lame generic humanoid vs variations of deformed blobthing

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Josh
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Re: lame generic humanoid vs variations of deformed blobthing

#16 Post by Josh »

I'm with PD on this one, I think we're both talking about the same thing. Freaks are fine. Humanoids are fine. BUT

Do they embody a single characteristic? Like, Cowardice?
What clothes do they wear? Surely something to protect them in space.
Do they talk? That's a social animal's characteristic.
Do they have goals?
How do they eat?
Build a ship?
Hold a tool?
And live in space?
Pertinent aspects that relate to how they function gamewise have to be considered, which ultimately goes into developing their most memorable characteristics. This doesn't discount freak aliens or humanoid aliens. The thing is, humans already have the characteristics that many sentient space-faring aliens couldn't do without.

Would anybody care to know how I helped design the Gyisache? (It wasn't just my idea)

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Re: lame generic humanoid vs variations of deformed blobthing

#17 Post by pd »

eleazar wrote:Thus no one will be forced to play with aliens they dislike or without the kind they prefer.
Yeah, thanks for pointing this out.
eleazar wrote:Also we really don't know how the aliens will be presented to the player. Concerns about "acting" and "empathy" may be totally moot.
As mentioned previously, it doesn't matter how aliens are going to be presented. Those are not main concerns, but are part of the overall design.
Josh wrote:Freaks are fine. Humanoids are fine.
Exactly, but in both cases it has to be possible to tell something about the race, by looking at the design(communication through design). This works by referencing familiar things. I don't want arbitrariness and I can't stress this enough.

All those are mainly concerns for the people going to visualize the alien races though. I'd encourage the people who "write up" alien races to leave the visual and physical descriptions as loose as possible. Most likely they will have to be adapted and changed anyway.
Josh wrote:Would anybody care to know how I helped design the Gyisache? (It wasn't just my idea)
Sure, go ahead.

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Gyisache Blueprint

#18 Post by Josh »

Well firstly, the Gyisache concepts were designed to have a race to base spaceships off of, not really to have a species to work with. I need a species established so I can interpret the ships form and function correctly, especially if every race intends to have their own "look". The insect looking ships you see now are not really what you expect a cowardly chicken race to have, are they?
The emphasis will be on looking flimsy and having large engines or anything else that conveys cowardly, and then building up the shapes so it looks cool. Or something like that.

As for the species itself, Utilae's original concept was for humanoid sheep, it was Impaler who decided their image needed tweaking. This was over 3 years ago, and I didn't hear any argument from Utilae's side, so I went ahead with the latest description. (as a word of caution: the less that is described visually the more I get to make up, so leave me some gaps too)

The most important thing to note is that all the parts are borrowed from something else. Very little is truly alien. Here are a few of the animals I used for reference when constructing them.

Ostrich (overwhelming majority)
Snails (Eyes)
Gecko (Feet)
Sheep (Mouth and Pupils)

Gyisache were described as a race of craven sheep-like herbivores, but I saw very little of Utilae's original sheep concept in here except for a brief mentioning of sheep wool, so I left it out. I might add wool later if it looks nice, but there is enough chicken in them to merit leaving it out entirely. In fact the more I read the description the more it seemed like an ostrich or a giant chicken. Emphasis on the long powerful running legs, "bird-like" feet, in addition to the myth associated with ostriches cravenly sticking their heads in the sand to hide just made more sense. The image of sheep seemed far too forced here, and if you call it a chicken or a sheep it's still a coward, which was by far the most enduring and intriguing aspect of the race. (Their exact motivations and fears are still vague to me though, it's worth developing it more)
An Ostrich is evolved from a Gallimimus, a kind of running dinosaur that used a tail for balance, and possessed a bird like keel near the pelvic girdle. If you want to get into the etymology of the name you could probably find it in any dinosaur encyclopedia. These two creatures formed the basis for the entire organism, and keys well with the latest description, the one I used, including leg anatomy.

Mollusks came in for the eyes, I was wondering if a tentacle would be better than the hand/eye/arm configuration. This configuration seems "arbitrary", using pd's phrase, and correlates to the same problematic wind/food passage found in the human throat. It seems overly contrived enough to merit some kind of a change, like two three fingered hands as per Utilae's first humanoid sheep design, but never the less I kept them against my better judgement, as it's not my place to make outright changes contrary to explicit descriptions. The description, however, is too arbitrary IMHO and should change.

Gecko feet. Ah yes, the gecko feet. Somebody wanted sucker pads on an X like shaped foot print for grasping stuff while running. Disregarding the idea that makes me wonder whether that means they can climb walls or not, the description was vague enough to add my own 2 cents. Gecko feet are perfect, and you should read more about the wonders of gecko feet somewhere else, as there is too little space to discuss them here in detail.

Lastly the sheep were mostly discarded. Wool is a possibility, and I did used them to help define the lips mostly, but otherwise there was no need for them. I don't see why it can't be a giant chicken instead, calling it a sheep seems, again, arbitrary. Call it a chicken or a sheep, it's still a coward.

I would like it very much if the Gyisache had a name that rolls off the tongue. The current one bothers me.

Image
This is the longest response I have ever posted, because I feel partly responsible for this thread; the topic hasn't come up during my stay here and this thread coincidentally appeared after I did concept art for an alien species. As a member of the graphics team, I feel that I should be involved in the argument

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Re: lame generic humanoid vs variations of deformed blobthing

#19 Post by pd »

Thanks for explaining Josh, it's great to read.

I've always encouraged people to interpret the visual descriptions from the story board loosely and make changes if necessary, so I'm fine with your choices and agree with them completely.

Some thoughts about the gecko feet, which I like and which are indeed quite awesome in reality: If they were made for fast running, they would probably not be shaped like an even X. Two or three extensions would probably be more prominent and aiming in a similar direction.

I agree, that the front head part is the weakest spot of the design and some more effort could be put into this.

I really like the space suit design. Have you thought about it being conventional cloth? Wearing cloth like this, which is obviously protective could add to the cowardly character and would be a great visual link to the space ships. The concept of being flimsy and having huge engines could work really well, btw.

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Re: lame generic humanoid vs variations of deformed blobthing

#20 Post by Josh »

Three forward? Like an Ostrich foot? That idea makes alot of sense, but design called for an X, so..... I will have to ask for further clarification from the creative team. As I mentioned, it's not totally my call, it's a collaborative project that I only needed to make spaceships.

But I'll take them up on it :)

The spacesuit was actually supposed to be cloth initially, I'm not sure why I drew it like it is now :| . Perhaps the reason why they need a large clunky shell to protect themselves is because in their own minds the universe is so hell bent on destroying them, they need to be able to hide in their own skin like a turtle or clam or snail to truly feel safe, which is REALLY starting to remind me of the Spathi.

For a second line of ships, I'll probably need a laconic, brave, strong and sturdy race to counterbalance the stereotypes.

All in all, the Gyisache are really fairly well along, and it was eleazer that I used as a springboard.

Geoff had some helpful sketches too.

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Re: lame generic humanoid vs variations of deformed blobthing

#21 Post by Tortanick »

Josh wrote: For a second line of ships, I'll probably need a laconic, brave, strong and sturdy race to counterbalance the stereotypes.
Well the Eaxaw are certainly different, being xenocidial nuts at war with everyone, if that's not exactly what you mant you could have a look at the Etty (better names are welcome), although I'd be weary of useing the Etty, Eleazar hasn't evaluated them yet and secondly I've got a strong suspision they're more suited to being a minor race than a playable one. That said looking strong and noble are explicit design goals for their warships. Its not a proud warrior race but their ships would be a strong contrast to the Gyisache's.

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Re: lame generic humanoid vs variations of deformed blobthing

#22 Post by MentokTheMindtaker »

Tortanick wrote:
MentokTheMindtaker wrote: That depends on how you choose your cathegories. You could also say there is the big cathegory A of very humanlike aliens, cathegory B of aliens that primarly resemble a specific earth animal and than there is cathegory C: other. My point is that categories are made up by choosing criteria you consider significant.
With a good category things grouped together feel like they are a group. For a lot of Sci-Fi humanoids are a good catagory since they share a lot of characteristics. On the other hand something like B from above wouldn't feel like a group, for example: a tiger an eagle a squid and a wasp, do they really feel like their one group?
Yes. They are the "aliens looking like animals" group. You categorize them in biological terms, concentrating on significant differece in their anatomy. My motivation is the question:"What idea inspired the artist?". The talking animal idea is very common and old in myths and fairy tales(Puss in Boots and a lot of other of Brothers Grimm work) . In these, the significance is not really which animal is used, but the asthonishing fact that it's an animal with the capability of human speech and intelligence. Another common idea are mythological humanlike creatures, which are caricatures of certain human charcter types(dwarfs=the diligent worker, kobold=the malicious trickster ..). These concepts are imo still used in scifi, especially when aliens are visualized.
Tortanick wrote:
MentokTheMindtaker wrote:
Tortanick wrote: If we have humanoids ingame they should be no more common they any other type (that probably means no more than two I haven't counted though). Half humanoid, one of A, one of B... one of M. wouldn't work too well.

Why?
It would lack any feeling of overall cohesion, having a bunch of very similar humanoid aliens in a galaxy where every non-humanoid was highly unique would give a similar sort of feeling as having two seprate design teams that weren't talking to each other. I'm not very good at putting feeling about things like this into words, sorry.
That's your feelings, no need to apologize for that :).
Tortanick wrote: Secondly, if half the alien races (say 9) are all humanoid then it would be very hard to have 9 creative and innovative outward appearances if your limited to the same body shape. 9 different rubber foreheads or animal faces isn't the hight of creativity and hasn't been since the ancient Egyptians did it.
I disagree, personally I find a lot of humanoid designs creative. Think of the Xenomorphs(Aliens). The term creative is also not exactly what makes me like or dislike a design. I like a lot of the Babylon 5 aliens (Minbari, Narn, ..). You can define creativity as something that has not been done yet, or as using an old idea in an appealing way. We are moving on a ground which is more suzcepteble to personal taste than other topics here. But this is exactly why I think there should not be a dogma like "only X humanoids".
Tortanick wrote: Finally you'd have to justify why no individual body shape save humans got more than 2 races (if that), but for some reason 9 separate races evolved into the same body shape. Normally we don't put too much focus on realism, but this is the backstory rather than the gameplay.
You dont have to justify that. Maybe living systems prefer a certain shape for intelligent creatures, maybe an ancient race with that shape manipulated life throughout the galaxie in an early stage(yeah, that one gets never old), maybe it's a statistical anomaly in this galaxie(If you count all races in the univerese, they will be evenly distrubuted). Who knows, who cares?

btw
@Josh
you rule! Thanks for sharing your conceptual thoughts with us. I very much like what you have created(I'm not only refering to the Gyisache drawings). If you search for more on the cowardly herd alien concept, maybe you will find this interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson%27s_Puppeteers.
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Re: Gyisache Blueprint

#23 Post by utilae »

Josh wrote: The insect looking ships you see now are not really what you expect a cowardly chicken race to have, are they?
The emphasis will be on looking flimsy and having large engines or anything else that conveys cowardly, and then building up the shapes so it looks cool. Or something like that.
The Gyisache ships should have the following traits:
-able to retreat/runaway ie speed
-small, stealthy, not noticeable
-individually small, but together a group of them are a 'flock'. Like a school of fish, they can come together to look like a bigger fish.
Josh wrote: As for the species itself, Utilae's original concept was for humanoid sheep, it was Impaler who decided their image needed tweaking. This was over 3 years ago, and I didn't hear any argument from Utilae's side, so I went ahead with the latest description. (as a word of caution: the less that is described visually the more I get to make up, so leave me some gaps too)
I adopted Impalers ideas so I stand on that side. But the original idea was not about a race of sheep, but a race with sheep like behaviour. The behaviour is the key, and that is there cowardly, conservative, flock traits.
Josh wrote: Gyisache were described as a race of craven sheep-like herbivores, but I saw very little of Utilae's original sheep concept in here except for a brief mentioning of sheep wool, so I left it out.
It's not a big issue. As the only real sheep thing about them that I was aiming to capture was their behaviour.
Josh wrote: I would like it very much if the Gyisache had a name that rolls off the tongue. The current one bothers me.
Like most race, I made up a random name. But if it helps, this is the pronounciation:
Gyisache (Yee-Saish)

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Re: lame generic humanoid vs variations of deformed blobthing

#24 Post by Tortanick »

MentokTheMindtaker wrote:
Tortanick wrote: With a good category things grouped together feel like they are a group. For a lot of Sci-Fi humanoids are a good catagory since they share a lot of characteristics. On the other hand something like B from above wouldn't feel like a group, for example: a tiger an eagle a squid and a wasp, do they really feel like their one group?
Yes. They are the "aliens looking like animals" group. You categorize them in biological terms, concentrating on significant differece in their anatomy.
If we're going to base it on their anatomy we can look to the biologists who've already done this for us :), you say there is one group "Aliens looking like animals", including a squid, an eagle, a tiger and a wasp. There is a biological group that has all those, the Kingdom Animalia. Of course if we have one category of aliens consisting of Animalia then it wouldn't make any sense to have a separate category for humanoids because:
Size discrepancies: The Kingdom is one of (or the) largest biological catagorisation, humanoids are a "family", that's several orders of magnitude smaller.
Humaniods are a part of Animalia anyway.

Having humanoids as one category, and aliens based on any other animals from earth as another makes no biological sense.
MentokTheMindtaker wrote:My motivation is the question:"What idea inspired the artist?". The talking animal idea is very common and old in myths and fairy tales(Puss in Boots and a lot of other of Brothers Grimm work) . In these, the significance is not really which animal is used, but the asthonishing fact that it's an animal with the capability of human speech and intelligence. Another common idea are mythological humanlike creatures, which are caricatures of certain human charcter types(dwarfs=the diligent worker, kobold=the malicious trickster ..). These concepts are imo still used in scifi, especially when aliens are visualized.
I'm not quite sure what your saying here, that we should base our catagories on mythological conventions? that contradicts (and makes less sense) with what you said just above.
MentokTheMindtaker wrote: That's your feelings, no need to apologize for that :).
I'm not appologising for my feelings, but my inability to properly explain them.
MentokTheMindtaker wrote:
Tortanick wrote: Secondly, if half the alien races (say 9) are all humanoid then it would be very hard to have 9 creative and innovative outward appearances if your limited to the same body shape. 9 different rubber foreheads or animal faces isn't the hight of creativity and hasn't been since the ancient Egyptians did it.
I disagree, personally I find a lot of humanoid designs creative. Think of the Xenomorphs(Aliens).
Excluding their non-humanoid phases of life then yes, they're not too bad, its not that hard to have a singular creative biology, now try finding 9 humanoids that you can line up side by side and still think every one of them is unique.
MentokTheMindtaker wrote:The term creative is also not exactly what makes me like or dislike a design. I like a lot of the Babylon 5 aliens (Minbari, Narn, ..).
Babylon 5 had pretty bland alien biology, it just didn't matter at all because the focus was on other things. If we are able to create amazing characters like Bablylon 5 then we too could get away with bland race designs, but this is a 4x game, its not likely ;) and even if we did good race designs would be an extra bonus on top.
MentokTheMindtaker wrote:You can define creativity as something that has not been done yet, or as using an old idea in an appealing way. We are moving on a ground which is more suzcepteble to personal taste than other topics here. But this is exactly why I think there should not be a dogma like "only X humanoids".
Its only a dogma if its "immutable", I'd change my mind if someone proves me wrong by actually writing lots of humanoid races that all have a good and unique _appearance_.

MentokTheMindtaker wrote:You dont have to justify that.
Then you immediately start tying :D
MentokTheMindtaker wrote: maybe an ancient race with that shape manipulated life throughout the galaxie in an early stage(yeah, that one gets never old)
Who did? Why did they? What other surprises have they left lieing around? If its the Orions, think about what that implies about their personality, would it clash with any other traits we want them to have?
MentokTheMindtaker wrote:maybe it's a statistical anomaly in this galaxie(If you count all races in the univerese, they will be evenly distrubuted).
Actually that's a pretty good justification.
MentokTheMindtaker wrote:Who knows, who cares?
I care.

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Re: lame generic humanoid vs variations of deformed blobthing

#25 Post by m_k »

Tortanick wrote: Excluding their non-humanoid phases of life then yes, they're not too bad, its not that hard to have a singular creative biology, now try finding 9 humanoids that you can line up side by side and still think every one of them is unique.
It is probably impossible to compile such a list without somebody complaining, but I tried and it wasn't even that hard, it is probably possible to find even more, but here is a list of 10 (so you can dispute one away from me) I consider different in appeareance, behaviour and in many of the cases even biology:
-the aforementioned xenomorph from alien:
-while I'm at it also the predator
-as an example of roswell greys the stargate asgard
-from star trek the ferengi
-whatever race yoda is of
-the twi'lek from star wars
-eventhough I hate them, the ewok
-starcrafts protoss
-although this is fantasy the idea behind the ents could be imported to science fiction
-us puny humans

Now show me a list of 9 non humanoids who differ from those I posted and from each other and who are realistical and not simply adapted from animals. Or even better who are all mineral based.
Personally I believe we shouldn't just assign a quota for humanoids and instead design races fitting in their enviroment, humanoid beings aren't normally found on an ocean planet because legs just aren't as effective as fins the same way as fins aren't as effective as legs on land, so that something fishlike won't be found in a desert. There is no need to evolve a biology based on crystals, when your homeworld is a thriving jungle full of carbon based life and so on. (You can design such races but there has to be a good explanation behind it)

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Re: lame generic humanoid vs variations of deformed blobthing

#26 Post by Tortanick »

m_k wrote:I consider different in appeareance, behaviour and in many of the cases even biology:
The list was souly about appearance, note that if you read the text directly above that quote, the races have to be creative not just unique, but I won't hold you to that ;)

anyway, several of them are pretty much identical to humans except for superficial details such as:
-from star trek the ferengi: A bit of rubber on the forhead, some funny eyebrows and something on the back of the head (or is something they wear) apart from that they're human.
-the twi'lek from star wars: Skin colour, a lack of hair and two "tails", otherwise they're human
-whatever race yoda is of: Skin colour, ears, head putty and fewer fingers.
-while I'm at it also the predator: This one is a borderline case, head is pretty different from the others but the body is totally identical except skin colour.
-as an example of roswell greys the stargate asgard: Another borderline case, they have a very human body especially when compaired to malnourished body with an odd skin colour and an alien head. And they're short.
And when you have that so closely resemble humans you have humans closely resembling aliens so they don't count as unique either.

That leaves:

-the aforementioned xenomorph from alien: like the predator, very unique head, the body is similar to human but surface details have changed, especially on the chest.
-starcrafts protoss: They have a passing similarity to the Asgard, same high forhead, prominent eyes and flat face (of course that depends on witch protoss you look at, they're highly varied) I think they and ents are the only one here who's body shape isn't completely identical to humans (reverse bend in the knee)
-eventhough I hate them, the ewok. Who doesn't hate them ;) Apparently adding fur dose a lot to designed how similar they are underneath.
-although this is fantasy the idea behind the ents could be imported to science fiction, I think Geoff actually proposed them already.
m_k wrote: Now show me a list of 9 non humanoids who differ from those I posted and from each other and who are realistical and not simply adapted from animals.
No problem, and while I'm at it I'll only use races proposed for free Orion.
By adapted from animals, do you include stuff like the Gyisache that are adapted from multiple different animals to the point that its unrecognisable as any of its components?

As for "realistical", that's pretty much impossible to judge.

m_k wrote:Personally I believe we shouldn't just assign a quota for humanoids

I disagree, we shouldn't have one body shape drastically more common than any of the others, hence a quota.
m_k wrote:instead design races fitting in their enviroment
Or design environments around races.

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Re: lame generic humanoid vs variations of deformed blobthing

#27 Post by pd »

Your list includes 2 types of worms. It includes amoebas and egg like creatures with a giant mouth an crab legs. That's really ...creative - to the point that it's absurd and just funny. The only purpose seems to be being different at all costs. It won't be easy to find someone interested in visualizing aliens like these, btw.
By adapted from animals, do you include stuff like the Gyisache that are adapted from multiple different animals to the point that its unrecognisable as any of its components?
All those elements are still quite recognizable, as I've proven previously. I wouldn't expect anything else either, because humans are unable to truly create. All we can do is combine different things into something new.
For a design to be successful, those parts have to be recognizable, anything else wouldn't make sense, because it would become arbitrary.
Or design environments around races.
While an environment can be tweaked to fit a certain race better, the design process should still be done the other way round. A species evolves from its environment as we all know since Darwin. A design evolves from circumstances.

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Re: lame generic humanoid vs variations of deformed blobthing

#28 Post by m_k »

Tortanick wrote: The list was souly about appearance, note that if you read the text directly above that quote, the races have to be creative not just unique, but I won't hold you to that ;)

anyway, several of them are pretty much identical to humans except for superficial details such as:
-from star trek the ferengi: A bit of rubber on the forhead, some funny eyebrows and something on the back of the head (or is something they wear) apart from that they're human.
-the twi'lek from star wars: Skin colour, a lack of hair and two "tails", otherwise they're human
-whatever race yoda is of: Skin colour, ears, head putty and fewer fingers.
-while I'm at it also the predator: This one is a borderline case, head is pretty different from the others but the body is totally identical except skin colour.
-as an example of roswell greys the stargate asgard: Another borderline case, they have a very human body especially when compaired to malnourished body with an odd skin colour and an alien head. And they're short.
And when you have that so closely resemble humans you have humans closely resembling aliens so they don't count as unique either.

That leaves:

-the aforementioned xenomorph from alien: like the predator, very unique head, the body is similar to human but surface details have changed, especially on the chest.
-starcrafts protoss: They have a passing similarity to the Asgard, same high forhead, prominent eyes and flat face (of course that depends on witch protoss you look at, they're highly varied) I think they and ents are the only one here who's body shape isn't completely identical to humans (reverse bend in the knee)
-eventhough I hate them, the ewok. Who doesn't hate them ;) Apparently adding fur dose a lot to designed how similar they are underneath.
-although this is fantasy the idea behind the ents could be imported to science fiction, I think Geoff actually proposed them already.

I don't want to start a war, so I will not try to disprove everything you said, but isn't the core of all those arguments there, that they are nearly human if you just change some parts? Isn't that the definition of humanoid? :?
Tortanick wrote:
As for "realistical", that's pretty much impossible to judge.
As are "different", "unique" and "creative"
Tortanick wrote:
m_k wrote:Personally I believe we shouldn't just assign a quota for humanoids

I disagree, we shouldn't have one body shape drastically more common than any of the others, hence a quota.
m_k wrote:instead design races fitting in their enviroment
Or design environments around races.
As pd said. Also I'd rather have a game with too many humanoids than a game where every race tries to be ridiculusly different. And after all there is an evolutionary reason, why we have two hands, two legs and stand upright, it simply works great for using tools and adapting fast to different situations.

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Re: lame generic humanoid vs variations of deformed blobthing

#29 Post by eleazar »

m_k wrote:And after all there is an evolutionary reason, why we have two hands, two legs and stand upright, it simply works great for using tools and adapting fast to different situations.
Maybe, but our FO galaxy is mostly 8/9ths planets very different from earth.

Personally, if we somehow knew the galaxy was dominated by different species of intelligent humanoid life, i would consider it very strong evidence for either Creation, or some sort of Panspermia.

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Re: lame generic humanoid vs variations of deformed blobthing

#30 Post by shrinkshooter »

eleazar wrote:
m_k wrote:And after all there is an evolutionary reason, why we have two hands, two legs and stand upright, it simply works great for using tools and adapting fast to different situations.
Maybe, but our FO galaxy is mostly 8/9ths planets very different from earth.

Personally, if we somehow knew the galaxy was dominated by different species of intelligent humanoid life, i would consider it very strong evidence for either Creation, or some sort of Panspermia.
To m_k: I apologize for sounding elitist or something, but that way of thinking about evolution is misinformed. We were not evolved to use tools. Somewhere along the line our brains got "tweaked," and we became capable of abstract thought. Tools soon followed. However, you are on the right track; we have evolved in the presence of tools for many, many years, so the two are connected. I just wanted to clarify that technicality.

For eleazar: This isn't the place to do it, so I'll keep it short...I wouldn't say it's VERY strong evidence, or evidence at all. I know exactly what you mean, though; I understand what your reasoning is. But just because many intelligent life forms may have similar physical forms simply means that somehow, three things are interconnected: humanoid physical form, intelligence, and survivability. This argument is pretty much moot, but in case anything like this came up in reality I think we should probably avoid jumping to conclusions like that.
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