I've read the rules, and in a leap of defence, he shouts...

I followed them.

Though I admit to being, a little patronising, so I'll let everyone else come back into this thread now that the water's calm again

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"Well, gee' they might wanna know, I mean; what happens if I, drop a black hole, in a black hole?"

Understanding is subjective... when you understand something, you are being 'open' to it to change, and accepting that you can't make it be what you want it to be.

Perhaps your hat was on too tight in the first place.

Yeah, what's so 'sharing' about subjective truth, as it would be if our genetic blueprint is just some kind of 'fluke' that really means nothing? There would be nothing objective, because omniscience could then be realized by 'any form' of being. Then of course it's on to brain size and how it's racist and evil to say it actually matters.

I'm sure you're one of the egalitarian commis that say "beauty is ONLY subjective" beacuse it's a 'hate crime' to say it's not.

Of course, you can just call him a quack now because he's obviously a nazi and anti-semite.

Moore like sheep..

An open mind is the first step towards brain surgery.



Unless of course, Darwin was wrong. If that be the case, then first contact should be handled with an exchange of religious texts.

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Fields of Space

LOGIC, n.
The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

In the Year 2525.

"One small step for (a) man. One giant leap for mankind".

If an astronaut doesn't need good grammar, niether does you.

Host of Seraphim

They would probably be more advanced than us, so I say - be nice.

Sorry, Soldier; there are no humans anywhere in the visible universe except those born on Earth. If an intelligent beng comes from another world with a separate biosphere they are not human, even if by some incredible chance they resemble humanity.
The chances of any extraterrestrial being closely resembling humans is very low; the chance of aliens as humanoid as those from Star Trek are only slightly higher. To be honest I don't know whether you would count Luke Skywalker and his companions as alien or not; they were, in the story, born in a galaxy long ago and far away. But the chances of such a human-like race anywhere in the Hubble volume outside of Earth is infinitesimal.

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Orion's Arm . The Starlark . Voices: Future Tense . OA Flickr set

Prove it.

The Human genome has 30 thousand different genes, and three billion nucleotide bases, all in specific places in 46 chromosomes. Are you suggesting that such astronomical numbers could be replicated anywhere else in the Universe? I would like to know how, please.

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Orion's Arm . The Starlark . Voices: Future Tense . OA Flickr set

What logic are you using here? I can use the same logic to say that it's impossible for humans to clone themselves, based on the assumption that the amount of genes in the human genome prevents it from being 'cloned'.

Your argument is about as valid as the 'Creationists' view point of 'irreducible complexity' of the eye. The eye is actually a very simple organism. Everything is truly simple, it'sjust that you level of understanding does not coincide with that simplicity. THe concept of 'complication' is just that, concept. 'Complication' doesn't exist.

Life would not have brought us to this point if it were 'too complex'. We are simple organisms, we survived because we were fit to. Complexity makes things... 'complex'... proving thatcomplexity cannot exist and that simplicity is the only thing that works.

My point still stands. Humans are a reflection of what it takes to survive. We stand up away from the ground, and that reflects our self-awareness, our ability to control ourselves. To know everything, you must reflect everything. Super-intelligent aliens having claws, 4 arms, 3 eyes and green skin doesn't reflect anything but the imagination of retards.

I ask again; are you suggesting that any intelligent alien will have identical genetic material to humans? That is to say 46 chromosomes and 3 billion base pairs arranged on those chomosomes in the same fashion as in people from Earth? If so how can this have happened?

Do you have a mechanism in mind that you are not telling us? Because simple convergence is not good enough. If two widely separated organisms evolve to resemble one another (for instance the Thylacine and the domestic dog) they do superficially resemble one another, but their genetic material and arrangement of chromosmes is very different.

Incidentally the Thylacine and the dog do share a common ancestor, no more than a couple of hundred million years in the past- so any shared genome is not coincidental.

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Orion's Arm . The Starlark . Voices: Future Tense . OA Flickr set

The thylacine looked nothing like a dog. That's why it was not classified as a 'canine'. It was a marsupial.

There is no such thing as 'identical'. even a clone will NOT be genetically identical to it's doner. You seem to be under the confusion of the idea that just because 2 beings may look identical, that they somehow share the same exact ancestry. It's simply not true. Life did not come from 'one cell' in the water. Life came from all different areas in the water, probably near underwater geysers where it's warm.



The amount of genes involved means nothing in the first place, because rats share 95% of our dna. Chimps, over 98%. Human beings that exist elsewhere in the universe aren't going to be 'genetically identical', but they would be breedable with us. Fruit flies have more genes than we do, anyway.

The reason human beings are a common occurence throughout the universe has nothing to do with 'numbers'. You can count until you're blue in the face, it doesn't make a difference. The amount of stars in one galaxy does not mean that other galaxies cannot exist. And even the milky way has some sort of 'twin' galaxy out there called NGC 3949 and it was detected in 2004. It's not hard to wonder if a galaxy's age and position to the other galaxies determines what it looks like. No, the purpose of existence is to support human life. It is everywhere in the universe, and to think what all of those other beautiful beings are doing right now, wondering about us and having these same conversations, is amazing. Then it's on to the 'goal' of evolution, which is omniscience, which is knowing everything thereby satisfying the default desire for all of life - to live indefinately. If life did not have this purpose, to live forever, then an asteroid would simply destroy all life on the planet anyway, making life meaningless.

No; that is exactly wrong. If a species has a different number of chromosomes and has a different arrangement of genes on those chromosomes, that makes them a different species, annd therefore interbreeding is not possible.
See Speciation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation

Since your hypothetical human-like aliens have different genes and different chromosomes to humanity, they cannot be considered human by definition. They may be considered humanoid, but they will not be able to interbreed with us any more than we can interbreed with the very genetically similar Pan troglodytes species.

So in the (very unlikely) event that humanoid (not human, by definition) aliens exist, they would have different genes to our own. This implies an entirely separate evolution- which, to produce a humanoid form, would need to mirror our own at every stage. No other pair of species on our planet has evolved in such a separate but exactly parallel way- why do you suggest that it would ever happen on an alien planet?

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Orion's Arm . The Starlark . Voices: Future Tense . OA Flickr set

Who said they'd have a different amount of chromosomes? Of course they wouldn't. Humans have pretty much all the genes required to move on to the final step without much inteference with our genes... which is... omniscience.

See liger and tigons:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liger
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigon

Different species have been known to interbreed, and in the case of female ligers, they are fertile.

Since your hypothetical human-like aliens have different genesn and different chromosomes to humanity, they cannot be considered human by definition.[/quote]

I never said 'different genes'. But it depends on how you want to mean 'different'. Different can be 'different' as in identical twins (always) having slightly differing DNA, or different as in a chimp compared to a human. No, their genes will be 'different' as they are on an individual level between humans on earth, which means they will be breedable with us.

You keep diregarding every single point I bring up. I'm tired of repeating myself.

The truth is objective, therefore the human form must be objective to reflect that truth, which means humans are a common occurance all throughout the universe. It's very simple, preschool logic here. This of course extends to the 'genetic' level.

Exactly my point. The best examples of convergence on this planet have only managed to produce creatures which vaguely resmble one another, and which cannot possibly interbreed. The process would operate in exactly the same way elsewhere.

The thylacine was a dog-like animal which had a pouch and a kangaroo-like gait; whould you count a humanoid with a pouch and a kangaroo-like gait as fully human?

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Orion's Arm . The Starlark . Voices: Future Tense . OA Flickr set

This statement has no logic behind it whatsoever. What in human nature is 'objective' which requires that it is the only possible form for intelligence?

Once again, how can human beings evolve on a completely different planet, with a completely different environment? Are you suggesting that the contenents of that planet are all identical to those on the Earth? Hominids only evolved in Africa and nowhere else, so without a continent identical to Africa you would not get hominids, and therefore no humans.

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Orion's Arm . The Starlark . Voices: Future Tense . OA Flickr set

Fertile hybrids are very rare among mammals and birds; and only animals which are very closely related can interbreed, such as certain ducks , and the feilines you mentioned. In the caes of the Liger, the female alone is fertile, so the hybrid will quickly dissapear as males of that hybrid cannot breed.

No examples of interbreeding exist between animals which resemble each other by convergence, and such an occurrence is astronomically unlikely.

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Orion's Arm . The Starlark . Voices: Future Tense . OA Flickr set

Are you suggesting this galaxy has every star in the same location as the corresponding star in our galaxy? That would be an even larger coincidence than the existence of an alien species that could interbreed with humanity. No two galaxies in the Hubble volume can possibly be identical; there are not enough galaxies for that chance occurence to occur.

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Orion's Arm . The Starlark . Voices: Future Tense . OA Flickr set

And with intergalactic human breeding it would be no different. btw, there have been mules recorded, both male and female that were fertile. However these are very rare occurances, but they have been documented.

Of course not. And it's no different with our genes. We could take 2 cells from YOUR body, and sperately clone them, and the 2 results would end up having slightly differing genetic makeup.

Again, you consistently disregard every point I make. I back my points up, then you nitpick one single thing I say and then pretend that that's my strong point, completely disregarding all the others points i make that back it up.