towards a brain

this is a question that is bothering me: on one side we have a simple organism (like my cat) and in the other you have a chimp.
since i think we have ruled out singing and hunting as a way of getting more neural cells then how should we do?

using Darwinian process for that wouldn't be the best idea since sentience is only one (and not a common one) path to accomplish the organism's goals.

I think we should use this way:
eating things like seafood and the thing inside the bones ( i don't know the name, English isn't my 1st language soz) would give you more brainPoints then other things (plants and rest would also but in smaller amounts). now using a idea from the 2005 spore, we'd use that to buy a better brain.
This wouldn't auto give you a better brain but instead suggest the evolution engine to make slow mutations towards sentience over some generations (there'd be always a chance of it not working, but i think this idea is more realistic than the idea of dancing and singing to get a better brain) ..... other factors should be taken in consideration to avoid multicellular stage to become so narrow minded (like difficulty to get "brain food", chance of mutating back to dumbness and requirements to get a improved brain)


just some ideas...

Sentience is the result of the organism being able to feel pain and emotion, i.e. the Behaviour tree will respond in different ways according to different stimuli that correspond to what emotions they would feel. Sapience is when the organism gets a complex enough Behaviour Tree to be able to solve problems more effectively and to be able to use tools.

The Behaviour Tree is evolved by random mutation and natural selection and when the organism gets a construction behaviour it can possibly simplify into much broader ranged construction behaviours でしょう. For example: instead of the behaviour saying to pick up a stick and bend it, it would just be a broad and generalized "Create Tool: Bent Stick A".

i'm just saying that the chance of giving sentience and sapience to an organism through a random mutation might be a little to low for a game

The Player's action get copied by the other Organisms nearby them of their species and create new Behaviour Branches. This allows the player to influence their development towards Sapience and Civilization.

that's too lamarkian...

eumesmo wrote:

that's too lamarkian...

it's the simplest way though, plus it's good for gameplay.

There's some very interesting points i'd like to make here on the issue of sentience, so sit tight, I'll try to make you feel my enthusiasm towards this subject.

The first point I'd like to make is that many studies are showing out view of "sentience" or even the idea of it may be quite flawed. Basically, we define sentience as self-awareness, but ed don't really have a great way to test what is sentient and what is not. We don't even have an objective way of measuring intelligence, or defining if an animal has feelings. I don't think canus familiaris is defined as sentient, however, almost anyone who has a dog will tell you how human they can feel. they understand human emotions because of thousands of years of domestication. They have their own feelings as well, their own personalities, their own kind of intelligence. What i'm getting at is the thought of human intelligence being unique, but rally the only basic trait that sets humans apart from other species on earth is the use of fire. That's what, pardon the pun, sparked our growth as a dominant species. So we really shouldn't view intelligence as some sort of ladder system, it's more than one dimensional: there are many different types of intelligence, and we need to try to incorporate them all and let different intelligences evolve.

My second point is that high intelligence has evolved on earth in at least two different ways, if not more. Human intelligence is based on socialization and our communal structure: we are at heart social creatures, and solve problems best with teamwork, by thinking differently together. The most distinct opposite of our intelligence is that of octopuses. Octopi almost never meet each other except to mate, and have no social structure. However, they are able to solve extremely complex problems (such as who will win world cup matches) and demonstrate very high intelligence and reasoning skills. Their intelligence evolved out of a need to be able to solve very complex problems with no help at all, the antithesis of our intelligence.

Finally, there's the crows, magpies and other corvids. They can solve complex problems and use tools, and also demonstrate forward planning. their intelligence is a lot like ours, yet it developed independently from us. So we need to find out what purposes certain skills of high intelligence would serve in nature before we can develop any sort of idea of how to aid their evolution.

Thanks for reading, if you did.

~sciocont wrote:

longpost is long

That's all very well in theory, Scio, but how do we get that into the game? How do we define the researches that non-social creatures can research? If octupi are solitary they will never have a civilization, at least not in the sense we know it. How will we show this in game? There are so many questions here that we will have trouble answering.

Before we get into serious discussion I think we should clarify what the difference between Sapient and Sentient is. Sapient is the ability to put together mostly unrelated pieces of information to obtain an outcome. Sentience is the ability to feel emotions based around things other than pure instinct.

Also with the players actions, it's only modifying the behaviour, not the Organism's Biological Structure.

Again you guys seem to not be factoring in the "fun factor" We need this engagin and fun as well. We need to think this as more of a game then a completely realistic simulation.

Falthron wrote:

Again you guys seem to not be factoring in the "fun factor" We need this engagin and fun as well. We need to think this as more of a game then a completely realistic simulation.

as realistic as possible, if we take out too much of the realism for the fun factor we end up with something that exists already

US_of_Alaska wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

longpost is long

That's all very well in theory, Scio, but how do we get that into the game? How do we define the researches that non-social creatures can research? If octupi are solitary they will never have a civilization, at least not in the sense we know it. How will we show this in game? There are so many questions here that we will have trouble answering.

That's basically my point- we need to discuss different paths of advancement, and how we define advances.

eumesmo wrote:

Falthron wrote:

Again you guys seem to not be factoring in the "fun factor" We need this engagin and fun as well. We need to think this as more of a game then a completely realistic simulation.

as realistic as possible, if we take out too much of the realism for the fun factor we end up with something that exists already

But if we make too realistic no one will want to play it. You have to take some liberties with realism I don't want this too turn into spore but I also don't want this to be too boring.

it might be best to work out microbe and evolution and then start talking bout this (ironic for me to say this cause i was the one starting the thread).

We dont even know how we will make em evolve exactly, so lets work that out first

eumesmo wrote:

it might be best to work out microbe and evolution and then start talking bout this (ironic for me to say this cause i was the one starting the thread).

We dont even know how we will make em evolve exactly, so lets work that out first

I think the discussion on evolution should be postponed until we have a game to work with. We really don't know what will happen, so it's best not to expect any one thing.