Bucking sci-fi trends

[Raxmei]

Truely alien intelligence. No more bugs or human with weird forheads. It would be fun to see humans though the eyes of a intelligent hive mind for once, though original ideas would be better. It would also be fun to learn about non-human emotions and motivation that is completely alien to us. How have them debate philosophy with discordians for fun.

Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep has a number of viewpoint characters who can be considered hiveminds. A Tine pack has 4-6 members who share a single consciousness. The effects of having that many bodies are explored. They interact with humans in the story and find them peculiar, but basically the same.

The Skroderiders in the same book are certainly not the same old humanoids or space bugs. They're potted plants in super wheelchairs.

I can't think of any truely weird psychologies that get seriously explored. Cherryh's Atevi lack the concept of friendship, but that doesn't seem enough. A serious problem exists in this field, in that a truely unorthodox thought process is difficult to process for normal minds. It's even harder to come up with them. It's like thinking outside the box when your whole world's a box. You can't come up with a completely alien thought or else it wouldn't be alien. If you could pull it off it certainly would be a trip, though.

[gravity]

What about a bunch of Communist aliens and unite the world against the USA?? I got the idea from the International Maoist Movement's review of "Independence Day."

If the aliens are so advanced they can travel to us they would already have found out that communism doesn't work (if their intellect is even remotely similar to ours).
Or they maintain their regime through opression. Although the idea of the world uniting against the US would certainly make for a good plot.

Bullshit. It's not like "lol communism doesn't work USA USA" is some immutable law of physics. It may not work for us in most cases, but there's not reason why it couldn't work for an alien species with a different psychology and evolutionary path, where the survival benefits of mutual cooperation were felt more strongly than they have been for humans, resulting in a greater cooperative instinct than humans have, and therefore a greater praticality of communist ideas.

[gravity]

And on that note, it would be interesting to see more examples of truly alien social arrangements that would be useless for humans to try to follow, as opposed to something that's basically a past or present human society with a few alien quirks, and which is used as an allegory to show that communism/captialism/facism/fundamentalism/etc is good/bad.

[Raxmei]

A lot of the reasons why various utopian societies don't work boil don to human nature. Human nature doesn't apply to aliens. That being said, aliens with a utopian society sounds like it should be a cliche if it isn't one aready. Perhaps aliens with what we consider a utopia that they think sucks. Work in some of that alien psych to make it really fit together.

[Warspite]

How about computer AI's that don't explode, when they're asked all sort or rethorical questions?

[SirNitram]

How about computer AI's that don't explode, when they're asked all sort or rethorical questions?

Do AI's that ask themselves rhetorical questions count?

[Warspite]

How about computer AI's that don't explode, when they're asked all sort or rethorical questions?

Do AI's that ask themselves rhetorical questions count?

SURE!

Although a little bit contradictory...

[BenRG]

*stiirring dramatic scene before the final battle"
"Men, we're not going out there to fight for revenge. We're not in this for the glory, or staying in the fight because of honor. We're not doing it for friendship and camaraderie, hell I hate all of you and you know it. We aren't fighting to save our country out of idealism and patriotism. We are going to go out there and WIN, for the money, the chance to loot the enemies dead bodies, and the possibility of wasting the guys in the unit we all owe money to while no one is looking.

Ah yes! A series of novels based on WEG's sorely missed 'Paranoia' RPG system.

Troubleshooters with six lives and completely fictional mission briefings wasting each other before they even get onto the mission itself. Equipment with hideous design flaws and poor maintenance records (have you ever seen mothballed stuff that was still fully functional?). Different special interest groups trying to sabotage the mission or make it succeed for their own reasons. A mission team whose worse enemies are the other five members of their team. Missions where you are forbidden by law to go to the places you need to go. Missions where the whim of the Powers That Be can get you killed a lot more quickly than the misfiring bazooka that you had assigned to you as a weapon (for corridor fighting ). Most of all, a world where every mission debriefing ends with the treason trials of all the surviving members of the mission group.

[SirNitram]

How about computer AI's that don't explode, when they're asked all sort or rethorical questions?

Do AI's that ask themselves rhetorical questions count?

SURE!

Although a little bit contradictory...

Why? A sufficiently advanced AI should be capable of philosophy. Though, admittably, those in mine are usually field testing it with hapless species they've conquered...

200 species extinct, they still aren't sure if there's an afterlife.

[Warspite]

Well, that's the point, AI's asking themselves a rhetorical question is a good measure of independability of thought. Computer AI's that go nuts on rethorical questions (too much of a cliché), haven't reached a "mature" enough stage to be able to handle the questioning of oneself. But then again, it's Saturday, and it ain't raining... (what?)

[johnmarkley]

Bullshit. It's not like "lol communism doesn't work USA USA" is some immutable law of physics. It may not work for us in most cases, but there's not reason why it couldn't work for an alien species with a different psychology and evolutionary path, where the survival benefits of mutual cooperation were felt more strongly than they have been for humans, resulting in a greater cooperative instinct than humans have, and therefore a greater praticality of communist ideas.

It's not a question of psychology or cooperation. If the alien society consists of individuals, it doesn't matter how cooperative or altruistic they are. Communism's chief problem isn't lack of incentives (which I think is more a problem of the egalitarian philosophies that tend to acompany socialism, rather than of socialism itself). The real problems are 1. economic information is distributed among millions of individuals, and yet the single state is somehow supposed to make all the big economic decisions, despite it's ignorance. This might be overcome by some sort of telepathic hivemind, where the group always has all the knowledge of each individual (such as the Borg), but no amount of "cooperative instinct" will fix the problem. 2. With no market prices, there's no way to determine the relative value of capital goods and natural resources, and thus no way to rationally allocate them. Again, some sort of superintelligent hivemind might be able to accurately calculate how many goods and minerals it has, how much effort each costs to produce, what it needs to build, how much of each resource would be needed, which can be best substituted, the opportunity costs, etc. but if the aliens are individuals, no amount of cooperation can give them the sort of godlike knowledge needed for a single agency to run an entire national (or worse, planetary or interplanetry) economy.

Conceivably, a hive mind might do it, but I don't think such a system could be called a communist economy, or an economy at all, although it would give the appearance of communism to an outside observer. The hivemind would be a single individual, so there would be no exchange or division of labor of any sort; it would be more comparable to a single isolated individual, who happens to act on an enourmous scale.

[gravity]

Bullshit. It's not like "lol communism doesn't work USA USA" is some immutable law of physics. It may not work for us in most cases, but there's not reason why it couldn't work for an alien species with a different psychology and evolutionary path, where the survival benefits of mutual cooperation were felt more strongly than they have been for humans, resulting in a greater cooperative instinct than humans have, and therefore a greater praticality of communist ideas.

It's not a question of psychology or cooperation. If the alien society consists of individuals, it doesn't matter how cooperative or altruistic they are. Communism's chief problem isn't lack of incentives (which I think is more a problem of the egalitarian philosophies that tend to acompany socialism, rather than of socialism itself). The real problems are 1. economic information is distributed among millions of individuals, and yet the single state is somehow supposed to make all the big economic decisions, despite it's ignorance. This might be overcome by some sort of telepathic hivemind, where the group always has all the knowledge of each individual (such as the Borg), but no amount of "cooperative instinct" will fix the problem. 2. With no market prices, there's no way to determine the relative value of capital goods and natural resources, and thus no way to rationally allocate them. Again, some sort of superintelligent hivemind might be able to accurately calculate how many goods and minerals it has, how much effort each costs to produce, what it needs to build, how much of each resource would be needed, which can be best substituted, the opportunity costs, etc. but if the aliens are individuals, no amount of cooperation can give them the sort of godlike knowledge needed for a single agency to run an entire national (or worse, planetary or interplanetry) economy.

But with things like the internet and other electronic communications, combined with the unselfish and non-excessive demands of this more cooperative race, could easily allow for more efficient distribution and managment by simply having each individual log on to communism.aliengovernment.com and log their economic activities, and what goods they need (which due to psychological differences they would be much less likely to exaggerate than a human). Sure, this would take a while to set up, but so would the space travel mentioned in the initial (not your) flippant disparagment of communism.

[kojikun]

communism works when robots can take over for humans and not complain. infact, there will be no choice but to have communism, since its significantly cheaper for companies to move to full automation which would eventually drop humans from the equation entirely.

[Guardsman Bass]

Actually, I would like to see in a possible sci-fi book(film would be impossible to expect, since nobody would make it), a despotic central authority of articial intelligences that only exist in the central computer network and quickly lose touch with their ruling duties because they begin acting like true humans and only use the computer network for entertainment. Several "augmented(genetically and electronically)" human rabble rousers take a force of aug-human fundie soldiers and hire a MASSIVE(43 billion) number of "lotus"(these aliens walk on four sprawled legs, which have "hands" that can grip the surface they are walking on, making them perfect for close combat, have about 21 tentacles sticking out of the top of their flat bodies in a flower fashion, and have various close range sense organs(similar to eyes in purpose but not in design) all over their bodies. The "individuals" of this race are a group of "lotuses" size 38) mercenaries, and attack the colonies of both lotus and human to gain influence. However, the lotus revolt because of pay shortage, annhilate the fundie humans, and after looting and conquering the colonies establish little dynasties upon the colonies . . whereupon the entire race is almost rendered extinct by a totally robotic warlord who blasts the planets with asteroids from orbit, then begins massive terraforming efforts and recolonization with human and lotus clone colonies loyal to him.

[SWPIGWANG]

The above post just gave me an idea....

How about a AI that is bend on taking over the Internet-equalivent and cut it self from "reality"....wait that much have been done before....

[Alex Moon]

I want to see a movie or story set in the near future where Earth has been at peace for long enough that most people have forgotton about how to fight wars. Scientists using a special sensor system in space are able to detect an alien colony around a nearby star. Eventually, they send out a long messege to the planet, telling everything about earth: it's location, amount of water, population, etc. Soon after they send the messege, they detect a massive fleet appear around the planet and destroy it's inhabitents in a massive atomic bombardment before beginning to build it's own colony...

[Darth Wong]

I want to see a movie or story set in the near future where Earth has been at peace for long enough that most people have forgotton about how to fight wars. Scientists using a special sensor system in space are able to detect an alien colony around a nearby star. Eventually, they send out a long messege to the planet, telling everything about earth: it's location, amount of water, population, etc. Soon after they send the messege, they detect a massive fleet appear around the planet and destroy it's inhabitents in a massive atomic bombardment before beginning to build it's own colony...

That was an episode of South Park, where aliens were able to conquer Lisa Simpson's weapon-free Earth effortlessly. But Moe fashioned a board with a nail in it as a primitive weapon and drove them back to their spacecraft.

[Durandal]

I want to see a movie or story set in the near future where Earth has been at peace for long enough that most people have forgotton about how to fight wars. Scientists using a special sensor system in space are able to detect an alien colony around a nearby star. Eventually, they send out a long messege to the planet, telling everything about earth: it's location, amount of water, population, etc. Soon after they send the messege, they detect a massive fleet appear around the planet and destroy it's inhabitents in a massive atomic bombardment before beginning to build it's own colony...

That was an episode of South Park, where aliens were able to conquer Lisa Simpson's weapon-free Earth effortlessly. But Moe fashioned a board with a nail in it as a primitive weapon and drove them back to their spacecraft.

That would be The Simpsons.

[Morning Star]

I want to see a movie or story set in the near future where Earth has been at peace for long enough that most people have forgotton about how to fight wars. Scientists using a special sensor system in space are able to detect an alien colony around a nearby star. Eventually, they send out a long messege to the planet, telling everything about earth: it's location, amount of water, population, etc. Soon after they send the messege, they detect a massive fleet appear around the planet and destroy it's inhabitents in a massive atomic bombardment before beginning to build it's own colony...

That was an episode of South Park, where aliens were able to conquer Lisa Simpson's weapon-free Earth effortlessly. But Moe fashioned a board with a nail in it as a primitive weapon and drove them back to their spacecraft.

That board may have defeated us, But the humans won't stop there, they'll make bigger boards and bigger nails and soon they will make a board with a nail so big it will destroy them all...hahahahaha!

[Renewed_Valour1]

I would settle for a simple understanding that inertia exists…

The down-trodden low-tech subject race/slaves rising up against their tormentors... and getting crushed brutallly, and re-enslaved.

"Bunker Hill" for Andromeda had Earth rising up in rebellion and being utterly crushed by the Nietzschean armored forces.

[Peregrin Toker]

It's not a question of psychology or cooperation. If the alien society consists of individuals, it doesn't matter how cooperative or altruistic they are. Communism's chief problem isn't lack of incentives (which I think is more a problem of the egalitarian philosophies that tend to acompany socialism, rather than of socialism itself). The real problems are 1. economic information is distributed among millions of individuals, and yet the single state is somehow supposed to make all the big economic decisions, despite it's ignorance. This might be overcome by some sort of telepathic hivemind, where the group always has all the knowledge of each individual (such as the Borg), but no amount of "cooperative instinct" will fix the problem. 2. With no market prices, there's no way to determine the relative value of capital goods and natural resources, and thus no way to rationally allocate them. Again, some sort of superintelligent hivemind might be able to accurately calculate how many goods and minerals it has, how much effort each costs to produce, what it needs to build, how much of each resource would be needed, which can be best substituted, the opportunity costs, etc. but if the aliens are individuals, no amount of cooperation can give them the sort of godlike knowledge needed for a single agency to run an entire national (or worse, planetary or interplanetry) economy.

Nah. The only thing which keeps communism from working is that communist societies require their citizens to have a high standard of morality, which they can't count on..... unless we do a few Cultural Revolutions.... (Mao-style!)

[Malachius]

I wouldn't mind seeing more of the movies where aliens invade Earth and are defeated. But it's how it is done. I don't like movies where we are losing desperately against an impossible enemy and then last minute create a piece of technology which we could not possible come up with in many decades, but now design and create in a couple of hours with which to save Earth. I hate that. Driving them off with utter brute force is what I'd like to see.

Or a movie where the aliens stomp us good. [/i]

[kojikun]

Andromeda tends to exhibit some understanding of inertia. we frequently see the ship to flips and such (atleast in season 1)

[LordChaos]

A team that is motivated, not for reenge,not for the greater good,not to expandd outrknowl;edge of the universe.. but is motivated by trying to pay the humongious debt off on the loan to there starship I mean hey those things gost Moolahh and ya gots to get it from somewhere

Pick up "Star Risk Ltd". They just want to get paid.

[Darth Wong]

Han Solo was in it for the money. He stuck around because he seemed to feel a paternal concern for Luke.