Avalon (CVnU Enterprise/Location)

@la_espada: We're such a destabilized union it's almost a joke. Economically no country would be ready and that's the least of it. Politically most countries are struggling, didn't France just disband their cabinet or something? Ah man, the EU needs a radical change if it has any hope of surviving. I don't blame everybody wanting to leave it xD

@cassius_knightfall: I think the two party system (Labour/Conserve) is getting out of hand. We won't ever have a stable government with the inter-party conflicts as neither Labour or Conservatives are equipped to run this country. Milliband is an idiot, Cameron is an idiot, and the Lib Dems are just as bad. British politics needs a breath of fresh air. We are an EU power, in fairness, but not a world power past our wealth. We act like the USA when we're nothing of the sort LOL

@pyrogram

Its probably why Ukip are getting more and more backing. Its a dangeours thing to back ( riddled with issues in fact) but the rest of the parties are broken as well. As a voter who has been voting for nearly 10years i can honestly say i have never seen a situation as dire as the political climate we have now. In many ways i think our military is living on past reputation, and seem to keep putting our hat in on pretty much every fight that turns up.

@cassius_knightfall: You're exactly right. It's all past reputation.

I'm voting UKIP, not because I full agree, but because I want a breath of fresh air -- Simply put, I don't think any of the "big three" deserve a chance. UKIP may either be good or terrible. But at least we gave somebody else a chance.

@pyrogram I'am struggling right now. Part of me is worried about Ukip they have some intresting policies but their reputaion and members leave somewhat to be desired. Not to go into the whole racial aspect of the party. But i wont be voting for cameron clegg or miliband thats for certain. Changes need to be made for sure.

Same with the military. Seen jobs avalible in it, no chance would be in boot camp and off to fight in a matter of months lol.

@cassius_knightfall: To be fair it's only four years. Can they mess up the country in four years? I'd rather vote them and see for certain if they are good or not, rather than vote Labour for safety and almost have a certain mindset the country will suffer regarldess.

@pyrogram: I refer you to what the nazi party did in four years. And they had similar views on immigration lol. But yeah we are screwed in pretty much any option.

@cassius_knightfall Yeah but that's because Hitler enacted an act which allowed him to take control of the military, and everything in the entire country. No such law exists in the UK :P

@pyrogram: Not yet lol ; p

@cassius_knightfall: @pyrogram: I heard that bit about the expeditionary force. I know its stressful but if push comes to shove between you and Russia you should win.

@strigidae_23: a European Nato force should be effective providing we all front up and do it. But i still think us joining another fight ( just or not) when we already have assesst in the middle east is crazy. Our military spending is crazy for our size.

@strigidae_23: I'm uncertain, the UK have made some pretty major cutbacks to our military this year. We cut our size back from 100k troops to 82k troops, 1/3 of which being reservists I think. Read this, quite a cool analysis from some British people.

We're practically a 'One-shot force'

Prof Mike Clarke, director general of the Royal United Services Institute, says: "We have full spectrum forces, which mirror American forces but at one-tenth the size, for which we pay about one-tenth the cost.

"But our numbers are now very small, and the question is: can we keep alive a small version of America?"

That debate has already begun ahead of the next defense review, due after the general election in 2015.

Prof Clarke says: "The real problem is that we have a one-shot force. That is, we can send our forces to war, they can go to a conventional war but they can't stay. Is that sufficient? And if we prepare them for a one shot war, as we did in 2003 or the Gulf in 2001, are they then in the right structure to do all the things we want them to do?"

He adds: "We've cut too far for our present level of ambition. We are still a very big military power. We spend the fourth biggest budget in the world, but we don't get the fourth biggest forces for it.

@strigidae_23: I know I'm discounting our EU allies but if push came to shove, the United Kingdom would be the major military power in a war I think.

@xenon_: The UK does have one of the largest militaries in the EU and one of the most powerful in the world, that's true.

@cassius_knightfall: That's a question of your nations values and priorities, really. The capabilities are there, its a matter of weather or not you deem it worth the expense and risk.

@strigidae_23: They will go most likely, cameron will see it as a moral must. Whilst i disagree with what Russia is doing its not our fight. We dont stop thing as bad or worse in africa.

@strigidae_23: I only see Russia being dangerous because they'd be willing to do things we aren't. I don't see them ever attacking mainland Britain, though, that would escalate tenfold. The 10k expeditionary force against Russia would make a mad good movie lol

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@pyrogram: LOL it is a joke. I remember we once talked about the ineffectiveness of the EU and I'm not foreseeing any significant change. First and foremost, the EU is really just about finance, banknotes, cash etc. The EU's military budgets have shrunk so much that it's open to ridicule really. When the Baltic states wanted to convince Russia that NATO was fully dedicated to the protection of their countries, it was the United States that sent hundreds of troops. It wasn't a substantial number at all but the gesture was very clear in that American troops were required to convince Russia of NATO's determination. Europe's collective military is so ridiculously hollow and divided that we no credible deterrent in response to open aggression.

Defense spending has increased in the past years in Russia and China, but experienced a plummet in Europe. Let's make some comparisons. Germany spends around 1.4% of its GDP on defense. While the EU spends 1.6%. Its nothing to be impressed about when compared with the United States' 3.8% and Russia's 4.1%. This isn't to imply that we don't have the necessary quantity of troops to respond to Russia's aggression, Europe has a large number of soldiers to meet Russia's conventional forces. The issue isn't centered on military personnel however, it's centered on combat readiness. The United States and the EU have more or less the same number of troops, but the difference is that the United States spends $142,000 per soldier which is €102,000, far more than the EU's €24,000. And Europe can't rely on the United States for support anymore. Russia's proven that given the opportunity, it will act unpredictably and in an expansionist manner, which is why Putin wants Ukraine because of its tactically fruitful location.

And there's no better time for Russia to do this than now. Europe can't realistically stop them and the United States is being increasingly stretched to meet defense commitments in Asia. And because the United States' priorities are now shifting to Asia, Europe can't rely on having the responsibility of maintaining NATO be the United States'. The US finances nearly three quarters of NATO's military spending, out of all 28 of the alliance's nations, it's only the US, Britain and Greece that meet it's spending guidelines of 2% of GDP. Europe has basically turned into a combination of nations that aren't only unwilling to do something, but we're unable to. Whenever we don't have the United States' assistance, our decreasing political and financial commitment derails numbers of initiatives that were intended to make Europe more self-reliant. It doesn't help that relations between the EU and NATO are dysfunctional at best. If it doesn't spend more on defense, Europe is at risk of collective military retardation LOL. Because our continued abdication on defense spending means that we can't handle our own issues and we'll gain less and less assistance from the United States because this almost ensures that we'll cease to be a valuable partner to them.

Britain and France for example, are struggling to maintain not only nuclear deterrents, but even basic armed forces, as I'm sure you know, especially about Britain because the situation for Britain is terrible. I'd suggest that Britain rectify this situation by first dropping its expensive nuclear deterrent so that it can become a real military force again and then they can focus on becoming a potent nuclear power. Europe also needs to convince smaller European countries to share their capabilities like the Netherlands does for naval training, they should be able to make this happen if they convince their partners to protect them. As far as I can see however, Europe is in a big big mess and we need to rethink our security policies.

@pyrogram: I don't know if Russia could even reach the UK in force. I mean, I'm sure they could sneak some commandos in or something but actually attack? I don't know if that's possible for them. It seems like a great way to throw away their navy.

It probably would! Thought it will be interesting to see if NATO goes through with the deployment to eastern Ukraine.

@cassius_knightfall: You don't see eastern Europe as your 'backyard'? Part of your sphere of influence that other nations shouldn't stick their militaries in without talking to you first?

@strigidae_23: Don't Russia have an effective air-force? The UK air-force has been drastically reduced and I don't think we could fight anyone air-to-air anymore. Only air-to-ground. They could bomb us, for sure.

I don't know if they will, way too uncertain.

@strigidae_23: We are the geographically the other most side of Europe. And politcially have bene trying to become free from the EU regulations and rules of late. Its a fight on our doorsteep no doubt but when other european nations far closer to the problem wont be involved it does ask the question why we are/will be. Morally we have little choice i understand that , but its the same with many over situations that we dont affect as well.

@la_espada: I'm leaving in a minute but wanted to say I agree entirely with everything you said, it's a very convoluted situation. Later on I may wanna figure out how it all happened, I love doing political breakdowns. But I have to go >_< Dammit, lol

@pyrogram: The Russians have strong air power in terms of airborne technologies. In fact they have airborne systems that are designed to compete with our airpower, and they did a good job. A lot of our air concepts were taken from Russian innovations, actually. What they don't have is the ability to project their 'bubble'. The bubble is layers of advanced radar systems linked to powerful computers. The radar of the fighters layered over the radar of the support craft, layered with the ground/sea based radar and today often layered with your satellite intelligence. Each of these units will have powerful onboard computers to sort signal from noise and optimize the amount of signal compared to noise that is sent through the limited number of communication channels.

So what happens in air warfare is each side pushes its bubble into the other sides bubble. Dogfights can take place over the horizon now and there is rarely visual contact. Each side relies on their bubble to penetrate the enemies emissions control systems and give them accurate data.

So attacking the UK would involve a strike package. X number of fighter craft, X number of refueling craft, X number of support craft [radar, communications, jamming, whatnot]. There would probably be a high/low mix with a number of 'silver bullet' craft. That's basically a mixture of large numbers of lower quality, cheaper aircraft with weaker emissions control systems to grab the attention of the bubble and a smaller number of higher quality craft mixed among them. Then you have silver bullets, which are the top of the line, top secret systems that cost huge amounts of money and aim to destroy something vital or win all the dogfights or something equally important. We have the F-22 but Russia probably doesn't have any equivalent.

The problem is that no matter how good their strike package is they won't have a bubble that compares to the RAF's homebubble over the UK. So they'll be at a massive information deficit. The odds are they won't even be able to see most of the things that are shooting at them and the RAF will have a near perfect picture of the russian strike package.

[That's what makes American air power so good. We have spent billions and billions and billions building force project capabilities, which means we can put huge information bubbles anywhere on sea and most places on the land. When we attack we often make what's called an alpha strike, which is we penetrate the opposition bubble and destroy as much of its infrastructure as we can, leaving our enemy nearly blind and giving us a huge advantage in the battle for air superiority. ]

@pyrogram: No worries, when you get back, it'd be cool to talk about it :)

@strigidae_23: That's simply an amazing breakdown and I learnt a lot there. Never even know the bubble things existed. It's a very cool concept actually, and seems oddly fun to think about.

How do you come to know this stuff? You're very knowledge on a wide range of subjects, science, history, politics, military, etc, did you study all of this in your spare time or what? I mean you don't know things a little, you have an in-depth view of many things and it's impressive. The only things I know are politics and history, but you dwarf me in both of those. I'm truly inspired by your knowledge lol it's like you're the internet but the human avatar of a Wikipedia :P

@la_espada: I actually got back, didn't leave, damn unreliable uncle :P I was gonna reply in a sec, just marveling at LL's knowledge haha

@pyrogram: LOL no worries. Haha as we all usually do ;)

@pyrogram: Glad you enjoyed it! There's a lot more to it, of course. I left out sortie rates entirely [because in the scenario you proposed there would be a sortie rate of one, ever lol]. But modern air conflict is complex and nuanced and I was tired of typing about it lol.

When it comes to military science I have always had a knack for it and I've always had an interest. I remember being a little girl and reading my grandfather's encyclopedia and being intrigued by the battles because they were the interplay of many systems together. It was biology, psychology, sociology, metallurgy, mathematics, chemistry, aerodynamics and geometry all come together. My little mind was blown lol.
As for the other stuff, yeah, I do ready and study a lot. I buy used textbooks when I find one that I'm interested in, I read on the internet and I research concepts that intrigue me. Learning stuff is kinda my hobby I guess, so I know a lot of stuff.

@strigidae_23: That's awesome. I'm glad I can actually talk politics with somebody, as that's probably the thing I'm most versed in and the thing I get easiest, shame I took biology in school instead of politics, I'd have been awesome doing that. Biology, although I was okay at it just bored the daylights out of me. Used to be my passion, but it turned into something I disliked for no real reason. *Shrugs*. I have and will always love world politics though.

Goes to learn about sortie rates in the spirit of learning stuff :P

@pyrogram: Have fun reading hehee.

Other than the hypothetical forms of biochemistry that an extraterrestrial may adopt and which alternative solvent aside from water they'll use, I've always wondered about the cognition and emotion of an intelligent extraterrestrial race. Regardless of their intelligence, there's no reason to assume that an alien would think the same way we do because it's not realistic to construct the memory functions of a hypothetical alien after our own. Or to even assume that they have the same notion of self that we do, or that they communicate through spoken language or think of space and time the way we do. Cognitive processes vary across cultures, so imagine how radical this variation would be across different civilizations spread all about the cosmos. The Piraha people in the Amazon for example, they referred to amounts with the equivalent of 'roughly one', 'more than one', and 'many'. They didn't have the same understanding of numeracy that we do.

And those are other human beings LOL, who are as physically evolved as the rest of us and live in the same planetary ecosystem. When you extrapolate this difference to the potential gap between how our minds work and how an alien's mind might work, it's completely loco. They may also feel different emotions from us. Many of our emotions are hypothesized to be the byproducts of evolution, and so the way we feel emotions has been shaped by our own, unique evolutionary history. For example, we fear things that are threatening to our well-being because it directly opposes our fundamental objective of self-preservation. It's possible then, that an alien civilization we encounter may not understand the purpose behind laughter, feel spite or experience fear or awe by the things that frighten and awe us. Conversely, it's also possible that they feel emotions that we cannot comprehend. It would make interplanetary diplomacy far more difficult than we may expect.

Its something worth thinking about :)

@la_espada: I've enjoyed thinking about aliens being confused by our customs. What if they don't have a concept of ownership hence have no concept of theft, of bartering, of currency? Etc. It's a very interesting topic trying to think about the differences between a hypothetical species, some of our customs may very well be alien. No animal in the animal kingdom save for humans has a concept of currency, for example.

@pyrogram: I've always enjoyed thinking about anything about hypothetical extraterrestrial organisms LOL. Naturally, the first thought that came to my mind was what would a hypothetical race of martians actually look like? Mars' low gravity would mean that their skeletons (if they even had skeletons, they may have some other form of geometric bio-structural support) would be thin and they'd be tall and elongated creatures. And because Mars doesn't have anything like Earth's geomagnetic field as well as the fact that its atmosphere is very thin, creatures on Mars would need to be highly resistant to the large amounts of ionizing radiation that would reach its surface.

But among all of that, its always been interesting to think about how an intelligent extraterrestrial civilization might react to our ways and vice versa. We'd certainly be very very different. The currency thing you mentioned for example, that's true as well. Humans have a highly evolved neocortex which is responsible for allowing us to create complex social concepts like money, religion, philosophy, discrimination etc. An alien would most certainly not have evolved in the same way. Touching on intelligence for example, let's assume we do meet an intelligent alien race. If they're smarter than us, we can conceive them to be more proficient in science and engineering, just like how a Homo erectus would imagine more sophisticated beings to be more formidable hunters and better tool makers, while being unable to conceive something more complex like quantum mechanics the way modern humans see them. It begs the question, what sort of concepts could a more developed intelligence conceive that we can't comprehend, no matter how much our science and technology advance?

Going back to the Homo erectus analogy, just imagine that modern humans come into contact with a race that's just as intellectually capable as the Homo erectus. They would understand their encounter with us differently from the way we would understand it. They're limited by their brain and wouldn't comprehend our efforts to communicate with them, meanwhile, we'd be frustrated and disappointed. Now let's look at the inverse. We come into contact with a race that's much, much smarter than us. Would they be frustrated by our inability to do and comprehend what they can do and comprehend? Or is there a minimum level of intelligence that we as modern humans have already achieved, past which all forms of communications are possible? The same way there's a minimum level of intelligence that dogs have achieved, past which they're as capable as we are of identifying what would constitute their 'loved ones'. It's interesting to think about.

Spiders are....interesting.

I really want to do something with Allegiance and Tobias, but rolling on the floor in another option.

"Girl you gonna know my name by the end of the night"

:D

@la_espada:

I've never been too fascinated with how aliens would look like in fairness. It's nothing too foreign, for me, aliens looking different is just like an animal looking different, it's not what we haven't seen before. A wolf adapts to it's environment different than a zebra, and so would an alien so well, it's just not too fun to think about to me. I enjoy thinking about social customs, because that's different. Animals, intelligent ones in the wild don't share many human traits which makes us human, ownership, naming things, verbally communicating with words and not just that, but having multiple languages and being able to learn another language. Currency? It's quite interesting.

I think that there is a minimum level of intelligence needed to understand science. Intelligence is cool to think about because that's one of those subjective subjects, how do you measure it exactly? I think no matter how advanced there would be a human on the planet who would be able to comprehend it.

But remember, if aliens ARE that smart. Wouldn't there be an alien who could break it down for us? Simplify it, and then make it more and more complex until we understood it? If they have language, they can do that. You can't teach an animal incapable of love, love, by making it more simple, it's impossible. But knowledge can always be simplified by a smart teacher.

@pyrogram: LOL I definitely have. On Earth the differences in appearance while are clear, aren't as ridiculously radical as the differences an extraterrestrial may have so it's not at all the same thing because every animal on Earth evolved in the same ecosystem whereas something that evolved in a completely different ecosystem in a different section of the universe has no reason to be even remotely similar. We always imagine an extraterrestrial looking at least somewhat similar to what we've seen on Earth, and its natural because our imaginations are naturally constrained by what we see around us. Which is why I've always felt that searching for life "as we know it", which is life that uses water as a solvent, requires oxygen etc. was the smartest thing to do because searching for life that we're not familiar with will represent challenges that we're not ready to face e.g. what if we do discover life elsewhere but it's so different that we don't recognize it?

Planets have radically different environments from one another. Evolution on another planet is almost guaranteed to take a very different path which would result in an extreme gap of biodiversity between a hypothetical planet's fauna compared to ours. Silicon-based extraterrestrials for example could be of a crystalline structure and thrive in high-temperature environments, that's very interesting to me. Everything on Earth evolved in the same planetary ecosystem so there'll always be similarities between organisms regardless of where on the planet they evolved and adapted. Most organisms here have eyes, ears etc. That will most certainly not be the case in a different environment. I find that very interesting, but that's alternative biology and biology as a subject doesn't interest you so I know why what an alien may look like doesn't interest you LOL, although an alien's biochemistry and evolution is fundamental to how it will think etc. What constitutes intelligence is a difficult question to answer. What we can answer however, is what constitutes human intelligence. An extraterrestrial intelligence will undoubtedly be different from what we know.

On the topic of intelligence, there could be a hypothetical civilization that comprehends most, if not all physical phenomena to a much more sophisticated degree than we do, has been able to elucidate the nature of dark matter and dark energy, counts with a far grander cartographic database of the universe than we do, and knows much more about where in the universe there is life. Some civilizations might even understand how to use the topology of space-time to their advantage. To answer your question on whether they can break things down for us and on the topic of language, they might and they might not. That depends on how said extraterrestrial evolved. Spoken language isn't the only language an organism can evolve to adopt. An intelligent alien we encounter may not even have the necessary body parts for vocal sounds, perhaps they communicate by using pulses of light. As for if they can break things down for us, that depends on how they communicate, but its possible that they can't for the same reason that you can't break down particle physics to a jellyfish. The way our respective nervous systems work is far too different, jellyfish don't have an organ that's responsible for cognitive processes etc. the way we have a brain. And we can only formulate concepts like religion, philosophy, politics, ethics, metaphysics etc. because our brain has a highly evolved neocortex which is what allows us to develop and understand these concepts. So no matter how intelligent a jellyfish may become, it doesn't have a neocortex that'll allow it to understand concepts the way we do, or even develop the same concepts that we have developed.

The same principle applies with an alien and a human. No matter how intelligent we may become or how intelligent they are, we could be missing a key biological component that's present in their biological composition that is necessary to understand their concepts and their interpretations of concepts. The only difference is that unlike a jellyfish, an alien wouldn't even have evolved in the same planetary ecosystem we have, so the difference between our cognition and theirs could simply be too ridiculously different for us to understand them no matter how much they try to simplify whatever it is they're trying to explain to us. What you suggested would only be possible with an intelligent alien whose species underwent an evolutionary path similar to that of the animals here on Earth, and that would be likely if we were to encounter an alien species from an Earth-like planet, but otherwise, it may not be possible.

@la_espada: Someday, we are going to come together, and you will teach me things. And then we will draw up the foundations for a race of aliens.

@la_espada:

Same ecosystem on what we know, on the earths surface. Deep ocean species are virtually alien to us. We have not explored that at all much (as you know, we done that RP on it xD) and seeing how aliens evolved there is astounding. Their is a lack of light and the pressures are ridiculous, the temperature, and other factors make deep sea aquatic life almost alien upon the earth. If we ever ventured to the bottom of the ocean and discovered some of that stuff one would think you're on a different planet all together. Curious, isn't it? Some say that there are certain fish living under the sea which are made of jelly-like substance, why? Because the pressure is so great their bodies would be crushed if they were unable to be so flexible. Jelly for their eyes, bones, skin, muscles, everything, is made of this jelly like substance. I forgot where I read this, but it was freaking fascinating. There was another one where the animal looked like a sponge and was virtually unable to move itself, and it just floated along, taking in any small lifeforms and digesting it as they accidentally wondered into it's drifting path. Somewhat like a jellyfish, but this fish was a sponge which sucked shit in LOL I think this was in an old science textbook back before I dropped AS Biology. Haha, really cool stuff. Funny you mentioned me disliking biology, last year, I LOVED it, but AS Biology made me despise it. lmfao, too much work killed my passion. Oh well, I still understand it easily enough, but reluctant to learn it as I find it quite boring on the most part (apart from conversations like this, occasionally).

I'm not sure. I personally think that intelligence has a minimum requirement. What you say is plausible but I still think humans would be able to understand. I think it all comes down to how we communicate. And I personally think a species which cannot communicate verbally is not an intelligent species on par with humanity. Apes are smart, dolphins, wales, but because they lack the ability to vocalize their thoughts they are unable to do quite a few things. "Speaking" through lights isn't the same as speaking through vibrations in the air with words. Not to my own opinion anyways, ants communicate through pheromones it's speculated and dolphins (or wales?) speak through sonar. They can do that and they can even name one another, it's thought, but that's still a basic form of communication and "lights" don't have languages. An alien from the north won't use lights different from an alien to the south. I think verbal communication is the most advanced, and if we can talk to an alien race verbally, we can understand anything given enough effort on both parts. I could be wrong but that's just me. I like the debate though, it's cool!

It's interesting understanding different people's lines of thoughts and mental processes.

@schlampe: How do you measure...Or, like, understand somebody else's mental process? Probably a vague question which requires a gigantic answer, in fairness? :P

@pyrogram: It can actually be really simple and short. You understand that by observing them, their communicated words (which are vocalized/written/whatever thoughts), and induction (as in inductive reasoning). Apart from deception (which would often be hard to maintain anyway, especially for longer periods of time, so more accuracy as you're exposed to the person longer), it's a pretty accurate way to judge. Of course, a reasonable degree of shrewdness is required for accuracy of understanding, but that's an individual thing.

I want to do a barbeque RP >_>

Just lots of food and drinks, everyone having a good time.

@schlampe: LOL..

@pyrogram: Oh no, when I say planetary ecosystem, I mean the array of living organisms interacting with the nonliving bio-components of the entire planetary system. Which is why a different planet would have a radically different ecosystem. While marine life is very very very different from terrestrial organisms, they are still part of the same planet that has the same gravity, same mass, same orbit etc. and they still use water as a solvent. I'd like a link to where you read that because it's interesting LOL. Biology and chemistry 'biochemistry' is the foundation for understanding everything that an alien could be like. For example, everything on Earth is carbon-based but elsewhere an extraterrestrial could be silicon-based but that's unlikely for a number of reasons. For one, unlike carbon, silicon doesn't have the ability to form chemical bonds with diverse types of atoms which would be necessary for the chemical versatility required for things like metabolism.

Elements creating organic functional groups with carbon include hydrogen, sulfur, nitrogen, phosphorus, oxygen, iron, magnesium etc. while silicon interacts with very few other types of atoms. And with the atoms that it does interact with, silicon creates molecules that are monotonous compared with organic macromolecules because silicon atoms are really big and have a large mass and atomic radius so its difficult for silicon to form double bonds which is fundamental for bio-organic chemistry. There's also the issue that the atmospheric composition of most planets may not be conductive to the development of silicon-based lifeforms because there wouldn't be much silicon in its atmosphere. This is because when you look at the interstellar medium, which are the clouds of gas or the spaced out molecules that are in the space between stars, you find that there are over a hundred different carbon-based molecules out there and there aren't even ten silicon-based molecules molecules out there. And out of that small number, a few of those silicon-based molecules actually include carbon so the cosmic abundance of silicon does not seem very promising. This suggests that there's a greater variety of complex carbon compounds throughout the cosmos, providing less of a foundation for silicon-based biologies to develop.

Oh I'm not disputing that intelligence doesn't have a minimum requirement, I'm saying that the difference between our biology and an alien one would be too radical. For example, the alien and the human can achieve interstellar travel using mathematics and engineering. But our concept of numeracy could be very different. So while our mathematics may be just as advanced as theirs, we wouldn't share the organs responsible for the cognitive processes required to understand the other's mathematical concepts. Which is why even if a jellyfish or a worm were as intelligent as a human, you wouldn't be able to explain the concept of metaphysics to them because while of the same intelligence, they wouldn't have a neocortex which is what allows us to develop and understand these concepts which is why a human without a neocortex wouldn't be able to understand a normal human's concept of metaphysics. And the only reason dogs can understand the concept of a 'loved one' is because all mammals have a neocortex, that's why you can't condition a reptile to 'love' you. You can condition it to tolerate your presence and respond to it, but it won't 'love' you because it doesn't have a neocortex with which to understand the concept, and we all evolved in the same planetary ecosystem, an alien and a human wouldn't share that luxury. So it isn't a matter of intelligence, its a matter of whether or not we have the necessary organs that'll provide the cognitive processes we would need to understand an alien concept.

As for the topic of language, you can actually communicate with pulses of lights. The military for example use flares to communicate with one another. Several species of insects and bacteria use bio-luminescence as a means of communication, and bio-luminescence is the emission of light by living organisms LOL. You should study up on biology because animals communicate through a wide variety of manners, through olfaction and the emission of different scents for example.

@schlampe: The deception thing intrigues me for some reason but I don't know why... Hm, kinda cool. Maybe because I wanna be a detective eventually, and knowing how to figure if somebody is being deceptive is kind of awesome :P Is there not a degree of it taken with a pinch of salt when analyzing somebody who you think is being deceptive? Humans are complex and sometimes even the most accurate assessment can be wrong, from observer bias? Things like observer expectancy and such, if you observe somebody for a long time and assume they are being deceptive, maybe you see things which aren't there. I've heard police cases like that, detectives aren't physiologists and things like expectancy bias have crumpled entire police cases with assumptions. *Shrugs* No idea why I thought of that lol

It's becoming exhausting writing these super long posts LOL.

@la_espada:

I wish I could find you the link. But I gave my biology text books back when I dropped the subject! I'll look around the internet though and try and find you something, I may have even seen it on a BBC Ocean documentary once too (about the jelly-like fish). Don't have anything to add about the carbon stuff as I'm a crap chemist, but I learned something there again, so thanks! I always sucked at biochemistry.

Ohhh I get you, I get you. The biology aspects playing into the comprehension. The question is, on the original topic, what would make an alien race evolve to have such a vastly different brain? Now that's a darned tricky question LOL And it's hard as fk to answer as it's just so alien! :P

I know animals communicate differently and I know quite a few of the ways, but I think verbal communication is the most complex because it's the most versatile. Verbally we can communicate and tell each other to use other forms of communication. A fish cannot tell another fish to stop communicating one way instead of their normal way. Humans can. I can tell you to write instead of talk, I can tell you to communicate via light with flares instead of talk, I can tell you to learn sign language instead of talk. See what I'm saying? Humans can do all of this due to the fact we have mastered verbal communication. I honestly believe verbal communication is the most advanced form of communication save for telepathy, which aliens may have. Somehow xD

The vine has turned into a science and politics forum lmfao