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Old 11-17-2017, 10:46 AM   #61
whswhs
 
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Default Re: Human racial template in a setting where humans are the outsider

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Originally Posted by lwcamp View Post
So has Humans' acute vision.
Another thing that goes with acute vision is that it enables us to perceive tiny shifts of facial expression or body posture. As has often been remarked, a huge share of communication takes place nonverbally (and people like me who aren't good at reading visual signals are handicapped at this).

So here are your aliens. They can signal emotion or intent by large movements or postural changes or overt facial expressions. But they can't read the emotion signaled by a slight tightening of facial muscles. And, as Darwin pointed out, when they aren't taking overt action, but are thinking about it, some of the muscles will react, but they won't recognize that they're betraying their intentions. We might seem like mind readers to them.
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Old 11-17-2017, 01:02 PM   #62
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Default Re: Human racial template in a setting where humans are the outsider

Aliens with Infravision could detect human changes in mood through perceiving the change in surface blood flows. Aliens with Discriminating Smell could detect human changes in mood through smelling the change in human biochemistry. Aliens who use vision as the primary communication methods (perhaps through changing colors) would find it easy to read human emotions from body posture and microexpressions. In each case, different senses allow aliens equal or superior capabilities as reading human emotions.
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Old 11-17-2017, 01:33 PM   #63
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Default Re: Human racial template in a setting where humans are the outsider

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Aliens with Infravision could detect human changes in mood through perceiving the change in surface blood flows. Aliens with Discriminating Smell could detect human changes in mood through smelling the change in human biochemistry. Aliens who use vision as the primary communication methods (perhaps through changing colors) would find it easy to read human emotions from body posture and microexpressions. In each case, different senses allow aliens equal or superior capabilities as reading human emotions.
The aliens who communicate visually won't necessarily have as high resolution as human vision has. We communicate acoustically, but our hearing's bandwidth is a small fraction of our vision's. (Note that audio broadcasting can use much lower frequencies than video; that's because it has to produce signals acceptable to a lower-bandwidth system.) If they do have equally high resolution, though, like cephalopods (which could communicate visually), then you've set aside my initial assumption about low-res vision.

Infravision as defined in the Basic Set isn't physically realistic. It combines the relatively high resolution of near infrared (about -2 relative to human vision) with the sensitivity to human body warmth of thermal infrared. If you can only see thermal infrared you're going to see a human being with a lot of blur. Certainly it may give you hints about emotion, but it won't convey anything as subtle as what human vision picks up. (And after all, part of what human vision is picking up is flushing or paling, which correlates with thermal output.)

In any case, when we describe things like Discriminatory Smell, we write of them as a sort of superpower that lets you read people's emotions. Aliens with average mammalian vision, or with compound eyes and dragonfly vision, might just as plausibly say that humans have Discriminatory Sight, which is a sort of superpower that lets you read alien emotions and intentions. And it would seem superalien to them in the same way that Discriminatory Smell with emotion reading attached would seem superhuman to us. That's the parallel I'm drawing.
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Old 11-17-2017, 02:19 PM   #64
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Default Re: Human racial template in a setting where humans are the outsider

Aliens may come off like someone with mild autism; trouble recognizing "obvious" facial expressions, vocal tones, body language, and social cues and expectations. While we would seem the same to them for missing their "obvious" social features.
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Old 11-17-2017, 06:08 PM   #65
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Default Re: Human racial template in a setting where humans are the outsider

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Because the average adolescent human lacks self-discipline and usually seeks to find pleasure and avoid pain regardless of the longterm consequences. Even when we become adults, the majority of human beings retain their adolescent obsession for self-gratification well into their adulthood. This extends into our public policy, as most politicians (and the people who vote for them) would rather support a status quo which benefits a handful of people on the hope that they will be among that handful eventually rather than more equitable systems.
That doesn't show a short attention span, merely short-sighted goals. Nor does it show that humans have a shorter attention span than the norm.
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Old 11-18-2017, 08:38 AM   #66
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Default Re: Human racial template in a setting where humans are the outsider

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
Another thing that goes with acute vision is that it enables us to perceive tiny shifts of facial expression or body posture. As has often been remarked, a huge share of communication takes place nonverbally (and people like me who aren't good at reading visual signals are handicapped at this).

So here are your aliens. They can signal emotion or intent by large movements or postural changes or overt facial expressions. But they can't read the emotion signaled by a slight tightening of facial muscles. And, as Darwin pointed out, when they aren't taking overt action, but are thinking about it, some of the muscles will react, but they won't recognize that they're betraying their intentions. We might seem like mind readers to them.
A neat idea. It might require familiarity with the alien species. Some things, like nervousness or interest, might have fairly universal body postures. But there are other signals that Humans tend to mis-read even from our closest living relatives. What seems to a Human as a broad friendly smile actually indicates that the chimpanzee is stressed (and likely trying to appease a superior).

It is also worth noting that dogs are quite good at reading Human emotions. But of course they've evolved over the last 40,000 years ago to do just that. It is also not clear what senses they use for this trick.

On a different but related note, Humans don't have particularly good hearing compared to other mammals in terms of sensitivity or directionality, but our ability to pick out fine details from sound is rivaled only by bats. It is suspected that this is a consequence of using speech to communicate. So aliens that communicate using different channels might not be able to pick out fine details from background sound or similar feats.

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Old 11-18-2017, 02:31 PM   #67
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Default Re: Human racial template in a setting where humans are the outsider

Our hearing range is half that of chimps, yet double theirs in tonal discrimination. We seemed to have doubled down on what we needed.

Human smiles are insanely varied in meaning based on other facial movements and context. Happiness, joy, good mood regardless of situation, stress, fear, euphoric anger, etc. Virtually any emotion could fit with a smile under the right circumstance.
Few if any expressions have only one meaning.

Laughter can be about humor or jokes, but more often is a social lubricant, stress reliever, or even sign of confusion or embarrassment.

Aliens where signs do only have single meanings would be very easy for humans to learn and notice, I'd imagine.
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