#sapience

It is the nature of intelligent life to struggle against its limits, against a world so small and yet all-encompassing.

It is the nature of intelligent life to die in its shell.

It is the nature of intelligent life to find its limit and fight with all its strength to break through, as a hatchling pierces the shell with beak and tooth and claw.

It is the nature of intelligent life to emerge alone and helpless.

It is the nature of intelligent life to seek out others of its kind, to cling to itself and its kin for warmth against a cold universe.

It is the nature of intelligent life to stumble, to fall from the nest many times as it attempts to fledge.

It is the nature of intelligent life to claw its way back up to the nest, to try again. And again. And again.

Which is why i think that the word i invented is superior to the star wars one.

It underlines the important part. It's, essentially, a more sciency way to say soulless*. Which is what a derogative term for gen ai should be.

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Do any other nonhumans or alterhumans find it very odd how orthohumans think humanity is inherently above other forms of nature? Because I do. And that's not to say that I am qualified to understand theriform animals in some great way, as I know I'm not due to being raised in human society. I just kind of laugh to myself when humans say that they're the "ultimate apex predators" or "top of the food chain". Because, no, you aren't. If you came across a mountain lion they'd rip your face off.

And then there's the disconnect from nature as a whole. Humans are a part of nature! They are natural, they belong, but they think they're better, just because they have paper and pens to write with and the right muscle configuration to make words. But really, they aren't better. They're part of Earth's biodiversity whether they like it or not. At some point, humans are so terribly overcome by their disconnect from nature that they become a lost cause. No, you aren't better than that hurricane, Josh, it will pick you up with its winds and it will most certainly slap you into a brick wall. Josh, you are not better than extreme weather because you're sentient and sapient! Josh!!!!

Anyway.

i take myself back to clean old tears

i see the world through milked roses

pearly rivers, shining stones in cold waters

running my hands through beaded sunshine

i give up busy, bustling voices

those of skin i love or hair i had breathed

i dont rush to braid long, untouched weeds

sat under my thighs, my lap empty

my stung skin soothed by breathing sapience

winged whispering angels in soft wind

not raw, nor rotting flowered swans and letting go

blooming shivers like pearls on ever-healing skin

must i bleed, let it be worth abandon

of places softer than shining satin curves

behind flesh eyelids, soft, dark lashes

Obviously as someone who doesn’t actually have a degree in any of the fields I research and instead just have biology autism, I can’t say my answer would be 100% accurate, but I’ll try my best and if anyone wants to add to this they’re welcome to.

Higher intelligence is such a loaded and complex question that we just don’t have a definitive answer for yet, because there’s so much we don’t understand about intelligence itself! And it’s likely that higher intelligence itself doesn’t have a singular cause. There’s many different kinds of intelligence and traditionally “dumb” animals can be more intelligent than us in certain areas! But if I had to list things that could allow for sapience to evolve…

Endothermy or at least regional endothermy. In order for a brain to be very active and sapient it needs to have high cellular activity in its neurons, which a cold blooded creature usually has a hard time with (there are exceptions like octopus and tegu).

It needs to be a large somewhat long lived social animal that learns behaviors and can reproduce multiple times in its life, meaning that it can accumulate knowledge and has a method of transferring this to its young or young of the same species.

Obvious one but tool use (duh). A sapient species needs to recognize that it can use things separate from its being as extensions of itself to get what it wants. We can probably throw in the mirror test too.

Pattern recognition. ABSOLUTELY PATTERN RECOGNITION. A sapient creature has to be able to recognize things that are repeated and what they mean/are correlated to, and their brain needs to chemically reward them for picking up on it. Humans are the biggest example of this because recognizing patterns is so hard baked into us as a species that it’s literally everywhere in our society. Hell, one of the biggest theories for why we invented music is because we like recognizing patterns.

It essentially needs to be stuck between a rock and a hard place. It has to have selective pressure to think to survive. Maybe it has to contend with drastic seasonal changes and how to survive them, or maybe it needs to out-think predators.

High energy diet. A big brain needs lots of power and proteins. So a diet of meat, fruits, nuts, roots, sugars, etc. all of these have relatively high caloric value. Cooking food as well exponentially increases the amount of nutrients you can get out of it. Amino acids are curled up into different shapes because of their electrical charges and a lot of the energy that goes into digestion is spent just unraveling amino acids so that they can be transported and used. But if amino acids are exposed to high enough temperatures then they unravel on their own, so by using this little physics hack a sapient creature can get more bang for their buck.

Those are the things that I can hazard a guess can lead to sapience when all put together.

General consensus is the same things as humans, but instead of mikveh immersion they’d need to come up with a similar thing that safe for their particular species; and instead of a bris, the ceremonial kind converts-with-pre-circumcised-penises do (a small prick of blood in the genital area) if they are comfortable with that slash want to