Quote from: steveperry on Nov 05, 2007, 06:02:51 PM
Uh, you know of any apes that have been trained to fly starships?
If it's not much different to flying combat jets, then yeah - the US Air Force was attempting precisely that, a number of decades ago.
Space shuttles are as complicated as they are because of having to compensate for things Predator spaceships don't, like angle of atmospheric entry and so on. The latter seems like they'd be infinitely more easier to cruise around in. They just glide in whatever direction you want them to. They can come to a floating stop, so they don't have to bother about friction in the upper atmosphere, if they don't want to.
Asuming they don't have some sort of energy shields, that is, which would render all of that null and void, regardless.
Also, when I gave the alternative of them chartering ships, I qualified the remark of there also being no reason why they might not charter crews, too. Doing so has the advantage of letting their entire society concentrate on nothing but hunting.
QuoteAnd nobody has really spoken to the technology in the yautja suits or ships -- it could be biological and not mechanical, and their version of computer chips might nothing like ours. What they do in a different spectrum of light or radio might be totally different but could effectively achieve the same ends. Light microscopes don't work the same way as electron microscopes, do they?
Sure, but I've always wondered how they'd invent that sort of stuff, if they perceive their environment on a purely thermal basis. Great for hunting living things. Crap for doing much more than discovering how to make fire.
The way in which all their images seem to blur into a messy smudge makes it difficult to imagine them even getting to the stage of of Babbage. Fine detail on things like cold plastic or metal don't seem like anything they'd be good at - or mediocre, for that matter.
Alternatively, what we've seen form their perspective might be the result of surgical ocular implants. Perhaps they had heat vision fitted for hunts and see in a different way, naturally?
Serpents are different. They add heat detection to a normal method of light detection. Something like that would have the best of both worlds. Predators, unfortunately, don't. Even if they're manipulating biological technology, they still have to have evolved to the stage where they'd be able to do it.
Unless, as I say, they took it from someone else or literally bought it.
QuoteSince I've been inside their heads and have given you their thought processes, then I know they are are as smart as we are, and if you've read the first AvP, you know it too, so that dumb-as-apes scenario doesn't work. Fox let it get by, and if it's not canon, it has at least been spoken to.
Oh, indeed. Your interpretation of Predators makes them a great deal more than that and, truthfully, I'd
like them to be capable of having invented and created their own equipment. Nevertheless, going purely by what we've seen on the films, if we're going to say Aliens have never been proven as having high intelligence, we
could say the same about Predators. The only question is how and where they get their technology.
I'd also point out that I find it curious, for a species to truly have been capable of doing such things for such a very long time, that their technology has stagnated and not advanced very much further, by the time of the Colonial Marines and the sort of things Hudson alluded us having access to.
QuoteThis is the same Leonardo who came up with the theory of the helicopter?
Wasn't it a result of simply trying to adapt a falling sycamore seed to a machine-like construct? The concept was ahead of its time, but I don't think he would have had a clue as to why, even if someone had told him so.
QuoteDa Vinci might not understand the technical principles of jet flight -- I'm not sure most people walking around do -- but with a teacher who understood them, he could be taught how it worked in short order.
Anybody who has ever seen a squid move could be shown the connection. Old Leo had the same mental hardware as we do. Intelligence is the not same as ignorance, and Leo was brighter than most. Show him the principles, I believe he could grok it. No reason he couldn't.
Surely so, but if we're saying Predators developed all their own technology without external help, the analogy falls down.
Jet engines can loosely be explained as 'like' a squid or octopus, but those of Da Vinci's time would never have worked out what all those miniature turbine blades or ducts and piping are for. What's the point of it being given oil? Why not put much more plentiful muddy water in it? Why isn't it getting bigger as it breathes the air in? Why is the air coming out hot? Etcetera.
QuoteTake somebody who barely knows the moves of chess and spend fifty hours or so teaching them and practicing two-move chess problems and in that narrow arena, they can keep up with world-class players. Can't beat them in a real game, but they can solve the two-move problems as quickly.
Knowledge cures ignorance, and a thing may be told simply if the teller understands it properly.
I agree he could be taught. If we went back in time and gave the Roman Empire access to modern firearms, they might even be able to replicate them (if also given the right understanding of how to make the correct alloys). On the other hand, even if Da Vinci stripped the down something as revolutionary as the F-22 (or even a Spitfire), on his own and without any guiding knowledge, he'd be completely lost.
Might make a nice sculpture out of it, though.
QuoteThe theory that yautja are using borrowed tech and aren't too bright is a interesting thought, but there's no evidence of it, and it doesn't stand very close to Occam's Razor. And since I've been there, I know it ain't so...
I'd like to think that were the case, too. Going purely on the films, however, without having any guarantees that the Predators invented and manufactured their own (relatively easy to use, if going by their usual point-and-click interface) technology, there's nothing to say their intelligence level is necessarily any higher than a particulally blood-thirsty monkey - or even aggressive tarantula, come to that.
They understand the principles of worlds being seperated by the gulf of space, but a chimpanzee would understand the idea of two islands having to be crossed by water, too.
I would personally say it all rests on if their science came from conquest/chartering or domestic inventiveness.
While there's nothing to prove they
didn't developed it themselves, their lack of texture/detail-related visual perception and bizarre stagnation of technology appear to suggest they that they could just as easily be getting the stuff from somewhere else.
Heck, for all that we know, they found a derelict-like automated factory belonging to some long-dead advanced species and just started cranking the stuff out.
I'd like to imagine Predators are just as inventive and resourceful as reflected in the Yautja portrayal, I just think there are alternatives which,
if true (not saying I necessarily believe them; only that they're possible), could account for what would otherwise be a couple of anomolies: Unsuitable visual perception and lack of future technological advancement.
And also perhaps put Predators and Aliens on a much more even intellectual level than is usually assumed.
And once again, I thank you, as a professional, for coming here and even taking the time to read this stuff.
