Latest blog post: Redraw of chapter 1 is happening (2024-05-11)

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Regular

He’s a conspiracy theorist. He DOESNT comprehend what he’s spewing out, but he THINKS he does.

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Senior

Dunning–Kruger effect.

It sound like fun and games until you actually meet one.

Trust me on that one.

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Visitor

Or perhaps they need a trace element that's poisonous to you, or vice versa, or one of the common energy storage molecules in their world happens to react with an essential molecule in your biochemistry, or . . .

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New

Mirrored biochemistry. As in The Right Hand of Dextra by David J. Lake...

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New

I LOVE the first panel here! It's a really clever way to show how Gharr can't understand what they're saying, but still allows us, the human readers, to know what the humans are saying.

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Senior

Thanks! I am trying to get creative whenever the opportunity arises. ^^

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Visitor

I second this motion, it's absolutely lovely

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Senior

Does the Alliance include any (non-machine) species that can't breathe our atmosphere? Unearthly pressures or temperatures, weird atmospheric chemistries, being made of exotic states of matter, that sort of thing?

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Senior

They only that were found so far are Smi'Tar and Ziort. One is flat out incompatible with the living conditions of other species (unless you love to live inside the Chernobyl's nuclear powerplant), the other is admittedly very exotic (basically a sentient cloud of lightning living in the interstellar space) and accepted to enter the Alliance. Other than that, the laws of physics and more importantly chemistry make unusual alien life an order of magnitude less likely to appear. Oxygen, carbon and water offer unsurpassed advantages that no other chemical mix can provide, all having some sort of serious issue.

So oxygen breathers will dominate the probability charts of sapient life, in my opinion.

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Senior

<facepalm> While that water is probably safe, Gharr should probably have checked for trace elements that might not be too good for him. You really don't want to find out too late that the locals have (for example) a high tolerance for dissolved arsenic, or water-borne bacteria.

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Senior

In this case, he better hope chlorine is good for him.

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Regular

If a being were that sensitive it would have ceased to exist. most life on earth has proven adaptable to change to continue to exist. Take a look at the various extremes that humans have adapted to on our own planet.

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Senior

"No, no telephone calls, no internet, we should go in a total dark mode. We will be discovered instantly." Unflipped the text for those interested.

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Senior

Heck, even being native to a planet is no guarantee you can eat the food. I have a friend we often describe as "allergic to everything under the sun and he doesn't like mushrooms."

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Senior

Even much of what we do eat is not necessarily good for us, we've just adapted and discovered via trial and error over a hundred thousand years into eating whatever won't immediately kill or incapacitate us.

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Senior

And of course radically altered various plants and animals via selective breeding to be more edible for us.

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New

Someone's read their Roger Zelazny?

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New

... It's a decent way of guessing, come on!






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The author is against any kind of application of AI to his artwork.

TRIVIA
Artificial Consciousness and Artificial Intelligence are not the same thing.
AIs, much like in real life, are not conscious or sapient and are more like really advanced scripts.
ACs - like Quantum - on the other hand, are properly sapient persons, but their functioning relies on a specific hardware setup as much as on code, so they cannot upload themselves to other computers.