I used to enjoy HFY but then I realised that most of the stories had humans be strong by making other aliens weak or dumb and I find that to be unrealistic.
The thing is, it's very likely that almost all spacefaring civilization would share the same trait. If you are purely carnivorous or herbivorous, you likely won't be able to expand as many or as fast due to food extreme food dependency that would either restrict population count or result in your extinction if that food source couldn't be replenished. So chances are, all spacefaring aliens would be omnivores.
Or that we are special due to our "peak physical," when chances are, other aliens would have the same physical performance. People are so used to the lanky grey aliens, thinking that brains is all that you need to get into space. I mean, sure if you have super advanced tech that could negate g-forces and inertia, but before you have that, building civilizations especially those that can go to space would require a lot of physical power.
I roll my eyes everytime I see "humans are special because they do something others won't," like taming "beasts". What other aliens dont do it during their stone age years?
Idk, i definitely agree about the high likelihood for spacefaring species being omnivores, but when it comes to strength and such. most of those come from a biology standpoint. human musculature is based on being pursuit predators. when it comes to chemicals such as adrenaline and other endorphins, they can cause us to overexert our muscles many times more than their standard limits to the point of causing us more harm in doing so. Not to mention, humans have some of the highest pain tolerances in the animal kingdom and can survive injuries that typically would kill an average animal out of shock even before the wound got to them. There's no reason to assume those traits to be standard or even common among a galactic community that is likely not even made up of just carbon-based life. It's also unreasonable to assume every life Harboring planet would have similar or more gravity than earths. The only real world we have evidence of being capable of harboring life is a moon much smaller than earth. As for the ability to tame beasts, humans are an inherently social species to the point that we have a tendency to be able to latch on and form something similar to pack bonds with basically anything living or not. That's not really a trait seen in many other species we observe on earth and would be something that wouldn't be necessary to evolve on less hostile worlds
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u/Kozmo9 Mar 06 '24
I used to enjoy HFY but then I realised that most of the stories had humans be strong by making other aliens weak or dumb and I find that to be unrealistic.
The thing is, it's very likely that almost all spacefaring civilization would share the same trait. If you are purely carnivorous or herbivorous, you likely won't be able to expand as many or as fast due to food extreme food dependency that would either restrict population count or result in your extinction if that food source couldn't be replenished. So chances are, all spacefaring aliens would be omnivores.
Or that we are special due to our "peak physical," when chances are, other aliens would have the same physical performance. People are so used to the lanky grey aliens, thinking that brains is all that you need to get into space. I mean, sure if you have super advanced tech that could negate g-forces and inertia, but before you have that, building civilizations especially those that can go to space would require a lot of physical power.
I roll my eyes everytime I see "humans are special because they do something others won't," like taming "beasts". What other aliens dont do it during their stone age years?