Ok, lot's of things to respond to in here so I'll try and field it all point by point.
Your first point: I don't think it's that the entirety of a mature and civilisation-spanning AI left and set up shop cranking out upgrades like the Matrix. I imagine the war was brutal, we know it ended the Guardian civilisation entirely, so it must have been epic. I imagine that a few surviving AI units escaped and slowly altered themselves over time, maybe they made lots of mistakes and were working with limited resources. It could even have been the equivalent of a few machines lying in a wrecked ship in a crater on some crappy ammonia based world after crashing there. Maybe it took them a million years to figure out how to walk, we don't really know how an AI (especially an Alien one, damaged by war) might evolve.
All fair points, but equally this would rely on them never going back to the Guardian sites and accessing the Guardian files despite 2 million years in which to do so. (And if they became the Thargoids, then most certainly having the tech to do so.) It also requires that they ignored or completely forgot that the Guardians were biowarfare experts, and built themselves bodies and tech that were vulnerable to it.
It may not have been the Guardian AI that evolved into the Thargoids, but there still must be some significant link in the past between Thargoids and the Guardians that goes so far as to make the Thargoids react very violently to their technology in a way they just never have to us. If it was something like "we used Guardian stuff in the past", then why don't the Thargoids react as violently to us?
It’s a good point. However, there’s viable explanations, for example we may have concealed that the mycoid attack was by us.
As far as we know the Relics are inert things, maybe they are ancient weapons batteries (them rising up from the ground might suggest that), but that implies the Thargoids recognise that tech for what it is, recognise it, not us using them, and not us as the beings that wield them, but the technology itself.
IIRC from their descriptions, the Relics are power sources. They also definitely have something inside them. Plus Guardian writing on them. Perhaps they react just to the emissions from the Relics. Perhaps they can scan what’s inside the Relic and react to that. Perhaps they can read what it says on the Relic and it says “Danger, toxic” or something like that. Plenty of possible interpretations.
My theory, that there's a racial link between Thargoids and Guardians, makes sense of the almost instinctual reaction they show. It's like the reaction a Cat has to anything vaguely snake-shaped, it's hard-coded in ancient DNA because the two were ancient enemies.
Err… cats and snakes were ancient enemies? Think you might need to give some back up on this one. If it’s anything to do with those videos that were doing round, it was never proven that the cats reactions were because they thought the objects were snakes.
And, we only know of one enemy the Guardians had - the AI/Linked Guardians.
This isn’t correct.
Within Guardians you have:
Group A – Implanted Guardians. Exiled in the first civil war by the abolitionists/religious faction. Prior to exile these Guardians had helped the AI achieved sentience and hosted them via the implants. No records exist as to what happened to them post-exile.
Group B – Non-implanted Guardians. Guardian history after the first civil war pertains to this group. There are two sub-groups within there:
B1 – The abolitionist/religious faction. Based on the homeworld. Tried to prevent the AIs from achieving existence independent from the monolith network. Turned to violence to do so, resulting in the second civil war against:
B2 – The Guardians who supported the AIs. Largely based on the colonies.
It’s not known which faction won the civil war so it could have been the anti-AI faction or the pro-AI faction. Regardless, the winners were already dying.
However, there’s also the Foe/Adversary. This throws into doubt the details of the outcome and latter points of the civil war, and the subsequent death of all of group B, and suggests that another party was responsible for wiping out group B.
Back to the Thargoids;
If the Thargoids are Guardian descendants of any kind (AI, Exile, Hybrid) then why would they have a blanket bad reaction to Guardian tech? Only group B1 would have been antagonistic to them. In the case of the AI, group B2 fought and died in support of the AI, so why would the AI bear a grudge against Guardians as a whole?
Your second point about the Guardian link with Humanity: Since DB and the team are scientifically oriented (while not strictly adhering to scientific fact) I don't believe they would "accidentally" create a species of aliens that look almost exactly like humans breathing almost exactly human air that aren't related to us.
Why? DB and co seem perfectly capable to me of envisioning similar beings evolving in similar environments and building that into the game. The 2 extra joints in the arms of the Guardians distinctly marks them out humans and vertebrate life on Earth.
Statistically that's incredibly unlikely to occur based on everything we know about evolution.
Disagreed here. It’s about aptness to the environs. If certain forms have emerged from certain environs on Earth, then why would similar forms not prove apt in similar environs on other planets? Besides, the sample size we have is 1, so we’re not in any position to make authoritative assessments of the statistical likelihood.
Convergent Evolution accounts for small structures like eyes or certain organ features, but even then they evolved from the same basic ancestor on the same planet so it makes sense that ultimately evolution would sometimes come up with very similar things given the same deck of cards to shuffle, but why would evolution create bipedal, bilaterally symmetrical animals on a totally different planet unless they were related somehow?
It may be that DNA and RNA are the only viable basis for life. If that’s the case then it would be the same deck of cards wherever life arose, to use your analogy. Whether there are other viable bases for life isn’t known, but we do know that DNA and RNA are a viable basis. If DNA and RNA appeared on Earth then the possibility of them appearing is proven, and they could appear elsewhere. Again, that’s then the same deck of cards.
Regardless of the basis of life, what evolves will be subject to principles of energy efficiency.
So, for example, looking at senses, being able to pinpoint things in 3D space provides a substantial advantage. What’s one of the simplest way of 3D sensing? - with two sensors equidistant from a centrepoint. & there you go – bilateral symmetry of several organs. It maximises the ratio of energy reward to energy cost.
Bipdealism has evolved completely separately in different animals on Earth. Equally it could evolve elsewhere.
There's no reason that the ancestors of Guardians were 5 lobed organisms, they might have had six, or twenty, or three. Any minor variation back at the dawn of time would create wildly different end products, and sure they might have eyes similar to us, or maybe they have calcium-based bones because that's a handy thing to use, but it's far, far, far more likely that they'd be literally anything else.
What basis do you have for that? They evolved on a planet similar to ours, and so the selection pressures are likely to have been similar. And again those selection pressures may well result in the same forms being favourable as they have on Earth.
We know on Earth that evolution has come up with millions of different answers to the same basic needs (food, protection, mating, etc.). Some species have wings, some are small, some big, some have tiny brains, some big, some are covered in armour, some fur, some scales, some warn blooded, some cold, some are mushrooms...
It’s millions of variations on basic themes though.
Take food.
Almost every animal is basically a tube. Food goes in one end and waste comes out the other.
Yes there’s incredible diversity but it’s all wrapped around that basic form.
Once multicellular life occurs, there’s only so many possible basic forms for food processing. Selection pressures have resulted in that particular form being one of the predominant forms on Earth, so what is there to suggest that the same wouldn’t occur on other similar worlds?
Again, energy efficiency considerations will eventually lead to bilateralism of sensory organs.
Variations on the forms will occur, and those variations which are more apt for the environs will proliferate, and that will continue for billions of years.
Again, if the environs are similar then similar selection pressures will be there, and over the huge amounts of time involved there is nothing to indicate that those pressures would not drive things towards the same forms as they have on Earth.
Convergent Evolution wouldn't create a species that looks almost exactly like humans, or rather, it's so statistic incredibly unlikely that it's certainly not going to happen in almost the exact same region of space!
Well, arguably they don’t actually look that much like humans – from the descriptions you wouldn’t look at them and think they were human relatives. You would recognise them as being very different. One of those stereotypical ‘greys’ looks more human than the description of the Guardians.
Or have you been looking at Dreamstate’s boobtastic drawings?!
But again, see all my previous points about convergent evolution.
If there are other Human-forms out there it's more likely they are on the other side of the universe or something.
Why wouldn’t it happen in the same area of space? Selection pressures which are related to positioning in the galaxy are going to be more or less the same in the same area of space, so that would increase the chance of the convergent evolution, not decrease it.
What you're suggesting is that because a pack of playing cards dropped by Bob the Gambler landed with more Clubs facing up than any other suit, if you drop 52 bananas from an albatross they'd land with more Clubs facing up too. It just doesn't make sense.
That indeed doesn’t make sense. However, it also bears no resemblance to what I was saying….
There's so many factors that guide biology over an evolutionary process. The chances of two bipedal bilaterally organised oxygen-nitrogen breathing creatures naturally evolving in total isolation in almost exactly the same area of the galaxy is literally astronomical - Especially since the entire rest of the Galaxy (as far as we know) is totally uninhabited by sentient space-faring races, yet is equally littered with Earth-like worlds.
See my previous points.
The more similar the selection pressures, the greater the probability of similar things evolving. (I’m hoping this is so self-evident that it’s not a cause for dispute.)
So the place where something like us is most likely to evolve is somewhere that’s very similar to where we evolved.
So a similar ELW in a similar part of the galaxy is more likely to be where something like us would evolve, not less likely.
There's many ways the Guardians could be our progenitors that could intersect with what we know of our own evolutionary history. There's got to be literally thousands of Sci-Fi books that deal with similar topics, some better than others!
Any of them that are more on the Sci side than the Fi?
Sure, none of them happened in real life, but it's stunningly unlikely we'll encounter sentient insectiod aliens that talk in morse code too, so there's some narrative lattitude given to Elite Dangerous game genetics.
Yeah, insects that natively talked in English, which is what morse code is, is utterly crazy. No one’s suggesting that though are they?
They UAs/Thargoid Sensors use morse, yeah, but the suggestions just that they’ve learnt it and are using it for some reason. That suggestion’s not at all ridiculous. I’ve mentioned it elsewhere, but morse would probably be easier for insectoids to interpret than spoken English.
Insects don’t have lungs so don’t create sounds in the same way humans do. Their main ways of producing sound are rubbing or clashing body parts together.
It’s considered myths and legends, but The Dark Wheel describes how Orserians speak – by clashing their chelicrae together.
Communication of that form would have much more in common with morse than with either spoken or written English.
So insectoids using one of the forms of human communication that would be most intelligible to them isn’t particularly unlikely. It’s far far more likely than them using normal English.
That brings me to point 3: There MUST be a connection between the Guardians, Thargoids and Humans that goes back to our 'birth' as a species. It's simply that we can understand each other.
To say that there 'MUST' be a connection seems rather a huge leap. We share an origin with lots of species that we don’t understand. (I’m taking that by ‘understand’ you mean ‘understand what each other are saying’ as opposed to ‘understand how each other think, each others emotions, what drivers and motivators there are, etc.’). Conversely, managing to communicate with another sentient species doesn’t seem an incredible stretch.
Ram Tah fairly easily translated the Guardian data without any frame of reference.
He had huge amounts of data gathered from the first CG though.
Worth bearing in mind here that player efforts to work out the Guardian language haven’t got anywhere.
We can understand the basic principles of the layout of the ruins,
What are they? Haven’t seen any confirmed explanations.
they seem familiar (the layout is not dissimilar from things we build),
Like what?
the scale of the obelisks is basically human-engineering-sized, the overall scale of the Ruins is human-like. Etc. etc.
So? A world fairly similar to ours but with lower gravity produces beings not too dissimilar to us, but taller and thinner due to the lower gravity. They’re going to build stuff on their scale. That scale isn’t going to be much different to ours.
Same with the Thargoid stuff, it's all things we can understand. They use visible light to communicate in very similar ways to us (red is bad, etc.) They make sounds we can hear and interpret with our ears. The scale of the ground facilities indicate they're much bigger than us but not impossibly so. They use morse code, which means they must have learned it from us I guess? They behave in ways we can understand (for the most part) They use doors with keys, they use logic in similar ways to us, they view things similarly to us (the hologram in the central base chamber, etc.
Ok then, if they’re understandable:
- What’s the meaning of the hologram in the base?
- Why did they set the UAs to use morse?
- Why did the previously hyperdict, scan then leave?
- Why has that behaviour changed?
- What do they want?
- How do they think?
- Why haven’t we been able to establish any meaningful communication with their ships?
- And so on…
The very fact that both the Aliens we encountered are: a) Understandable, b) share structural, societal and cultural similarities to us, c) occupy the same area of an otherwise empty Galaxy means there must be a connection.
a. Describing them as understandable is pretty dubious for reasons given above.
b. What are these structural, societal and cultural similarities to us? The Thargoids so far appear very different. The Guardians appear reasonably different.
c. Saying the Galaxy is otherwise empty is jumping to a very very large conclusion. There’s a lot of permit locked areas out there. We also don’t know where the Thargoids are from. We’re also only guessing that the Guardians are from the main one of their bubbles. Melville and Ram Tah are contradictory about the Guardian homeworld. Also as explained above, similar species evolving in the same region of the galaxy isn’t that unlikely.
And yeah, there must be a connection in the sense that there is a mutual connection in the area of space that we occupy/occupied. But there is no logical ‘must’ in terms of the species being ancestors/descendants of each other. Logically, given the overwhelming evidence for our evolution on Earth, it would require even more overwhelming evidence to conclude that we must be somehow related to the other species.
Oh yeah, and it didn’t really come up at any point in the main reply, but there’s also the genocide of the sentient species on Achenar by the Imperials. That was in a main area of human space but is still quite hushed up. It could have happened in other places too.
