On Wednesday, May 28, 2014 1:48:25 PM UTC+1, telmo_menezes wrote: > > > > > On Mon, May 26, 2014 at 11:50 PM, LizR <liz...@gmail.com <javascript:>>wrote: > >> On 26 May 2014 23:31, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com <javascript:> >> > wrote: >> >>> On Mon, May 26, 2014 at 1:12 AM, LizR <liz...@gmail.com <javascript:>>wrote: >>> >>>> On 25 May 2014 23:32, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com<javascript:> >>>> > wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Sun, May 25, 2014 at 1:15 PM, LizR <liz...@gmail.com >>>>> <javascript:>>wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> I guess it would be pedantic to point out the silliness of aliens >>>>>> wanting to have sex with humans. I mean, we're more closely related to >>>>>> grass, jellyfish and slugs than we are to aliens... >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Makes sense, of course, but I'm not so sure. I don't think we know >>>>> enough at this point to estimate the diversity of the solution space for >>>>> biologically evolved entities with human-level intelligence or above. It >>>>> could be that something very similar to us is the only viable solution, >>>>> or >>>>> the most likely solution. >>>>> >>>>> Functionally similar (perhaps), but certainly not genetically similar. >>>> We aren't even gentically similar enough to interbreed with any other >>>> species that evolved on the same planet under very similar conditions to >>>> us >>>> - for example, we are very closely related to chimps, but we still can't >>>> interbreed with them. >>>> >>> >>> Ok, but now you're making the requirements more stringent. We were >>> talking about outer-space fetishists, not necessarily interbreeding. So >>> functional similarity might be enough, as alluded in "sheep are nervous". :) >>> >>> Well if you're just talking about something you can put your dick in (or >> an alien can put their proboscis in), that's a (ahem) broad range of items, >> depending on your tastes (See "A melon for ecstasy" and "The unrepentant >> necrophile" for some suggestions for things one can "have sex with" in this >> sense, should one be so inclined). >> > > Interesting stuff. When I was a teenager, me and some friends would > pretend that we ran a necrophilia fanzine. We would have conversations > about it, just to disturb people in hearing range. The title of this > fictitious publication was "Formaldehyde". Life can get excruciatingly > boring in small towns... > > >> >> However your original reply (in blue above) certainly *appeared* to be >> talking about interbreeding. (Or did you mean humanoid forms are "the only >> viable solution for fetishists who happen to get their kicks from anally >> probing members of other species" ?) >> > > Ok, I wasn't so clear. My speculation was somewhere in the middle: that > species can exist that may not necessarily interbreed but are sufficiently > similar to be sexually attractive to each other -- or, more precisely, to > elements of each other's species with common sexual tastes. > > So the reason why I find this sort of speculation interesting is that we > assume a hypothetical diversity in the tree of possible organisms of > human-level intelligence or above. It is compelling to assume high > diversity, given the combinatorial explosion of possibilities afforded by > DNA encoding and the biological diversity we can observe on earth. But we > don't really know. > > A counter-hypothesis is that, as complexity increases, the space of viable > solutions gets smaller. In an extreme case, it could be that human-level > intelligence always requires humanoids. Even taking our friends the > orangutans and bonobos. Suppose they keep evolving until they reach > human-level intelligence. They are quite close now. Maybe they will lose > their fur and develop more and more human-like features until they become > sexually attractive to regular humans. >
oink - I think the hypothesis makes a lot of sense. An even more constrained version would that the evolutionary paths to that converged space of viable solutions, are themselves extremely improbable the possibility space of evolutionary histories. which may itself be constrained by the possibility space of worlds and behind that solar system evolutions. This bitch could be constrained all the way back man,. forget turtles; constraints. > > I am not saying that this is the case, or even that I have any evidence > for it. What I do know, from experimenting with evolutionary computation, > is that we should be suspicious of our intuitions when it comes to such > highly complex systems. > > Best, > Telmo. > > >> >> But anyway .... OK, aliens *may* want to have sex with humans, just as a >> human *may* want to have sex with orangutans - but generally they won't, >> because sexual attraction is fairly fine tuned, both by evolution and >> social norms (indeed it's so fine tuned that species that could in theory >> interbreed often don't) - and, at least in my experience, most humans don't >> even want to have sex with most other humans ..... never mind fancying >> members of a different species who will almost certainly give out all the >> wrong visual, behavioural, and chemical cues. >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>. >> To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com<javascript:> >> . >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
