So has been a little bit since I watched the movie Arrival after seeing that tweet by Rachelle Lefevre.
Since then the most notable thing has been that Rachel Adams got snubbed (also Kimi no Na Wa) by the Oscars.
:/ So?
The director goes on record as saying he put the movie on her shoulders. Not a great idea because the role wasn't that great for starters and it really isn't that impressive of a performance. I thought Rachelle could have done a better job because she shows a whole range of emotions in Under the Dome and probably could play a much better scientist that the men would listen to.
Which was one of the bad parts of that movie. It just took for granted that the audience would run with her being crazy.. I mean that she could see the future and easily pick up the alien's crazy language that lets you understand and see the future.. It literally could have gone the straight approach and just skipped all the I can see the future bullshit and maybe people could have taken it seriously.
But were they so wrong in going that route? Saying that most of the worlds nations wouldn't work on the problem together until it was solved even if they didn't have a pay off like seeing the future (apparently no on else picked up the skill even though they understood the structure of the language enough to make an app).
I loved the movie (Kimi no Na Wa) because it was interesting, but it isn't that inspiring. AND seriously, the body swapping concept has been done before.. there's little that the movie brought to that concept that isn't new. Before I saw the movie I read an article that blasted the movie saying that it was just another high school drama anime that got to the big screen.. That's all that it is.
While Arrival is verging on silly. How is this Oscar worthy?! Not the point. The point was the story that it was trying to tell.. and again that it took about an hour to state the obvious. Which is that it would take quite a long time for earthlings, humans, to communicate with aliens.. IF they ever arrived on earth in the form of 'aliens' in a space ship and not ultimately some type of sentient artifact. But even as an artifact that wasn't sentient, something with simple etchings (like the end of the movie)... it might take years to figure it out. We sent out artifact out into space and it left the solar system a while back. It won't get anywhere any meaningful time from now.. but nothing says anything out there would understand it or pay any attention to it. If voyager doesn't get destroyed long before anyone finds it that is.
But the disturbing thought is that many of the things our scientists think they know is still only based on stuff we can understand. Many competing theories exist to explain the natural world around us and yet sadly, often, the ones that become the most widely known turn out to the false. The propagation of knowledge is one of the things that makes us a really great species.. because we can figure out and spread knowledge and for the most part we can learn quickly, but too often some of the things that we know.. are wrong. It doesn't necessarily lead to harm and has given us many great things, because for the most part we're rational and can keep in mind that there are multiple things that can be right that might contradict each other. We work with what we have. For the most part what we're good at is communication. We can for the most part clearly communicate complex ideas to each other AND save them so that they can be disseminated to many other people. If that next 1% beyond modern humans is that we might someday be one mind many bodies.. and yeah we might bridge that gad and become an even greater species. Given everything that makes us different though, maybe this is as good as we need to be for a few thousand more years so we can not become extinct. We don't need another 1% difference in our evolution but if 1% difference in culture puts as far beyond what we are today versus chimps that sling shit at each other and scramble around in trees..
The idea that the things that separate humanity from other life on earth and elsewhere are so small and meaningless but lead to such huge jumps genetic (not much), cultural (significant) and technological (significant).. kind of hints to culture being that thing that makes us different and even having culture isn't unique to humans, neither is technology as in using tools. Many creatures on earth have rudimentary tools and complex language. We have certain tools that other animals also have but they've seldom had to use them the way humans did which led to our evolving into modern humans.
Another part of that video is that recently scientist mentioned that the various extremophile bacteria we wonder about.. how they evolved.. seem to have done so to survive dry climates... not necessarily in radioactive ones or in deep space. That I think also points to the coming from Mars because that planet dried up gradually. Gradually enough for evolution to have produced bacteria that would have had to deal with dry climates, low gravity, poor light, and higher surface radiation.
No matter how tough they became that doesn't mean they could survive being blasted off of mars, travelled through space long enough for that material to be captured by earth's gravity AND somehow survive entry into our atmosphere.
Except that we have samples of rocks that did that. Whatever viable biological material that came with it might have seeded life on Earth OR was incorporated into life that was already on Earth.
Still makes me consider that at its basis life could have gotten started anywhere in the universe and it should have similar basic chemistry. It could be modeled in a game so that people can really get a grasp of the fundamentals of star formation, dynamics of star systems and how life could evolve and spread between worlds, naturally.
And saying that these systems are simple and probably exist everywhere, what's to say that they don't pop up very frequently?
Some scientists figure that life just doesn't get very far. Bacteria and that's about it. Really complicated multicellular organisms that evolve based on relatively safe environments that provide them other food sources.. Might simply not be as common as they are on earth. But if life does develop and finds its way to planets like Earth... They have a shot. Earth would then be one of those places that isn't very common and that aliens might have to seek out if there world can no longer support them. And yes that's a common theme in sci-fi too. One that Arrival doesn't even hint at. Only that the aliens will need our help but vaguely tell one person there's a problem. I'm assuming at some point we do get around to helping them out. But since we have and understand what language is.. and we have and understand what technology is.. and what generally would motivate aliens to travel around in space.. we have a shot at communicating with willing species that would visit our world. I don't think many people argue that. But the hand signs, the noises.. and how to understand language and complex scientific concepts? Years. We humans might still be evolving physically but I doubt that we're going to drop spoken language any time soo. Aliens might because they might have had hundreds of thousands of years of genetically modified evolution behind them. Or they might not.
And I suppose that means at some point humans will need to seek out a new home too. We'll get to try that out in Mass Effect in a few weeks.
But while watching this I'm like.. :/ these guys aren't talking about Mass Effect.
BioWare does however talk about these ideal worlds. I'm wondering if they will give some kind of idea what an ideal world is. Not just one in a goldilocks zone (where water, and surface temperature, and radiation aren't too bad for life to survive on the surface of the planet).
From what I've seen Mass Effect Andromeda will focus on planets where life already exists. Not sure if that's just out of necessity.. since it makes things easier when you're talking about settling a biome where you can probably manipulate life that's already there.. But from the looks of things you probably aren't going to find things that are really Earth-like such that we can just set up shop and start consuming the goods already present. Oh.. sorry.. that won't be in the game either anyway. :/