Your mind is refusing to even consider thought patterns and senses that are fundamentally and exotically different from what we know. So different that we do not even have words or concepts to describe them. . .and vice versa.
Imagine a species that do not have sight but instead have bat-like sonar, shark-like electronic activity sensors and pit-viper-like heat sensors. They'd have the ability to do everything we can technologically and more. . .probably having a far greater intuitive grasp on thermodynamics and electro-magnetics than we do, but the very concept of pigment would not only be alien to them but completely incomprehensible and indescribable. We simply would not share a frame of reference in order to translate those concepts.
Try describing Beethoven to someone deaf from birth. Where would you even begin?
And even my example is borrowing from terrestrial examples. THEIR evolution would have begun from an entirely different starting point and progressed down entirely different lines from there.
They'll be so different, assumptions that we don't even know we're making yet will be struck down.
When and if there is ever contact, it will force us to consider differences that we have never even imagined before. Stuck as we are in our frame of reference, we lack the ability to even guess what will surprise us.
"You fired Gary Busey. And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night. Well handled, sir. Well handled."
- CARTIERFROHAWK 2012-04-02 00:25:58 (75 views)
- Flashfire 2012-04-02 15:38:28 (49 views)
