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Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

> Earlier, you mentioned that beaks can't make spaceships. Well, maybe neither can hands.

Except hands did create spaceships...

The "beaks can't make spaceships" is a comment about crows not having hands. Crows use their beaks to manipulate objects. This does not imbue cows with great motor control. The use of tools is very different than the ability to finely manipulate tools. Aliens could have beaks, but these would not be their way to build spaceships. Similarly they wouldn't have pincers. Such grasping mechanisms just are extremely inefficient and don't allow for certain tasks.This excludes a lot of classes of tools from crows. This isn't biology, this is physics.

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Our hands are like beaks to some hypothetical species, and it is hubris to assume we're great manipulators. Our fingers could be closer in utility to cow's hooves, than the manipulation techniques of some unknown species are to our own gesticulations.

And they would have tools as multipliers for their natures, just as we use tools to extend ours.

Our wonderful inventions might be another species child's play. Our herculean efforts to reach the stars might be a triviality to a species that can synthesize novel compounds in their bodies, and/or those of their stock animals. We're just at the early stages of doing that with algae, after a very long climb from first making fire.

Just as I could train and arrange to walk to Mexico, they might be able to self modify and reach the stars. No spaceship needed.

Our great ideas and dreams might be trite to bigger minds out in the galaxies. They could have easily skipped over what we struggle with.

You call those cans "spaceships"? They can barely get to your moon and back.

"Humans can't even excrete flexible ceramics. They need air. They need heat. They can't stand up to ionizing radiation. This isn't biology, this is physics!"

Cephalopods have got onto land at least twice. Nothing says they can't do it again.

> Cephalopods have got onto land at least twice. Nothing says they can't do it again.

Sure? But isn't that my point? They sure looked different and had different physical attributes when they lived on land.

> They can't stand up to ionizing radiation. This isn't biology, this is physics!

I wouldn't compare this to the ability to use a screwdriver. Or in a more abstract way, be able to grasp, twist, and push.

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