(July 20, 2014 at 4:58 pm)Confused Ape Wrote:NP. I'll start off by mentioning that using any comparison to our biology is troublesome from the view of centrism. This is in the context of a thought experiment, mind you, concerning what is possible.(July 20, 2014 at 4:17 pm)Rhythm Wrote: It might be a situation akin to osmosis (acknowledging that there are problems with that comparison as well).
Could you explain the bolded bit, please. I'm not sure what you mean here.
When we imagine that intelligent beings must have some method to communicate their ideas - we're actually leaving a whole host of things unsaid. That they have "ideas" as such, or that they "communicate" indeed that they even recognize the others existence. We understand that chemicals can be used as biological triggers - that they convey information, and we understand that a process like osmosis is at least possible (the mechanics of it, not the specifics). Plants "communicate" information chemically and then "act" on the contents of those messages - even in the absence of any sort of "self awareness" or even awareness of others with which they are interfacing. Machines responding to levers which produce an eerily similar effect to our own consciousness when distilled. So it's not something beyond the pale even here, on our rock - we could be left without words to describe a similar sort of setup in an alien species that evolved in a gas giant (of which there are plenty more than earthlike planets...so far as we can tell). Perhaps they're floating around absorbing the communal knowledge of every member of their lineage that has ever existed without realizing that any of those messages originate from another member of their species - or having any desire to be the originators of a message themselves.
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