Sentences to ponder

[vegas]

"We know the case of human intelligence. But if we generalize, it’s just computational sophistication—and it’s ubiquitous. And so it’s perfectly reasonable to say that “the weather has a mind of its own”; it just happens to be a mind whose details and “purposes” aren’t aligned with our existing human experience."
- Stephen Wolfram

More at this link if you are interested, but his topic is consciousness, not intelligence per se.

Anyway, it reminded me to play aliens more like the weather...

 

[aramis]

Aliens possessing technology, cognition and sapience will have, thanks to the physics involved in cognition and evolution, a minimum of an ability to communicate, to pass information in durable form from generation to generation, to sense their environments, to affect their environment, and to reproduce.

Likewise, same said will have needs that must be addressed: food, reproduction, respiration, trace minerals, needed biofluid (usually water). They also need suitable pressures and temperatures.

We expect that most will need socialization and recreation, too, but those are far less provable. (Most mammals engage in play; many birds seem to engage in play. Reptiles don't seem to,)

So, given the needs, an alien should be relatively sensible.