they needed to evolve from a marsupial species, from that point they are pretty much assured to end up as human-ish aliens.
Any kind of radically different aliens would need a really freakish race of marsupials as their ancestors, or telekinetic powers so that they can build shit.
>>47563135
Similar ecological niches.
>>47563135
Reminder:
All races in startrek were, in fact, engineered to look like a precursor race that eventually died out.
>>47563420
Evolution is always going strong. The people most likely to pass on their genes today just have different qualities than those 50, 500 or 5000 years ago.
>>47563135
I kinda figure "becasue currently 100% of known sapient species with "human level" or greater inteligence look like humans" is probaly be a decent reason
>>47574390
Uh-huh.
>>47563135
I do it a few ways.
Firstly there's hand waving it. I can put it aside without a care because it doesn't trigger me.
Secondly convergent evolution. It's just as good an explanation as any in a scifi setting.
Thirdly, depending on the setting I may have all human and human-like races share ancestry.
I personally can't stand assholes who make a big deal out of it.
>>47569188
>>47569042
You kidding? Birds do all kinds of wild shit with their beaks alone.
>>47563417
>We know it's impossible.
We don't know for sure that warp drives are impossible, actually.
>>47566562
It wasn't about budget. The planet of the week format just wouldn't have worked with everyone speaking their own languages. Having Danial Jackson translating all the time would have gotten really tiresome.
>>47563135
Either Humanity or one of the Human-likes had an intergalactic colonization/empire.
They diverged at some point, lost contact, empire fallen, whatever.
>>47564183
>Being human enough that Kirk wants to bed their princess
Fun fact, genitals are one of the most varied body parts among different animals. It's common for species that otherwise look nearly identical to have significantly different junk. So even if an alien looks a lot like us with cloths on. . .
>>47563151
/thread
>>47563135
First post best post
>>47570986
What? No it isn't. Convergent Evolution is a perfectly valid theory as to why an intelligent bipedal space faring species that evolved on a similar planet as earth may look similar to humans. It's answering how Star trek teleporters work by answering with "The dematerialization, transfer, and rematerilization of energy ". A perfectly legitimate answer to the nature of the teleportation, but that answer in and of itself warrants an explanation of how that process occurs. Which we as 21st century humans don't know because we haven't figured out how to do that. That's why I can't explain exactly how an alien evolved to appear similar to us because I haven't met an alien whose species evolved similarly to humans and who then preceded to extensively show me the nature of their biology.
Their weird kinky xenos biology.
>>47569446
Not to mention the other changes to the human body, like those caused by adapting to cooked food , and not having to spend so much time processing harder-to-digest raw foods: smaller guts, smaller & weaker jaws.
>>47571125
That picture doesn't actually justify the inherent superiority of the bipedal form, or show that it's even a prerequisite for sapience. I'd save that slot for "graspers/manipulators" or something like that.
>>47577319
Anything that can function as graspers or manipulators, while not impeding locomotion/breathing/eating/drinking, should work just as well as humanoid hands.
Transhumanism (transalienism?) is a thing, bodies are basically optional, but most humans have human-ish bodies; aliens who live and work in human space use human bodies as well (with a few distinctive traits to make them feel more at home).
>>47564065
>Would an alien think like us? Would it have the same set of emotions? What if he has emotions and thought patterns incomprensible to us?
This might be one reason for the Fermi Paradox.
we're just hanging out with the ones who look most like us and waging war with shadows/vorlons etc
>>47563231
>hands on the end of awkwardly-placed pieces of muscle
>way out on the fucking sides
>only articulate in two places
>eyes are nowhere near the hands
>implying this creature could have any dexterity or achieve anything
Pierson's Puppeteers would like a word, anon.
>>47563135
It is entirely possible that non-humanoid life would develop a sentience unrecognizable to humans. Dolphins are sapient, but nobody gives a shit. It may well be that only a certain evolutionary path leads to the kind of self-awareness that we recognize as intelligent.
>>47563417
Humans don't know dick about what is possible or impossible.
It's literally just bitter fucks trying to make themselves feel better about not having made any truly world-shaking discoveries.
We can't even accurately gauge time dilation outside of our immediate geo-orbit and we think we can explain away every law of physics in the universe with our pathetically small sample size of one habitable planet and a couple dustballs.
>>47588206
Some of what you say is valid but
>the laws of physics are only applicable to Earth
It's true that our theories of planet formation and evolution use a limited sample set and will likely be invalidated as soon as we can study other terrestrial planets outside our solar system. But things like particle physics, aerodynamics, quantum mechanics etc. are literally universal.
>>47588280
I'm saying that it's hilariously arrogant and foolish to assume that such things are the only laws applicable when we haven't even truly escaped our own solar gravity well or even truly observed ANY other stellar phenomena apart from our own Sun and comparatively ancient emissions from other stars.
While it's true that many things in the universe are likely to operate under our current understanding of it, it's also true we haven't even known photons as an actual thing for barely more than a century, and our first attempt at truly observing particle physics in action through specialized instruments, mainly an accelerator; was in the 70's, little under fifty years ago.
In short, I believe people are being pessimistic fucks because we didn't have Chrome aliums like we thought we would in the 40's as we approach the middle 2000's.
>>47588331
>I'm saying that it's hilariously arrogant and foolish to assume that such things are the only laws applicable when we haven't even truly escaped our own solar gravity well or even truly observed ANY other stellar phenomena apart from our own Sun and comparatively ancient emissions from other stars.
In the universe we're in, they're basically the only laws. We're missing pieces, obviously, since our descriptions of nature are still incomplete. We're putting the jigsaw puzzle together. There are gaps, and pieces we can't connect to others, but we're on our way.
The laws of physics are, and must be, invariant. This is a basic precept of all physics. If it weren't true, special relativity would be observably wrong, since relativity is underpinned by the fact that the propagation of light is independent of your reference frame. Relativity has a colossal amount of observational and experimental evidence and any corrections or amendments to the theory will probably be minor.
>In short, I believe people are being pessimistic fucks because we didn't have Chrome aliums like we thought we would in the 40's as we approach the middle 2000's.
There's a crowd of hard sci-fi autists on /tg/ that shit on anything that uses anything more advanced than nuclear rockets (i.e. the 70's). They can go fuck themselves while I enjoy space opera AND hard sci-fi.
>>47588440
I know, I know.
I just get frustrated when people treat particle physics as some ancient route of science we have observed everything in, when it actuality it is a "young-ish" field of research and discovery. Hell, the general theory of relatively, our arguably most important pillar of physics alongside Newton's formulas, was published in 1915, exactly 101 years ago.
Einstein was a fucking genius, and I dearly would have loved to see what he would have confirmed or come up with if he had modern-day equipment and nigh-unlimited funding for experimentation alongside a modern understanding of his work, but that's a dream that simply will never be.
>Thousands of years ago, there was the space internet
>It was just as disgusting and awful as human internet
>Some particularly deviant spacesters had a very specific fetish involving the humanoid form
>They have excess amounts of space dollars somehow to fund their illness and supply of humanoid porn
>They go and get themselves modded to fuck and back at the genetic level
>They get divided due to exile, either for the good of all or they volunteered
>Somewhere in the future, we run into their successors
Basically, assume the entire universe is full of fucking space furries who do crazy shit because it gets their dick hard. Best to just purge em all.
I mean hell, you know humanity will do the same shit the second that tech becomes available for everyone.
I would even go so far as to say that God has a reality fetish, and here we are.
Dick is the most powerful force in the universe.
>>47574516
while silicon alone isn't much of a contender silicon-oxygen chains have better protential and in theory can have a similarly complex chemsitry compared too carbon and is more stable.
>>47588622
>Was playing Stellaris yesterday
>Started up a new game, made my Empire, went humans because I felt like being generic.
>Entire Galaxy is populated by some variant of Xenophile
>Militaristic Xenophiles, Peaceful Xenophiles, Religious Xenophines, Fanatic Xenophiles, Collectivist Xenophiles, every was a xenophile
>Played my game where I made diplomacy with literally everyone and formed a Federation consisting of the entire Galaxy.
>Quit and went to go look up Stellaris porn.
It was quite literally a harem anime in 4x form.
Even the fucking AI rebellion left me the fuck alone despite being right next to me territory.
>>47588665
>He doesn't integrate the lesser lifeforms and then purge/enslave them once he owns the galaxy
I'm going to go make a Stellaris specific version of this picture.
>>47588484
Probably not that much, he had an irrational dislike of quantum mechanics.
>>47563250
We've got a fairly benign parasite that's essentially a Babel Fish.
>>47582438
but not as well as humans. If a bird wants to, say, tie a knot they've basically got to balance on one foot
>>47573351
Likeness to earth I think
>>47563135
Here you go. A first contact novella, with a nice explanation. Also makes fun of some murican first contact novel.
http://litresp.ru/chitat/en/Y/yefremov-ivan/the-heart-of-the-serpent
>>47588681
Like so.
>>47563135
Shut the fuck up.
>>47588989
Alternate version, for those of superior mantis taste.
I should probably use a better resolution but eh, my internet is kill right now.
>>47589027
>Superior Mantis taste
Modded-in Swarm or bust.
But really, the playable Invaders / Robots with custom Government and traits really is the best way to play.
For instance, right now I'm rocking an ancient menace that was trapped inside a special crystal for so long it was forced to adapt itself into an entity composed only of the visible spectrum of light.
It thirsts for the essence of it's cousins that lurk beyond the veil of this material realm.
Alternatively for non-modded bros, Space Beetle is Supreme.
>>47589112
I run humans off a tomb world with Irradiated and the Humanity Divided mod.
Space Australians leaving a mostly dead world to find the seed ship (pre-space civilisation) humans scattered around the galaxy and bring them back to the stars.
>>47589222
Really, the normal Stellaris Empire-creation, Player and AI is quite good, but it's the opinion of my friends and I that we want a little more "Flavor" for our Empires, singleplayer or multiplayer.
So you get weak-slow breeding mutants dragging themselves out from tomb-worlds and only fit to live on irradiated planets, then you get a perfect Hive-mind race with absolutely no Ethics divergence and a general-Empire wide bonus to efficiency, and you get Techno-sorcerers inhabiting a damaged ring-world around a neutron star that refuse to leave their "Arcane Sanctum" and can only set up Fortress / Outpost / Industry worlds with Droids but have a heavy boost to their research capabilities, or you get Simple-Droids on ocean worlds that reached consciousness through no apparent reason and became heavily religious.
All in the same game, separated by hundreds of systems and numerous "Generic" Alien Empires.
We don't really care about balance in response to flavor.
>>47587991
Is that an official picture? I always pictured them in a scale closer to the Tyranid mortar aliens.chunky tripods with 2 hydra heads.
>>47589471
That picture was Wayne Barlowe. "Official" pictures would be old and probably hand-drawn/painted.
>>47583292
>I recognize that bulge
Is it wrong to recognize that as Mollari just from a picture of one of his penises?
>>47589559
They released a new ring world book not THAT long ago.
>>47589598
Actually no, it was a really big bit piece.
Seriously, a man cheating at friendly cards with his literal tentacle-dicks is memorable.
Fucking Lando, what a great character.
Babylon 5 was great, I loved how it ultimately wound up as a story of "Two Millions of year old civilizations are being fucking children over something they can no longer even remember and routinely murder everybody in the Galaxy over it until they get sick of it and tell them to fuck off."
