Gui
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Posts posted by Gui
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Hasn't this been posted already, or is it a new trailer? A bit lazy to compare this one to the previous one to be sure...
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That first clause is a pretty big assumption, though.
We already know that silicon can form molecules in long complex chains similar to carbon, just not in Earth-like environments. That's why sci-fi often has silicon-based life.
And even on Earth, we've found life in every kind of inhospitably sterile hellhole we can think of.
There's life in the boiling water around volcanic vents and inside geysers. Life in the incredible pressure at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. Life in the intense cold of Antarctica.
Even life in "poisonous" environments of pure arsenic, totally starved of phosphorous. Less than a year ago, phosphorous was considered mandatory for any carbon-based life, and arsenic universally toxic.
Much of this life is fundamentally "alien" to us. But it exists. Everywhere there is water. In every shape imaginable, and many that defy all imagination.
I know that. Actually they talked about the life forms in the arsenic in the science magazine I subscribed to some time ago.
But they still don't know if these bacterias appeared there spontaneously or if they progessively adapted from another, more clement environment.
Same remark for the other examples you mentionned.
The assumption that a primate will become the dominant life-form is even more anthropocentric than the assumption that circumstances humans find comfortable are the only circumstances under which life can thrive.
This is certainly the case in one known instance. It is HARDLY indicative of a trend.
Other than it's never been seen on Earth, what makes something like Niven's Puppeteers particularly implausable?
Or even something as "normal" as a smart wolf or elephant? Maybe even a dolphin?
But we all know that dolphins are intelligent, and we know this since a while. Actually, this has nothing to do with their current environment because they are descendants of dogs which came back to the water millions of years ago – first rivers, then oceans. The case of elephants is different, but they didn't become the dominant life forms on our world either, and you know why? Because they lack hands...
See, one of our ancestors, homo habilis, wasn't particularly smart but it was enough in order to give particular shapes to common natural items – such as simple stones that he carved into flints. Through millions of years, because he trained his brain throughout such exercices this organ became progressively more complex.
It is not enough to explain the superior intelligence of mankind but it remains one of the most decisive factor: "do-it-yourelf"
To take that argument to it's logical conclusion, to claim that any world but Earth can harbor life in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary(7 dead planets and numerous dead non-planetary bodies) would be such a crime.
The evidence to date indicates that NOWHERE IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE but the Earth can life originate, in any form.
I find this a truly absurd stance to take.
The flaw of your reasonning is in the very two first words of the very last sentence: you find this is an intolerable idea – like one century ago christians found Darwin theories were a crime.
But opinions are not facts.
We know so close to nothing of the universe as to make no difference.
It is roughly akin to plucking a single grain of sand from the beach, placing it under a microscope and examining it in excruciating detail, then claiming to know not merely the beach, but the Earth as a whole from this exhaustive study of a single grain of sand.
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Ah, the vastnes of the universe... Thousands of scifi writers found in it countless pretexts for giving us complete bullsh!t to read or watch, and it became one of the reasons why science-fiction is not taken seriously by the scientist community – even if a lot of writers of this genre are scientists themselves.
But scientists still have to understand that the interest of science-fiction is not in exploring strange new worlds, and all the more as these most often are not even as strange and as new as one may think, but in exploring the various possibles that science and technology offer to us: how they can change our world like all sciences and technologies have always changed it since the beginning of times when we carved the first already abovementioned flints – and what will be the place of mankind in this everchanging environment.
That's the difference between science-fiction and mainstream litterature, you know: science-fiction is not sclerosed and it can play with new ideas because science always make new discoveries whith each of them being the possibility of a new world...
And that's also why Transformers is sh!tty science-fiction while I'm at it, from G1 to the Bayformers.
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We as a species continue to find the "impossible" happening on our very own planet, despite some hundred millenia of experience with it. In light of that, it seems fair to assume that anything is possible in the vast infinite canvas of the universe... perhaps even naturally-occurring sentient humanoid robots.
See? You came to it yourself!
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Many years ago I saw a series called "Silent Mobius" but this when it was only on Laser Disc, recently forgotten until a few days ago while browsing online that this title popped in my head and I saw the DVD sets, is it worth getting? For what ever reasons I always wanted to watch it, plus the art work rocks!
It is worth it, yes
Be aware that the TV series differs considerably than the pair of movies, though: I assume you watched these because AFAIK they're the only ones released as Laser Disks soemthing like 12 or 15 years ago...
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Wow, a few days only after a motherboard crash and I get entire novels/essays: I should post more often
Concerning the whole "brains have an upper limit" issue...
Am I to understand that ants (with 6 limbs), spiders (
, crabs (10), not to mention centipedes or millipedes are lugging around have 2 to ? many extra limbs just because...the extra weight keeps them in shape?If you want to nitpick the fact that none of those animals have 10 fingers/toes on each limb...how about monkeys? They have five fingered hands with opposable thumbs, plus feet whose toes have a lot more dexterity than ours...and they have a prehensile tail.
On the other hand...I could see research showing that the humanoid form is the most efficient (as seen in Gui's statements about the brain, ears, and eyes).
I could be way off on all of that...I'm a chemist, after all, not a biologist. But if someone is going to insult someone else for questioning "scientifically established theories," that person should cite some publications in scientific journals.
Because, as a man once said, "between recognized experts and a big mouth on a forum, the choice is quickly done, you know, at least for the ones of us who can use their brain."
PS: Just to show that I'm not just picking on Gui...Peter, everything in science is (technically) just a theory that no one has been able to disprove yet. "Scientific fact" is just a phrase.
Like I said in my very first post on this subject, the reasonning I exposed concerns intelligent beings and not insects, all the more as these ones don't even have brains to begin with – yeah, I know they have several tiny brains all along their body, but that's precisely because none of them can work as a brain: they're more like neural nodes or something like that...
Also, it makes sense that I was just talking: we're not in a trial and I don't have to prove anything I say; you can, on the other hand, disbelieve me, of course, but having fun of me wasn't welcome, for obvious reasons, especially when I was trying to get over an argument as sophisticated as "oh my god, the Bayformers look like sh!t, I take G1 everyday!" VS "oh my god, G1 designs suck so much, I prefer Bayformers by far!" – because, frankly, it is more or less the summary of this topic so far...
But if you're really interested into my sources, jwasko, and if you understand french, I can give a try to looking back for them. I didn't bother to cite them at the beginning because I simply thought that there wouldn't be as much as a ruckuss and that most people here couldn't understand this language anyway; if this becomes a subject of forumic sanity, though, I can give my best at doing some efforts but I don't promise anything...
When I first started reading this page, I was about to add my own rant about scientific theory vs. casual usage of the term theory.
Anyway...IIRC, part of the reason we don't have twenty limbs is because it's not very cost effective. Doing so would provide us with little survival benefit, yet we would have much greater energy requirements. Why don't we have three or even four eyes? It's because we have been able to efficiently get away with two for quite some time.
Think of it this way: You may have three arms, four legs, twenty eyes, and sonar. All of this added weight may make it more difficult for you to run from predators--particularly those with fewer limbs. What if you evolved to move quickly and evade those predators? You're now going to have to eat more to sustain that incredibly freaky body of yours. This is problematic when food and other resources are scarce. Contrast this with your more ape-like cousin. Though he can't do everything you can, he can do most of it and at half the energy cost--just enough to get by. It's only an evolutionary advantage if you can get away with it.
So how can this tie into humanoid looking aliens? Our current biological "configuration" is successful because it's the minimum we needed to get by. There are only so many ways to configure four limbs, two eyes, two ears, a mouth, etc. and this version has worked for us. It's not hard to imagine an alien evolving in a similar environment, with similar evolutionary pressures, would look similar to us. Speaking perfect English on the other hand...
Let's also not forget we're talking about giant robot aliens that transform into cars. Let's not over-think this too much. It's certainly obvious the filmmakers haven't.
That, and...
^actually, we could probably infer that TFs have singular brains inside their heads, considering the countless headshot kills employed in the movies. If they had other nueral processing centers, then they could simply readjust their processing, and continue to live on, but this is not the case is it
? (look up nueroplasticity for further inference)On the whole science debate, I would agree with Gui on this one. first of all, if anyone noticed, lots of insect, animal, etc. TFs were featured, such as scorponok, which really invalidates the whole argument essentially. Beyond that, Gui is not just throwing around random stuff, those are well established biotheories regarding human development. On my own part, I'd like to add some support as well ( oh boy ). If we recall, TFs, especially the younger ones like sideswipe, were created with a purpose of combat to some extent. now, that would generally elicit designs such as carnivorous animals, prone to combat situations. BUT, at the same time, TFs are an intelligent lifeform capable of greater thought and self - progressive thought.
this is key. Evolutionary theory has demonstrated that one of the most important underbasings for human intelligence development was the undertaking of a bipedal form nearly 50,000 to 100,000 years ago in our evolutionary ancestor, the Australopithecus afarensis. Bipedal stance allowed for an efficient form that was able to adequately disribute net energy within the body to respective components of the body without much energy loss, in things such as transport of resources. Beyond that, blood supply to the brain was enriched and improved as well thanks to a bipedal stance.
The sum total of this allowed for alleviation of first to second tier survival systems, such as the necessity to constantly find food, and gave way to actions such as simple tool development and even food production. This gave way to a growing brain, which lead to self -awareness and higher thought, which defines a "person" today.
If transformers are beings of higher thought, then a similar evolutionary path makes complete sense, considering the importance of bipedal nature, leading to a logical humanoid form. Beyond this, going back to the combat argument, humanoids are also the worlds deadliest animals thanks to tool (weapon) development. This logically translates to the TF world as well, making a humanoid structure quite applicable. Beyond that, we can't go around saying that basing theories off humans invalid, just because "what if aliens...?" . Since we don't know of any aliens, Gui's human based stance makes the most logical sense in terms of pure cogent reasoning. If not, we'd all be guilty of the argumentum ad ignoratium fallacy.
Imho, Gui has had it right based on pure reasoning from the start. so let's not ridicule him eh
Besides, I think more people would complain if TFs were 7 foot walking insectoids.
... That sum it up basically.
If we admit that life cannot appear on worlds whose conditions are too much different than Earth, and if we consider the laws of evolution as universal, then because the same causes give the same consequences it makes perfect sense that an alien life form would be pretty similar to us – not identical, but with an overall comparable shape.
Of course, we can still imagine worlds with different conditions but we don't know any of them with life forms therefore we can't say for sure that life forms can appear on them, or we'll "get mixed up between science, science-fiction and science-fantasy" like a very enlighted member here said...
And because the same guy also evoked the flatness of the Earth, it may be welcome to keep in mind that a few centuries ago all scientists in the world were convinced of that.
But time has passed and things have changed...
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I wouldn't say erased from existence, as the aliens were not native to LV-426. They were on a space vessel which had crashed there, remember? So humanity would be bound to run into them again sooner or later. Just not in 3 or 4.
No. This vessel was unique and its cargo the only specimens of a genetically engineered specie: once both gone there can be no more aliens.
My friend with the small size and the green skin told me this from his UFO last night, and I believe him...
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And Dr. Gui, what have you been smoking? Are those your own theories or or someone else's loopy theories?
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Like I said in my previous post, it is a scientifically established theory, and what you think about it doesn't really interest me actually: between recognized experts and a big mouth on a forum, the choice is quickly done, you know, at least for the ones of us who can use their brain.
I'm sorry to poke fun at your post, [...]
You should have shut your mouth, then: this would have spared you the apologies...
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Bioshock Infinate, anybody check out the extended E3 trailer? Never had much interest in the first one, and be it a lot of my initial interest in this one has to do with the fanservice, but it actually looks like it'll be cool.
This game looks like it is interesting, yes; Elizabeth seems to be an unusual character, and judging by the latest info I read onto her, the flying BigDaddy thing is related to her into a somewhat perverted way...
The flying city setting is inspiring too: for some reason, it reminds me of the Winsor McCay's Mars in his Little Nemo in Slumberland.
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And that's precisely what happened at the end of Aliens: all of them erased from existence because of a nuke blast – end of story: no 3, no 4, no AvP and no need for a prequel: I told you!
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Grenadier is indeed a good show.
I think they actually did do another version of Giant Robo, didn't turn out anywhere near as well.
I'd like to see it in its entirety: a group began to sub it but dropped it after two or three eps only – a bit short to judge the real values of the show...
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They were so alien, in fact, that they had two eyes above a horizontal mouth, with a functional nose in between.
And two five-fingered hands at the end of two arms. With an elbow between the shoulder and wrist at a perfect drinking distance.
And they pee. Out of the place where their two legs join their torso.
Why do people keep saying this? They weren't alien at all. They were perfectly standard humanoids with perfectly human proportions(except for Starscream, who was a bit of a hunchback) and some cosmetic disfiguration.
They're the Transformer equivalent of klingons. Just add some wrinkles and pretend that hides their inherent humanity.
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Actually, if you take into account some recent scientific theories about alien life, it makes a lot of sense to get vaguely humanoid shapes, at least for intelligent being. It is all related to the brain in fact.
Because the brain cannot control efficiently a lot of limbs, their number is restricted to four, then that's two to walk/run and two to manipulate things with the hands that finish them and which are simply evolved feet.
Because the brain cannot work properly if it is at the same temperature than the body, it needs to be stored in a sort of limb which has to be outside of the body (ie the head).
The number of eyes is related to the mass of data the brain can compute: two being the minimum required to have a feel of depth, it is enough; same thing for the ears: you can't locate the source of a noise (ie a prey or a danger) if you have only one.
As for the placement of nose and mouth, the first is placed above the second because otherwise the ancestors without hands would have had some difficulties to eat.
So, yeah, in the end, aliens should look like us, at least in the overal shape.
But, of course, I don't think the guys from ILM took any of this into account when designing the Bayformers...
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Why not VS Transformers instead?!? Like this will get the concept for TF4 in the same time!
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He's talking about the potential for Newtypes to reach an understanding with each other that transcends normal communication, and will end the need for war. Of course they always end up getting used as super pilots & kill each other before that can happen, but hey, it's bound to work eventually....
I refered to this interview. He used the word hope while talking about the bright colors of the 1/1 scale Gundam statue, not the newtypes – this was in another paragraph of his reply...
Though you may be right: this guy talks in a rather cryptic way somtimes (unless it's a question of translation in the present case...) and I may need to reread this interview more carefully.
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[...] Should we care that Arcee got killed (did anyone even notice)? [...]
For Chromia and Elita, yes, and this made me sad because I love them, but Arcee, no... When was that?
Seriously though, why are we so passionate about this?
The psychanalysis session is doing fine, isn't it?
[..] The only good think that came out of it was some great toys. I dare anyone to hold a Takara Buster Prime and not be wowed by it. That thing is beautiful. It also gave us Human Alliance (that IMO is a continuation of the alternator / binaltech line that was not selling and about to be canned anyways) before the movie came out. Hold a Human Alliance Jazz and tell me is not one of the best incarnations of the character.
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Did they do the same with the Arcee's sisters?!? Because the only ones I could find sucked so bad that it looked like a rape to me... One of them even has nothing to do with the original (movie 2) design
Seriously, I found the Arcee sisters really great looking design wise, as well as a smart and rather novative take with their sort of mono-wheel concept: this makes them so quick and agile, but also gracious in the same time... I'm in love, I tell you!
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Then, next step is Alien vs. Starship Troopers!
Oh, well, it has been done already, it's called Aliens...
But what if the marines get power armors?!?
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And of course Miyatake designed the titular Macross itself, as well as the Zentraedi mecha & destroids. [..]
Wasn't Kawamori who designed the zentran mechas instead (regults, queadlunn, nousjadeul, etc)?
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This on its own is enough to disprove that the core of series is mecha action. It's similar to Eva in a sense. Eva's core is characters, Macross's music - while both are mecha anime franchises. Out of the big three mecha franchises only Gundam has at its core mecha warfare as most essential element for the story!
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This is oversimplified: First Gundam is an allegory on WW2, which remains the most important event in Japan recent history, of course mecha warfare is at its core – how can you depict a war story without war machines? But Macross remains a war story too, even if this war is won through a different way: therefore mechas stay at the core of Macross aswell, they simply play a more minor role...
Although, if you listen to Tomino, Gundam is all about hope, whatever it is supposed to mean...
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Japanese Ministry of Self-Defense Spends $1000 on Flying Robot Soccer Ball
According to the video, this is the world's first truly spherical flying robot [...]. It can buzz around at up to 60 kilometers per hour [about 40 mph] or hover stably in narrow spaces like hallways. But its neatest trick is to land by just smacking into the ground and rolling to a stop to absorb the impact. It's also ideal for operating indoors, since keeping all of the flying and steering components inside the robot lets it happily bounce off walls, doors, windows, light fixtures, and startled people. -
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PS - I also don't read any movie threads about movies I want to see once the movie is released until I've seen it. But that's just my strategy on how avoid spoilers.
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Only speaking for myself here, but I never enter a thread for a movie I haven't seen or game I haven't played.
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This looks like the safest way, indeed, but when the release of the movie/game in your country is several weeks away, this implies that you have to read pages and pages and pages and... before being able to post your message once you've finally watched/played the thing, which can be seen as tiring or something like that.
Well, I guess there's no perfect solution anyway
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Wasn't David Mazzucchelli the artist behind the original comic? I remember this one sucked big hairy balls, looking like the average mercantile follow-up to one of the greatest comics ever (ie Dark Knight), from the uninspired scenario to the bland art: a waste of time and money, basically...
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Watched The King of Thorns: a pleasant story and a nice animation, check it out!
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Finally I just wanted to add Ridley Scott is THE THE ORIGINAL F'ING SOURCE MATERIAL!
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Which doesn't prove anything: original authors often are the first ones to "forget" some of the main points of their own previous works, because they focus on particular and major aspects of a new project which cannot be developped without some retcon...
Hell, even Kawamori does this, ie not taking too much into account what previous Macross stories tell in order to tell a new one.
Going back to the "it's fossilized" line - was it really fossilized? Or just colourful language from a crew member who doesn't know any better way to describe what he sees?
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And that is the perfect example of the fanboy who wants so much the new story to fit into the continuity that he retcons himself the old one...
I always thought that the "fossilization" was due to the atmosphere interaction. Also I always asumed that the atmosphere was thin as well as non viable for humans. Would have to check the DVD as they IIRC have some info on the Atmos content. Part of the "Fossilization" could be due to low temperature and thin dry atmosphere as this would have a dehydration effect on the body.
Or it can be related to this particular organism which, in such circumstances, fossilize quicker than any other ones... which also sounds like a fanboy wish to make the retcon acceptable.
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Anyway, Ridley Scott's or not, it seems to me that this new Alien will suck at least as much as any of the other ones after Cameron's: this franchise's long dead, guys, get over it...
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I was very interested into working in the cinema industry until something like a decade ago, because of my interest into CGI, SPFX, science-fiction and especially good tales, but it didn't work. I, for now, am rather glad of this failure when I see what I'd be working on...
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And from noone else than Makoto Kobayashi himself: excellent news!
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The right to reply
in Anime or Science Fiction
Posted
In response to the science argument in this thread – argument which began with this post
JBO said:
No: it is the only scientifical way we have to seriously conceive life in the universe.
But anthropocentrism is the only serious way to conceive the world which surrounds us, simply because we don't know any others.
You can of course let your imagination run, but it will only be your imagination and despite thinking in the most logical and reasonnable way it will still remain your imagination...
Yet, they failed to take the dominant place on our planet, because their limbs are too weak to carve stones into flints, and they can't forge metal because water extinguishes fire; and I didn't evoke their lack of sociability: they don't live in groups like cetaceans do, and they can't profit of the teachings of the ones of their kind. Even on a planet without emerged lands, where primates couldn't exist and therefore couldn't evolve into the dominant specie, we can't say for sure octopi and cuttlefish would become the rulers of such a world – if such world can exist, because we don't know anything on this point either.