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Forum URL: http://www.eyrie-productions.com/Forum/dcboard.cgi
Forum Name: Undocumented Features General
Topic ID: 161
Message ID: 18
#18, RE: Acceptance of the Notion of Artificial Sentiance
Posted by Laudre on Oct-20-01 at 06:15 PM
In response to message #15
LAST EDITED ON Oct-20-01 AT 06:16 PM (EDT)

>Earthlike planets produce Earthlike inhabitants. It may fly in the
>face of some arcane law of genetics, but it's a lot more logical on a
>horse-sense level.

Maybe on the surface, but the only Earth species that look remotely like us are very close genetic relatives, and they look more different from us than J. Random Star Trek Alien. At least SW makes the concession that alien beings from alien worlds tend to look a lot different, and aren't interfertile. (There's no explanation given for why humans are so common, but I've always figured that it was because humans are actually only native to Corellia in the SW, and since Corellians created the first working hyperdrive, they started lots of colonies before anyone else did.)

And even parallel or convergent evolution utterly fails to explain interfertility. If they're not the same species, then they're not interfertile; that's part of the whole definition of "species" to begin with. Maybe the same genus, but even then, that kind of union is unlikely to produce fertile offspring.

Earth only barely produced us; we've been present for an eyeblink of history on the geological level, or even the history of the planet. No reason to say that an Earthlike planet would necessarily even produce intelligent primates.

-- Sean --

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