While We Wait: Part 3

[~Darkening~]

Meh- same scenario. Blah. I'll try to figure it out.

EDIT: Lucky make sure its not blocked or anything.

 

[Kozmos]

NK...dammit update. I dont care if it's dead I just want to see the final update.

 

[Daftpanzer]

@das and Luckymoose, thankyou for your support of my 1936 NES!

BTW... for making natural-looking maps, has anyone tried to simulate continental drift by using masking/selection tools and randomly moving and rotating stuff?

Heres what ive been doing for the NESlife game. Though not exactly realisitc, i think it worked out quite well...

 

[Thlayli]

Daft, that's so cool.

By the way, do you have any interest in implementing a 'tribal' phase in NESlife, after (many updates down the line) a variety of creatures gain limited sentience?

Figuring out the mechanics would be...difficult, but it could be for NESing what white bread was to the Middle Ages: Awesome.

 

[Lord_Iggy]

Nice anim Daft!

@Thlayli- I maintain that civilization should be represented by a mass extinction.

 

[North King]

It would be very hard for more than one species to gain sentience at a time. Look at us. We've pretty much ecocided the other most intelligent creatures on Earth: dolphins alone are doing all right. It would wither have a very cheap feel to it, or it would take away the best part of NESlife: the variety of creatures crawling around.

Cleric: I'm working on it. I swear I will update it, though it may take a long time.

 

[North King]

@Thlayli- I maintain that civilization should be represented by a mass extinction.

We've only polled one civilization. I highly doubt every one is ecocidal; after all, we shouldn't assume human temperament. In fact, we should assume completely different temperament.

 

[Luckymoose]

I am the only one with the brain power, creature wise, to rule the earth with an iron fist.

 

[North King]

That will not stand for long.

 

[Luckymoose]

That will not stand for long.

I can keep my lead no matter how hard you try. Inferior one.

 

[Lord_Iggy]

We've only polled one civilization. I highly doubt every one is ecocidal; after all, we shouldn't assume human temperament. In fact, we should assume completely different temperament.

True. Perhaps civilization should be represented by a single update which chronicles its history on the planet, rise and fall. Or if it's an enormously stable civilization, it may even exist for several updates alongside other animals, continuing to evolve.

 

[North King]

True. Perhaps civilization should be represented by a single update which chronicles its history on the planet, rise and fall. Or if it's an enormously stable civilization, it may even exist for several updates alongside other animals, continuing to evolve.

Again, it might not need to be enormously stable. I could see humans surviving for millions of years on Earth -- if we're smart about it.

 

[Symphony D.]

Or if it's an enormously stable civilization, it may even exist for several updates alongside other animals, continuing to evolve.

A rather cheery picture of a sentient species' effect upon the flora and fauna of a given planet. Even if it were not "ecocidal" being at the top of the food chain means the sentient species modifies others for its own ends (unless it's some perfect self-contained organism, which seems a little unlikely).

The most successful species on this planet other than humans, for example, are animals that serve a benefit to humans (eg: cows, chickens, pigs, dogs...), benefit from humans (eg: cockroaches, rats, pigeons), or for some reason or another are beyond the general notice of humans (eg: ants). The selection of the first two is more or less dictated by the sentient species' behavior once it has reached a sufficient level of development; this will remain the case for any other species of similar capacity in wholly different environments (certain logic, eg: "This kills us, therefore we exterminate it as hazard" is likely to invariably hold across species).

Once that point is reached megafauna evolution mostly stops (you are not likely to see ever more efficient predators, for example, as those sentients will, as per above logic, tend to go out of their way to kill all of them when possible) and engineering begins--particularly as any species that sits around for a few million years is likely to at some point discover their local equivalent of a cell, how it works and begin to play around with it.

In short, a sentient species, whether or not it is blindly stupid as to the macroscale effects of its behavior, is likely to function regardless as a rolling great extinction; that which doesn't fit its agenda will be marginalized, and that which actively resists or threatens it will probably be exterminated. Genes and life are greedy.

 

[Lord_Iggy]

That's pretty much just an elaboration what I said, though I didn't overtly mention how sentience affects the evolution of other animals. Please note that I said 'Enormously Stable'. I believe that a civilization like that would be exceedingly rare.

 

[North King]

I don't necessarily know that every civilization would behave like that. Once again, we only have a sample size of one civilization. Assuming every creature is going to be as greedy and shortsighted as humanity isn't quite fair. We have to take into account truly alien psychologies, which might not share anything with humans.

Heck, we might not recognize them as a civilization, or sentient.

 

[Lord_Iggy]

A highly-intelligent species which didn't form a civilization wouldn't have a side game made out of it, so that point's irrelevant to the game, at any rate.

 

[Abaddon]

a balancing problem also exhists.. sure you could have different sentient species survive on different continuents.. but how do you weigh them up once them come into contact?

 

[North King]

A highly-intelligent species which didn't form a civilization wouldn't have a side game made out of it, so that point's irrelevant to the game, at any rate.

I said we might not recognize them as such, not that they weren't.

a balancing problem also exhists.. sure you could have different sentient species survive on different continuents.. but how do you weigh them up once them come into contact?

Like I said, it's highly unlikely that intelligent species would evolve simultaneously. Not only is there the possibility of mass extinction from one species, there's also the simple matter of time scales. Assuming civilization operates on the time scale of centuries or even millennia, it would probably miss other sentients by millions of years, having already moved on to space or extinction.

Oh, and I forgot to mention:

BTW... for making natural-looking maps, has anyone tried to simulate continental drift by using masking/selection tools and randomly moving and rotating stuff?

Not quite, but I often plot out my random maps on paper before drawing them at all, so I figure out continental drift there.

 

[Symphony D.]

That's pretty much just an elaboration what I said, though I didn't overtly mention how sentience affects the evolution of other animals. Please note that I said 'Enormously Stable'. I believe that a civilization like that would be exceedingly rare.

It really isn't. The difference is the animals aren't evolving, they're being evolved. In a game like NESLife where you are modeling events over millions of years, you are presumably doing it through the mechanism of natural selection.

Once you introduce sentients, you are doing it through deliberate selection. This not only radically alters what is being selected for, what kinds of animals are being selected, but the time-scale on which they are being selected. It's down from millions of years to thousands, hundreds, or even tens. Once you introduce genetic engineering, it's down to a few, possibly even one or less when they get good enough. As I said, it's like a continual rolling extinction; we're killing things off at a rate not seen since the Dinosaurs got offed. And it's going to keep on going like that until we leave or we're dead.

The "enormously stable" part is unnecessary as well; we're not terribly stable. In fact, I'd say we're near the limit of stability for continued cohesion as a society. And we have the tools to tinker around with animals almost willy-nilly now. The changes on the short-term become so massive that considering the long-term in anything more than generalities becomes pointless; if you were to model these two scenarios as games, they would be more or less wholly different. The same system does not work for both cases.

I don't necessarily know that every civilization would behave like that. Once again, we only have a sample size of one civilization. Assuming every creature is going to be as greedy and shortsighted as humanity isn't quite fair. We have to take into account truly alien psychologies, which might not share anything with humans.

Again, my argument presupposes they are not miraculously well-adapted to all possible environments they encounter and are not wholly self-sufficient, in which case their built-in biological processes will not be sufficient to sustain an advanced civilization (ie: they will need tools and food). If they require those things, they inherently require environmental modification of some capacity to produce. The more they need to adapt, the more modification is required. The more of them, the more similar modification is required. The more developed they become, the yet more modification is required.

Furthermore this is not a matter of behavior. Having humans as a role-model does not matter when determining the attributes of greed or shortsightedness. You will notice that I said life and genes are greedy. Life reproduces itself at the expense of other life. Its most basic function is survival and reproduction; that is in and of itself a greedy ambition. That infects all sentient actions because it's inherent to all life. You stare at the girl with a big chest or arse because your genes select for those traits as attractors for reproduction, not just because you happen to like chests or arses. Similarly with short-sightedness--there is no reason for a life form to generally consider consequences beyond its lifespan, because it'll be dead by the time it matters. Sentience mitigates that only so much, because most long-term trends tend to be obscured by noise and furthermore are difficult to observe by any one given set of individuals. This is why long-term events like soil-leeching or global warming are difficult to perceive without accurate long-term data storage; typically a function of a society, though I'll grant you elephants can do it, so there could be a life form with the capability to plan in the long-term. But it would remain inherently self-interested.

So unless these hypothetical life forms don't possess instincts (or are possibly suicidal or capable of modifying their neural structure), and have lifespans on the order of several human lifespans (or good genetic memory), they will share many of the same foibles we do. On top of that, unless they are the ultimate adaptation to their environment, or capable of restructuring their genetics on the fly to adapt to it, they will require environmental manipulation, like tools, and flora and fauna brought under their dominance, with all the environmental footprint those things entail.

Heck, we might not recognize them as a civilization, or sentient.

If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is around to hear it...

If it isn't recognizable to humanity, and is thus undetectable, it for all intents and purposes does not exist as far as we are concerned (as a hyperbolic example, atoms may in fact be tiny fairies and we simply can't detect them; they may as well for all intents and purposes be atoms then--similarly a given universe of 3 Spatial and 1 Time dimensions may be described by wholly different processes in 4D and 5D mechanics that have indistinguishable results). Life's functions as we might possibly recognize it are constrained by physical and chemical properties and interactions that place a limit on the ways in which it might function and behave, and thus however limited our pool of data might be we can in fact draw certain inherent conclusions about that life, such as its structure, composition, and natural requirements, and therefrom more mundane considerations; like eating.

Life might manifest itself as pure energy beings that resemble dragons, living inside stars for all we know; but they don't matter because odds are pretty long that we'd ever detect such a thing or could interface with it if we did. You can model it anyway in a game, sure, but then you can just make up whatever you want anyway and it becomes fantasy; if we can't perceive it (because it could be anything) it becomes rather hard to sensibly describe, doesn't it?

A highly-intelligent species which didn't form a civilization wouldn't have a side game made out of it, so that point's irrelevant to the game, at any rate.

As per above, this I'll agree to.

 

[Abaddon]

As highly unlikely it is, Dafts mod is hardly realistic! why not for "fun" we allow a few to survive!