Undersea Aliens

Peter Godfrey-Smith, a professor at the University of Sydney and City University of New York, believes the octopus is the closest thing to an alien living on Earth with us. Octopuses "are the most complex animal with the most distant common ancestor to humans."

Octopus Intelligence

In many ways, octopuses seem as different from us as an advanced creature can be and evolve on the same planet. They have three hearts and blue, copper-based blood. They have the ability to change color, which they use for camouflage. Suppose we encountered an extraterrestrial species of intelligent cephalopods who communicated by waves of colors? We would have to learn a whole new mode of language. Octopuses "developed eyes, limbs, and brains via a completely separate route" from us. With neurons distributed through their bodies instead of solely localized in their heads, we might say they have brains in their arms. They show considerable intelligence, such as in escaping from confinement, and they can tell human individuals apart. Octopuses seem to play, another sign of high intelligence. They also display curiosity, which Godfrey-Smith thinks may be evidence of subjective consciousness. If so, consciousness has appeared separately at least twice on Earth.

It has been suggested that a possible reason why they haven't evolved even higher intelligence springs from their reproductive cycle. Male octopuses typically die soon after mating, and females don't live long past the hatching of their offspring. Therefore, adults don't survive to pass on knowledge and skills to their young. Octopuses can't have much of a culture, if any. Their solitary lifestyle (aside from mating) is probably another factor, since gregarious species tend to be more intelligent than solitary ones; interactions with other members of one's species in a group require mental flexibility.

Godfrey-Smith makes the optimistic assumption that the evolution of consciousness at least twice on Earth implies consciousness isn't a rare fluke, but a potentially common natural development. That assumption, if valid, bodes well for the discovery of sapient beings elsewhere in the universe. If a race of giant octopuses on another planet—perhaps one mainly or entirely covered by water—overcame the disadvantages of their short, solitary lives, maybe by evolving a long-lived, asexual caste responsible for the care and education of the young, they could create something we would recognize as a culture.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Human Domestication

Here's a new article on the hypothesis that the human species may have domesticated itself:

How Humans Maybe Domesticated Themselves

"Tameness" (which the article loosely equates with "domestication," although they aren't quite the same thing) is here defined as "a reduction in reactive aggression — the fly-off-the-handle temperament that makes an animal bare its teeth at the slightest challenge." By this standard, we are fairly tame. "We might show great capacity for premeditated aggression, but we don’t attack every stranger we encounter. Sometime in the last 200,000 years, humans began weeding out people with an overdose of reactive aggression" (as theorized by Richard Wrangham, a Harvard University primatologist). Did we discover being nice to each other produced better results for the group as a whole? (Go figure.) Early humans, as they developed more complex social skills, may have joined forces to throw bullies out of the tribe.

Domestication tends to have visible effects on body structure as well as personality, e.g. changes in head shape, ears, tails, and coloration. For example, we can see obvious differences between the physical traits of dogs and wolves. The foxes in the famous Russian fur-farm taming experiment evolved over multiple generations to look more puppy-dog-like. Correspondingly, modern human beings look more "domestic" than Neanderthals. Becoming tamer may also have contributed to the development of language. It's known that domesticated songbirds have more complex songs than wild birds. Also, it makes sense (I suppose) that if people get along together rather than fighting a lot, they have a greater frequency of peaceful interactions in which to evolve a complex language. The article notes that at least one other primate species, bonobos, may have tamed itself, since they are notoriously less violent among themselves than their closest relatives, chimpanzees.

Recently, it has been theorized that dogs and cats effectively domesticated themselves, dogs by hanging around garbage dumps to scavenge food, cats by prowling into our granaries to hunt the rodents that devoured the grain. Animals innately less fearful of or aggressive toward people, a little more willing to accept human approach and touch, would have become better nourished and produced more offspring. Eventually, we invited those tamer animals into our homes. That scenario sounds more plausible than the earlier notion that human beings picked up stray cubs to bring home and raise, despite how much I enjoyed similar scenes of animal taming in the "Clan of the Cave Bear" series.

The "human self-domestication" possibility fits in with Jacqueline's post this week about reason developing as an adaptation to life in social groups. I much prefer this hypothesis over the concept popular in the 1960s, that we developed intelligence through the invention of weapons for killing and hunting, as proposed in the bestselling works of Robert Ardrey (AFRICAN GENESIS) and Desmond Morris (THE NAKED APE). Now that we know chimpanzees make tools, kill for meat, and wage "war" against bands of rival males, the "man the mighty hunter" origin of our species looks far less plausible. The self-domestication myth (in the sense of an origin story, not necessarily untrue) certainly strikes me as both more appealing and more plausible than the simplistic origin myth imagined in the prehistoric segment of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, where the alien monolith sparks hominid intelligence by showing the ape-men how to make weapons.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Evolution of Civilization

An interesting short article answering this question:

Why Haven't We Found Civilizations Older Than 7000-8000 Years?

The questioner wondered why, if our species evolved hundreds of thousands of years ago, it took so long for human cultures to make the transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a civilized one.

Here "civilization" means the standard definition of settled city life with classes of people who specialize in various occupations. Several conditions are required for civilization to develop:

Most importantly, agriculture is necessary to produce enough of a food surplus to free some subsets of the population to specialize in other skills and be supported (through trade, patronage, etc.) by the farming class. Agriculture needs at least two preconditions, as outlined in the article—favorable climate and a critical mass of population (for agriculture to have a significant advantage over hunting and gathering; if a society is small enough that it can feed itself by hunting and gathering, there is no incentive to switch to the harder work of farming). Both of those conditions were fulfilled after the last Ice Age gave way to the present "interglacial" period we're living in.

"Civilization" in this sense is probably a prerequisite for advanced technology. To produce the kind of high-tech society we now have, you need people free to work full time in highly specialized fields of research, engineering, and manufacturing. Therefore, an SF author creating a space-faring alien culture has to give the aliens a home world and an evolutionary history that allow for agriculture, settled living, and vocational specialization (even if that worldbuilding never explicitly gets into the story). If the aliens come from a radically different kind of background, how they developed the capacity for space travel probably needs to be explained.

That article links to a Quora page exploring another intriguing question: Why haven't other animals evolved intelligence equal to ours?

Why Didn't Other Animals Develop Intellect Like Apes?

What are the minimum prerequisites for developing intelligence (once you get past the hurdle of defining "intelligence," of course)? As far as we can tell from observing ourselves and other animals with an intellectual edge over their closely related evolutionary counterparts, some of the factors seem to be belonging to a social species, having manipulative organs to interact with the environment, having access to abundant nourishment to support a big brain, and possibly being omnivorous (because having to search for food and determine what's good to eat encourages problem-solving). When constructing a sapient alien species, it's desirable to consider how they evolved to become intelligent, keeping these factors in mind.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Insect Consciousness?

A honeybee scientist, Andrew Barron, and a philosopher, Colin Klein, have collaborated on a study that suggests insects may have consciousness and emotions:

Insects Are Conscious

Does insects' inner life comprise more than simple reflexes? Conventionally, the neocortex is thought to be the site of consciousness. Suppose, rather, the "much more primitive midbrain" synthesizes experience into "a unified, egocentric point of view"? Barron and Klein maintain that insects have midbrain-like neural structures that enable them to "model themselves as they move through space." (The quotations come from an article about this study in SMITHSONIAN magazine.) Insects may feel, at the very least, hunger and pain.

Since I've always shared the prevailing belief that invertebrates don't have enough neural processing capacity to feel anything, this hypothesis strikes me as rather unsettling. Insects do appear to "plan," in a sense, in that they pursue definite goals. They can learn from experience (even flatworms, a much "lower" life form, can do that), so do they have "memory"? They make choices between alternatives, so are they "deciding"?

Whether insects have consciousness and the ability to think depends, of course, on how we define "conscious" and "think." C. S. Lewis in THE PROBLEM OF PAIN points out that an unconscious human body may reflexively react to hurtful stimuli although obviously without being aware of pain. If by "self-awareness" we mean the ability to meditate on our own existence, possibly only human beings have that quality. Self-awareness on the level of recognizing one's own reflection in a mirror is confined to us, some primates, and a select few other animals. If "thinking" means only abstract thought that can be formulated in words, by definition we classify ourselves as the only thinking organisms on the planet. If any kind of problem-solving equals thinking, the field becomes much wider.

I once read a story (can't remember the title or author) in which one character tries to convince another that thought isn't confined to human beings and higher animals. He says, "With what does a plant think, in the absence of a brain?"—classifying a plant's phototropism as a form of thinking.

Barron and Klein hope investigating the mental lives of insects may throw light on the origins of subjectivity in "higher" species, including ourselves.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Character Integration Part 7 Defining Character Strength by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Character Integration
Part 7
Defining Character Strength
by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts in this sequence on Theme-Character Integration:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/06/theme-character-integration-part-6-hero.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/12/theme-character-integration-part-5-fame.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/theme-character-integration-part-4.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/theme-character-integration-part-3-why.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/07/theme-character-integration-part-2-fire.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/06/theme-character-integration-part-1-what.html

Here is a TV Series Episode that clearly and cleanly defines the interface between Theme and Character-strength.

The Series is INTELLIGENCE on CBS and the episode in question is titled ATHENS.

http://www.cbs.com/shows/intelligence/episodes/212922

This is Episode 9 of the First Season.

Why is that important?  Because strength of character is abstract, illusive, and a trait that is "revealed" one component at a time, not on the first page of a novel or the pilot for a TV Series.

"Strength" of character means one thing to an editor, producer, or agent, and another to the writer -- yet another to viewers/buyers.

What one person sees as strong another sees as weak.

The assessment of a character is very much based on the end-customer's View of the Universe and is idiosyncratic -- very, very personal.

Strength of Character is a Trait that can answer the question "What does she see in him" that is the core of Romance, but is especially relevant to Science Fiction Romance (my favorite kind).

INTELLIGENCE is a mundane science fiction romance -- and a pretty good one.

The couple in question is an ex-soldier who volunteered to have a "chip" inserted into his brain (which works because he has a certain rare genetic mutation) and the woman assigned to be his bodyguard and protector because he's worth maybe a billion dollars (remember the 6 Million Dollar Man?  this is an UPDATED version.)

So episode by episode (or for a novel, chapter by chapter) we have seen this man's character revealed as the attraction between the two Special Forces grade individuals heats up.

At first wary, the mutual respect is established and grown as each saves the other from harrowing circumstances, and they develop teamwork precision like a circus act where each puts his life in the hands of the others.

And meanwhile, respect grows with the management team sending them on missions, and the tech team that works the "chip" miracles.

So we have many "variables" of character traits filled in for both these people and a really neat ROMANCE blooming nicely. 

Now, remember this is a CBS drama, not USA CHARACTERS WELCOME.

There are two "beats" (see Blake Snyder's SAVE THE CAT! screenwriting instruction series for beats definition) to pay attention to in order to learn to assess a "strong character" for the fiction market, and then to analyze many examples, then create some of your own.

Here's the story.  Gabriel, the fellow with the chip in his head, gets amnesia (long international terrorist plot business that's irrelevant).  When he wakes up in the middle of the attack on his headquarters without any memory of who these people are, he doesn't know the good guys from the bad guys.

3/4 through the episode, when he's now convinced the attackers are the good guys and he's helping them beat his real friends, the showdown scene, the turning point into the final act, is his bodyguard eye-to-eye with him trying to convince him that she is the "good-guys" side and the attackers are the bad-guys.

Gabriel's chip has been hacked in such a way that the data attached to his friends' personnel files has been changed to make them seem like bad guys, killers, victimizers of children.

The DATA shows the bad guys as the good guys.

Riley (his bodyguard) stares Gabriel in the eye and tells him to stop thinking and just FEEL -- telling him that his memory of facts is gone, but his FEELINGS originate in another part of the brain and are more reliable in sorting good from bad.

This is the NEW CULTURE PARADIGM we see in all these most  popular TV shows.

This entire generation of viewers has been educated from primary school to understand the world in terms of feelings and to put aside all facts in favor of what feels right.  (look for that theme if you haven't noticed it -- it sells big time in Romance).

We see in Romance -- if you read some written in the 1950's and 1960's then skip ahead to 2000, you will note this trend, then follow it back decade by decade until you locate the turning point in philosophy -- the theme that lust and passion are irresistible, that there's no use trying to use intellect to over-ride animal lust, and that all hook-ups or even marriage must have searing-passionate-animal-lust as the foundation.

That might correlate to the divorce-rate rise -- a statistical researcher might get a paper out of it.

But to sell fiction, you have to understand the world the reader thinks is real in order to invoke suspension-of-disbelief.  So pay attention to the cultural shift from THINK FIRST, and STOP CRYING OR I'LL GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT upbringings, to DON'T EVER OFFEND ANYBODY.

The worst crime children learn about in primary school is making someone feel bad by doing something better than they can do it.  Everyone gets a certificate of merit, a prize, a ribbon, just for showing up, so the incapable won't feel bad about being incapable. 

So we see this EMOTION trumps THOUGHT as a major, cultural assumption, a philosophy, and that makes it THEMATIC MATERIAL.

In this episode of INTELLIGENCE, we see one of the love-interest characters convince the other love-interest character that you can tell the good guys from the bad guys by how you FEEL and that all data, all facts, all thought is unreliable.

The story is rigged so that in this instance, that is actually true -- and that rigging is what makes this a beautiful example of THEME.

The "Character" element that integrates with the theme is that Gabriel - the chip-guy - buys it.  He relies on how he feels about Riley and throws in with his employers against the invaders.

And he wins the day back for them.

Then the STRENGTH of character scene comes at the end, final tag of the episode, where it is made crystal clear that emotions trump facts or thought.  How you feel is the only important and determining factor. 

So this series defines "STRONG CHARACTER" as someone with the courage to act on emotion-only against all the facts.  Facts are unreliable; emotions are the truth.

You know that the TV Series Intelligence is still using the same mechanism to create "strong characters" for an audience because this episode which showcases and defines "strong character" first wipes out Gabriel's memory of facts, then replaces the facts with lies.  When he's convinced the lies are truth, he still acts like Gabriel -- loyal and strong, and ferociously protective of children. 

The script bores right to the core of the definition of Strong Character by removing Intellect from Reliable Information Source.  By eliminating that one factor, the script reveals the unspoken cultural assumption of the definition of high moral fiber.  The best people strive to follow their heart, not their brain.  So lies don't matter (because nobody will pay attention to them), but feelings do matter.

If you dig back a few decades you will find all TV action-shows, all Science Fiction, and most Romance depicted the STRONG character as the one who followed Intellect, determined and cross-tested facts, and "did the right thing" regardless of how they felt about an issue, regardless of the emotional loss or pain they might cause themselves or anyone. 

Today the definition of what illustrates "strength of character" has done a 180.

However, the actual writing craftsmanship is still the same!

"Strong Character" in fiction is defined by the integration between the character's emotional life and the character's external, fact-based life.

The concept "Integration" means essentially that two elements merge to form a third, and that the proportions of each ingredient are defined so that the "third" they create has a recognizable consistency.  That's a marketing thing.  Large markets are created by producing consistent products that are all the same -- if you buy Tide to wash your clothes, and buy another package with exactly the same LABEL next month, you expect the new package to contain the same washing-power.  Likewise with books - if it says Science Fiction Romance or Paranormal Romance or Vampire Romance, it better deliver just like all the others under that label.

So today's market is looking for characters who have an unshakeable dedication to following their feelings and ignoring all intellectually ascertained facts.

It is the UNSHAKEABLE trait that is the defining ingredient in "Strong Character." 

No matter what happens, that integration point between intellect and emotion will not change in that character -- not amnesia, not maiming, not disabling, not disease, not helplessness, not imprisonment, not torture, not anything will alter the proportions of Intellect and Emotion behind plot-moving decisions and actions. 

That integration point is stable, meaning the character is both sane and admirable.

It's the exact same writing technique -- the exact opposite message.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com