Messages posted by: Insanity42

mikeejimbo wrote:I would also argue that it's not a threshold where a creature is either not sentient or is sentient, but rather a spectrum of sentience with humans at the top (among all animals we know anyway) with other apes and dolphins below us.

Buddhism agrees with that. Still reading a learning, but my understanding is it teaches that life can be intelligent or non-intelligent, with plants making up the group that is non-intelligent. All animals, including humans, are intelligent, but in increasing levels. Humans are the only animals with enough free time to practice spirituality and enough suffering to motivate them to do so.

itosaithwebb wrote:One thing I haven't figured out yet though is how to get every single mouth part.

I don't think its possible. As mentioned in this thread, you tend to find pieces that are in alignment with the ones you are using. If you are a herbivore, you can't use carnivores mouths. The slots for the other mouths have the food symbol, while the ones in alignment with yours, have a open slot. I think the others are locked out. I spent about 7billion years looking for all parts and never found the other mouths.

I believe, I haven't tried yet, you open the cheat console at the main screen, and type in the code.

mikeejimbo wrote:Sadly, an insect will never achieve sentience. For one thing they can't grow large enough to have a brain complex enough. There are a number of factors, not the least of which is the old square-cube law. I believe this is the reason exoskeletons actually can't get very large. (Although there are exceptions, such as the coconut crab. It is noteworthy that these occur in marine arthropods, but coconut crabs can indeed live on land for some period. I am not completely sure about this part, actually, an entomologist may correct me.) Another reason is lack of hemoglobin (OK, admittedly some insects have it). There's something about breathing and the spiracles too, but this may be tied to the lack of hemoglobin since for chordata the blood delivers oxygen to the cells.

My understanding in what limits the size of arthropods is the exoskeleton square-cube challenge and the oxygen transport system. As yesrah said, in most arthropods, in particularly terrestrial ones, the circulatory system is not responsible for transporting oxygen to the body tissues and cells. Oxygen transport is done mainly by "book lungs" or the spiracles, in which roughly the oxygen just diffuses throughout the tissues via spiracles. There is a limit as to how fast oxygen can diffuse, which means at larger sizes, some tissues would not receive oxygen.

Sentience and sapience are often used to mean the same, where often they are different. Sapience really means cognitive abilities; knowledge, consciousness. Sentience is the ability to perceive subjectively. The Latin roots are sentire: to feel and sapere: to know. So while a creature may be sapient, being intelligent or cunning or capable of using technology, it may not be sentient.

The movie Mimic actually did a decent job at addressing the physical size limits. In the movie, the genetically Judas bugs (a hybrid of a termite and praying mantis), over a period of 3 years, yet equivalent to thousands of their generations, evolved and developed true lungs and an advanced circulatory system. They grew approximately human size and began hunting humans in New York.

Another good series on sentient insects is Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth series. The Thranx species are sentient praying mantises more or less. Still have spiracles, but are sentient, technologically advance.

I am not knowledgeable in insect development, so I am in no way qualified to discuss what exactly goes in during the metamorphosis process. It is truly an amazing process, almost more so then gestation and birth. Literally the animal is taken apart and reassembled.

Insects have no eyelids, wonder what it is like to sleep when you cannot close your eyes.

Roughly, in order to charm or impress a creature, you must be able to copy their actions.

When you target a creature, you can then choose combat or social. When you click as social, it starts a "dialog" between the two creatures, one being yours. Your task now is to copy what they do, and a half-moon bar shows your progress. By copying I mean, when it dances, you then dance, when it poses, you pose. When the two bars meet, you impressed that creature. Babies are easier then adults, adults are easier then alphas. I suggest getting more creatures in your pack as this helps. You can recruit other creatures that have social methods that your species doesn't and they will copy when appropriate. Its a copy cat game. To be really good at it, you need decent ranks in all socials (Sing, Dance, Charm, Pose) or impress other creatures that have skills you don't and add them to your pack. If you are unable to impress anything, you can't add others to your pack.

I've noticed that it seems the first species you encounter only has one social skill, sometimes its the same as yours, sometimes not.

Depending on how your creature developed in cell, you might have a Siren Song ability. Use this close to a member of another species before you start a social dialog. It makes impressing them easier, though it does not guarantee success.

if you truly have a problem or error in the game, the best place to direct your request for help is the "Spore Help" forum or contact EA/Maxis directly.

danicus wrote:
Firstly science has neither disproven nor proven the existence of God. As you say, each new discovery makes the existence of God more and more unlikely. The reason why we never recieve negative proof is because of 2 potential "escape clauses" for want of a better term. The first is that, by most definitions of a higher being, they are both outside of time, physics etc. and are able to subvert these at will. Because of this we would never see them acting, as any action they take in this world will look like an act of nature. The other is that God may merely have created the universe, set all it's laws in motion and then sat back with a cold beer to watch. This means that there is no further interaction of God with our universe so until we figure out what happened at the very beginning that one's unprovable too.

Its amazing where you can find wisdom sometimes. Here are some quotes from Futurama (Episode: Godfellas):

God Entity: Bender, being God isn't easy. If you do too much, people get dependent on you. And if you do nothing, they lose hope. You have to use a light touch, like a safecracker or a pickpocket.

God Entity: If you've done things right, people won't be sure if you've done anything at all.

roboraptor wrote:

insanity42 wrote:Agreed. You don't have excellent vision when it is not needed. Same with you don't have massively strong jaws with 8 inch steak knives as teeth and never use them.

Can you please rephrase that? I'm not sure if that was sarcastic to any extent

Cheers,
Roboraptor

It was not intended to be sarcastic. darwintheory stated:

DarwinTheory wrote:Which goes as some evidence (in my mind at least) that vision was important to it. My belief is that 'T-Rex' was an ambush predator that used its binocular vision to gauge the distance to its prey and help it time its attack, I however also believe that "T-Rex" wouldn't turn down a dead hadrosaur if he came across it. Just my 2 cents.

To which my response was meant as; Yes T. Rex has good vision because having good vision was important to T. Rex. If T. Rex was a pure scavenger, it probably would not have a need for good binocular vision. I'd imagine a superb sense of smell be more important, ever try finding a dead animal in the woods just on eyesight? Regardless as to how sharp your vision is, you can't see through foliage. Much the same that having opposable thumbs is important to humans, but not necessarily to cows. T. Rex had strong jaws and sharp teeth because they were meant to be used. Does this make sense or did I make it clear as mud?

sporemasterarti wrote:Gas giants cannot support life, what happens is the core of the planet is small and it attracts gas and it begins to build up increasing in size, and there's really no way to make them habitable, colonized, perhaps Neptune (majorly methane), but Venus and Jupiter would be much to harsh to colonize.

There is no evidence to support the claim that gas giants can or cannot support life. Agreeably, Earth-like life could not exist on gas giants, but does not preclude that some form of life could not exist. Even on Earth, there are several extremophiles that can live in, and sometimes require, extreme environments that would normally kill other life.

darwintheory wrote:

Insanity42 wrote:How its vision was is unknown, the soft tissues of the eye do not fossilized. The skull shows that it did have binocular vision. Binocular vision gives an animal a wider field of vision and accurate depth perception, typically something that only a predator would need. In fact, fossil evidence supports that the tyrannosaur family tree had a history of improving binocular vision. Primates are an exception for possessing binocular vision, and its thought because our ancestors were tree dwelling, we developed binocular vision to deal with tree jumping.

Which goes as some evidence (in my mind at least) that vision was important to it. My belief is that 'T-Rex' was an ambush predator that used its binocular vision to gauge the distance to its prey and help it time its attack, I however also believe that "T-Rex" wouldn't turn down a dead hadrosaur if he came across it. Just my 2 cents.

Agreed. You don't have excellent vision when it is not needed. Same with you don't have massively strong jaws with 8 inch steak knives as teeth and never use them.

guang wrote:

chethosk wrote:Yes. Just as we soon all start using the Metric System.

Umm.....we all do use the metric system.....except for the US.

quite true. and by the time we do, there will be a new international standard of measurement and it take us hundreds of years to adopt that one.

Darwin himself was aware of this problem in his theory. In fact in his book, Origins of Species, he addresses it with the following questions;

Firstly, why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see
innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?

Ultimately, the lack of these innumerable transitional forms presents a serious problem to the theory of evolution.

999-999=0

whoops.

try again...

101-101=0

mmm...

I've had similar problems where if I click on the totem to drop the food, they kinda stand around doing nothing. Usually this seems to happen when I am at the upper 2 levels of tribe size, I think its 9 and 12 members, and I am telling all of them to do so. The problem might simply be they all try doing it at the same time, and the game engine can't decide who goes first. Most times if I click on the ground in the village, and leave them, they will eventually drop the food. Now typically I will have most of them getting food, and few stay back with weapons in hand in case of an attack.

Here is a great website dedicated to languages, both natural and constructed.

Omniglot

Probably the most intriguing one for a binary language is 12480.

I've dabbled into the idea of developing a language for use later in a story.

This thread reminds me of the story of the Tower of Babel.