Grrl Power #926 – Best and brightest
Hey, alien lady, just because some of us are total dimwits doesn’t mean our best and brightest can’t kick your ass. At least these two were smart and/or oblivious enough to circumvent the police cordon keeping lookie loos from wandering into an alien mercenary/superhero/supervillain rumble. (It’s the latter.)
I guess the best thing you can say about these two is that they’re remarkably upbeat about discovering the existence of lizard men and demons.
This page kind of makes me wonder about the intelligence distribution of alien races. (Granted “Intelligence” is kind of a broad umbrella term for a host of aptitudes, but I’m talking about overall averages. Also, IQ tests and scores are problematic for a number of reasons, but I’ll use them as a simple point of reference as I’m not aware of another standardized measurement.) So, if there are humans with IQ’s ranging from like 65 to 250 or higher, (yes, there are lower and higher scores, I’m doing Olympic rules and trimming the extreme outliers) are Vulcans like 90 to 300? Or are they 110 to 175? Are Orcs 45 to 105, or are they 85 to 110? Are the standard deviations consistent across races, or do some races have way more outliers?
In a lot of video games and RPGs, humans are the race with no racial bonuses, but also no limitations on class selection. They’re the generalist species. I kind of think humans should have bonuses to every class, as Quark has pointed out (correctly I think) that comfortable Federation humans are a bit milquetoast, but before they became semi-post scarcity, they were more savage capitalists than Ferengi, and you take away their food replicators and electricity etc., and they turn nastier than the worst Klingon.
Of course, when we meet actual aliens, they might have a worker class that can barely follow basic instructions and a scientist class that make quantum computers look quaint, and they’re all wildly bipolar. And then we’d be like, “No! All alien races are supposed to be a monocultures! You only get to specialize in one thing!”
The new vote incentive is up! 
Maxima won (or lost) the draw this time. There are several clothing/non-clothing variants over at Patreon, including a special version with guest art direction from JJ Abrams. (Yes, there’s a ton of lens flares, hah hah. I amuse myself.) The a-cups will return next month, so please enjoy this offering in the meantime.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like!
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Was wondering when the Qanon crowd would show up.
This whole incident really is altering of humanities path material…
To be fair to the Qanon crackpots (pardon the redundancy), Lizard people, demons, and The Illuminati comspiracies predate both them and the internet by a good clip.
(Bob Dobbs walks by, smoking his pipe and grinning)
May the Slack be with you!
Same antisemitism, new paint job.
Though sympathies to Icke, his Lizard-people stuff seems to be sincere delusion, he just took language from existing antisemitic conspiracies.
You’ll need to connect the dots for me. I’m just not seeing a trail that leads from this page back to bigotry against a specific culture
I think that what Bruceski was referring to is the fact that many conspiracy theories are basically a reskin of the old antisemitic ones about Jews 1)ruling the world from the shadows and 2)preying on Gentile children for depraved rituals involving blood and/or human sacrifice: in the 1980-90s you had the Satanic Ritual Abuse moral panic, and nowaday you have the Q-tips and the pizzagaters. In each case, the conspiracy theorists believe that there is a shadowy group of evil people (Jews, Satanists, the Gays, the Deep State, Democratic pedophiles,…) manipulating the government/society and targeting children.
I’m sorry, but because one conspiracy theory is anti-semitic all of the are?
Nah, because the first conspiracy theory was dumb-ass stupid, all of them are.
No, but many conspiracy theories use the same structure, just with a different boogeyman.
That said, there appears to be quite a bit of overlap between the Q-tips and the “teh J00z will not replace us!” Proud Babies, so many Q-tips probably are antisemitic, even if their conspiracy theory isn’t explicitely so.
I love you.
You almost make feel like I need to defend actual Q-tip brands cotton swabs b/c of this nickname. X’D
“Lizard people” in one form or another crop up all over the place, from Nehebkau to Apep, the Naga, Hong, and do on.
to be fair I think those are all more accurately snake related, and to be fair the later is a Dragon the size of a freaking rainbow.
True as. My late wife is a Naga, she died of cancer after consuming an anti-sinitic moron. Turns out they’re more poisonous than anti-Semites…
So just how many black men, and white women who date black men, do you think are in Q-Anon? These two really don’t fit the demographic.
First, being a racist dipshit isn’t a prerequisite to adhering to “Q’s” semi-literate ramblings.
Second, QAnon isn’t the only conspiratorial whack job game in town.
Third, maybe they’re dating, maybe they’re not; men & women can, in point of fact, be “just friends,” and they may even be relatives.
Fourth, don’t just assume she’s white; her style & makeup (esp. eyebrows) just about screams 90’s Chola, and you might shocked by how many blonde (or bottle blonde) Latina girls their are.
…no idea why I’m being so aggressive about this. -_-‘
Assumptions are irritating.
More than you know. Most of the really fun Qanon conspiracies are just repaints of leftist conspiracy rantings from earlier eras. you know, “Now painted in Republican!!”
some of those eras being REALLY quite recent. The Election conspiracies mostly only date from left-wing ‘deep state’ ideas from the 1980s through 2000’s when we were all going to be taken over by evil government right-wingers embedded in the various agencies. Hell, that was the entire plot of “The X-Files”.
thus proving people in bubbles are gullible.
You mean, aside from the fact that there are literally people in the government who want to run things their own way regardless of what the elected head of the government legally orders, and who engage in all kinds of chicanery, including lying to congress and to the elected head of their government, in order to make it so?
Sure, aside from that, “Deep State” is a total fiction.
Whataboutery and personal fictions where you are actually the victim are all part of this complete fascist breakfast.
https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/qanon-is-a-nazi-cult-rebranded
“the alt-right playbook” is a good watch.
Good stuff, though I like the broader flavor palate afforded by a variety of other channels.
Second Thought, Three Arrows, and (of course) the Council of BreadTube.
It would be a lot easier for people to disregard QAnon tripe if general media would stop falling in lockstep with their less fantastic claims. For example, the BLM movement. Despite causing more dead blacks than all the police shootings combined, and with the financial cost of their damage rapidly approaching that of Al Qaeda – well, they’ve been consistently treated as a “peaceful protest.”
Blacks ARE disadvantaged by the judicial system. But that’s because they commit so much more crime than other groups. Not just whites – all races and etnicities. Even when compared to Muslims, another high-crime group readily touted as “peaceful.”
You wanna make it about white supremacy keeping the black man down? You wanna tell me whites have no culture of their own because it’s all imported from England? Nazis say the same about blacks in Africa. Cuz’ it’s racism. Duh.
Anyone who says otherwise is told they’re the racist one. Even when they’re a black woman. A black woman in English parliament gave out these same talking points while a white woman sat there on her cell phone ignoring everything. People went around bashing her – no, not the rude white woman – they said the black woman was a “white puppet” among other things. Why isn’t that racist? Hmm? I think it is.
BLM is the same exact story QAnon is pushing but repurposed for blacks.
Here’s a solution. Stop accepting insanity. Then QAnon won’t have any legitimate grounds.
That reminds me, I need to buy more Tin Foil stocks.
You guys are making me rich!
Yes, Bharda, because you’re the only one who knows the truth.
Hmm… doesn’t that sound a lot like a tinfoil hatter?
I misread that as tinfoil socks. for some weird reason
Can’t be too careful about that hidden toe-talitarianism, hypnobubble!
There are 19 deaths contributed to the protests according to Wikipedia.
There were over 200 black people shot dead by police in 2020 alone according to Statista.
And pretty much everything else you tried to say was a bloody miscarriage of statistics.
Crime does not have a strong correlation with race. It has a strong correlation with *poverty*, and minorities, black especially, have been historically denied opportunities for wealth that have been readily available to whites.
Struth.
Take a victory lap.
As opposed to 9 “unarmed blacks shot by police”, or other formulations that eliminate from consideration to criminals who were assaulting police or others when they were killed.
“Miscarriage of statistics” is going in my lexicon.
Which is less deep state, which infers a massive network of groups throughout the government collaborating, and more people out to maintain their little bureaucratic fiefdoms, and get their subordinates on board because it keeps them employed and in a relatively nice job.
They need an ever more complex & improbable set of theories to prop up their increasing out of touch fantasies.
If they disregard the orders of superiors and collect people to ensure their political insulation from those superiors that’s literally an insurrection. I have no idea why we say these things are “fiefdoms” and act like it’s all hunky dory. You people are crazier than I am.
But it’s not a coordinated one on a national level, which is at the core of Deep State.
And insurrection? Wherein is it violent? They’re active actions to work around the orders, but they’re not holding guns to anyone’s heads.
And where did I say that it’s hunky dory? That’s just putting words in my mouth.
My comment is in moderation (probably due to over a dozen source links) so I’ll just summarize here in case it doesn’t go through:
1) You don’t know that, and the Michael Flynn case (see below) suggests otherwise.
2) Seattle, Minneapolis, among others.
3) I said you’re acting like insurrection is okay; notably by ignoring actual violence. I never said you explicitly supported the act.
Specific policies, agendas, and parties aside, if Dumpy wanted to get away with his Fourth Reich power fantasies, then he should have been quieter & less confrontational.
You know, like the Democrats.
+1
Of course, that was Dem talking point CLAIMS about what Trump was doing, not what Trump was doing.
Sure, Jan.
Trump brought it into the fore.
I wasn’t even aware of what the Democrats were doing. I had done a lot of what I considered decent research on the Democrats and while I felt their politics were suspiciously clean I couldn’t find any evidence of this so-called “swamp.” So I voted for Hillary.
Well, after his election they immediately set upon him like rabid dogs at a buffet. This rubbed me the wrong way so I went back looking with more detail – tax records, licenses, 501(c) organizations. I had to learn several new things about economics just to do it all.
Holy hell was I appalled at what I found. They are very good at hiding their misdeeds, better than the Republicans, but the shit they’re doing is absurd. For example, people let Hillary off the hook for the UraniumOne deal, saying the “$120m ‘donation’ from the president of Kazakhstan had nothing to do with her approval of the deal.” Yeah? How about Bill Clinton being the one to broker the deal? I mean for fucks sake, that’s a lot of money, you know?!
Why doesn’t someone look into that quid pro quo, huh? Or the one where Biden literally bragged on TV about his quid pro quo? Instead we get 4 years of ranting about Trump hypothetically doing something that he ended up not doing.
The whole situation is insane and I am sick of it.
Before someone points out all the people around Trump who got arrested:
Michal Flynn. Read the court dockets. Evidence was fabricated by the FBI, by the transcriptionist, and even by the lawyers themselves. The judge was biased, the jury was rigged, the lawyers on both sides wanted him guilty. After years of fighting, when he finally proved his innocence, the court voided his trial and began the whole lawsuit over again.
So Trump pardoned him. The whole country’s media collectively booed. Figure that.
https://text.npr.org/852582068
Notice they failed to mention the judge saying he would charge Flynn with TREASON and issue the DEATH PENALTY. Oh, and that business partner? Yeah, that’s his son. They said “plead guilty or your son is next.” Those notes from the FBI? Completely ignored by his former counsel. That’s why they were found in 2019 – after 2 years in court.
The real case is one hell of a ride. Emphasis on “hell.” The news does it no justice.
When a judge hires outside counsel to proceed with prosecution, after the government has withdrawn the case, it is impossible to say there is no appearance of bias.(One does not have to prove that a judge *is* biased to have him removed from the case. A judge’s duty is to eliminate any appearance of bias.)
It is true that the reversal from the DoJ created a suspicion that the case was interfered with for political reasons, either by the prior prosecutors or the later ones. However, Judge Sullivan *assumed* without evidence it was the later ones, despite the fact that Sullivan himself had ordered the prior prosecutors to turn over to Flynn any and all evidence that would potentially be Brady evidence, and they had abjectly failed to do so. The independent investigator brought in to review the case produced (insert some ridiculous number) of Brady documents that the prior prosecution had failed to produces, despite a direct order from Sullivan. And Sullivan hired a counsel to try to sanction the NEW prosecutors?
Appearance of bias is indisputable. the fact that Sullivan’s counsel included internet rumors and Democrat political speeches as part of his brief should have been enough to throw out the brief, the counsel, and the judge.
Mostly, it appears that Judge Sullivan kept stringing the case along solely so that Flynn could not campaign for Trump.
Thanks for your additions YupYupNope. One of the lawyers tangentially related to the case (was sought as counsel but declined) Robert Barnes went on Viva Frei. He speculated that if the case could be won based on fabrication after fabrication, that, the next step would’ve been expanding the scope; using Flynn’s conviction as a basis for further warrants and arrests.
I don’t know how true that is but it was terrifying enough for me. I imagine a regular joe like myself getting caught in such a farce (a la Project Veritas’ free speech case) and being far less able to defend myself. The feds can play all the tricks they want, that’s fine with me, but the judiciary should not. Justice needs to be just regardless of who’s being prosecuted.
The longer Flynn cooperated, however, the more fraught became his relationship with the feds. After giving prosecutors everything they wanted in the Russia matter, Flynn became less forthcoming when the government brought a case against his former business partner, prosecutors said.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Washington D.C., which took the prosecutorial baton from special counsel Robert Mueller’s office, told a judge that it thought Flynn should be sentenced to as many as six months.
============
The literal next sentence refutes the claim you tried to make about it being a death penalty case.
Secondly, the former business partner is a man named Bijan Kian who is seven years older than flynn. If you can successfully convince someone that kian and flynn’s son, then you should go into bridge retail.
BlueAnon?
Not what I meant, but that’s a thing too, yeah.
That’s some weapons grade bothsidism you got there, Danny Boy.
Makes you sound like a real Horseshoe Centrist.
“No, no, it’s only about the one narrow thing *I* brought up out of the blue and want to rag on, join in or face my scorn!”
You got that right, Ichneumon
Maybe they can do the world a favour and ‘abduct’ these two (probing optional)
IQ isn’t all that accurate to begin with, and scores past maybe 180-200 are not just fictional, they literally don’t exist because the test doesn’t work that way.
Damn, this was not meant to be a reply!
The most fundamental problem with IQ test is that it only measures one type of Intelligence, Abstract Intelligence.
Though Abstract Intelligence is the type of intelligence best suited to most STEM careers, there is at least one other type of intelligence, Practical Intelligence.
Practical Intelligence is geared for the practicalities of life, like hunting, and was very important to our ancestors.
Also MENSA makes candidates take two tests, one to measure IQ, and one to measure Spatial Awareness.
Get in the top two percentile (of that year) of either and they invite you to join them (as long you can pay the fees).
Depending on whose model one subscribes to, there are anywhere from three to twelve different types of “intelligence”.
Regardless, I can’t find any of them promoting an “Abstract Intelligence” category. Can you provide citations?
The sad and bitter truth about Mensa: most members of Mensa roughly fall into 3 categories: Nerds, Dicks and the Silent Ones. The Nerds are nice, but obsessed with puzzles. To them, every Mensa gathering is a puzzle workshop. The dicks flaunt their membership in daily life “Hey babe, look at how smart I am”. Or “Dude, shut up. I’m a member of Mensa, you know”. And the Silent Ones are always absent during meetings and keep quiet about their membership in daily life. Mensa was founded to improve the world but all it did was improve puzzles.
The Nerds improving the world: “Since 1990, American Mensa has sponsored the annual Mensa Mind Games competition, at which the Mensa Select award is given to five board games that are “original, challenging, and well designed”.” -Wikipedia.
Yeah, I’d like to say I quit MENSA because of those Dicks but really there’s a membership fee, I’m cheap & I just wanted to save a few bucks.
Which makes you demonstrably smarter than actual members, Amirite?
Very much so.
I have steered await from MENSA almost from when I heard about them.
I you really are all that smart, you don’t need anyone constantly telling you that you are smart. In fact, it gets to be rather off-putting.
when people tell me I’m smart, I’m smart enough to realize I’m not as smart as they think I am
To quote Groucho Marx: I would never join any club that would have ME as a member.
That’s a different issue entirely, but a beloved point nonetheless.
Congrats, you have passed the Dunning–Kruger test.
To be fair, even if MENSA didn’t improve the world at large, I can say that improving the best board games and puzzles is something I can subscribe to.
I agree, but Kickstarter has done a better job at it.
Reminds me of a story my mother tells about how one of her old professors recognized that MENSA was full of dicks and would say that he wanted to found DENSA for people who aren’t dicks.
Looks like that professor was really dense.
Looks like that professor was really dense
As a MENSA member myself I can assure you the organization is definitely full of jerks. We all think we’re right… And worse yet, we often are! Average I.Q. people feel this is totally unacceptable.
> Also MENSA makes candidates take two tests, one to measure IQ, and one to measure Spatial Awareness.
Never heard of it. When I joined, they only gave me one. Or maybe it’s different depending on the country.
And Binet didn’t design it that way. He was going for a multi-axis test that would identify areas where children had strengths and weaknesses so that educators could come up with better ways of teaching them. He never, EVER meant it to be a “Mine is bigger than yours” number.
Just like how Schrödingerling never intended his ‘cat in the box’ to be taken seriously: it was a direct dig at the other scientists… and they fucking ran with it, proving Schrödingerling’s entire point!
Schrodenger’s cat is a great visual analogue to the standard model’s actual explanation.
I too find it nonsensical (for different reasons than he) but it stands as a great thought experiment.
No, no, NO!
That needs to be ‘Probing highly recommended’… Preferably using a 4″ diameter proble with knobbly surface…
Oh, BABY! Stop promising me a good time!
You do NOT want to probe those two. You could catch “the stupid”. (It’s contagious!)
given their chosen profession, I would say they are ‘immune’
I think professional alien kidnappers have higher standards than that.
I like how nonchalant they are about seeing their proposed conspiracy in person. Also how did they get together, cos you would assume the belief of the existence off one of those cryptids, would preclude the existence off the other?
I bet that blonde woman could do a killer Halo cosplay
In my own experience, far out there conspiracy theorists tend to be much more accepting of far out there conspiracy theorists with conflicting theories than I would have thought possible. It seems that being a far out there conspiracy theorist itself is something of a bonding point. “Maybe this person seems completely nutters, but at least they understand that there’s something going on that most people don’t get.”
I should probably admit that I’m something of a conspiracy theorist apologist. Many of them sound pretty crazy, but they are correct that there are conspiracies all around us. Most of them are relatively benign things, like people organizing surprise birthday parties for people who hate surprise birthday parties. But there are others, and we *know* this, because some of them get revealed in ways that can’t be covered up. Possibly the biggest came to light in early January.
It’s just that, what do you believe? Things that seem sane and ordinary tends to be what most people choose, but there are some indications that at least some conspirators recognize this and intentionally include some absurd elements in their conspiracy for the distraction and unbelievability they provide.
the rule i like is:
‘how many people have to directly lie to support this?’
why this test? because of this rule:
‘two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead’
the more people who have to lie, the more likely and faster the unmasking will make its way to the nonfiction section.
Or… How many people know about this and would not go to jail if they talked about it?
Of course, your formulation also includes the assumption that no one has actually talked about it, and that there are no filters keeping the information from being propagated.
Having media and tech all explicitly aligned to label such things as unfounded conspiracy theories renders your formulation suspect.
Remember the Hunter Biden laptop, that turned out to be Hunter Biden’s laptop and have no Russian disinformation component?
The one caveat to this rule should be MKULTRA
Actually, no. Can you provide a link?
Conspiracy theorists have accepted that they’re being lied to. Once you’ve accepted that, why should you be confident about what the truth really is?
Where they tend to go wrong, I think, is when they just latch onto the next lie by somebody else, instead of keeping an open mind. The desperation to find some truth can make them pretty gullible.
Like, an outgoing President lies about having won the election, and you figure that out. Then you seize on an opposing lie. “He plotted insurrection!” And don’t notice that the riot, rather than advancing his efforts to contest the election, predictably ended them, and made claims of election irregularities radioactive.
Who benefited from that riot? Not guy being blamed for it, certainly.
Personally I laughed at QAnon. What a transparent psyop! At least 95% of the conspiracy theories out there are probably just deliberate chaff thrown out to discredit anyone who uncovers a real conspiracy…
The failure of the attack on the Capital building to overturn the election and place trump back into the office does not constitute anything as ludicrous as proof that it’s a lie he plotted insurrection, people do things all the time that end up producing results opposite of what they desired that’s not proof that someone plotted against them and lied about them trying to do it just that they failed at what they wanted to do.
At the planning meeting- Ok Thursday we are taking over the government . Sticks are allowed , and improvised weapons , yes bear spray , all right? -How about guns? -Are you kidding, how are we going to get guns?
Why did they plan so well that they brought hockey sticks to a gunfight?
Planning happened, certainly, though I would hesitate to characterize it as having been a thing well done.
1) The attack on the capitol building did not attempt to overturn the government.
2) Trump wanted to win the election by constitutional chicanery, not by armed insurrection. There is no evidence to support any claim to the contrary. (If Trump had told his followers to take the capitol, it would have been taken.)
3) If Trump had succeeded, he would have cheated fair and square and won by constitutional means, not a coup.
4) Biden cheated fair and square, and won by electoral chicanery that could not be reverted.
“electoral” should be “electioneering” or some such… changing election rules, making fraud easy, and so on.
All evidence is that there was no significant a fraud in the 2020 Presidential election. This was extensively litigated; Georgia recounted 3 times f’gosh sakes.
The lies about changing the rules was also litigated in the correct forum: state courts. The lie that only the state legislature can affect electoral rules hinges on ignoring the (state) constitutional requirement that all laws passed by the legislature (and signed by the governor) must be constitutional. In the cases at issue, some laws were found to violate the state constitution (Pennsylvania for example) and therefore not allowed.
This doesn’t have much to do with today’s very amusing comic but it is important not to let the Stab In The Back Theory persist.
Strange how even Republican states couldn’t even find any evidence of fraud or vote flipping when they looked…
I have a feeling most conspiracy theories out there are ways for the person presenting the theory to make money.
How many years has Alex Jones raked it in for his unhinged blabber? People are STILL listening to him and buying his products.
Heck, even the relatively benign sounding ones intended to sell products. “Toxic fecal matter is robbing you of energy! Which they’re perfectly fine with! Buy my stuff to rid you of it!”
Truth is a lot more boring and depressing than fiction.
I highly doubt it was any sort of psyop; several thousand people really did just delude themselves into believing a conspiracy theory on 4chan.
Because said people tie their entire identity to Trump, and thus, Q’s worship of the idiot is the only view they can accept.
Weird to see so many people saying in effect “There’s no smoke without a fire”. In other words, if there is a conspiracy theory, then there must be a reason for it.
Look. some people are batshit crazy. They believe things which are not true. The internet lets them meet and combine their batshit crazy theories. “Somebody believes me. I must be right.”
And then the Russians and Chinese start posting fake stuff to encourage them. And pranksters post even more fake stuff too. And suddenly the batshit crazy people are surrounded by “evidence” of their theories.
And then they start assaulting the Capitol. Or shooting Jews. Or storing ammo and food against Armageddon. Or getting elected as Republicans.
It doesn’t make any of it true. It makes the believers sad or stupid people who need to shut down the laptop, and go out and buy a real newspaper.
Or believing that Trump told anyone to inject bleach. Or that Trump if reelected would be a “dictator”. Stupid people will believe stupid things.
“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me.”
Even though he clarified later (probably at the insistence of panicked staffers) that he didn’t actually mean that bleach or any other disinfectant should be injected, sure sounds like he was considering something of the sort. Maybe if he was less of an outrageous liar it would be less believable when people wrongly claim he outrageously lied.
Paireon – thank you for admitting, with the exact quote, that Trump did not tell anyone to inject bleach, or inject anything else. No sane interpretation of that paragraph is an instruction to anyone, so he did not tell anyone to do anything. Also no sane interpretation of that paragraph mentions bleach. And, with the later clarification, there is no excuse for any reasonable journalist or politician claiming that he did.
He ASKED if there was any possibility of finding an injectable medical disinfectant specific to COVID. There ARE injectable disinfectants, such as hydrogen peroxide, so any claim regarding “bleach” is a false formulation. Why did journalists lie and use the word bleach rather than use the accurate word that Trump used?
By the way, in context, I don’t think he was talking about injecting anything into veins at all. (the light thing was regarding blood, but I don’t think the injection was.) I believe he was suggesting a possible lavage of the lungs, which would have been a misconception of believing that the glassy regions of scarring were direct action by COVID, and that disinfecting those spots might have a beneficial effect. It’s wrong, but as he said, it’s interesting.
I really hate having to defend Trump, by the way, against lies and false DNC-media spin. If his opponents had just stuck to all the truthful stupid stuff, my life would be so much easier.
Oh come on, man. So he didn’t say “bleach”, he said “disinfectant” and the commentators shortened that to “bleach”. This is what is known as “a distinction without a difference”.
You can’t inject hydrogen peroxide or other disinfectants into the lungs unless you are interested in an especially nasty death penalty. Nor can you shine lights on the inside of the human body to kill viruses since viruses grow *inside*your*cells*.
You can try to think of a way that what he said makes sense, but the simple answer is that he’s a blabbermouth who has gotten away with talking without thinking all his life, and once he got into the Oval Office he only got worse. It is entirely fair to mock him for it.
Complaining that people used the wrong word to mock him is kind of ironic considering his alternative approach to facts. When a bully gets bullied, it’s doubly funny.
If you can’t win with the truth, then stop pretending Trump’s lies are bad. If lies are bad, then YOU tell the truth, and stop making excuses for lies that your side tells to make someone you hate look bad.
Be honest, one way or the other.
Again, first, Trump did not tell anyone to do anything. If you disagree, then highlight the exact words you believe are a command or recommendation in that statement of his. He did not TELL anyone to do anything. Did not happen.
So, if you’re honest, admit that and stop claiming otherwise. Just use truthful words instead.
Second, bleach versus hydrogen peroxide. Those are each specific disinfectants, of which there are dozens of different classes for different uses. “Disinfectant” was not SHORTENED to “bleach” , it was ALTERED to “bleach”.
Bleach is NEVER used for medical internal purposes. Never. Therefore altering the accurate medical word “disinfectant” to that common word “bleach” was an explicit lie. That was not what Trump said, and not what he meant, and the use of that term, whether by a commentator, politician, or scientist, was a lie. (comedians don’t matter.)
Bleach is far different from hydrogen peroxide. Hold either one in your mouth for a full minute, you’ll feel the difference. Unless you have done that experiment and think they are the same thing, then you should be honest and concede the point. Trump did not tell anyone to use bleach for any purpose. Anyone who says otherwise is lying, and anyone who excuses such a lie is dishonest and without honor.
No, a short period of hydrogen peroxide lavage in the lungs will not kill anyone. It also won’t kill COVID. However, Trump did not say it would. He didn’t mention any SPECIFIC disinfectant. He ASKED whether some class of disinfectant might be able to be developed to do that. If Obama had asked the same question (phrased more artfully) the exact same people mocking Trump would have been saying, “That’s a wonderful creative idea…”
You point about lights is unfounded and wildly presumptive. Radiation can interfere with cell metabolism, including viral reproduction, and light is radiation. (Talk to any cancer doc about this.) Since studies show COVID is clearly susceptible to vitamin D, it’s not intuitively obvious that you can blithely wave your hand and say “disinfection by sunlight or UV can never work.” You certainly could not have done that AS A SCIENTIST at the point when Trump brought up the subject. Multiple companies were working on it.
More importantly, that kind of thing can and is done by the equivalent of dialysis – pull the blood out, treat it and put it back, and viruses are pretty fragile things. Reducing the viral load in the blood is one potential strategy for keeping a COVID victim alive long enough for other things to work, so once again, you can’t just assume that such a thing can never work. It was an interesting idea, and people should look into it.
Which is all Trump said.
Wow. I’ve never seen a Trumper try to explain one of Trump’s untruths before . It’s fascinating to see the distance people will go to avoid seeing it.
Reminds me of the hoops religious people jumped through, rather than accept that the sun and planets didn’t go round the Earth. Look up epicycles.
Fascinating.
Or you can look into that trump’s comments were in response to a report about specifically bleach. He didn’t say disinfectants in general, he said “the disinfectant” as he was referring to the specific disinfectant mentioned in the report. So yes, he was talking about a specific disinfectant. yes, he actually suggested injecting bleach to treat the coronavirus. so yes, it is a valid reason to criticize him especially in combination of his other “medical recommendations” which actual doctors were warning against.
At what point in your quote, did Shtrump actually say “Go do this?”
rewinn:- the ironic thing is, he said that to mock the idiots, and he was right: anyone who believed what the fuckwits claim he said (which he didn’t) are fucking moronic idiots
You also are aware that there are disinfectants that are not fatal or harmful to hyu-mons, right? So yeah, correcting that blatant bullshit is an important distinction
He didn’t say “go do this”, sure, but as you said yourself, there’s a huge bunch of morons out there, and lots of them were liable to think it was a good idea to do because their Dear Leader talked about it. And seeing as the most common household disinfectant is bleach, and stuff like the Tide Pod challenge was a thing, it’s pretty much a non-stretch to imagine some of them chugging a bottle of bleach and then pulling a surprised Pikachu face when they end up in intensive care because of that.
I see no problem facepalming/laughing at any verbal misstep by politicians, whether it’s Trump, Biden, or anyone else. I still say the Donald was being crassly ignorant and uncaring how his words would be taken when he talked about that, as usual.
That wasn’t a Conspiracy Theory. He actually did tell people that crap bleach. And acted like a Dictator. Saying the Media that isn’t under their direct control is “Fake news” is literally one of the first things dictators do.
You gotta remember Trump believes QAnon’s bullshit. So… yeah.
1) Please link to a direct source where Trump says the word “bleach”. There are none, so that was a direct lie.
2) Please point to a direct quote where Trump tells anyone to inject ANYTHING. There are none, so that was a direct lie.
3) Trump did ask about injectable medical disinfectants. There exist injected medical disinfectants, including hydrogen peroxide. They have existed for a half century. Trump did not say that one was available for this purpose… he ASKED if it could be developed… and he explicitly said that if one ever was, you would need a doctor involved.
This is the diametric opposite of Trump telling anyone to inject anything, so the entire DNC/Media talking point was an explicit lie that anyone with an ounce of skepticism and no prior anti-Trump zeal could have perceived directly.
He still said people should drink disinfectants on the April 23rd white House briefing of last year, even if he didn’t specifically say bleach.
And he ACTED like a fucking dictator when he was in office. That’s not theory. That’s blatant fact. Right up to inciting a coup to stay in power.
Tell me one fucking President who hasn’t acted like a fucking dictator!
He didn’t incite a fucking coup, moron, in fact, he told the protestors to go home!
His comments came after William Bryan, the undersecretary for science and technology at the Department of Homeland Security, presented a study that found sun exposure and cleaning agents like bleach can kill the virus when it lingers on surfaces.
Trump remarked on the effectiveness of those methods and wondered if they could help address infections in the human body.
Here are his full comments:
“A question that probably some of you are thinking of if you’re totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposedly we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. (To Bryan) And I think you said you’re going to test that, too. Sounds interesting, right?”
He continued.
“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful.”
So there is a little thing that I like to call “context”, strange little thing that seems to get left out of most discussions like this. In this case, it is apparent that with *context*, that the “disinfectant” that he was referring to was bleach.
Kindly point out anywhere where he told people to inject themselves
Can you do that? Can you? Please do
It seems pretty clear to me that a reasonable interpretation of his rambling is that he ‘suggested injecting bleach into patients to treat the coronavirus”. combined with his previous championing of non doctor recommended treatments such as hydroxychloroquine, it is a valid reason to criticize him.
He suggested injecting bleach. You are trying to hedge between telling someone to do something and suggesting that someone do it, but they are largely interchangeable.
He wasn’t referring to disinfectants in general. He said “the disinfectant” he was referring to a specific disinfectant. namely the one mentioned in the report he was responding to. English has pronouns, which is why context is really important.
“Stop getting into this crazy shit. Consume our carefully curated messaging instead.”
<_<
+1
Smoke without fire is very common … smoke bombs for example … I believe that a lot of conspiracy theories are for the amusement or profit of the people throwing the smoke bombs, so to speak.
How much money do you think Alex Jones has made in all his years of running Infowars and pushing his products to his loyal viewers…
I’ve heard that it’s far easier to cross-convert theists and atheists than it is to cross-convert either with agnostics. makes a lot of sense when you ponder it a bit — like a river, it’s much easier to redirect someone’s fervent beliefs than it is to make them start or stop believing. Also akin to the opposite of love being apathy, not hate
I’m quite sure there is some chaff, but I doubt it’s 95% of theories being deliberate, unless maybe if you count anything coming from a deliberate theory, but evolved into something else(?) — idunno. The world may never know
Classic nonsense.
“This thing and it’s complete absence are exactly the same thing, guys.”
*facepalm*
Knowing categorically, “there is no god-like being in the universe” requires omniscience.
The true opposite of love is not hate but apathy. Likewise, the true opposite of theism is not atheism.
“I’m going to try and redefine things into what I want them to be.”
Run along.
The first think you need for claim of existence or non-existence of god-like being is DEFINITION. Without definition, either statement is meaningless.
Also, there ARE definitions of god which would make it’s existence hard to miss. On the other hand, there are definitions which would make overlooking him easy.
I prefer crosspollination anyway.
It looks like Lizard Man and Torchhead Woman may agree, about crosspollination. W00t w00t!
Thing is, most actual conspiracies such as the birthday party thing are “small-c” conspiracies,; any “big-C” conspiracies get found out right fast as soon as they’re out of a tiny, fragile bubble.
People knew of Al Capone’s takeover of the Chicago mob almost as soon as it happened, law enforcement just couldn’t round everyone up on the spot due to our Western democracy justice system requiring solid proof of wrongdoing going all the way back up to him (made doubly-hard by the endemic corruption he fostered and traditional mob Omerta).
Allied High Command was aware of the Holocaust (THE greatest, most terrible criminal conspiracy of the 20th Century) as soon as they noticed ressources being diverged towards the building of extermination camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau, but they didn’t act on it due to more pressing strategic concerns, incredulity at even the Nazis being quite as batshit murder-happy as they were, and, yes, elitist and racist attitudes of the time because.
The conspiracy to commit the Rwandan genocide was under the radar because Rwanda is an out-of-the-way backwater (and also due to continuing elitist and racist attitudes – looks like we hadn’t learned much in the 50 years prior), but as soon as people started dying by the hundreds of thousands from machetes and AKs, people noticed (and again, didn’t really act enough because hey, why should we risk a few thousands of our soldiers’ lives for the lives of hundreds of thousands of darkies that don’t have any oil, amirite?).
The criminal neglect of Flint’s water system by state officials may not be an actual conspiracy, but it was an open secret that left enough of a trail that many people responsible have been investigated and indicted for their actions (or inactions).
Big C conspiracies reveal themselves easy enough, they’re impossible to keep hidden forever. Those that take longer to reveal are simply far from any well-to-do people who care, but the Pandora’s box always opens in the end, and sooner rather than later.
Would what Epstein and his ilk were behind be considered a big C conspiracy, or just amoral elites that believe they are above everyone else doing amoral elite things?
Umm, which of those are you claiming are “conspiracies”? Take actual conspiracies, like the College admission scandal that several people were indicted for in 2019… and it had been going on almost a decade, starting in 2011.
You mean, paying for buildings or resources to the school to get their child admitted?
Love to tell this, but that’s been going on for decades, if not centuries (ever wondered why some wings or buildings were named after people? because they fucking paid for them so their idiot spawn could be admitted!!!)
As guest was saying, the college admissions scandal is another example of a “conspiracy” being an open secret with the only barriers to it being a fact is the requirement to gather all the evidence and make a credible argument.
Well, that’s also a kind of conspiracy, yes. It was also an open secret (lots of people knew or suspected but for whatever reason didn’t broadcast it too loudly, or it just fell in the cracks for some time before exploding on national news) and stopped as soon as the authorities managed to process proof of wrongdoing and deal with red tape. It’s also very mundane, like most conspiracies are (I just went for mostly heavy-hitters).
And the only one that may not be a conspiracy in my examples is the Flint water crisis, which may just be caused by willful, callous disregard for life and the responsibilities of office more than malicious planning.
Any good coffeehouse or sci fi convention, plus mutual attraction and a sense of humor.
The exposure I’ve had with conspiracy theories seem to fit in a couple of categories.
One would be superficially correct, but fails any real examination…ie, flat earthers
A second would be formed from a denier of some sort thinking outside of the box because of lack of trust with answers in the box. ie, aliens, secret guvmnt programs, umbrella corp human experimentation
others?
By the way, being a conspiracy theory doesn’t invalidate the theory
With regard to the flat earthers, I point out that the existence of cats proves that the world is not flat. If it were, the cats would have pushed everything off long ago.
I’m pretty sure that there are people who would try and disprove aliens TO aliens
There actually is a (pre-emptive) conspiracy “theory” (the word theory should not be used for these),
on this very topic.
that being they expect to see a wide scale alien invasion but believe it will all be staged using holograms and costumes as an excuse for a one world order to bring all the governments together and exert control over the world.
so any alien they saw they would believe was a hologram, costume, or robot.
I don’t think it will be aliens to take over the world’s governments, but clowns. By way of proof that this is true I offer you this evidence, “It has already happened”.
you missed the real crazy of what I said.
these people believe it won’t be aliens, but that a new world order will STAGE an alien invasion as an excuse to make all the world governments come together to form one government to defend against the STAGED alien invasion.
so if aliens did invade they would shooting up social media calling it a hoax to trick people into accepting a one world government.
No, I caught it. I simply thought mine was funnier.
that’s nice, but I am not joking, this is an actual real group of people who actually believe this.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/927509/alien-invasion-nasa-ufo-911-cigar-shaped-asteroid-extraterrestrial
IQ isn’t all that accurate to begin with, and scores past maybe 180-200 are not just fictional, they literally don’t exist because the test doesn’t work that way.
True, I’ve given several thousand IQ tests across the course of my career. None of the standardized tests go that high. When you start talking about test scores of over 160 or so, it is just extrapolation. Once you exceed an IQ of around 120 there may be specific strengths such as numerical processing or verbal memory but for practical purposes you are just smarter than the average bear. A particular problem with assessing the upper reaches of IQ is that it becomes difficult to find a statistically significant number of subjects for setting the standards for that level of intelligence. Another issue is that being intelligent doesn’t protect you from having erroneous, or at least strange, beliefs. For example, I worked with a well regarded psychiatrist who was quite skillful in his field but he believed in his heart of hearts that most attractive/intelligent people had an alien/human hybrid in their ancestry. IQ tests are much more useful at the other end of the spectrum. Not so much for specifying IQ levels, although that is done for diagnostic purposes, but for identifying specific streangths and weaknesses.
I remember Isaac Asimov describing how he IQ tested himself. He allowed himself half the normal time for the test. Then he doubled the score. It gave some huge figure, which he claimed was his IQ.
It was a jest, by a genuinely hyper-intelligent man. * But it supports your comment about the difficulty of measuring high intelligence.
*Yes, his intelligence did not stop him being flawed in his attitude to women. Which shows that intelligence can only work with the cultural data it receives. Feed a super-computer garbage, and it will spew out garbage.
On your second point, I know a very intelligent and learned psychiatrist. He is a lovely person, whose company you will enjoy – unless he starts telling you about Them. And what They are trying to do to him from Their satellites, and why he sleeps under a lead blanket so They can’t detect him. And so on.
Processing corrupted data on a super-computer produces more corrupted data.
Thank you so very much. I guess it is not surprising that such a sensitive subject would be so consistently misunderstood. I do wish that the testers would be more forthcoming, however. A couple of vignettes:
1) My wife and I are Hi-Q, as well as our first born. Our poor second-born was tested, and for a few years, had her inferiority complex reinforced because of her “average” score of 125. I know that few high-schoolers are ready for statistics, but percentile scores, especially to children situated as she is, is probably more meaningful.
2) When I was tested in junior high, I was told my IQ was 1×1. Still being relatively young, I took that information at face value. Three decades later, I was told it was 1×6. At this point, I recognized the pattern, and questioned the information, to be told, “The test actually tops out at 1×5, so we call it ‘1×6’.” That’s statistically dubious, even if we had enough data to be certain in that range. I’m curious about what the actual average is of the tail of the curve, but not enough to actually do the computation. Please just say, “this test tops out at Y, and you topped out.” That’s factual. And I’m pretty sure that almost anyone who does top out is going to make better use of that fact than of a synthetic value
Your IQ can be higher than 200, it just depends on the test. AFAIK, there are two ways to interpret the score. The original score is mental age divided by actual age times 100. The current one is designed to be a bell curve. Standardized tests only rate up to a max of 200 but this doesn’t mean that specialized tests cannot be created to test a person with a high ability up to the understanding of human knowledge.
Looking at Wikipedia, the score gives one standard deviation every 15 points. If one standard deviation captures 70% of the remaining populous, the a score of 190 would be about 6 standard deviations or 0.036% of the populous.
Since IQ score is based upon a racial norm, every alien species averages about 100 +/- 15.
The big problem with using standardized tests is that the test are usually skewed unintentionally based on inherent biases based on the writers of the tests. So, a “standardized” test does not give a perfect number rating intelligence rather only one factor to rate intelligence.
If you are wondering why I am spouting all this crap, its because a couple of years ago in an RPG forum, the question was raised about how the Intelligence stats rates to IQ.
I’m not worrying about how you came by the information. I’m worrying that it is wrong.
Yes, originally, it was the age thing, and now, it’s a fit to the normal distribution. But the normal distribution is not exponential dropoff. It is exponential squared. The normal curve is f(x) = e ^ (-x^2/2)/(2pi)^(1/2). Think e^-x^2. So the difference in the value of that curve from 130 to 145 is e^4.5/e^2, or 12. The difference between 145 and 160 is e^8/e^4.5 or 33.
Certainly, it is only really “fair” to compare members of similar populations. However, it is still important and meaningful to compare cross populations. For instance, the average IQ of a female is 2-3 points higher than that of a male. However, our standard deviation is higher. That means that there are more Hi-Q males than females, and the more you raise the bar, the more extreme this difference becomes. (It also means that there are WAY more Low-Q males than females.) The book The Bell Curve was intensely controversial for pointing out that the average IQ in the West is significantly higher than that in Africa, and lower than that in Japan & Korea. (And then speculating about the societal effects of this difference.)
Likewise, when dealing with different species, it is really, really important to understand their IQ _compared to us_ for any significant interaction.
lurker – switching from “female…male” to “our” in the discussion is not helpful with your sex-ambiguous name. I’m decoding “our” as male.
Yep. Sorry. I’m a human male. Beep. Boop. Beep.
IQ is nice to have, just as superpowers are nice to have, but how you put them to use, how diligently you practice, and so forth – are just as important in a practical sense
Also bet that blonde woman could do a killer Halo cosplay
I bet that blonde woman could do a killer Halo cosplay
Are you saying that the blonde woman could do a killer Halo cosplay?
I think Tojay is betting the blonde woman could do a killer Halo cosplay – wager undetermined
If Tujay is betting the blonde woman could do a killer Halo cosplay, then does Pander bet that blonde woman could do a killer Halo cosplay? What about polerbear? Does polerbear bet that blonde woman could do a killer Halo cosplay?
What are the odds that the blonde woman could do a killer Halo cosplay?
Who’s going to hold the money and will we use a parimutual system???
What I was trying to say is that I’d wager that the woman who was blonde could do an absolute killer Halo cosplay
Yeah, I bet you were.
I was just making a joke because Tujay said the same thing three times in three different posts accidentally :)
there’s a Tijay, Tujay, and a Tejay. are they all the same person, just having typo problems?
That too.
I’m assuming they’re all the same person since it was the same thing written three times.
It wasn’t until panel 7 here that I caught on the flaming thing is a floating eyeball— right up until it squints there. Details like that and the lip tusks are what keep me coming back hungry for more.
Now go back and look at the expressions in all the prior panels with Lapha, and then go back to Fracture and look at the reporter.
Dave is a master at doing stuff like that.
Yawn… I sure hope somebody’s having fun with this. I’m past ready for this to be done.
‘This’ has been what this fucking webic has been about for the last ten fucking years, if you haven’t caught on by now…
Uh, wow. All I said was I was ready for this part of the plot to be over. Didn’t think that was worthy of a shoutdown. Sheesh, calm down.
Considering every time some arc goes on ‘too long’ (whether it’s a fight, or non-fight), someone complains
And started off with a ‘Yawn’ was purely innocent, right?
And what ‘part of the plot’ are you referring to? Where we get the instigators of all this shit to explain themselves and to find out if they actually had a plan?
Or are you referring to some other ‘part of the plot’?
Sigh…
Y’know what? I’m done here. This conversation is too boring and unpleasant to keep up. You want to let this bother you that much, fine. I personally don’t have time to let offhand comments on webcomics bother me enough to swear but you do you.
And don’t bother responding to me in future because I won’t reply to you even if you do. I’m just not interested.
I think he just means he is looking forward to this arc progressing to the next arc.
Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if Dave should ever come back – to where subplot threads like this diverge.
Also, really hoping that these two are just trolling the aliens, both for the comedic value and for their own sakes given that Archon’s “ok yes fine, there are aliens” press conference with Cora & Dabbler must’ve been all over the news recently.
If they’re conspiracy theorists, they probably think that the press conference thing was staged with Hollywood FX and crisis actors in suits. Because The Government(tm) would never let the REAL aliens on TV without a disguise, amirite?
Maybe we’ll see these two in the background of the next ARC-LIGHT group of agents scene.
That last little bit I couldn’t help but think of Asobi Ni Iku Yo! (also known as Cat Planet Cuties!) where there’s a loose group of humans that basically dream of the day of first contact with aliens…except they can’t handle the idea that the first contact is with alien cat girls that look perfectly human other than the extra set of cat ears and tail and speak perfect Japanese. Because aliens are supposed to be strange, bizarre lifeforms that defy imagine not like something out of what they consider bad science fiction, so they promptly decide that they’ll just have to kill the first contact alien cat girl for not meeting their preconceptions. Of course they fail and the one member, a female teacher of the male human protagonist is later something of a running gag of her ranting about something Eris does and how that’s not supposed to be how aliens are and tossing out some ludicrous thing in response.
“No one wants to kiss a slug.” -Mekton (and no I’m not digging through my game books to find the authors’ names.)
Weren’t the cat girls deliberately picked for the first contact, exactly because they WERE the closest thing to human the alien federation had on tap?
No, wait, it’s coming back to me: There was an interstellar war between catgirls and dogboys, wasn’t there?
Oh, well, the plot might have been stupid, but the art was nice.
The Catians (they renamed themselves that to be nice rather than insisting that they were called Earthlings) were looking for new people to meet and share with and loved that Earth had so many things in common to make contact easier (I imagine they especially loved the high numbers of males as their own species one thing NOT parallel to Earth was population ratio, it was something like 20 females to one 1 male). The Dogisians meanwhile were under orders from the overseers of galactic federation (who were like the Organians from Star Trek except WAY more effective, being known to wipe out entire planets for breaking the law) to not be making contact with others like Earth and were secretly engaging in trade with Earth despite that. It was one of the main cover plots for at least the anime that the female Dogisian was plotting against the Catians and secretly manipulating some Earth agencies to eliminate them and one of the female human characters finds out the battlesuit technology she uses in fact comes from them and includes safeguards so it can’t be used against them.
I actually like this trope, also showed up in one early episode of Farscape where a “primitive” alien woman was surprised how much all the aliens looked like her people only slightly different *until seeing Pilot”
the whole idea of aliens should be like this or that, and insisting they have to fit into a specific criteria because how they imagined something “alien” to be.
Its especially good when it gets to the higher end (beyond comprehension) aliens; and someone will be like…they are beyond comprehension, beyond scarcity, and mortality, so they wouldn’t care about this or that, or get involved with, or they’d have to *every single individual* behave in these very specific ways these beings have to be behave…and I’m just, so…this being you just said is beyond comprehension has to behave in this very comprehensive and very specific way you just described?
funny enough it has been suggested that part of the best case scenario for humans for first contact would be a species that looks humans, parallel evolution or came from another timeline/reality Earth *the concept of if you find a way to cross to other timelines/realities its easier to colonize and find resources from variants of your own planet than trying to terraform big dead rocks out in space so focus on multivere exploration instead*,
because of how humans react to thing, the whole “its a monster, demon, devil, gods, faeries, ect…” thing kicks in when its too different. Honestly so does denial something even is intelligent because its not human…like so many clever animals on Earth that of course can’t pass a bias IQ test *even animal intelligence tests have tested more how well/easily something can be trained over its actual intelligence and only more recent changes to these tests have discovered just how smart some animals really are*. but have these same looks so alien, aliens, also using tools and having more advanced craft and I honestly think some people…more than I would have thought a few years ago, will react in a psychotic break down manner to their preconceptions being shattered.
Wait until the Unicornians visit.
Would that be the Linyaari?
No, the Renyilaaghe…
As long as it is not the Unicorns of Candy Mountain.
“We’re going to Candy Mountain, Chaaaaarlie!”
Hmm, I wuts dat I smells…dat smells like humans trolling somebodies. heh, about time. No, I’m not saying why I get that feeling.
The first to troll aliens. These two pioneers will become saints of the internet.
Whether they mean to troll or not, they’re certainly fools for approaching so casually.
The late science fiction author Gordon Dickson wrote about intelligence in the book “Space Winners.” He pointed out that what is “extremely smart” or even genius level in one culture may be “God, he’s dumb” in another, even on this planet. Using his example, take someone who’s a genius here in the US, drop them into a stone age level tribe in the Amazon, and the tribal people would consider them to be idiots who have to be watched constantly to make sure they don’t hurt themselves.
I’m all for that. Free jungle excursions via parachute droppings for Twitter employees, Google programmers and Starbucks customers.
You’re blaming the products of the system, not the system itself.
Those three sub-classes exist as products of the capitalist environment that encourages, even demands, those behaviors/action sets. You want to change the products, you have to change the system (social environmental pressures) that create them.
Which is, fundamentally what the parachute drop into a “primitive” (ye gods, the arrogance) environment would do, for said individuals…the thing is, unless there was some genuine learning disability involved, they would “smarten up,” really quick, learning from the tribe (assuming they weren’t shunned to begin with) the same way humans everywhere already do.
*sigh*
A run-on sentence worthy of Halo.
If you don’t consider paleolithic environment to be “primitive”, then you perhaps haven’t ever been camping.
Yes, the city slickers don’t know which end of the cow smells sweet, but, given time, they can learn. It doesn’t make a hunter-gatherer environment any less primitive.
The initial premise asserted a tribal group, which is what I am referring to.
If you want to have a completely separate conversation about a mythic hero-survivalist who will conquer nature single-handedly, then by all means, go for it.
Just bear in mind, your engaging in a fantasy.
You inserted the word “primitive”, in scare quotes, describing an environment, followed by an ironic aside, as if the word you chose was inappropriate and chosen by someone else.
So, never mind. I’ll just step back and let you roll your eyes at your own word choice if you want.
Yes, Dal, you can pretend things are always only ever what you would rather they be.
Toddle off.
You… missed the part where Norbrook specified ‘stone-age level tribe’ and just ran with the ‘tribal people’, didn’t you
“Stone Age level” implies that there’s some sort of objective measure of intelligence that one must “level up” in order to “advance.”
That’s not how it works. Humans aren’t any more “intelligent” than we were 6000 years ago. We’ve just accumulated an ever increasing (and accelerating) body of information & experience to exploit.
Better still, the overwhelming majority have – individually – no more understanding of how all the toys in our modern existence actually work, and we don’t have to, in order for them to work for us, individually.
That is where I “ran with” things.
The point being that “intelligence” has nothing to do with any specific skill set or technology, but rather the ability to take in, interrelate, and retain & recall information. Tossing around words like “primitive” without specifying what, precisely, you are applying that descriptor to, is less than helpful, and distorts everyone’s understand of the subject at hand, which is “what is, and how do we understand, the concept of ‘intelligence,’ in a way that can be universally applicable.”
It doesn’t imply anything about intelligence
caveman: *points to rock* this is a rock. *points to a dinosaur* that is not a rock. any questions?
Genius: so, I’m guessing I’m supposed to throw the rock at the not a rock?
caveman: yes. you do that. (runs opposite direction)
Interestingly that was one of the things I liked about Mass Effect. Yes, humans were “generalists” but the aliens specialties related to natural abilities and environmental conditions of their evolution. Krogans HAD do be walking tanks because of the wrecked environment of Tuchunka, while Asari were somewhat soft because they pretty much all grew up with “space magic” to do all the heavy lifting on a world that was a better managed utopia and not a global nuclear wasteland. Quarians HAD to be good ship systems engineers and tech specialists because they all grew up in space ships that needed constant tending. Turians …were kind of hard shell humans with a penchant for calibrations… You get the point.
Turians are metal-shelled Avians who evolved that because of radiation.
IQ doesn’t really quantify intelligence, it just tells you where you are in the overall population in terms of intelligence (basically, how many “smarter” people exist). 15 IQ points represent one standard deviation from the mean; if you have an IQ of 115, you have a higher score than 84% of humanity, 130 corresponds with 97.7%, and 145 with 99.9%. The statistical nature of it implies that it’s really not usable past a certain threshold, given that humanity is made up of a finite amount of humans – only 8 people are supposed to exist with an IQ of 190 or higher, and an IQ of 200 would imply that there is only one in 76 billion people who are smarter than you, which simply doesn’t make sense. The same can be said about the lower end of the scale; IQ distribution is always symmetrical around the 100 mark.
All this is to say: human IQ ranges from 5 to 195 by definition – given 8 billion humans –, with 95% of us between 70 and 130.
Lol
The normal curve really only maps for the middle portion of the curve. It truncates to the left (since negative numbers are impossible to score) but it really truncates higher than 0. In practical reality, an IQ of 5 is not possible in a functional human. Someone with an IQ of 20 or below is profoundly handicapped and pretty thoroughly nonfunctional. It takes a society to keep such beings alive.
On the right side of the curve, it is probably best to think of there as being two bell curves superimposed, With one having a much higher standard deviation. In empirical observation, it looks like there are between 4 and 10 individuals per million have an IQ above 180, so we can use stdev of 18.5 to calculate the number of humans likely to be at 200 assuming normal distro, average of 100 and the observed incidence of 180 IQ is roughly 250. However that many stdevs out, it’s extremely subject to the assumptions. If the target population averaged 105 IQ, with stdev of 18.5 you get about a thousand.
Thus, an important thing to remember is that human populations are not homogenous, and selection pressure can skew the shape of the curve. Highly intelligent individuals are more likely to excel and thrive, and with any endogenous mating, you can get VERY intelligent populations. With an average of 115, and a stdev of 20 for instance, you get roughly one individual per million in the 210+ range.
One in twelve of those will be FAR above that.
A friend claimed to have scored a 2 on an IQ test — by not finishing.
Well, I guess arguably failing to understand the number of questions to be completed in the test could be spun as a measure of Intelligence… (Yes, I know that’s a malicious spin based on probably-false assumptions.)
This looks like a good place to quote one of my favorite books Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman:
“This morning on planet Earth, there are 1,686 enhanced, gifted, or otherwise superpowered persons. 678 use their powers to fight crime, while 441 use their powers to commit them. 44 are currently confined in Special Containment Facilities for enhanced criminals. Of these last, it is interesting to note that an unusually high proportion have IQs of 300 or more — eighteen to be exact. Including me. You really have to wonder why we all end up in jail.”
You may have just cost be whatever the Kindle price of that is.
It’s a good book. Have the audio version and the VO work is amazing. :)
I took an IQ test when I was 6 years old, and understood it as you described, that everyone’s score was comparative to other people of my age.
After I was done taking the test, I asked how often the result got updated, figuring that new scores would be factored in, changing my result to reflect other tests taken by other people.
I was told that they never got updated. Which told 6-year-old me that IQ tests are nonsense.
I don’t know which test you were given but yeah, a good IQ test gets a new set of norms every few years. Some tests such as the Test of Non-Verbal Intelligence or the Culture Fair Intelligence Test were intended to be robust in this regard as they didn’t depend on shifting culturally specific skills but such tests are also really only intended to be a screening tool. The heavy duty tests such as the Weschler family of tests get revised every decade or so. I’ve been out of the testing end of the business for over a decade and would need the equivalent of a college course just to get up to speed on the latest version.
It depends on what you mean by “the results got updated”. They are not going to renorm and rescore a test you already took, so interpreted that way the question is meaningless.
If you meant “how often is that test renormed against current populations”, that happens all the time, and is usually not statistically significant.
If you meant “how often would taking the test again or a similar one significantly change the result, then you’d get a different answer. (It doesn’t change much over time, so variances in score of a few points should not be considered as particularly significant.)
The main thing that happens that can change the result is if you learn something that causes you to reinterpret the meaning of a question. My son was asked what was similar about dogs and cats… and muffed the question, because in teaching him at home, I was always distinguishing minor variations between similar things, as opposed to pointing out similarities. When I found out the issue, it took me about 15-20 minutes to get the point of that kind of question across, and on future tests, he never had that issue again. Thus, his measured IQ rose. That’s not the result being updated,
“How are dogs and cats alike? How are they the same?” That provokes a trip in the wayback machine. With regard to retaking IQ tests, practice effect is an issue. My training was that one shouldn’t administer a given IQ test more than once per year and that you shouldn’t give feedback on specific questions unless required by the test. Generally speaking, one question shouldn’t blow the results of an IQ test unless there is some threshold that the person is required to exceed. A few people have touched on the issue of statistics. Every IQ score is a statement of statistical probability. Properly stated, an IQ score is reported as a score of X plus or minus a range of points. Many factors can impact a person’s performance at any given time and although it is less convenient it is more accurate to say that a persons IQ falls within a given range rather than reporting a given score. Just for completeness sake it also should be said that any competent psychologist will balance IQ scores against all other available diagnostic information before making suggestions based on that IQ score.
Personally took them to mean by retaking the test after a few years, to show if they have advance their intelligence or if they are the same as they were when they were six years old
You know, before they really started to learn any thing?
Problem with IQ tests, is that the really smart ones out there deliberately flub the tests. “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is soon dead or cleaning the latrines.”
This is a real thing. Part of my career was spent at a maximum security forensic hospital. Many of the patients were there for restoration of competency for trial. One of the things we assessed for was the possibility of malingering. It wasn’t unusual for some kid to be a behavior problem in the classroom. After this went on for a while there would be a referral for an assessment. The kid would fluff the IQ test and would receive a diagnosis of what was at the time referred to as “Mild Mental Retardation”. This gets him out of the classroom and into special education where he coasts along until he drops out. Fast forward a few years and this now young adult who should have been identified as a budding psychopath has charges of capitol murder. His lawyer is looking for a defense strategy and notices the old diagnosis. “Oh you are mentally retarded! You aren’t competent for trial.” The lawyer would say and off to my program the guy would go. Although not exclusively so, these patients were generally young men in their 20’s. Luckily we had staff who were good at detecting malingerers and these fellows usually got to exercise their right to a fair and speedy trial.
The really smart ones know not to take the tests at all
I know my own intelligence and self worth. They are not more valuable for having been compared to others, only to who I was yesterday. -Random Guy
In all honesty, there probably aren’t any real-life aliens. It’s the simplest solution to the Fermi Paradox.
Sure, it’s that and not the unimaginably vast distances of space, the unimaginably vast deepness of time, and the wall of lightspeed.
Yes, I’m aware of the theoretical workarounds lightspeed. Doesn’t mean that theory and practice will ever coincide, though.
The most interesting “solution” I’ve read is that we – that is to say our species – are essentially the first technological civilisation in our galaxy, and that in the fullness of time, humanity will have turned out to be our galaxy’s “Great Old Ones”.
I like the thought of humans as the oldest generation telling those young aliens how tough it was back in their time.
Yep, in my day the light speed barrier was uphill both ways.
Young species these days send Von Neuman probes to do all the hard work. Back in my day we had to download our minds into spaceships and do the hard work ourselves.
You youngsters have Dyson Spheres and Matroshka Stars and the Hypernet to play with. When MY species was your age, all we had were rocky planets. And we LIKED it that way!
Yeah we had it tough. All the trillion of us living on a single planet. We used to dream about living on a Dyson Sphere! But you try to tell that to the young aliens of today, will they believe you? Nooooo!
You had an entire planet? Luxury. We only had a single continent, and none of it above sea level. Used to get and drown an hour before we went to bed the night before.
Well we were evicted from our planet and had to move into a O’Neill cylinder all trillion of us. Each morning we had to lick the cylinder clean and then we worked for ten hours making paperclips for the local paperclip maximizer for two pence a week and when we came home our master computer would brainwash us to sleep.
You got PAID to do that? And had computer assisted brainwashing? Our people weren’t even paid for our twelve daily hours of aglet production, and “brainwashing” was us getting brutally clubbed by jackbooted thugs while some asshole said “The beatings will continue until morale improves” over comms.
One species somewhere, some time, has to be the first.
But it’s also possible that we’re not the first first, but among the first and earliest or among the most advanced of them, and it’s just a matter of time. we really should try to tread as carefully as possible with all the theoretical great filters, though… it only takes one capable (possibly selfish and/or delusional) idiot to do something that could end the whole experiment… most idiots are not capable, and most capable people are not idiots, but statistically speaking… it could happen, is all I’m saying…
That’s not a “solution”. That’s a denial of the paradox.
Just so we’re all on the same page, the Fermi Paradox begins by asking the following question: “What would it take to develop an advanced civilization?” Where “advanced” means “one we can detect”. One then breaks down each step, and estimates the chances for each in a given star system, including that sufficient time has passed. You end up with a percentage chance, which you then multiply by the number of star systems. His result was much greater than one, to which he responded, “Where is everybody?”
While the answer “we are the first” is certainly a logical possibility, it is highly improbable. Moreover, as our observations have become more sensitive, it has become even more unlikely. (We are finding far more Goldilocks planets than expected.)
Personally, I think that at least one problem is that it appears to have taken us 4 billion years to evolve to this point, and just one Earth-shattering kaboom, and you have to start over. I think that’s a much higher hurdle.
Although, Schlock Mercenaries proposal (and I AM going to make you search a 7400-page archive to find it) makes a great deal of sense as well.
We can see a LOT of galaxies, and if anyone has spotted any evidence of one a civilization near K2, I’ve not heard of one…
I recently read that Earth is not detectable from any great distance away. As in, even though the wave front is 200 light years across, our radio waves are not even detectable from Alpha Centauri with current technology.
THAT causes the question to be “Why do you think there is no one out there?”
This line got me nosing around a bit, and apparently, with our current technology, we would have trouble resolving life on Earth from the Oort cloud.
But we’re not even a K1 civilization. The classic formulation of the Drake equation looks like it’s talking about intercepting _I Love Lucy_, but the spectral emission lines of a K1 civilization, with or without Dyson sphere, will NOT match any sterile star system. A modern search for life is looking for K1s. Sure, a flashy war (that did not kill any of us) might do the trick, but that requires that we be really, really luck to notice. Stellar engineering is going to more-or-less permanently alter the emission lines of the star system.
Another tell-tell sign would be an oxygenated atmosphere. Oxygen is quite reactive, so if you are able to infer a planetary atmosphere with a lot of it, SOMETHING must be generating it. Of course, it hard to maintain long-distance diplomacy with blue-green algae, but that’s a start…
I certainly think there’s not just folks out there, but they’re sneaking about behind us and sticking their tongues at us, waggling their fingers in their ears. If they’re not, they should be. We’d certainly be doing it to them, if we could.
I think as our observations become more sensitive it becomes more likely we are “The First”.
Assuming (against all odds) we actually make it out to the stars.
But I agree with you about the Earth shattering comment. I think we entirely over estimate how stable our planet might be. Would our current civilisation survive a super volcano? Or similar reularly occuring environmental disaster?
I once half-finished a novel that went this way.
I stopped when I was told “this isn’t even remotely imaginable. This isn’t even suspending disbelief, it’s outright breaking it. Nobody is going to relate to accept the idea that we’re the smartest, oldest, wisest beings.”
Now I wish I’d kept going.
That is perhaps the darkest timeline.
Somebody has to be First, and as shitty as you seem to be proving our species to be today, it’s not obliged to remain so.
Keep your fingers crossed. Second most likely solution to the Fermi Paradox is the Dark Forest theory.
That or that we’re not past the Great Filter yet. Which isn’t necessarily the same thing as the Dark Forest, hopefully…
Third most likely. First most likely is, “There are plenty of them out there, but general broadcast radio is a waste of energy and goes away quickly when society figures that out and can’t be detected for more than a couple of light years anyway, so why did you think there’s no one out there again?”
Always suspect paperclip maximizers.
And the Spanish Inquisition!
And ninjas. You can never prove the absence of ninjas, only their direct presence.
Great, now I’m paranoid about ninja conquistadors trying to steal my paperclips.
https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1630124410/5050701723_a4c5f9769f_m_400x400.jpg
He just needed a hat, but I’m less concerned now. Our doom will be slow and adorable.
noice!
Don’t want to interrupt any of the flow in the above threads, but did want to take a moment to observe that the variety and depth of the spinoff tangents in response to a simple “there probably aren’t any aliens” are fantastic, and one of my favorite things about this community.
“…when we meet actual aliens, they might have a worker class that can barely follow basic instructions and a scientist class that make quantum computers look quaint…”
OTOH, like Niven and Pournelle’s “Moties” in The Mote in God’s Eye and The Gripping Hand, the aliens might have biologically specialized over millions of years into “classes” like (in the books) Engineer, Doctor, Farmer, Mediator, and be able to cross-breed these and more specializations as needed.
And before we were scavenge capitalists, we were pursuit predator apes with the gastrointestinal discernment of a dustbin, really good throwing arms, and the ability to pack-bond with ANYTHING.
I think humans should get poison (but not venom) resistance, endurance bonuses, a proclivity toward grenades, and a beast master perk that might backfire and result in us having a pet roomba with a knife taped to it.
Jokes on you! We were the ones who made the Roomba with the knife by tapping it on and teaching it how to fight with one… Then it got bored and reworked the lights to fry house intruders.
Because that’s how science works!
(later seen dragged into mental hospital by aliens as roomba swarm follows in pursuit. Nobody is sure if it is a quirk of programming or if they need more security)
Speaking of wat Dave said in the description:
Rpgs do place humans as the jack of all trades. And that’s… in a way the most reasonable way to aproach the “we need to diferenciate the other species/races” problem.
But I really do not think that Humas sould be generalistic or with a small + to all classes.
With a zoology standview, we humans are the berserkers that grew enough inteligence that leanerd the trait to use inteligence as their bonus atribute for all rolls. Let me explain.
Compared to basically all other live on earth, we are extreamly and widely resilient. Yes, a lot of secies do have more of some kind of resliency than us. But at the cost of being dwarf at allmost all of the rest. For our sice, our own long time excercise energy regeneration is bonkers. Our earliest way of hunting big prey was walking. We walk till they could not run. We walk till they fell asleap of exaustion just trying to outrun us. Wolf kinda could keep up the pace. So we breed them till they could. So we did with horses.
We can eat a variety of foods match only to some kinds of bears and boars. And we can take an amount of intoxicating food for fun that would make other species sick or even be killed. Yes, some animals are good against certain tipe of toxins. But with the rest, we are simple outmaching them. ¿Mint, chocolate, tobaco, capstacine? All potencially deadly for most animals.
We are the invasive species. And we did it with sear brute endurance. We conquered the most dangerous surface level ecosistems by simply being to stuborn to give up. ¿And wen something does not go our way? We punch it. ¿Still not? Punch it with a bigger stick. Then, we take the stick that works and standarice it till everyone can use it.
We. Are. Space Orks.
You also forgot about one of our unique traits.primarily when finding a species that eats or harm one of us we swarm them beating them senseless until future members of that species learns not to eat weird standing animals thing.
I think you may be overstating things.
Humans came to rule due to the unprecedented way we could coordinate and talk with each other on top of our long lives.
Not our physical might.
Because, physically, we’re very lacking compared to most other predators in every way except for stamina. Especially the big cats, some of which hunted humans specifically.
And then what happened? Hunting the biggest, baddest predator becomes a right of passage.
Ancient Egyptians found that too boring. You have to go INTO the Nile, and kill the croc THERE.
We were driving species to extinction before we were even human. Bigger, stronger species. To get mates.
Dude, for real?
https://www.pnas.org/content/113/40/11261#:~:text=Thirty%20species%20of%20invasive%20predator,%2C%20mammal%2C%20and%20reptile%20extinctions.
Driving other species into extinction or hunting things bigger than ourselves isn’t unique to humans. Not even remotely; dozens of predator species have done the same thing in the past.
I know Humanity-Fuck-Yeah is a popular genre, but at least take pride in things that are accurate to what we are actually exceptional at.
Yes, we may be physically lacking against almost all other predators, that’s why we use our brain-muscle to figure out ways to either neutralize their strength (set traps or hit them from a distance), or trick them into working for us (domesticating wolves until they can fit into our fucking purses!)
And we do like dakka.
Human have two traits that made us, period.
Imaginative, abstract thinking, and the ability to sweat properly.
The former is what made communication & planning, and the therefore transmitted knowledge, possible, and the latter is what enabled our preferred hunting strategy of “chasing it until it falls over,” possible.
Don’t forget opposable thumbs and fingers.
Smart as dolphins are, they’ve never been able to construct tools without them.
there is another addition to the theories of human success, one that also relates to an advantage over other hominids.
prolonged pregnancy and prolonged childhood. Allows for more development, care by the society.
just the longer lifespan in general is a hell of an advantage coupled with intelligence. Add the social system that once in a settled environment with plentiful resources allows for time to focus that intelligence and creativity into other goals.
there are a few species that either suffer from not having an extended development, or short life spans; that otherwise would be prime candidates to develop into more advanced tool users.
As I understand it, that’s considered something of a chicken-and-egg situation. Metabolically-expensive pregnancy and childhood are good for letting you develop and tune intelligence, but only when you’re already at a level of society that can support that type of long-term non-productive consumer. Before you get to that stage, they’re a liability at best.
So long as the liability isn’t quite enough to prevent the trait from being passed on, it’ll be preserved and further mutated over time.
Robert Heinlein once opined that the real key to the success of the human species is not our intelligence, but the fact that we’re so damned ornery.
He may have a point. A number of scholars have given credit to our ancestors’ success as “pursuit hunters”. Human have unusual stamina for a mammal and can continuously hunt something until it collapses from exhaustion.
We apply the same kind of tenacity to many other endeavors as well, including problem solving, and building things.
I agree with your analysis :D
I also imagine a situation where we finally get out into the universe and discover that we are the super strong indestructable monster compared to all the other races. Who look at the monsters that used to roam our planet and see that explains our monstrous ways!
Hmm IQs alien or human, mine happens to be 137. It’s an interesting topic regarding the science fiction realm. Let’s just say it’s a given that across all alien species there will be a a gamut ranging from morons to geniuses with all sorts of mental deficiencies/genetic defects ala autism, retardation, schizophrenia, Down’s syndrome, sociopathic tendency, etc. Let’s take vulcans for example. Are they all born perfect with no defects or variations from the “norm”? While not outright saying so, the Star Trek universe does provide examples of such. So digging into the culture, what would Vulcans do with those born with what they would consider mental or physical deficiencies? What would be the logical decision balanced against their pacific philosophy? How about Klingons? Pretty much think their solution would be along the lines of the Spartans. Same with Romulans. Betazoids? Probably along the lines of human culture. Other SF alien cultures: Feringi, Bothans, Mri, Wookies, Hani, Na’vi, minbari, etc. SF doesn’t really deal with this issue and I’d be hard pressed to come up with examples.
Well, not all Vulcans or Klingons follow the main path of their culture. Star Trek pretty much just shows the space-faring folks and those that associate with them, mainly politicians, because that’s where the drama is. No one wanted to watch an hour of Kirk chilling at a space-llama petting zoo with retired farmers and their grandkids.
Gordon Dickson’s Cletus Grahame said that philosophers were much more ruthless because of their adherence to theory. The Vulcans would have been bloody death dealers in culling emotion from their ranks. They likely became quite adept at altering genetic material to follow their desired emotionless norm. The hard to believe part is their stopping the deaths and genetic tinkering….enough to allow Sarek to marry a mongrel human that didn’t even have copper based blood cells.
A religion like Vulcan logicism ends up being its own stumbling block. In order to engage in logic, one must eliminate anger and violence. To kill is violence. Therefore, we must become scientists and pacifists and vegetarians. (Thus, killing all emotional people is anathema to the logical structure.)
If the logic succeeds in reaching critical mass, proto-Vulcans become Vulcans. If it fails, they become Romulans.
… Romulans and Vulcans WERE at single planet in past. Then Surak came with his teaching. The ones who rejected it, “those who march beneath the Raptor’s wings” left the planet after losing a nuclear war and becamed Romulans.
Why are humans always the “normal, average” race? Isn’t there anything that makes us quirky? Anything that makes us stand out?
Presumably because most PLAYERS are humans. We know what humans can do and are not all that impressed with our capabilities, so we imagine other species like elves, dwarves, orcs and so on MUST be better at doing at least some things than we are.
Because that’s what players are used to. So we’re using our own physical and mental range as a baseline against what fantasy races would be like.
“So imagine the average person … but stronger and dumber. With bad skin and teeth. And terrible table manners.”
You mean… the French?
Whut’re ye oan, man? ‘Tisnae the French ye’re talkin’ aboot, wi’ that sort o’ an attitude!
It’s they bluidy prop-forwards!
Look for The Deathworlders online. Originated from the HFY subreddit.
Also sometimes called the Jenkinsverse after the character in the original short story, but there a several canon stories by other authors.
Highly recommend the recommended reading order laid out in the wiki, and the main author’s site has ebook versions that are much more convenient than the Reddit format.
That is the nightmare. There are aliens, and they are even bigger idiots than we humans are. “No! Please stop helping. You are making things worse!”
There was a great novel called “Pandora’s Planet”, where the viewpoint character is in an alien empire that seems pretty dull in general encountered Humanity (who were more genius-level on average) and they let the humans out into a small section of their empire – hilarity ensues – until eventually they have to beat them back with overwhelming force.
spoilers avoided.
One of my older sci-fi story concepts was a race called the Cohora. They were a species that while sapient lacked complex abstract thought. They could determine patterns from experience, realize how to duplicate things, and through trial and error figure out how to make machinery. But they lacked imagination, no drive to innovate, no drive to make something they made up *how some human inventions are the result of making something up and then seeing if they can actually make it..see How Star Trek changed the world*,
they eventually became space faring, but their civilization hit a plateau, They also devastated their own ecosystems as their mind set was (something dangerous, destroy it), everything was either threat or food, they had no foresight and didn’t/couldn’t realize the error till it was too late.
they found humans and realized humans were outpacing them in a relatively short amount of time and seemingly making new inventions out of thin air. They wanted humans indebted to them *as they couldn’t understand the concept of alliances with other species* and launched a secret attack, assuming given their own history if they destroy the environment, then come in and save them, that this new species would be indebted to them and share their innovative thinking with them. It back fires as humans quickly figure out where the attacks came from…also supernaturals were in this setting who helped pin-point the cause…some of that sounds contradictive writing it out but…eh, it was such an old story and so bad I didn’t bother to back it up in multiple online location; I think the only surviving copy is on a floppy disc in a closet somewhere.
but the concept is still there, slight differences in thought processes can make a species seem smarter or dumber but only from a certain perspective. Simply lacking the comprehension to think far enough ahead, or imagination, or an exploration drive, ect…can hinder a species.
a more recent example is a species I made called “Living Tongues” a species that developed a sapient mind by pure random mutation and not as an environmental pressure. They had no physical means to manipulate anything in their environment, and there was nothing really in their underground cave environments to manipulate really. These soft body species were emotional but humans on first contact mistook them for animals…and treated them as a food source until another alien encounter shared psionic sapience detection technology and they learned they had been the big evil invading and eating the locals aliens to this species.
It’s funny to see your note posted in the comments.
I meant name.
If humans met an alien species with a separation between classes like described then most likely we would simply divide them by class and treat each as if they were completely separate when we came up with our stereotypes. The only thing that will really throw us is if the aliens are realistic and have as many distinct cultures as humanity.
What, you mean the Star Trek assumption of 1 or maybe 2 cultures per single-biome planet could be wrong? Naaah.
I have to say… assuming those two are a lizardfolk and a demon is… not an unreasonable assumption. Cora is an alien who is also human. Hell, it reminds me of City of Heroes, where every character had an archetype, a couple of power sets… and an origin. Because you could be a fire control/kinetics controller who was a mutant… or a fire controller who does it via magic incantations… or a science origin fire controller who was a whiz at chemistry… or a technology origin hero with a device that can transfer kinetic and heat energies around… or even a natural origin hero who does it because they’re an ifrit or something.
So the two are clearly not human. That doesn’t mean they’re automatically aliens, not when there are also demons and lizard people (AND they’re mostly concealed by a magical conspiracy, so that too is factually accurate).
And the Bard who just goes around singing “Me soul on fire feeling hot hot hot.”
Not one but TWO crazy nutjob people are confirming their pet theory exists with incorrect targets and they are 100% going to post those pictures online. T minus ten seconds to Maxima being informed.
In a world in which Vampires ,Demons ,intelligent lizards and aliens are protected from observation by a globe girdling veil….. Those who invest belief in conspiracy theories and cryptids are still marked as sub par in intelligence. Could this be the operation of the veil?
I can only say two things: [1] the “sub par” intelligence is only really earned in that they think the cryptids and lizard folks are in control of / toying with / farming humans, which is not how I interpreted the Twilight Council – despite their individual power (from supernatural to economic to political), they’re more or less just living their own lives (though they will feed on a human or whatnot now and then, they try to keep it ethical by-and-large) and [2] I’m wondering why the veil isn’t concealing our two alien characters here…
If I remember correctly, the Veil generally runs on a write-in basis rather than an automatic ‘something strange’ filter. Come to visit Earth through regular channels, register yourself with the Veil admins, and they can tell it (for want of a better phrasing) that the being fitting your description should be edited in the eye of the beholder. Skip that registration, and it won’t hide what it doesn’t know needs hiding.
There’s a finite amount of intelligence in the universe and it’s distributed amongst living beings, so the more living beings, the smaller the share of intelligence becomes per being, which explains why humans were able to make so much progress before we reached 1 billion in population, and why we now get upbunched panty-wise over plastic potatoes and celluloid skunks.
The theory doesn’t match the facts. The rate of technological progress has increased with the population, to the point where most humans are not intelligent enough to keep up with the rate of change. Thinking that you are up on technology and science makes other people appear unintelligent. Nonetheless, they are smart enough to keep your car running and your toilet flushing, and you are not.
Nonetheless, a small subset of the population has focused on nonsense that they believe gives them a potential social edge, and have convinced a larger subset to let them promote their nonsense.
Perhaps Stupid and Smart are extradimensional beings using Earth as a playing field.
It’s hard to tell whether Stupid or Smart are ahead.
The commentary once again reminded me of the meme about vulcans and klingons talking about the insane crap that humans do. https://www.tor.com/2016/10/17/the-answer-to-why-humans-are-so-central-in-star-trek/
Love that thread, thanks for reminding me of it.
In reality QAnon is nothing more than a group of college kids at Stanford University trying to see how many gullible fools they can sucker into believing the most outrageous crackpot theories they can invent. When people like Trump, Greene, Jones and Limbaugh repeat and spread their fabrications they go all ROTFL and high five each other and break open another keg to celebrate.
Exactly. But add in the Russian and Chinese teams, who see it as a perfect way to destabilise USAian right wing politics. Simply exaggerate the things which motivate Republicans and add paranoia. Abracadabra! QAnon, Trump, Capitol invasion … Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi pay bonuses to their staff.
And the college kids join the fun, like they always do, without caring for the con sequences.
Cool. Now do all the nutty paranoias the Left has lost its mind over! There’s a ton of it, and a giant portion of it currently under the “Woke” umbrella.
When your goal is to cause chaos, either for the lolz or for geopolitics … it doesn’t really matter whether you’re infecting left, right or nowhere.
Ideally you’d infect them all.
And the evidence shows …?
True trolls are pragmatic centrists.
No need to layer conspiracy theories on top of each other.
We don’t know enough about the origins or the initial spread of the conspiracy theory to tell who started it, where, or if they were being serious.
Blaming vague “college kids” and entire other nations is just silly.
I’m reminded of the Tau from Warhammer40k. They incorporate alien species into their ranks based on what that species is good at, and their main species is composed of five castes which are eugenically selected for aptitude in certain areas – the fire caste have genetic traits which make them good soldiers, the air caste are good pilots, etc. If one of us was living in the Tau Empire, we might be uncomfortable at all the communism and racial stereotyping, but to be fair EACH of the empires in 40k are arguably worse to live in.
*heresy detected*
The Tau trying to include the Orks into their greater good could make a funny story.
I mean…Imperial Orks (sort of) exist, so…maybe?
Even with GreenSkins, variation exists, and leaves room for change… “Torks” could come into being. Picture well-meaning tankies, trying to learn incorporate identity issues into their “reasons to roll in the mechanized units & infantry”.
“Why’s we takin’ a stupid dam, huh?”
“Food gits needs water for dem farms.”
“Oh, yeah…hey…what if we’s just blow it up, maybe?”
“…food gits _does_ needs water for dem farms…”
*enthusiastic rocket noises*
Garamm seems to be the smartest one here. ” We are Firmly in the live to fight another day category” id be quickly rounding up the crew and making my exit at this point.
And she’s still trying to figure out how to recoup the losses incurred. Shield destroyed, stasis gun stolen, stasis pod confiscated, transportation costs, etc…
Apparently, neither one has remembered that their way ONTO the planet was Ray Cosmos’ ship, and that way OFF is not available.
Presumably they had arranged for alternate means off. There was no guarantee Ray would take off after their public grabbing of Maxima, or of the attention it would put on him.
And with Cora and Dabbler visibly beside her and helping? Yeah, no. That ups the risk.
IQ is a marker that has been going down since the start of the 21st century, that is the nasty part.
yep 1990 adulthood was the peak, how scary is that when the Internet also showed up?
/as for conspiracy theories and their creation, take an anecdote (or 3) and make it into an outrageous statistic, there you go approx 6% of people (the same number as currently mentally ill BTW) will believe you.
PROOF just read Pakistani conspiracy theories or Malaysian, people routinely believe conflicting stories about their “faith”.
hold up – does one have to subscribe to or otherwise be initiated into concealment by the Veil? or is it broken? Why can these humans see these aliens as anything but other humans?
They have to be written specifically into the veil, yes.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-458-the-super-enigma/
Supers got ‘generic’d’ in because some of their abilities overlapped supernatural abilities, but it wasn’t perfect, so supers became locally, not globally, known… until things like world-wide news reports became easy.
“our loss to the humans of this planet”
oddly specific.
does she go around to different planets with humans on, to lose to them?
She’s emphasizing WHAT she lost to.
They ARE mercenaries, and there ARE humans in outer space… so, yes?
Dave you should do some research about IQ. By definition there can’t be anyone with 250 or higher with the current population.
My issue with Hi-Q scores is those who are putting together the questions. I score pretty high; but, when I’ve had the chance to revisit the ‘wrong’ answers, I’ve found that their explanations didn’t satisfy me. I’ve liked my own pattern recognition over theirs.
If you can describe a pattern that matches, then it is a correct answer. It doesn’t matter if another pattern also matches.
Who’s definition? And based on what logic? Consider some very smart person, with a penchant for staying under the radar. Do you really think this person will loudly trumpet his or her 300+++ IQ? Sure, many of these people wiil have long-term secure employment in high-achievement fields, but being in a crowd of high-achievers is a well-known and successful concealment strategy. And I’ve wondered about several people in my own construction-related employment… Just a little too well-educated, yes?
I am seeing some foreshadowing here.
keeping in mind the Veil, the supernaturals while diverse have known each other for thousands of years so each species is protected/glammored over by the veil. Some alien species that frequently visit Earth might have, but also needed their own disguise tech and abilities as the veil can’t just cover “alien to Earth” as a universal. Supers likewise were only partially covered because they were still human and their powers were random.
This goes back to a comment I made when the aliens first showed up, some looked like some supernaturals, cyclops, orc/troll, demons, lizardfolk, ect…
the actual local versions are in the veil, the aliens are not, but like how supers exited the hold, what if seeing aliens that fit the same physical descriptions loosens the hold of the veil over those species, werewolf because of Woofs, lizardfolk and dragonkin because of reptilian aliens, insectoid, trolls, ect…
especially if you get people like this who see the alien and then conclude 100% mentally that they are seeing the supernatural equivalent, so unless another spell or tech is used the veil alone won’t cover it and they will be broken free from its influence and at least see those species. Much like implied that monster hunters have to some degree broken free of the veil’s influence and unless someone uses something extra will see their true forms.
in short: with so many aliens showing up, and humans with their various beliefs and expectations, and sharing these ideas and pictures with each other, convincing each other, may end up destabalizing the veil as they argue over if what they are seeing is an alien, supernatural, or super.
for instance, is that a
A: Plant like alien
B: Plant like supernatural (Dryad, Alraune, Treefolk, ect…)
C: A super with floramorphic powers.
They go online, share the same videos, and argue what they are and believe all the above in one group or another.
*seriously we see this in real life, I have seen the exact same footage show up in YouTuBe compilations as “proof of alien”, “proof of super humans”, “proof of angels”, “proof of demons”, “proof of real magic”, because different people looking at the same thing come to different conclusions based on their own bias.
With regards to todays’s author comment: I think the idea of humans being the “normal guys” with no bonus is just anthropocentric.
Check out the “Deathworlder” series: Among all the species in the galaxy, humans turn out to be the super-sapients, coming from a so-called Deathworld that has an environment just too dangerous and competitive for any sapient species to survive in. In that series, basically any human is considered a death machine, even when it is possible to disable all the horrible plague microbes we are living with. The only real disadvantage we have is our fragile nervous system, and the fact that we don’t have antigrav and FTL tech. The galaxy outside of Earth is full of weaklings almost unfit to live by our standards!
funny enough its not an unrealistic viewpoint.
we have seen from exoplanets that could be life bearing that most seem to be a bit bigger than Earth this could lead to much smaller body types overall. Take into account no certainty that the chordate structural support system is often repeated in space *so soft bodies may be more common or exoskeletons, fluid filled support bladders, air bladders, cell walls, ect…*, then we have the bran vs body ratio where the available energy is spent either developing a high intelligence or a strong body, so it is theorized most clever species tend to be on the small size.
the idea being here that if we find like out there most of it might just be on the small side of things (which Earth life was at first too, and most life still is), and the intelligent ones especially could be tiny.
imagine going out into space, finding alien space ships and civilizations and the actual aliens are like one to three feet tall on average, like little octopus blobs, parrot like creatures, and stuff that probably would look more like a muppet than one might imagine an alien looking. So humans are the giant freaks and Earth a world of giant monstrous creatures.
“So humans are the giant freaks and Earth is a world of giant monstrous creatures.”. Except weaker than the little guys.
Not weaker,
*pound for pound maybe, same as with how rabbits, frogs, and what not are stronger for their size than larger animals (or how much you have to fight to catch a fish) because of the interactions between weight and mass on biological systems*
you’d still be stronger than all the one foot tall globs, but they are also going around lifting half their own weight, and whatnot *when entering a lower gravity like Earth* but its still a one pound life form lifting half a pound of weight. if they were also already aquatic with the greater buoyancy it might even, even out.
That makes no sense though.
At the technological level of “FTL flight and grav guns” physical advantages are irrelevant. We wouldn’t be seen as death machines, but as a back-water planet that can’t guard against orbital bombardment and get shredded in personal combat by aliens in power armor with plasma guns.
I haven’t read Deathworlder though, so feel free to correct me.
The original Deathworlders short story explains all that quite nicely – quick and fun read, give it a try.
In short though, humans in the Jenkinsverse are very OP compared to the rest of the galaxy, primarily due to our high gravity and hostile biological environment which are both vanishingly rare among the galaxy. So rare in fact, other species expect unexplorable worlds like ours to also be uninhabitable (hence ‘death worlds’). Other space-faring species that evolved on gentler, lighter worlds are therefore quite fragile by our standards, and their weapons while quite lethal by their standards fall short of human-level force. At least until humans came along and started tanking their ‘heavy’ weaponry, then things started ramping up.
The main gap in the basic premise is of course the (perceived) rarity of deathworlds, but there’s a quite plausible in-universe explanation for that as well (which is one of the plot hooks for the longer storyline).
One of the premises of the DW series is that the local ‘Federation’ didn’t want to commit genocide, so they encased the Solar System in an impenetrable shield that not even they could deactivate, and was powered by our Sun, so they thought Humanity in general (save for a few Humans who were already out-system, but in no position to really cause trouble) was contained.