Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-25618639-20150307200513/@comment-25177957-20150311191441

The Lord of Silence wrote: These are all good points, but I will still try and put up some arguments, more for the sake of having a good argument than anything else, so this is friendly. The IQ that a person displays on tests for IQ is not always their true potential intellect. Then again I suppose you could regard IQ as simply that person's current intelligence. I did actually look up what IQ is, and really it seems to be a way of measuring not so much intelligence on a universal scale, but rather as to whether or not a human posses average intelligence. Other races may display IQ in different ways than humans do, perhaps it is in their creative levels that they progress rather than raw knowledge? Not the best suggestion but I suppose you get what I mean.

As for your evolutionary arguments, they seem correct to me, as a person who at least likes to think they know a decent amount about the theory. But they do not actually work for me because, well, I don't believe in evolution; I am a creationist. No I am not going to argue on that point since generally people don't really care how logical your argument is I've found, they just say you're biased (as if they're somehow not) and that you shouldn't bring religion into science (which I'm not!). But since in 40k they seem to follow normal evolutionary laws, then I'd say yes you're right.

So, very well it would make sense for the Eldar to have a higher IQ due to evolution and gradual genetic improvement. But wouldn't they have changed a tad more from the standard humanoid? I mean we know humans mutate into new forms all the time in 40k, so why haven't the Eldar done the same? I'm wondering if they have a problem with their genome, perhaps developed by all the excess that led to Slaneesh being created, although that seems a bit too recent, but whatever. It seems also that surely they would have better tech than this after millions of years, I mean it is pretty good, but it isn't perfect otherwise no one could take them on and survive. Their biology also isn't really much better than a humans (yes it is better, but not by very much).

So, there are my friendly arguments, just because I'm enjoying this and I like a good debate. Xenos definately use a different method of measuring intelligence than humans would, however I presented the alien IQ's from a human standpoint, (say for example, if an Eldar masqueraded it's nature in a human society, the majority of humans would think the secret Eldar was highly intelligent, a very emotional individual, or a person with extreme levels of creativity, and these 3 qualities are the essentials behind IQ level, (perhaps excluding the emotional bit in a few cases). The average eldar will always have more emotion than the average human, and will usually have more creativity than a human.

There's a core different between human evolution and Eldar evolution in 40k, we can assume that the prokaryotic cells dropped on far ancient Earth  which eventually evolved into humans were dropped off by the Old Ones, so essentially, the Old Ones simply left all life on Earth to evolve on it's own, but the creation of the eldar was a far more important ordeal to the Old Ones, and they were engineering the race for specific purposes in mind. The eldar can be mutated by the powers of the warp like humans, but the eldar genome is far, and I mean extremely far more advanced than a human's, for example, it's been said before that the eldar have a triple-helix DNA, while humans have double-helix DNA. With the very fact that the eldar have DNA in triple-helixes, it is obvious that the eldar's genetic information has far more to it than humans, other than biological differences on the genetic level, every organ system the eldar have are superior in function, and efficiency, especially the eldar mind. But it's important to keep in mind, the main genetic weakness of the Eldar is their hightened emotional senses, such as feelings of pleasure, which we all know caused the fall of the Eldar. The eldar did have better technology before the fall, it's possible they reached a level of technology nearly as advanced as the Old Ones, but when their society collapsed, the level of their technology degraded like any other fallen civilisation.