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[Sean Mirrsen]

Both greys and elves have crossed my mind, actually. Greys are the more probable target, except for our planet's humans, the skin wouldn't be all that grey. Elves...  snobby, self-centered, nature-loving, cannibalistic... yep, fit like a glove.

Spoiler: Unfitting physics ramble (click to show/hide)

I actually had this idea once that time as we know it is not the actual time the universe - or even this galaxy - has been through. If time slows down with increasing speed, then we are travelling at about 99.99% of the actual universe's time flow, due to orbiting the Sun and the Center of the Galaxy. Considering the roughly four billion years since the galaxy was created... if our 0.000C speed gave us 99.9999% of the galaxy's own timeflow, we'd be roughly four thousand years behind any intelligent species located closer to the galaxy core, and that's not taking the whole "almost blown up halfway through evolution" thing Earth has experienced.

So, the whole concept of "Very Advanced Alien Species" might not be that far-fetched.

[DreamThorn]

Response to physics derail:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

One thing to remember about relativistic time dilation is that it works with relative velocity and also acceleration and space-time curvature.

If we and the center of the galaxy were moving in straight lines relative to each other, we would see them advancing slower than us, but they would also see us advancing slower than them.  If we then flew to them (at whatever velocity) our acceleration would slow down our time-flow and then we would reach them at an un-dilated time, so, if you took the flight time into account, and if we progress just as easily as them, you would find them at our advancement level.

But, in reality, we are not even moving in straight lines relative to each other, but are in fact going in circles around each other, so the only difference in advancement that we would see would be due to the lag caused by the speed of light.

Of course, if they started earlier than us, chances are they started millions of years before us and could thus be incomprehensibly advanced.

The question then becomes why we haven't spotted their effect on the galaxy.  It might merely be that there is no purpose to such large scale actions, or that they are so alien and so ancient that we do not recognize their works.  We just assume that these things are natural.

You might want to check out the twins "paradox".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twins_paradox

Also, how do you that thing that the spoiler shows a short description?

Edit: Added a link to a wikipedia article.

[Aqizzar]

Considering Toady is a doctor of mathematics, I wonder if he's seen this F(creature) math discussion yet.

I'll bet he's laughing too hard to respond.  Laughing with satisfaction that is.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Spoiler: Physics derail continued (click to show/hide)

So you're saying that the premise of an astronaut lightspeed-travelling somewhere like Alpha Centauri and back in eight Earth years, and remaining his age when everyone else got older, is wrong? Because I think I even recall an experiment with a fast-travelling satellite or something, that had its clock desynch from an identical clock on earth due to time dilation.

Ninja edit - yes, that's the one I thought about with the astronaut. And it links to the other thing I thought about.

I think all this means is that the premise isn't fundamentally wrong. The outside and the inside of the galaxy had to have different forces acting on them, to put them where they are. Consider two identical rockets, launching and accelerating until one is moving at 0.1C and the other at 0.2C, orbiting something. The faster rocket would have less time pass on it than the other, because even though they're both inertial at present, they had different forces acting on them, which puts them in different frames, and if something was to be passed from one to another, it would have to correct its velocity, which would return the time flow to that of the recipient, but wouldn't change the fact that the "something"s age is different than that of the rocket.

[Areyar]

If certain inputs into a function yield nonsense results, clearly the function is poorly defined. :/

Some of you want to include human as a maximum, so alter the function to take this as such. The hybridization function is a step in the right direction.
We need several functions to create various blend-forms/ hybrids.
(I tried to write a function that follows an asymptotic curve here, but ended up confused with a non-species.)
We need: animal anthropomorph/civilization function, hybrid function, man animalistication/feralization function.
Giving man animalistic features seems to me a more reliable method of creating animalmen than the reverse, mainly due to the hands thing. a 10%anthropomorphised fish is no fishman in my book but rather a facefish or walkingfish. In order to earn the title animal-man, the creature needs to be more man than an ape. And apes are 99% like human already!
 
Also fantasy hybridisation works by magic and not 100% realworld genetics, so we need to add a bit of that too. Randomised creature gen we have, combining various Body parts from various creatures (and other stuff).
Centaurisation function, faunisation function, mermanisation function, demonification functions, etc., generally are similar grafting functions, but more specific. eg Take humanoid, replace legs with a quadruped, equine creature or fish tail, or snaketail. Faun and demon are more anthropomorphic though, but with altered legs, added horns, tusks, wings, fur, scales, etc

Possibly the method could
evaluate the bodytemplate of the target creature and take (predefined ?) characteristics from it, such as skintype, horns, tails, etc and just add/replace those to the basic human bodyplan. Add some randomized wholly transplanted bodyparts, head, or just the eyes, ears, teeth, nails/claws.
Tags such as [breathwater] [intelligent] [grasping] and whatnot are linked to bodyparts? (gills, brain, hands/teeth)
Taking up the f(elf,-0.5)=orc ,f(hobbit,-0.5)=gollum, etc argument:
this is more an allignment function, though the evil one did only ever detract from the originals.
This argument allows for: f(human, human)=highmen of Beleriand, who were stronger of will and body and lived much longer than the men in the time of the Fellowship.

[/rant]

[Innominate]

I guess this discussion depends on whether "human" is a static reference or an evolving concept. For example, you cannot get more spherical than a sphere, as the definition of a sphere is unchanging. But humans have advanced their culture and to some extent their bodies over time. So are humans more human than they used to be? If so, when do we draw the "human line"? When talking about something being more or less human than another thing, we must necessarily talk about concepts and characteristics which we attribute to humans and not humans themselves.

So my "human criteria" are these:

• manual dexterity
• intra-community communication
• inter-community communication
• the ability to abstract reality from experience
• problem solving

There are other aspects of "human" that I cannot think of at the moment, but I would say these are really the prime human traits. Note also that humans are by no means the pinnacle of these criteria, just the best examples so far.

However, turning animals into animal men also requires some changes which are more physical than these. Erect posture, exaggerated facial features for communication (notice how our eyes indicate where we are looking), opposable thumbs on forelimbs, reduced muscle mass but increased brain mass, reduced (or stylised) fur/scales/whatever on the face and head (e.g. beards and hair as opposed to a full facial covering), and body decoration - clothes, tattoos and jewelry. That should just about turn any creature with eyes into an animal man, though aquatic creatures are definitely harder.

[Neruz]

The forms we will take X many years into the future will not be Human; assuming they have evolved far enough to deviate sufficiently to be defined as different species.

In the same way that we are not Chimpanzees, our future selves will not be Humans. Or at least, will not be Homo Sapiens.

[Vester]

The forms we will take X many years into the future will not be Human; assuming they have evolved far enough to deviate sufficiently to be defined as different species.

In the same way that we are not Chimpanzees, our future selves will not be Humans. Or at least, will not be Homo Sapiens.

The only flaw with that statement is that we didn't evolve from Chimpanzees. We co-evolved with them, which is why we're so closely related, but we humans took a different (more successful?) evolutionary path than chimps.

We're descended from things like chimps, but probably not chimps as we know them today.

[Osmosis Jones]

Just saying, the twin 'paradox' is the biggest pile of BS to ever get labelled a paradox ever. It ain't a paradox because they experience uneven forces.

[DreamThorn]

More physics.  Hopefully the last one.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If you go away and come back you will be younger, due to dilation.

The actual point that I am making is that we are moving at the same speed relative to them than they are to us (which is always true), and that that means that from their frame of reference we would be lagging behind as much as they are from our frame of reference.  Unfortunately, this derivation is only accurate if we are both moving at constant velocity.

Since we are in fact going around each other, we have zero relative velocity, but a rotation that acts identically to anti-gravity.  (Einstein's equivalence theorem, I think)  This would mean that our times are dilated by the relative spatial curvature, which is zero if we ignore the rest of the galaxy.  If we take the rest of the galaxy into account, the spatial curvature is more here, and therefore we are actually lagging behind, but not for the reason you mentioned.

The wikipedia article on the "twin paradox" name some other things that I am not familiar with which might complicate this even more.

@Osmosis: Yes, which is why I keep putting it in quotes.

@Neruz: AFAIK they stay Homo Sapiens as long as they share a genepool with us.  And anyway, humanity is merging with technology; long before we can evolve into another species man will be indistinguishable from machine.  You might count that as a new species though.

[brainfire]

So do you guys think that five pages of off-topic discussion is maybe the point where you could take it to another thread that I can then not follow at all because holy crap this is the most boring bullshit I've ever read in a web forum?

[Chthonic]

We're descended from things like chimps, but probably not chimps as we know them today.

Tree shrews!

[Nadaka]

DreamThorn: You don't know what you are talking about. Time dilation does not reverse time. You will never "come back younger", only less old. It is also not relative velocity that affects time dilation, it is absolute velocity, based on the absolute speed of light. Launch two objects in opposite directions at the same relativistic speed, will both return with the same clock time.

[Neruz]

The forms we will take X many years into the future will not be Human; assuming they have evolved far enough to deviate sufficiently to be defined as different species.

In the same way that we are not Chimpanzees, our future selves will not be Humans. Or at least, will not be Homo Sapiens.

The only flaw with that statement is that we didn't evolve from Chimpanzees. We co-evolved with them, which is why we're so closely related, but we humans took a different (more successful?) evolutionary path than chimps.

We're descended from things like chimps, but probably not chimps as we know them today.

Which doesn't change the point in the slightest; modern Homo Sapiens is not ancient Cro Magnon, is he?

[Lancensis]

and that's not taking the whole "almost blown up halfway through evolution" thing Earth has experienced.

You're referring to the Permian extinction? Mass extinctions like that tend to accelerate evolution, as the best adapted organisms survive and repopulate quicker. The branches of advanced reptiles that evolved into dinosaurs or mammals would've had an uphill battle without the boards being cleared.