How did Trek Become Such a Phenomenon?

[Kaodi]

Yeah, I think that as long as the content of the communication is intelligible to us, figuring out how to give rough translation is inevitable, no matter how different their physical process of thought and "speech" is.

 

[Janx]

Yeah, I think that as long as the content of the communication is intelligible to us, figuring out how to give rough translation is inevitable, no matter how different their physical process of thought and "speech" is.

I suspect that if the alien is corporeal, able to percieve our reality then we probably have some things in common and can muddle our way through figuring out names and identifying some basic objects. I'm certainly betting that once we misunderstand them and start a war with them, their "alien" mindset will not be so different that we can't fathom their strategy or they'll get themselves annihilated when they employ their unstoppable rear firing pillow cannons while waddling higgledy piggledy towards our moon, because they're mindset is so different they're morons with bad battle strategy.

 

[Remus Lupin]

This last exchange reminds me of Thomas Nagel's philosophical essay "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"

Here's an excerpt:

If anyone is inclined to deny that we can believe in the existence of facts like this whose exact nature we cannot possibly conceive, he should reflect that in contemplating the bats we are in much the same position that intelligent bats or Martians7 would occupy if they tried to form a conception of what it was like to be us. The structure of their own minds might make it impossible for them to succeed, but we know they would be wrong to conclude that there is not anything precise that it is like to be us: that only certain general types of mental state could be ascribed to us (perhaps perception and appetite would be concepts common to us both; perhaps not). We know they would be wrong to draw such a skeptical conclusion because we know what it is like to be us. And we know that while it includes an enormous amount of variation and complexity, and while we do not possess the vocabulary to describe it adequately, its subjective character is highly specific, and in some respects describable in terms that can be understood only by creatures like us. The fact that we cannot expect ever to accommodate in our language a detailed description of Martian or bat phenomenology should not lead us to dismiss as meaningless the claim that bats and Martians have experiences fully comparable in richness of detail to our own. It would be fine if someone were to develop concepts and a theory that enabled us to think about those things; but such an understanding may be permanently denied to us by the limits of our nature. And to deny the reality or logical significance of what we can never describe or understand is the crudest form of cognitive dissonance.

 

[Janx]

This last exchange reminds me of Thomas Nagel's philosophical essay "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"

Well, I'm sure we can't fully fathom what it is to be a bat or a martian. But by that same token, I can't fully fathom what it is to be you. I'm not percieving the world from your containment vessel.

However, where the rubber meets the road is how mindset truly exhibits itself. In a game of kill or be killed, there's only so many ways for the Gorn's mindset to interact with the environment. Does he use stealth or direct attack? Does he use the rock, or make gun powder out of the local elements.

A corporeal critter is going to approach the game of chess in a finite number of ways because the pieces only work a certain way (the rules of the game = the laws of reality). Once observed, the playing style can be deduced, regardless of whether we can actually know their inner mindset.

 

[Remus Lupin]

Nagel makes that point as well, about not really being able to inhabit another human beings subjective consciousness. It's that capacity to impute the possibility of consciousness to another being that allows us to imagine what it's like to be that kind of creature, and as relates to this discussion, allows for the possibility of communication.

 

[Kaodi]

Oh, Thomas Nagel. Shame that he has kind of gone to crazy town in the last few years. I really appreciated his paper on what is acceptable to do to your enemies in war.

 

[Remus Lupin]

Well, I suspect that any discussion of what it might mean to say he's gone to crazy town would violate the Eric's Grandma rule (PM me if you'd like), but this article is very fine.

 

[Umbran]

A corporeal critter is going to approach the game of chess in a finite number of ways because the pieces only work a certain way (the rules of the game = the laws of reality). Once observed, the playing style can be deduced, regardless of whether we can actually know their inner mindset.

Moreover, "grokking in fullness" is not required for communication. I don't need to be able to understand the entirety of what it is like to be a martian to be able to ask where the bathroom is, and get a useful answer.

 

[Janx]

Moreover, "grokking in fullness" is not required for communication. I don't need to be able to understand the entirety of what it is like to be a martian to be able to ask where the bathroom is, and get a useful answer.

That too.

I just can't see an alien with an alien mindset that values triangles so he plays Chess to make triangle shapes on the board. His favorite piece is the Knight (because its movement forms a triangle). He's going to get his butt handed to him when he faces anybody who knows what he's doing because the point of chess is to kill the enemy king, not make triangles.

As such, any alien race that has a mindset that values stupid things over doing the smart thing is an alien race that won't survive the natural predators on its planet, let alone getting off-world and making contact with other species.

Now somebody can chime in with some hippy "all alien cultures should be respected as they are", but that won't save the triangle-loving pseudo-pod people from the tri-legged Eatasaurus Rexes that keep eating them while they form their ritual Dance of the 3 Lines every day.

Just as some science dude insisted that no species would make it to space if they were hyper-warlike, no species that is absolutely lacking in tactics or common sense is going to be able to put 2 sticks together to eventually make a rocket ship either.

So super weird unimaginable alien mindsets may be possible, but it is not probable that they will make it to the StarFleet era of space exploration. The environment shapes mindset, and at some point adversity comes in the same recurring themes, of which only so many viable solutions are likely.

 

[Remus Lupin]

Hm. I'm not sure. What if at the end of the game you say: "Well, I won, because I took your King," while the alien says, "No, I won, because I clearly made more triangles than you. I don't even know why you messed with those little guys in the front rank, do you know how hard it is to make a triangle with them?