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gjm comments on Humans in Funny Suits - Less Wrong
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For logical consistency, if there are both rubber-forehead and starfish aliens, then the starfish aliens should be separable into groups, such that all species in any given group are rubber-forehead aliens relative to each other. Instead of (say) three sets of rubber-forehead aliens and three sets of starfish aliens that are starfishes to each other as well, it seems more reasonable to have three sets of rubber-forehead aliens and a number of similar clusters of (approximately) four species each consisting of remarkable similar starfish aliens. (If they're starfish enough, then humans might be unable to differentiate between their species, and that's fine too. They might have just as much difficulty telling humans and ferengi apart, after all.)
Too specific, I think. Toy example: we have species labelled 1,2,3,4,5; species 1 apart are rubber-foreheads to one another, but species 2+ apart are starfish.
Okay, I see what you're getting at, and it's a good point; but as a minor quibble, "starfish aliens" are, to my reading, pretty completely alien, while rubber-foreheads have strong similarity. You could have species 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... with each neighbouring pair being rubber-foreheads relative to each other, and becoming less and less similar as you travel down the line, but given those constraints I don't think you can have proper starfish until you're a good distance along that line; say, 10+ spaces. (Starfish and rubber-foreheads are extremes of, respectively, "different" and "similar" - and there are a lot of gradations between those extremes).
Of course, in any realistic lineup, it won't be a neatly spaced line; number 4 might be missing entirely, and numbers 5 and 6 surprisingly close, and so on.
Yes, the distinction between rubber-foreheads and starfish is a fuzzy one and the ratio between "clearly rubber-foreheads" and "clearly starfish" is probably bigger than 2 for most plausible ways of quantifying the differences. I was only trying to indicate the logical structure of my objection, not trying to make a plausible and quantitatively correct example.
Right. I apologise for over-nitpicking.