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Understanding Humanity

What if there was a different conscious experience?

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8 Comments
by
Counterguardian
, June 15th, 2012 at 01:51 AM (5471 Views)
We are so used to these things - playing games on computers, watching movies, admiring beauty in art and drawn representations of ourselves. Things that essentially boil down to either images that flash in quick succession such that our brains interpret it as "movement", or patterns that stimulate the temporal regions that tell us to recognize them as pictures of people.

What if there was some other life out there, one just as advanced - if not more advanced - than us, but they did not have these things. Perhaps they could not recognize drawings of people in such a primitive 2D form, but can construct language and logic that facilitates the advancement to 3D imagery that they can recognize as art. Would not these people, were they to watch us, screaming with hype and joy and lust and sadness over what they could only recognize as a jumble of flashing lines on paper or screen, think us alien and strange.

Is it not alien or strange that we do this even if these creatures did not exist in the first place?
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Comments

  1. NZXT's Avatar
    Oh, but it is. Perception might as well be reality...

    Interesting thought Counter Guardian.
    Updated June 15th, 2012 at 09:29 AM by NZXT
  2. Kotonoha's Avatar
    What if there were aliens and they were really dumb and nowhere near as advanced as life on earth

    Why does nobody ever consider that possibility, it's always "super advanced aliens who are better than humans in every way"
  3. NZXT's Avatar
    Well, if an Alien civilization was able to peer off into distant galaxies and observe other forms of life, which this scenario calls for, they would have to be significantly more advanced than us, who can only glance at near by galaxies- much less distant ones, and to be able to observe them to such an extent... Yes, significantly more advanced. But, then, their civilization- themselves as a species would likely have been around much longer then us.

    When you hear scenarios like this, it isn't a smite against human progress, just logic.
  4. Aiden's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kotonoha
    What if there were aliens and they were really dumb and nowhere near as advanced as life on earth

    Why does nobody ever consider that possibility, it's always "super advanced aliens who are better than humans in every way"
    Because that would be vaguely innovative, and people hate that.
  5. Satehi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kotonoha
    What if there were aliens and they were really dumb and nowhere near as advanced as life on earth

    Why does nobody ever consider that possibility, it's always "super advanced aliens who are better than humans in every way"
    There is an infographic on this somewhere. The current levels of human technological advancement we have today were reached extremely quickly, so the probability of meeting a civilization on our level is pretty much near 0. We will either meet bacteria (which has been around for a pretty darn long time), dumb animals (and maybe some really primitive beings capable of learning), or huge techfags, since they can be anywhere on the scale of time and development beyond us. Our current civilization's development is like, 10,000 years? That's barely anything in terms of the time that life has taken to evolve to our current selves.
  6. Mike1984's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kotonoha
    What if there were aliens and they were really dumb and nowhere near as advanced as life on earth

    Why does nobody ever consider that possibility, it's always "super advanced aliens who are better than humans in every way"
    Well, that is quite likely, if by "really dumb" you mean "as intelligent as seaweed", since intelligent life has only existed on this planet for 2 million or so years, whereas life of some form has existed for several billion.

    However, given how long humans have been around (2 million years or so), the likelihood of us finding sapient alien life that is not far more advanced than us is very low (unless most or all intelligent species kill theirselves off before they can survive that long). 2 million years is nothing relative to the lifetime of a planet, so the likelihood of us coming across a race of similar or lower advancement to us that is still recogniseably sapient is low.
  7. Kotonoha's Avatar
    if by "really dumb" you mean "as intelligent as seaweed"
    Hey.

    HEY.
  8. Mike1984's Avatar
    Well, last time I checked, seaweed didn't have a brain at all, so I'd call that pretty dumb :p