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[Areyar]

Stricktly speaking plassmids are circular code, still the data encoded has a start, end and usually directionality. (though can have code in both directions)

non-linear code would have to take the form of a grid or matrix.
I can't imagine how that would be decoded or translated...probably on more than one place at a time.
 

[x2yzh9]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_581_c
And
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_581_d
How far? ONLY 20 LY, and then.. TWO OF THEM IN THE SAME FUCKING SYSTEM?
Welp.
Yep, looks like we've wrangled 2 exoplanets, in the same system, in the habitable zone, that can support water, and as such, LIFE
OH YEAH.

[Savok]

E.T. phone mountainhome.

Oh no... this isn't good.

That sentence sounded perfectly normal to me.

Then I realized that we have homes, not mountainhomes.

[bjlong]

The problem is communicating "verbally" with non-linear language, I think. The only thing I can see is either a two-voice sort of thing, or a sign language with lots of limbs/fingers/tentacles/whatever. Both sound clunky to me--linearity has the distinct advantage of only needing time and something relatively simple to manipulate.

Also, didn't we get huge gains from tracking alone when we started getting larger brains? And as for fighting w/o tools, let me point you to the UFC--we don't suck at it that much. If you've got a few seconds, you can find something sharp--hey, now we're knife fighting! And if you can find a stick, some string and a few more seconds, then you can make a spear. With a bit of tactics and a cool head, a group of humans can make it through quite a lot.

[Karnewarrior]

Holy crap! this is on bay 12 forums? what happened to all the magma?

[0_0 OH MY SCIENCE 0_0]

[Idiom]

Quick question:
I swear I recall hearing that intelligent life (about on par with human intelligence or better) was/is evolutionarily unfavorable? If this is the case, it would mean we've better odds of running into artificially developed intelligences I think a la messenger theory/cheap colonization machines.

[TheNewerMartianEmperor]

Evolution is situational, and thus we have no idea how often intelligence of human level would arise. It would probably be pretty rare, though.

[Idiom]

Evolution is situational, and thus we have no idea how often intelligence of human level would arise. It would probably be pretty rare, though.

Out of the billions of years and species we know of, it looks like only one actually achieved it, and we dodged extinction several times. Really rare.

Why is everyone so excited to find extraterrestrial life? It'll just be something akin to fungus or plants at best. And then it would be a biological hazard, all sorts of microorganisms we've never been exposed to. In fact, if we find a life supporting planet (there's a good chance to be at least microorganisms there from at least meteorites), I think it would be safest to just gas the sucker and then settle in once it's just us, and then what was the point of that alien life anyway? We can't colonize life supporting planets with life, we'd have to terraform the bare ones.

Stupid science FICTION where not only do aliens use the same senses and means of communication or thought as we do, but microbes might as well not exist in it. Guess what movie I saw recently.

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

Oh well.
Somebody want to make a von-Neumann terraforming machines, then?

[Ampersand]

Evolution is situational, and thus we have no idea how often intelligence of human level would arise. It would probably be pretty rare, though.

Out of the billions of years and species we know of, it looks like only one actually achieved it, and we dodged extinction several times. Really rare.

Well, I wouldn't say only one achieved intelligence. If we include Homo neanderthalensis, Homo erectus, Homo sapiens idaltu, and Homo heidelbergensis as species that can be said to have been intelligent (sapiens idaltu almost certainly was), then sure, we're the only species on Earth with intelligence that remains, but not the only ones to have achieved intelligence.

You may say, that's cheating, they are our distant relatives. So? They are all different species. I feel all that held them back from being in our shoes is knowledge of agriculture.

[0_0 OH MY SCIENCE 0_0]