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Grrl Power #926 - Best and brightest
🕑 Added 2021-03-11 11:00:03 +0000 UTCThanks so much for your support! Like, seriously, you guys.
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Hey, alien lady, just because some of us are total dimwits doesn't mean our best and brightest can't kick your ass. At least these two were smart and/or oblivious enough to circumvent the police cordon keeping lookie loos from wandering into an alien mercenary/superhero/supervillain rumble. (It's the latter.)
I guess the best thing you can say about these two is that they're remarkably upbeat about discovering the existence of lizard men and demons.
This page kind of makes me wonder about the intelligence distribution of alien races. (Granted "Intelligence" is kind of a broad umbrella term for a host of aptitudes, but I'm talking about overall averages. Also, IQ tests and scores are problematic for a number of reasons, but I'll use them as a simple point of reference as I'm not aware of another standardized measurement.) So, if there are humans with IQ's ranging from like 65 to 250 or higher, (yes, there are lower and higher scores, I'm doing Olympic rules and trimming the extreme outliers) are Vulcans like 90 to 300? Or are they 110 to 175? Are Orcs 45 to 105, or are they 85 to 110? Are the standard deviations consistent across races, or do some races have way more outliers?
In a lot of video games and RPGs, humans are the race with no racial bonuses, but also no limitations on class selection. They're the generalist species. I kind of think humans should have bonuses to every class, as Quark has pointed out (correctly I think) that comfortable Federation humans are a bit milquetoast, but before they became semi-post scarcity, they were more savage capitalists than Ferengi, and you take away their food replicators and electricity etc., and they turn nastier than the worst Klingon.
Of course, when we meet actual aliens, they might have a worker class that can barely follow basic instructions and a scientist class that make quantum computers look quaint, and they're all wildly bipolar. And then we'd be like, "No! All alien races are supposed to be a monocultures! You only get to specialize in one thing!"
Comments
Richard Penner
It is not a reasonable assumption that any society is a monoculture, because culture is composed of memes and new memes arise often and spread. A society that is a monoculture is ROM -- dead to innovation. It's a convenient short hand to treat any foreign society as a monoculture so that you just have to present a thumbnail or caricature of how they are not like us so you can get to your main story line. That's fine for short stories or novels which cover only a few characters, places and times. But not really a passing grade in world-building. In short, not all Bavarians can be assumed to be drunken louts. Just give me time, and I'm sure I'll fine one who isn't/
Stan
When it comes right down to it a humans claim to fame boils down to two things. The ability to throw projectiles fast, hard and accurately and create new ways to kill other people and take their stuff.
Nicholas Grey
It's a reasonable literary assumption that a spacefaring race would be a monoculture, or at least have one overwhelming culture - the assumption is that it requires a united planet to get that far. Thing is, a monoculture doesn't necessarily preclude that culture being stratified and unequal.
But You May Call Me... Thrackerzod
Personally, I always hated the "humans are good at a little bit of everything" that tabletop and electronic RPGs always do. Why are humans generalists? In terms of combat, humans are evolved to fight a specific way just like any other macroorganism. I feel like for sci-fi, humans should specifically get a bonus to the equivalent of CON and then probably one of the mental stats in whatever system you're in. based on the things we're good at.
Kevin Wright
We never see the stupid Vulcans.
Stefan J Neylon
Have we seen terrestrial lizard people before? I remember seeing a bunch of different supernatural races at the big council meeting before it was attacked, but I don't recall and lizard people off hand.
Otoger
lots of the problems there are the Basics no need to know quantum physics to tighten a bolt, most of the time, but if you got good schools and no need to fight for basic living standards you can more easily get more into study and arts and so on.
akrasia
We generally don't see that because those things don't generally develop the story. Darmak is what happens when they do.
Noise
When you look at people tested with the same basic test, the variations are much, much smaller on average.
Marc Vun Kannon
Perhaps the success of the ST episode Darmak is simply that they have a race of beings who have a mythology, like we do. Tales and stories and history. You don't see that much with alien races.
Marc Vun Kannon
Clearly the aliens don't have as many possible categories of entity as we do, which is odd. You'd think they'd have more, unless they came from some kind of uplift scenario, and never developed much by way of mythology.
Sasha Whitefur
How about, 138?
James C
Something to remember about IQ is that it is relative, the average is always 100, and every country has its own scale. As an example, a UK IQ of 100 is roughly equivalent to a Japanese IQ of 90, or a US IQ of 110. So, Vulcans would still have a "typical IQ" range of 65–250, but their 100 might be our 150
Stan
The aliens just need to understand that humans don't really become sapient until they start paying their own way.
Michael Obert
So funny. And Twitter exploded!
Ken House
I love how oblivious the blonde is
