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Race Class Combos, Design, Roleplaying and the fear of the new
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<blockquote data-quote="TheCosmicKid" data-source="post: 7252983" data-attributes="member: 6683613"><p>Without disagreeing with any biological or sociobiological claim you've made (except for the bit about gods)... simply needing food and resources, and living in communities, do not make a thing "far closer to humans than not". No, they're not going to just randomly kill people or do totally bizarre and inexplicable things. Yes, with patience and observation we can probably understand the basic reasons for why they do some of the things they do, as we can with terrestrial nonhuman animals. But even with terrestrial animals, there are a lot of behaviors that experts don't fully understand and might never be able to understand. And sentient aliens are going to have minds vastly more complex than those of the terrestrial animals we know.</p><p></p><p>Also, they're vanishingly unlikely to have a roughly human build. Humans have a <em>really</em> weird build, biologically speaking.</p><p></p><p>All of which is going to say that when we look at a setting and see beings who do have a roughly human build, and do high-level human-specific things like make music and ponder religion and fall in love, it's a good sign that we're dealing with beings who are, for all intents and purposes except nomenclature, human.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="TheCosmicKid, post: 7252983, member: 6683613"] Without disagreeing with any biological or sociobiological claim you've made (except for the bit about gods)... simply needing food and resources, and living in communities, do not make a thing "far closer to humans than not". No, they're not going to just randomly kill people or do totally bizarre and inexplicable things. Yes, with patience and observation we can probably understand the basic reasons for why they do some of the things they do, as we can with terrestrial nonhuman animals. But even with terrestrial animals, there are a lot of behaviors that experts don't fully understand and might never be able to understand. And sentient aliens are going to have minds vastly more complex than those of the terrestrial animals we know. Also, they're vanishingly unlikely to have a roughly human build. Humans have a [I]really[/I] weird build, biologically speaking. All of which is going to say that when we look at a setting and see beings who do have a roughly human build, and do high-level human-specific things like make music and ponder religion and fall in love, it's a good sign that we're dealing with beings who are, for all intents and purposes except nomenclature, human. [/QUOTE]
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