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[Il Palazzo]

Explanation is not a model in the same way a guess is not a theory.

[Max™]

Using theory of mind to infer the state of another mind and produce a cognitive or mental model of that other mind in an attempt to understand or predict their behavior is not such an outlandish concept, is it?

Yes, I feel dirty using terms like "theory" and "model" like this, but these are the words used for this sort of thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_model
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind

Extending that back to the original discussion, producing said sort of model for a more powerful mind is not a simple task, especially in comparison to something like understanding the mental state of a cat or dog, even understanding the mind of other people is easier than trying to understand a mind which is capable of performing/doing/etc [insert your choice of mental quality here] better than we are.

[Starver]

The big problem is that we are trying to infer a hypothetical mental acuity that is beyond our very comprehension. Which, by its very nature, we cannot hope to comprehend.

The best we can do is come up with possible stories about such things, but they're mostly either extrapolations of 'standard' abilities or wish-fulfilments with no obvious reason to believe that their non-fictional counterparts could exist.

Also, is somewhat anthropocentric, given that while we may have complex language that makes us 'superior' to cats, a cat may possess any number of mental processes that exceed anything we have that fits the same purpose.  Even more so, as we go further away on the tree of life to yet more inscrutible animals with perceptions and survial mechanisms th at differ so much from those we have ourselves.

[Max™]

Well, we've also got stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_%28The_Culture%29

[TempAcc]

Kinda off topic, but cats aren't exactly the best example of a ~smart~ animal. While as individual hunters they're pretty decent (its essentialy all they've evolved to be good at), they kinda suck at anything cooperation wise. Their social kills are pretty crap and most cats outside of the realm of lions are pretty shit at cooperation, and even lions themselves are kinda shitty in that aspect (hyenas are way more coordinated and have far more complex social structures, for example).

Anyway, there are things in nature like octopi, which are smart, but not in a way that we can accurately gauge, because they're smart in a way thats incredibly alien to us. They have an amazing nervous system and can perceive and process info in ways we cannot even begin to imagine. If they didn't have such short lifespans and didn't suck so much at cooperation, they'd prob have tribal societies and stuff going on since they've shown some potential regarding abstract thought and can actualy use tools they just found in multiple ways.

The problem with creating even a model of something actualy more intelligent than we are, even in a very ~human~ way, is that its essentialy very hard to actualy grasp something we have no example of. Its not something we can observe in nature and use to come up with conclusions. The best we can do is observe ourselves and then try to notice what is better than us, then try to piece those instances in a model that we can only hope is somewhat realistic in regards to how a ~superior human-type intelligence~ would be like. Its essentialy stumbling in the dark while trying to put together a better, superior version of a work of art you saw before using tiny pieces of the original art.

[Egan_BW]

Even if you could predict how a superior human-like intelligence would act, that's likely a model of only one of many different intelligences that could be described as "superior human-like".

[Max™]

^That is a fertile region of sci-fi actually.

[TempAcc]

The state of our works of fiction in regards to non human inteligence is pretty indicative of how hard it is to come up with a concept for a non human advanced sentient being.
The problem is that is never actualy properly explored (outside of books, at least, and even then its left mostly vague and at the mercy of the reader's imagination, which almost aways anthromorphises it) because non anthropomorphised aliens almost never make it the screens. Hello avatar :v
Hell even lovecraft failed to escape the anthromorphisation curse due to nyarlatothep, and cthulhu is just a demon human thing with a squid face.

I mean, can anyone even think of a popular movie with actualy interesting non human-eske aliens in it?

[Starver]

Kinda off topic, but cats aren't exactly the best example of a ~smart~ animal. [...]

Anyway, there are things in nature like octopi, which are smart, but not in a way that we can accurately gauge, because they're smart in a way thats incredibly alien to us.

I had been much tempted to say something like "forget about puss, think octopus", for pretty much the reasons you give, but for that moment I had an attack of "is that too cheesy"ness. I shoulda said it anyway, despite someone having fixated us on the feline strand... 

Not movies (yet! ...if ever), but Heaven (in particular) and in some ways also Wheelers by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart (the Science Of Discworld guys) has such a treatment.  Heaven features a pantheon of 'aliens' (to each other), inclusive of space-faring neanderthaals.


And, while I'm adding...  That solar plane has just completed its fuel-free global circumnavigation.

[Frumple]

Or rather, it's fairly easy but usually not particularly pleasing to read, for a human. Odd logical patterns are easy. Ones that don't lead the reader to howl murderous invective about idiot balls or whatev' is the problem :V

[Egan_BW]

I think that in this regard it might be useful to look to nature. Odd logic is a thing, but you probably want to explain why that logic arose, from an evolutionary standpoint.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

One interesting concept I've heard of is that there is a typical convergent standard for life in the universe...and we're not it. Humanity are the weird aliens to everybody else's rubber-forehead neighbors.

The main reason for this is that Earth is about as high-gravity as a planet gets before conventional rocketry becomes futile. Not only that, but Earth is immensely massive for its volume due to the iron core. And life from lower gravity worlds probably has an easier time adapting to microgravity, while we need to make everything centrifugal in order to not just wear down and die.

It certainly does appear true that worlds with Earth's physical properties, whether barren or lifebearing, are rare beyond measure. We've been looking for a while and haven't even found one. The closest ones are seriously more like Neptune or the moons of gas giants than Earth.

[Egan_BW]

One interesting concept I've heard of is that there is a typical convergent standard for life in the universe...and we're not it. Humanity are the weird aliens to everybody else's rubber-forehead neighbors.

The main reason for this is that Earth is about as high-gravity as a planet gets before conventional rocketry becomes futile. Not only that, but Earth is immensely massive for its volume due to the iron core. And life from lower gravity worlds probably has an easier time adapting to microgravity, while we need to make everything centrifugal in order to not just wear down and die.

It certainly does appear true that worlds with Earth's physical properties, whether barren or lifebearing, are rare beyond measure. We've been looking for a while and haven't even found one. The closest ones are seriously more like Neptune or the moons of gas giants than Earth.

Would be neat to have a story like that where you only introduce humans near the end, after the audience gets a chance to get used to the new normal. Then suddenly there are humans and everyone's like "whoa those things are weird."

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The thing is, Super-Earth is matched with another term: Mini-Neptune.

Somewhere between these two values a planet starts to resemble a gas giant more than a terrestrial planet. Where? Nobody knows. There may not even be a clear demarcation, though it seems silly to say that just ramping up the atmosphere forever would take you from something like Earth, to something like Jupiter, to eventually something like the Sun. After all, the Sun has no solid terrestrial core (probably), so can we be sure a gas giant does too?

If things in the universe are super crazy, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that terrestrial planets become the smallest gas giants with only, say, 1.5 Earth masses. With what we know that's unlikely, but anywhere between 1 and 30 Earth masses could be the limit, and it can't be fully ruled out.

[Max™]

Well, the Xeelee Sequence is full of ridiculously different minds. From the moment you learn why nobody has actually seen a little Xeelee in a little space suit, to little things like the Silver Ghosts, who are actually close enough for us to engage with, but so alien that the term for the member of their species which interacts with other species is "Sink Ambassador", because space is just a heat sink to a race from a planet with a dying star.

Then there's the Qax, which is like how we build logic circuits with minecarts, except the minecarts are bubbles above a near-boiling mudflat, and the logic circuit is self-aware.

Then you get the Culture Minds which are so powerful that their POV character is generally just an avatar that they're delegating tasks/interactions to, and said avatar is still generally smarter, faster, and so forth than a human, which representing just a portion of the full awareness of a given Mind.

There are lots of ways that you can conceive of which would fit the label "superhuman" along the intellect/insight/memory/problem-solving/etc axes. Understanding what it would be like to actually be out there at the far end of that brainpower scale is a far more difficult question, but it's one we have to deal with if strong AI turns out to be a viable route in the near future.

For reference:

*Weak AI: capable of simulating a mind, emulating responses of a mind, and do anything short of actually being self-aware and intelligent.

*Strong AI: capable of actually being a mind, responding as a mind would, and exhibiting full self-awareness.

Those aren't hard and fast definitions, and I'm totally open to different ones, it's just a general example of what I mean when I use those terms right this minute.

Would be neat to have a story like that where you only introduce humans near the end, after the audience gets a chance to get used to the new normal. Then suddenly there are humans and everyone's like "whoa those things are weird."

I have read a couple of different stories like that but can't think of one off the top of my head.