Aquatic Sapience

I've heard a lot about aquatic creatures not being able to get past Aware stage or something because they can't get to fire. Underwater volcanoes actually reach incredibly high temperatures, aquatic creatures can use the heat as a source of...heat...idk, but I just wanted to say this.

In my opinion, there should be no aqatic civilizations/tribes/whatever because fire is so extremely important. In order to reach the awakening, you need to develop lungs and legs, at least to some degree, as I can't see a way for aware species to produce fire underwater, except maybe for magnesium.

*facepalm

Underwater thermal vents and volcanoes might be hot, but nowhere near enough the temperatures needed for (s)melting metals. Even if it was, water is much denser than air and propagates heat much better, meaning any living thing would be already dead twice at the time it reached the vent.

Rerun post.

(Not your fault, as you weren't around for the other one...)

On another note, we need to get our terminology straight for the difference between Aware (Sentient) and the next step up, for which the word "sapient" may or may not be appropriate.

/Calli Is a Language Nerd.

Commander Keen wrote:

Underwater thermal vents and volcanoes might be hot, but nowhere near enough the temperatures needed for (s)melting metals. Even if it was, water is much denser than air and propagates heat much better, meaning any living thing would be already dead twice at the time it reached the vent.

Yeah, this was decided years ago.

~sciocont wrote:

Commander Keen wrote:

Underwater thermal vents and volcanoes might be hot, but nowhere near enough the temperatures needed for (s)melting metals. Even if it was, water is much denser than air and propagates heat much better, meaning any living thing would be already dead twice at the time it reached the vent.

Yeah, this was decided years ago.

This, and earth chem is the only chem we can possibly use, need to be slapped up somewhere official.

Personally, I think you should be able to get to maybe, a community similar to a complicated-ish wolf pack with around octopus intelligence. Any further than that seems a tad silly without fire.
-Waap.

(The lack of) the presence of fire doesn't directly affect the development of intelligence, it just hinders technological progress. Fire is very important for smelting metals and making stuff, but it shouldn't directly affect brain development.

Cavemen were about as intelligent as us and they didn't really need fire, they used caves to live in (or wooden huts) and carved stone weapons attacked to sticks and wrapped them together with rope. None of it involved fire, and is possible with alternatives found underwater. Only technology is hindered.
Remember, SpongeBob has no problem making fire underwater.

I agree about brain development, but they wouldn't be able to build a civilization without fire, or at least, I can't conceive a way for them to do so.

Bob Blackmon wrote:

I agree about brain development, but they wouldn't be able to build a civilization without fire, or at least, I can't conceive a way for them to do so.

I could imagine an underwater species making stuff out of coral and seafloor rocks, but that's all. Basically they would be stuck at their stone age.

Imagine if the worlds population was suddenly plonked in the stone age, we'd be able to function as a complex society, but be limited in technology. Just because a species is stuck in the stone age doesn't mean they can't be civilised.

Like dolphins in suits, drinking tea and smoking pipes in a cave while pondering over a cave painting they're working on. That's what it'd be like.

I'm working on a guide for new members explaining how to be a productive member of the dev team. If you guys want, I could expand it to include a few of the official descisions we've made that can't be found on the wiki, such as the reliance on earth chem and the large similarities that will be nessicary for Space Faring civilizations to form.

Okay, back to Calli's post, this is what I understand:

Microbe Stage: Self Explanitory. What we're working on.
Multicellular Stage: The colony concept pioneered by pez.
Aware: Our equivalent of Spore's Creature Stage.
Awakening Stage: Needs to be discussed. In terms of the Setient/Sapient debate, most sci-fi refers to races with technological abilities like humans as Sentient.

Back to the OP:

Aquatic species can certainly be Sapient/Sentient, and even form civilization, but they'd need uplifting from another race to provide them with metalurgy and advanced technology. In addition, this will keep us from having to plan out underwater cities and the like.

Tenebrarum wrote:

I'm working on a guide for new members explaining how to be a productive member of the dev team. If you guys want, I could expand it to include a few of the official descisions we've made that can't be found on the wiki, such as the reliance on earth chem and the large similarities that will be nessicary for Space Faring civilizations to form.

Okay, back to Calli's post, this is what I understand:

Microbe Stage: Self Explanitory. What we're working on.
Multicellular Stage: The colony concept pioneered by pez.
Aware: Our equivalent of Spore's Creature Stage.
Awakening Stage: Needs to be discussed. In terms of the Setient/Sapient debate, most sci-fi refers to races with technological abilities like humans as Sentient.

Back to the OP:

Aquatic species can certainly be Sapient/Sentient, and even form civilization, but they'd need uplifting from another race to provide them with metalurgy and advanced technology. In addition, this will keep us from having to plan out underwater cities and the like.

Right. So linguistic debate: Sentient is 'capable of sensation,' but is usually used to refer to species being capable of the communication of complex emotions, such as grief. (So, by this standard, Chimpanzees would definitely be sentient, and cetacians and elephants probably would be.) However, the line is still somewhat fuzzy, which is why the ability to communicate as well as feel is important to emphasize. For example, your dog may feel sad, but we have yet to talk to it and figure out if he knows that you won't be back from college until thanksgiving, or if he wakes up every day and discovers anew that you aren't home.

Sapient is a term that I don't wish us to use, as it not only has no applicable meaning to that stage ('posessing wisdom,') and it carries some of the same connotations as 'humanoid,' given that half of the people discussing it will assume it refers to humans or a (star trek style rubber face alien) human or primate-like equivalent. Also, with the amount of morons running around 'homo sapiens' is a bit of a misnomer.

To make the game and programming simpler, I'd say sentient = tool use (general organised construction of functional objects).
It might not be the actual definition, but I'm not sure any of these AI are actually going to be 'aware', and seeing as we don't even know whether our pet dogs are, how the computer works out if they are capable of conscious thought and emotion I don't know.

I suppose then that Aware would refer to the ability to think. Not necessarily the best term for the purpose, but I've yet to see a better one and even if we find one, we've already pretty well cemented the "aware" part into our final draft.

Aware = ability to problem solve? That seemed to be the consensus a while back.

Hmmmm.... Not so sure on the tool use for a Sentience definition. Chimps use tools, sure, but so do crows. And Otters. The ability to manufacture tools, such as sharpening a stick or tying a rock to a stick with some grass would be a better definition, and would reduce our broad-category sentience to some apes and monkeys, making me think we're on the right track.

Of course, as tool use is not strictly necessary in aquatic areas (see - aerodynamics means no hands) there would have to be a double standard to allow for aquatic Sentience, as dolphins do have complex hunting behaviors and appear to be testing at toddler intelligence levels along with chimpanzees. Both have been taught complex language systems, and both demonstrate sense of self. (As do elephants.)

To be really, really over-complicated:

Aware: Problem-solving capacity. Can crack a nut with a rock, pull a lever to get a cookie, etc. Covers pretty much everything from crows and seagulls to octopuses and up.
- Subset: Awareness of Self: Awareness of individual identity. A classic test is to paint a dot on an animal's head somewhere and then introduce them to a mirror. The ones that try to examine it or rub it off are aware of self. The ones that bark at the mirror (your dog) have failed the test. Dolphins, several species of ape including chimps, and Elephants have all been demonstrated to have awareness of self, which would be the next step up towards sapience.
Sentience: tool use and the communication of innovations.
Basically, you can make a rock hammer, sure. But you're not Sentient until you can teach your friend how to make a rock hammer.

This clear stuff up for anyone?

I was trying to define when the game would mark the progression to the next stage, not the actual word itself. To clarify: The game marks progression to the aware/sentient stage when 'general organised construction of function objects' is performed by the organism. This will be a lot easier for the game to distinguish because once a functional object is created, it would mark the beginning of the tech tree progression, the next phase of the game. This is so the game doesn't have to replicate the level of reality required for awareness of self or conscious thought (a vital part of which being imagination, which computers can't do) in order to function. I'm assuming we don't want to overwork our programmers even further.

But in terms of word definitions, you've done it again. You've communicated to us how language fails completely to be any use in communication through language, partially my fault because my language was mis-communicated. I may be somewhat contradicting myself, but that's language. I really should upgrade to telepathy.

... Don't do that to me when I've just had a spanish class, Uteen. My neurons just about had a spaz attack.

So, Sentient means the unlocking of the ability to create a FP? Okay, I can dig that.

.... I just revealed that I remember the nineties, didn't I?

Wait a while. For this whole time, 'Aware' pointed to the stage of a (stupid) animal. If Aware now means ability to make TOs, that's more of that tribal thing, wich was previously occupated by Awakening. Does that mean the names of everything will be changed? Or just that I have total mess in everything?

Bear with me, my specialization is things going kaboom, not sociology..

Lemme scroll up and check... nope. Aware = ability to problem-solve. Not necessarily to make TO's. Sentience is the ability to make TO's.

Uteen and I just confused the belgium out of everyone here, didn't we?

Commander Keen wrote:

Wait a while. For this whole time, 'Aware' pointed to the stage of a (stupid) animal. If Aware now means ability to make TOs, that's more of that tribal thing, wich was previously occupated by Awakening. Does that mean the names of everything will be changed? Or just that I have total mess in everything?

Bear with me, my specialization is things going kaboom, not sociology..

I thought that was multi-cellular... Hang on, the forum index will sort this out.

There's multi-cellular and aware, both are basically multi-cellular while unintelligent, and what I've been calling aware is awakening... ⍨

So... Yeah.

EDIT: I was beat to it... And we probably have.

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

Lemme scroll up and check... nope. Aware = ability to problem-solve. Not necessarily to make TO's. Sentience is the ability to make TO's.

Uteen and I just confused the belgium out of everyone here, didn't we?

Awareness = "Awareness is the state or ability to perceive, to feel, or to be conscious of events, objects or sensory patterns. In this level of consciousness, sense data can be confirmed by an observer without necessarily implying understanding. More broadly, it is the state or quality of being aware of something. In biological psychology, awareness is defined as a human's or an animal's perception and cognitive reaction to a condition or event."

From wikipedia

ido66667 wrote:

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

Lemme scroll up and check... nope. Aware = ability to problem-solve. Not necessarily to make TO's. Sentience is the ability to make TO's.

Uteen and I just confused the belgium out of everyone here, didn't we?

Awareness = "Awareness is the state or ability to perceive, to feel, or to be conscious of events, objects or sensory patterns. In this level of consciousness, sense data can be confirmed by an observer without necessarily implying understanding. More broadly, it is the state or quality of being aware of something. In biological psychology, awareness is defined as a human's or an animal's perception and cognitive reaction to a condition or event."

From wikipedia

So... How does the game work this out? And what is the actual difference between this and normal multi-cellular? Is normal multicellular the 'early multicellular' with the cell colonies, then?

The Uteen wrote:

ido66667 wrote:

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

Lemme scroll up and check... nope. Aware = ability to problem-solve. Not necessarily to make TO's. Sentience is the ability to make TO's.

Uteen and I just confused the belgium out of everyone here, didn't we?

Awareness = "Awareness is the state or ability to perceive, to feel, or to be conscious of events, objects or sensory patterns. In this level of consciousness, sense data can be confirmed by an observer without necessarily implying understanding. More broadly, it is the state or quality of being aware of something. In biological psychology, awareness is defined as a human's or an animal's perception and cognitive reaction to a condition or event."

From wikipedia

So... How does the game work this out? And what is the actual difference between this and normal multi-cellular? Is normal multicellular the 'early multicellular' with the cell colonies, then?

Multicellurar is Working from Instinct Awer Life can Think And Learn.

Aware = ability to problem solve (and learn from it) by definition of the game stages, not necessarily the great wikipedia or the dictionary of your choice.

Hmmm.... Okay, see anything can learn - you can even train a goldfish to react to stimuli (such as tapping their tank or turning on the light when you're about to feed them,) - except for maybe invertibrates. Conditioning is different, but it's still learning, as it's pattern recognition. Aware is the ability to apply those patterns - see, your dog is 'aware' because you can teach him to open the door when you clap your hands, but he can also open the door in the absence of a command, such as when he wants to get into your pantry. He will also preform tricks (such as shake hands) for people he doesn't know, in the absence of a command, because he's hoping to get a treat from them by showing off. Your goldfish does not have this capability.

So, if you start as an earthworm, you have stimulus and a very limited capacity to respond to them. Some things can be "learned" such as "this hurts" or "too bright" could be associated with emerging onto the surface. So the worm will be less likely to emerge. But your worm can't learn the route through a maze.

I know I'm confusing you further, but I've gotta think about how the game would know this one. I mean, I would know, but I'm not a computer program.