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“Would aliens also have X?” for almost any X tickles the brain a lot. The X that primed it for me just now (again) is stainless steel, but almost any generalization of it works.

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Shivon Zilis

@shivon

Dec 24, 2020

Does feel like the right way to rate the progress of a species is material technology! Alien species prob relied on stainless steel during a brief phase of their existence? Humans have only had it for a small fraction and will likely move beyond it in time? Great material tho!

Andrej Karpathy

@karpathy

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@shivon

If they have enough iron/carbon/chromium/++, and live around solids not float in air/water, and have oxygen+water around for “stainless” to make sense, and didn’t go some weird “zerg” tech route, and aren’t in otherwise extreme environments, and build structures at all, and... ;\

12:06 AM · Dec 25, 2020Twitter for iPhone

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If they developed organic-based computing that’ll be super cool. Silicon is just too…stiff.

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I wonder if an undersea sapient tool-using species (maybe something octopus-like) would find a way to smelt metal? There's stuff that burns underwater.

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Oxygen is wicked rad.

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Our lungs are big goopy filters and if you keep the goop right ur p. much gold.

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They could have living growing materials and with octopus skin properties of transforming the color and texture.

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Without fire, I don't think enough materials like metal can be made to support an advanced civilization. Find planets that allow fire to happen and start from there.

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Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For ex, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums ...no surfaces...no straight lines...