I feel like “If aliens arrived today, they would think (human institution) is totally baffling” is a pretty useless claim, since it’s practically a fully general argument against any sort of human institution.
Imagine explaining food to aliens. “Yeah, so we derive matter and energy for our bodies to use (we’ll explain bodies later) from existing lifeforms, by putting them inside ourselves and breaking down their chemical bonds. But first we process them in all sorts of ways. Some pre-processing of these other lifeforms is necessary or helpful for the internal chemical-bond-breaking, but others have no such justification beyond hundreds of years of history. Also, there are varieties specific to certain regions, and many people prefer their region’s lifeform-processing methods to others. And somehow, everyone thinks this is totally normal!”
Break out of the pro-food groupthink, IMO.
I think aliens would not be nearly so perplexed at most of our institutions. Like, it isn’t like our human institutions are going to be universal, but most of them are ways to address things that any species is going to need to be able to address, and they’d have to be really stupid to be unable to draw a parallel.
this sort of “oh no, humans are so bad and disgusting, aliens would be ashamed of the fact we’re violent” thinking is why the reveal of “A Small Talent For War” was so great
i get really annoyed at what tumblr thinks aliens would be super perplexed about, or how they think aliens would be different in general. and these posts are all written in the same way!
the post about the demon being super confused and for some reason upset over gender roles? well, firstly, dimorphism and sexual selection is a thing in nature, it’s not as though humans are unique in that regard, and secondly, if the demon is that alien i find it hard to believe they would even notice that there is propriety, that the option to put these things on your face or these certain clothes even existed, or that they would even care. they’re a demon, from hell, possessing you. presumably they have shit to do.
the post about sight somehow being unique to humans? photoreception is RIDICULOUSLY COMMON. it is not biologically plausible, like, at all.
this thing about explaining food to aliens is a parody, i think? it’s in the same reductionist forced-absurdism style. there is no way aliens would not understand resource consumption to maintain equilibrium. it’s only ever done to try to demonstrate TO HUMANS how absurd things we take for granted sound when stated in this style of language.
alien aliens can be done well, but tumblr does not do them well. it isn’t even about aliens.
Tumblr aliens seems to be basically about Yog-Sothoth being baffled about Shub-Niggurath.
To The Black Goat of the Woods With a Thousand Young, sexual selection and dimorphism and eating and so on make perfect sense, because they are the products of evolution and nature. The Beyond-One has no attachments to the processes of evolution, and there is a peculiar particularity to the products that are inevitable from the processes that created them.
Basic AI drives are what makes sense to Yog-Sothoth. Consuming energy and maximizing resources is natural. The specific human-cultural forms of “food” and “gold” are very much tainted by their origin from Shub-Niggurath and thus make less sense to Yog-Sothoth than their mind-in-general idealized forms. Optimizing the universe to match one’s utility function is Yog-Sothoth, sex & drugs & rock’n’roll are Shub-Niggurath.
And our human position suspended between the two lets us recognize this certain absurdity. Our minds are implementing enough general consciousness and cognition to be occasionally surprised by how ridiculous the specific things our animal evolutionary history has produced are, but at the same time our inevitable origins are what makes us have those things and take them for granted in the first place. When people imagine these aliens, they are imagining something that is a bit less Shub-Niggurath and a bit more Yog-Sothoth than we are; just like we are a bit more Yog-Sothoth and a bit less Shub-Niggurath than peacocks or ants are.
(via metagorgon)
2 months ago · 88 notes · source: responsible-reanimation · .permalink
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theunmortalist reblogged this from socialjusticemunchkin and added:I’d say we’re more like the Goat’s children who have listened too much to Nyarlathotep, myself. Our whole science thing...
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