Well, heavily dependent on your definition of each... one can be more or less intelligent. It's easy for us to imagine someone who is more intelligent than us - someone a lot like us, but just smarter, quicker on the uptake, and so forth. Can you imagine someone more SENTIENT than you? Is sentience something you either have or lack? Or, if not, is it something with an upper limit?
Motie religion: The fyunch(clicks) who give most of the information about Motie religion take a sort of bird's-eye view of their whole civilization, up to and including religion. I think this is a function of their ability to always see other perspectives, and also of the Moties' meta-awareness of Cycles.
On the lying/deception front, if the two groups had been more up-front with each other, much of the dialogue of "Crazy Eddie's Answer" would not have been necessary. Though they went out of their way to deceive each other, neither side actually succeeded in concealing information in the long term. Working with only the barest of archaeological clues and things that the Moties had let slip, the humans pretty much reasoned out everything that the Moties had tried to hide. Likewise with the humans' attempt to conceal the presence of Admiral Kutuzov from the Moties, etc. I generally feel like the authors do this to show off how smart the characters on both sides are.
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On the lying/deception front, if the two groups had been more up-front with each other, much of the dialogue of "Crazy Eddie's Answer" would not have been necessary. Though they went out of their way to deceive each other, neither side actually succeeded in concealing information in the long term. Working with only the barest of archaeological clues and things that the Moties had let slip, the humans pretty much reasoned out everything that the Moties had tried to hide. Likewise with the humans' attempt to conceal the presence of Admiral Kutuzov from the Moties, etc. I generally feel like the authors do this to show off how smart the characters on both sides are.
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