In a sci fi setting...

Riddick immediately comes to mind.

> other intelligent species which came from diffirent evolutionary paths
I think you vastly misunderstand what "different evolutionary paths" actually means.

There are only two major evolutionary paths in existence:
- Technological (using tools to adapt the environment to yourelf);
- Biological (adapting yourself to the environment, think Lamarckian theory in its logical extreme, like growing out a limb in a moment's notice or using a proboscosis to manually edit other organisms' genetic code).

Humans come from the technological evolutionary background, and all the intelligent species who also come from technological evolutionary background would be able to find at least some common ground with humans.
That is not the case with the intelligent species that come from biological evolutionary background.

Humans usually only raise one or two young at a time, and raising human young is many years' hard work. It's amazing they've managed to survive as long as they have, really.

...You are getting into faggy semantics which mean nothing. evolutionary paths can mean several things. in this case it meant intelligences developing for diffirent reasons, where humans develops extremely good abstract intelligence, as opposed to say an octopus, which by human standards is an absolute master of bodily control and sensory management.
Apply to aliens. Name diffirences.

Humans have extremely long lifespans by galactic standards. Individual humans have been known to live for over 100 standard years. Humans have also been known to hold grudges for the same length of time

Depends on the initial species environment?
I mean, if the environment is friendly enough, then there is no need to defense multiple defense mechanisms, and if there is no need to compete for resources, then there is no need to develop intelligence either?
I mean, that's the only two major deciding factors - death from external factors (that drives the defense mechanism evolution) or death from lack of resources (that drives the resource collection mechanism evolution.)

The organisms from the Death World would probably reign supreme in the galaxy, to be honest, assuming they had enough of civilization development to develop spacefaring.

Also,
>...You are getting into faggy semantics which mean nothing
No, fuck off, if we're talking about evolution, then we're doing it properly and not just having a collective HFY wank.

I'd say that it depends heavily on WHO we go up against. I think it's hard to talk about absolute advantages.

For example, against hive minds or single-organism civilizations, we could defy expectations and act in manners that they'd consider self-destructive. Before they realize how individual we are, it wouldn't be able to fathom the way we fight for even a single member of our in-group. Once they realize that, they can't understand how easily we discard someone of our out-group.

On one hand, we value individuals above all else, but at the same time, we have no trouble acting selfishly. A single-organism or hive mind would have tremendous difficulties understanding that, since individuals are the only thing that matters to them ("the self"), but they have absolutely no difficulties sacrificing drones. Our relationship is largely a polar opposite.

Against sedentary herbivores of any kind, we'd be fucking murderhobos, a ravenous horde of plunderers, even in our most peaceful state. If something evolved in a highly regimented and predictable environment (which is unlikely, because of a lack of evolutionary stressors, but sure, sci-fi, whatever), our adaptability and "out-of-the-box" thinking might be a major issue. But against someone else, we might be considered retarded in that regard, especially to high-mutation organisms that are short-lived and rely on adaptability over maybe one-two generations.

Generally, we can have a fairly high reproductive rate, but (neanderthal descendants, at least) still build "tall" rather than "wide" (which is what negroids/aboriginals do), and we're surprisingly durable, and capable of recovering (especially if we count artificial means) from grievous wounds. When trained, we're also able to act for extended periods of time, to the point where we can basically run/jog for a full day, sleep, and then just continue, especially with high fat/protein diets.

It's hard to match our endurance.

Also, what the fuck would bio evolution be then, in that case? tyranids??

Seems like it gonna kill itself much sooner than it will get into space.

It depends on other races' traits. We could be the smartest race for all we know, or the most long-lived one, or the most resilient.
The problem with most settings is that authors firstly create humans, and then they try to make other races different to them, by shifting different scales. It's a tolkien kind of problem, when authors can't think outside the box and just make humas "average", or, and I hope nobody does that here, "adaptable".

>faggy semantics which mean nothing
No, they're actually pretty fucking important. Evolution doesn't just happen; it happens the way it does for concrete reasons.

They're not different evolutionary paths to do the same thing, they're responses to the environment (or lack thereof). It's not arbitrary.

The Tyranid life-cycle is definitely a viable survival strategy, to a point. We can't assume psychic warpfuckery, though, so it would have to be contained on some level. They're really just really successful viruses that have created a symbiotic relationship with other organisms and incorporated them into the fold by means of rewriting biological processes via viral injection, possibly carried by fungal spores. It's all pretty horrifying, honestly.

Just ignore the faggot or he'll spend all fucking thread whining.

What other species do we have? Uplifted octopi? Smarter bees? Trans/post-humans? Robots?
From what and in what conditions did the aliens (if present) evolve?

Humans might not be exactly like the queen-led hiveminds in the scifi stories of other intelligent species, but they pretty much act the same. Just a headless mindless hivemind.

Dying for religion, countries, ideals? Why? Why give up on the evolutionary ratrace to meditate on things or pursue some vague artistic whim? Why live for concepts? Only a human can dimish the self to become a cog in the machine of its species own existence.

You don't need to be aware of your own existence to be aware of space and the dangers it poses.

Waterbears instinctively know how to shut down their metabolism when they get to space in order to surive. Do you tell me waterbears are sapient?

>humans are the beastmaster civilization
I LOVE this. Especially makes sense, by instinct we react so well to shit we deem "cute". We naturally empathize with creatures who look COMPLETELY different than us.

>If something evolved in a highly regimented and predictable environment (which is unlikely, because of a lack of evolutionary stressors, but sure, sci-fi, whatever)
Its not that unlikely. If the environment is "easy" and stable then evolutionary pressures will come from competition with other animals.

If you want to make humans contrast other races in your sci-fi you need to make said races first since no matter what you do humans will always be average in your mind if you start from them.

Combine this with the upcoming advancements of biotechnology and humanity can be the odd one, using genetically engineered cyborg warbeasts armed with biolasers and organic artillery, like a weird combo of Tyranids, Splicers and Guyver: The Bioboosted Armour.

Humans are the most degenerate, merely reading the descriptions of human depravity (such as engaging in anal sex) can drive aliens insane.

We've already seen that one. The story is linked in the archive on 1d4chan. We invented rape and degeneracy, and now we're gonna give aliens the D. Honestly it's good if you're new to the HFY genre, but it doesn't hold up once the tropes settle in and you realize that's the background of HFY. It's by no means innovative to the genre.

Yes. Every animal is both 'sapient' and 'sentient'. The ability to sense the environment and then act upon it is what conciousness is.

Waterbears just react to outside stimuli.

How an animal that always lives on planetary surface gonna infer the existence of space and its dangers? They don't have senses capable of telling them that there is something outside of the land they live on. And there is no resources in upper atmosphere that could have moved them to try a gradual ascension. As far as they are concerned land and sea is their whole universe.

so youre telling me a tree is sentient?

You should probably read the fucking deffinition of those words before you go spouting absolute shit like that.

Chimpanzees are much smarter than orangutans.
50% of chimps demonstrate sapient behavior, 100% of orangutans do.

>Smarter bees?
Uplifted beehives.
Individually the bees are dumb, but by replacing pheromone communication with genegeneered organic subspace nodules all bees are connected at all times and the Hive is an entity in itself.

Almost all animals quite demonstrably do not demonstrate future-oriented abstract thought through metacognition.
Most things with a spine are sentient, so far we only know of a couple species of great apes who are sapient, and MAYBE dolphins.

We'll see who will be first with tool using.

sapient = capable of reasoning and higher, non-instinctive thought
sentient = literally just means capable of sensing its surroundings

blame hack sci-fi writers for not knowing the difference

>In a sci fi setting, what advantages do you think humans would have over other intelligent species which came from diffirent evolutionary paths?
We literally have no idea. You could choose a strength humans have relative to other wildlife on earth like endurance, reproduction, fingers and thumbs, carrying weight, thermoregulation, or you could go for something mundane like have a skeleton or being able to see well or being bipedal.

Here's a better question: What advantages do each alien species have over humans?

Except this is wrong, we shat out babies like there was no tomorrow, and still do.

Women are fertile all year along unlike many animals which are only in heat in specific periods of the year.

>what advantages do you think humans would have over other intelligent species
None whatsoever. Enjoy your struggle for galactic survival.

>Compared to earth biology, we can easily beat every single life form on earth in a marathon without even struggling. We can outpace horses so long as we keep walking.
That really depends on the circumstances. In cold to temperate temperatures both horses and canines outpace us pretty handily. In warm to hot temperatures we have the advantage, particularly if the humidity is also low. The key is mainly that we're biologically very good at avoiding overheating, and we can increase our endurance by fashioning containers to carry water with us. Terrain plays a role as well, since horses for example handle hillier terrain better than humans do.

In the Man versus Horse Marathon the only two times humans have won have been particularly hot days. It is held in Wales, which has a generally temperate and humid weather, if it were held in the Kalahari desert or the Kenyan lowlands one presumes humans would win more often. Additionally it generally agreed that making the course longer favours the horses, not the humans, suggesting that this is not simply a matter of there not being enough space for the human very long distance advantage to kick in.

Incidentally i've always felt that the ability of canines to keep up wit humans is part of the reason why we domesticated them so early on. Just imagine packs of wild dogs following humans around because they usually lead them to good hunting grounds, and eventually even cooperating with them in bringing down prey.

Not all that resilient. This kind of thing is why our life expectancy rates have a higher ceiling now. We do less dumb stuff.

What would be hilarious, and would piss off the HFYers, is that if we came onto the galactic stage and learned of all these aliens, and we find out that the great filter to achieving a galactic civilization is fitting into a narrow band of evolutionary limits. All the aliens and us are remarkably similar because of the restraints on tech and evolution. That on average they are the same as us, but covered in scales or feathers or whatever.

That all this trying to find a reasons we are better than them is just too much misplaced pride in being human, instead of what you have personally accomplished.

And then the aliens just beam us their own AFY.

It seems to me that biological advantages just don't matter every much in a sci-fi setting. Like if another species may be squishy, weak, and unable to hit the broad side of a barn without targeting assist. It doesn't really matter if they all go into battle with powered armour, heavy weapons, and state of the art combat software. Or hell if they deploy armies of intelligent combat drones who are stronger, tougher, faster, and better shots than any human. Tactics, engineering, and technology are likely to be the deciding factors in any armed conflict, not biology.

Something I have been using is luck/chance. It makes us irrational to other intelligent races. Humans will take that 1% chance to win and defy all odds. That also extends to mankind will do what ever it takes to win.

>Tactics, engineering, and technology are likely to be the deciding factors in any armed conflict, not biology.

But biology is what determines those things, because it is what shapes the brain that creates them. Culture and IQ are both significantly influenced by biology, about 20% and 50% respectively.

AI beat us at that in Go. Humans try to accrue an advantage in order to win, but AI can treat advantage and chance of winning as separate stats, then min-max all their points into the latter.

They are the same thing. You may not like it because it makes you uncomfortable, but being able to sense the environment, running it through a meat processor, and then acting upon it is consciousness. Your computer is conscious, just in a very limited way. Trees and grass are conscious, but on a very small time scale. Cats and dogs at the very least have emotion, and are thinking beings with dreams and all the same sort of experiences you are, just without the ability of language to communicate them. Just because animals are mentally insufficient to philosophize about their existence, even if they could they'd have no way of telling it to us.

At the very least warm blooded vertebrate mammals share 99% of the same brain chemicals and structures we have, and yet you believe they are not conscious beings because the thought of that makes you feel uncomfortable. This is special pleading, it's not scientific or accurate. Consider for a moment what you know is wrong, and it might be very eye opening.

Except we're talking about races capable of space travel. Augmenting the biology of your race is a very basic idea. Just because we're incapable of running faster than a cheetah doesn't mean we never got the grand idea of strapping a rocket engine to something.

Hey look, I found the vegan!

What designs that rocket? A perfectly objective and acausal will to power?

In most settings it's designed by a electrochemical organ made of atoms and designed by millions of years of evolution in a specific environment that does.

There's a certain amount of convergent design for some things based on physical law, but design approaches, concepts, and goals are liable to be different.

The problem is, you are talking about differences on the level of consciousness that might go either way. On the other hand it's not too probably that something like being physically tougher will affect your technology much, you most probably at some level will research a bigger gun, and then you will need some more armor, and then the entire thing trails off.

Most things can be fluffed as either "race x was bad at this so they researched technology to be good at it and they became the best at it while every other race didn't invest into this technology until it was too late" or "race x is biologically good at it so obviously their technology augments them more than other races".

In the ecosystems present on Earth, we have observed that it is possible for an animal to evolve little to no survival instinct due to not having natural predators around to deal with. See: the dodo.

Not to get all, "No, John, YOU are the monster!" but as far as our development on Earth has gone:
>we can hunt forever
>we can (lightly jog or) walk forever
>we can turn the bulk of organic materials into energy
>when sufficiently similar species have presented themselves, we either fucked or killed them out of existence

We are absolute horror shows, so violent that we have to have the "cute" response to not die out as a species.

Man really is the fuckingest, killingest, rippingest, tearingest thing out there. We need only fear insects.

Alternately (due to some recent evidence that we basically live in one of the least dense areas of the known universe in cosmic terms):

>Humanity is an empire stretching across most of the universe
>the most dangerous convicts in the Holy Human Empire are shuttled to the most deserted backwards bumfuck rock possible and given no tech to work with
>we are the end result, and when we break into space and meet the Holy Human Empire, we will discover that we are all divergent evolutions on the same species, and we are the most violent branch, as we are basically Space Australians on steroids

In my setting, mankind isn't "better" so much as... different.

First of all, Earth based life is the only life in the known universe that sleeps. Other races sometimes have a rest cycle, but they never actually become unconscious like we do unless they are badly injured or sick. We obviously find it weird that they don't sleep, and they find it weird that we almost fucking die once a day.

Second, other races don't personify shit. Its not a part of their psychology or their language. So, in addition to a bunch of metaphors, they never thought to blame natural phenomenon on big aliens in the sky. Not only is humanity the only race with a religion, we are the only race with a MYTHOLOGY. We are also the only race that writes fiction for pleasure. Other races understand deception, but they don't understand why we would enjoy being deceived.

The end result of all of this is that other spacefaring races approach conversations with humans very delicately, because they consider us functionally insane as a species. The galactic stereotypical human is this sort of mad prophet figure that says 99 totally batshit things that make no sense, mixed with one revolutionary new idea that only sounds batshit until it works. And then the human falls into a deathlike coma mid-conversation and forgets the good idea by the time they wake up.

They are not actually scared of us, they just don't understand us. Like, at all.

>we are the most violent branch, as we are basically Space Australians on steroids
So literally Starcraft Terrans?

So basically the Triangle of Terror HFY story?

No, because they are not scared of us and we don't exploit it for our benefit and we don't do anything that greentext is based on.

But other than that yeah its exactly the same.

We family bond with EVERYTHING.

We took one of our most feared predators and turned them into friends. CUDDLY friends.
We affectionately name mere things we interact with on a regular basis and ascribe personalities to them.

We are special because we are the universe's affectionate mommies.

Both use them already

Chimps even recently entered their own stone age.

>In a sci fi setting, what advantages do you think humans would have over other intelligent species which came from diffirent evolutionary paths?
Literally anything. Aliens are, and have always been, a mirror.

I remember reading somewhere, or hearing, that if Earth's gravity was a little stronger we would not be able to leave it's atmosphere by conventional rocket science.

The reason being the amount of refined fuel the rocket would be required to carry would not be enough to propel the rocket itself out through the atmosphere. Physics would not allow it.

Ergo, the Human race has developed in the strongest gravity that still allows space travel. Again, I have no idea if the above is true.

>I remember reading somewhere, or hearing, that if Earth's gravity was a little stronger we would not be able to leave it's atmosphere by conventional rocket science.
>The reason being the amount of refined fuel the rocket would be required to carry would not be enough to propel the rocket itself out through the atmosphere.
That doesn't sound right to me. A deeper well would make reaching orbit (much?) harder, but it still wouldn't be impossible.

The thrust or force generated by the rocket fuel would not be enough to get the same weight or mass of fuel out of orbit.

>The thrust or force generated by the rocket fuel would not be enough to get the same weight or mass of fuel out of orbit.
Sure. Rockets would have smaller payloads, or be larger and likely made of more stages. But they would still work.

You have no read what I said.

What I am trying to explain is that the energy needed to put 1 Unit of mass in to orbit is more than the energy output 1 Unit of the same weight of fuel can generate.

Meaning the rocket will not succeed as the fuel required to break through the atmosphere becomes too heavy to reach it.

>What I am trying to explain is that the energy needed to put 1 Unit of mass in to orbit is more than the energy output 1 Unit of the same weight of fuel can generate.
>Meaning the rocket will not succeed as the fuel required to break through the atmosphere becomes too heavy to reach it.
Unless I'm misreading you, I think you're very confused how rockets work.

Rockets don't need to carry enough energy to be able to bring their pad mass to orbit, because they don't send their pad mass to orbit. As a rocket burns fuel, it gets lighter. As a rocket sheds stages, it gets much lighter.
Look up the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation.

Consider: All existing rockets don't meet your requirements on Earth. I'd guess Kersosene-LOX has a (theotical) combustion energy of about ~10MJ/kg. So 1kg of propellant contains enough energy to accelerate 1kg up to (2*10MJ/1kg)^(1/2) = 4.5km/s. FAR below the velocity needed to reach orbit.

If the radius of our planet were larger, there could be a point at which an Earth escaping rocket could not be built. Let us assume that building a rocket at 96% propellant (4% rocket), currently the limit for just the Shuttle External Tank, is the practical limit for launch vehicle engineering. Let us also choose hydrogen-oxygen, the most energetic chemical propellant known and currently capable of use in a human rated rocket engine. By plugging these numbers into the rocket equation, we can transform the calculated escape velocity into its equivalent planetary radius. That radius would be about 9680 kilometers (Earth is 6670 km). If our planet was 50% larger in diameter, we would not be able to venture into space, at least using rockets for transport.

Sources
airspacemag.com/daily-planet/the-tyranny-and-power-of-rocket-travel-78586310/

nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition30/tryanny.html

Humans are the most willing to anthropomorphize non-humans both living and non-living and readily accept it which may be weird to some aliens

Dammit, now I feel unoriginal for starting (and never completing and therefore never sharing) a little HFY story where the premise is this: Well-travelled alien is drinking with a friend and says, 'don't you even get me started on humans. You know you can tell a lot about a species by the company they keep, and humans? Well have you ever seen these things they keep and call dogs? Apperently back when they were evolving there were these giant things covered in that weird fur stuff the male humans have, and they were the only real competition the humans had. The humans DOMISTICATED the damn things!'

That implies that use the same fuel to power their rockets fly into space, they might have a diferent more powerful version of it ot a lighter version of it or they might not use fuel at all.

hello Peter Watts

>what if by other species standards, humans just strait up acted as though they had a mental disorder in comparison?
Isn't that true in any relationship between a higer and a lower intelligence species? I mean, wouldn't any smarter species see us as retarded? Esp. since as a race, I feel we have a tendency to give into fear when confronted with unknown, anger when we fail to understand and general resistance to actually listening to others.

Please don't tell anyone

But what about a nuclear "rocket"?

Hyper-competitiveness.
I'l explain in the next post because I want to bump the thread.

You see, my idea is that each race had evolved sapience and sentience differently throughout the cosmos, gaining it through different environmental pressures. One race would have gained it because higher control of motor functions would lead to a greater chance of survival in the infinite jungle. Another would have acquired it because proper resource management was what was what best allowed them to survive the frigid wastes of their planet. In some cases, sapience just came naturally as a sort of side mutation, and others might have been uplifted to such a state through the actions of others.

Humans of course are no different, except in the way they are. In my eyes, their sapience was gained because it allowed them to survive against far greater predators. This differs from the other species based on the ridiculous biodiversity of Earth and it's many strong predators, meaning competition between species is far higher here than anywhere else. So when humans first gained sapience, they of course used it to compete and win against the beasts of the world.

Of course, after this the humans found that the beasts stopped providing as much of a challenge, since most could be defeated easily. You would think this would kill the flame of competition, but it still had fuel in the form of another great beast, perhaps the strongest on the planet.

Mankind.

With man competing against man, be it in war, sport, art, or any other competition, the flame of competition burned brighter and brighter. Yet humanity didn't notice this for a while, since they were getting accustomed to the previous level of competition before the next one arrived. Only when they came into contact with other sapient life did they notice how competitive they had become.

This is only a rough draft of my idea, but I'll see about improving it further later on.

Humans are the most jovial and or empathetic species. They'd sacrifice time and materials just to make themselves and other aliens feel better, or just listen to their problems and give advice.

Something is wrong with the color of that cactus.

This is almost always a sign of a great setting.

BAMKPU

I've thought about this and while you are correct in all of your original post you are missing one critical point.
Humans are prideful creatures our pride is a heavy burden we carry but it allows us to do stupid shit like? Die for our pride. Humans have this insane ability to sacrifice our sleeves for what ever we believe in. In war stories you always here about how a few soldiers gave their lives to give refugees an extra hour head start. You get the point. Also Humans are spiteful, and when spite is mixed with pride? I imagine if we are losing a war badly to an alien invasion we would rather nuke our own world to hell then give it up to them. We would fuck everything up just to spite you with our dying breath.

An example for your sci fi setting might be a battle cruiser is losing a battle to a alien warship. Instead of accepting defeat humans might.. Drive the battle cruiser nose first into the alien warship blowing both of them up.

Or we are losing a ground battle and our human infantry decide instead of dying noble deaths strap C4 or other future explosives to their chests and charge the alien ranks just to spite them.

Also just want to point out humans have been fighting wars with other humans over the most insane shit for thousands of years. It's hard to think that aliens have this same problem. When you think about it we are probably seen as incredibly violent, unpredictable, mixed with pride/spite we probably haven't been contacted because the aliens who have found us are terrified we are the future scourge of the universe.

. . . Now that I think about it given that humans have plenty of food we can breed at an amazing rate given our anatomy and our penchant for violence. The zerg from starcraft, the Tyranids from 40k.. Lets track this out shall we?

1. Rapid breeders (With a large enough human population and enough food we can cover an entire planet in a few hundred years)
2. Violence (Humans love violence)
3.Swarm tactics (See WW1 and any war before that. Think of any soldier after WW2 as the specialized ranged Tyarind or zerg.)
4. Adaptable (Humans can adapt to a wide range of environments and if we cant physically change then damn it we build something or just cast it aside and dump or waste on it till it turns into a wasteland.)
4. Hive mind. (see Hitler, or any other dictator/leader of people, given enough "incentive" millions of people can be controlled by one person)

Could it be that aliens don't contact us because we are the scourge of the universe?

Humans, and most Earth organisms, readily interface with cybernetics.

Most other species in the galaxy have to undergo painful, grueling, and extensive calibration and physical therapy to properly and effectively adapt to cybernetic prosthetics, and sentient consciousness-machine interfaces are next to impossible to facilitate.

Earth organisms adapt to prosthetic and enhancement cybernetics with nearly plug-and-play ease.

This is a game-breaking trait that would make us extremely powerful in only a few decades.

user you do realize that several Human delicacies are deadly to most other animals, right? peppers are hot to discourage things from eating them, mustard's flavor is from a poison to keep herbivores from eating it, chocolate and caffeine are both toxic, we're an odd species in regards to what we eat.

Not him but, yeah, sure, but there's other things animals can eat that humans can not, its a retarded argument.

>We live a really long time compared to most species.
>We can adapt to almost any climate.
>Our physiology allows us to swim, climb trees, and run on land with relative ease
>our appendages are very well adapted to tool making and usage.