"Real" ringworlds
 

Don't you think the ringworlds are a tad small?

I mean these things are, in theory, massive. A classic Version would have a radius close to that of a planet, so it should be a few squares across at least.

Also, they are more than 5 times a huge planet in total size. Ringworlds should be at least 5 times that in suface width! If you have it around the entire system (excuding the edges to allow for wormholes) then you can get 29 planets (excuding duplicates in same location)

Ive had a brief try to mod it to get a better Version. Generated systems that have a set of huge planets in a ring shape. However, can't get them to be built in game, only in a pregenerated sense. Ive tried using other stellar manipulation components that change the entire system (Black hole generator, havnt had a go at nebulae). In fact i replaced the black hole systems with a "new ringworld" system. But the black hole generator component still genenated a black hole! Even though i deleted the specs. Any ideas?

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

RWs are only 5 times the size of a Huge planet for game balance purposes. Also, the system scale is completely arbitrary and unrealistic already, so a RW only occupying 1 sector is not much of a problem. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

Also, if you made them much bigger, then you'd run into the 77 billion population bug...

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

pre-generated system sized ringworlds.
naaaarf.

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The way I see it, a planet/ringworld is much, much smaller than the sector it is in. I mean, if you fight in Tactical combat, a Huge Planet will not even take up 1/20th of the screen!

I do think that Sphere/Ringworlds should be bigger in combat, though. It would make a good strategic touch to have to maneuver around that hulking landmass - or use it as a shield http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

I get planets and things being smaller than the sector. However, ringworlds are supposed to be the same diameter as a planets orbit, so all the surface can be inhabited. That should be very large indeed.

Ive tried scaling it up a bit, just with the normal constructed ones. Ive increased RW by 500 and SW by 2500 (so there 10x a RW). Ive balanced it by increasing the resources to match (RW=25Mkt each total cost) and had to add a supersized construction yard to build the components. I havent found the 77 billion pop bug mentioned (got 3000B OK), has it been fixed? (running gold v1.84)

Pre-generated sounds good. I managed to get 27 huge planets in nice circle (plus duplicate locations), but can't set the graphics properly. They either appear in other systems or aren't visible at all. Still trying though!

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The bug you mentioned only occures if you add population to a sphereworld over the normal 64 billion limit. (say from a transport) Population increases do not seem to trigger the bug.

I run gold v1.84 and the bug remains.

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

Maybe a ringworld should occupy the 8 sectors around an star......

.

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yeah, that would be cool...instead of 8 planets in a circle, it would actually be one planet occupying 8 sectors http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif . The sun would become part of the Ringworld when it was generated (to prevent solar bombs/supernova-ing stars)...but since the ringworld doesn't really block Solar light, the Ringworld should still generate solar effects - meaning Solar Panels, and that Crystalline stuff that's sun-dependent, would still work.

However, a Sphereworld - which totally encompasses a sun - would totally surround a sun, so it'd look like a big Sphere in the middle of your Galaxy http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif ....Unfortunately, since the Sphereworld completely encompasses the Sun, building one should "disable" the sun, and keep solar panels/those crystalline generator things from working http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif ...UNLESS you have a bi/trinary solar system.

That brings up more problems http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif ...if you have three suns in a system that are very close together, and built three Ring/Sphereworlds, they'd overlap - not good. So, if a ring/sphereworld will ever take up the 8 sectors surrounding a sun (including the sector with the sun), there will have to be a hardcoded requirement: *NOTHING* can be generated within 8 sectors of a Sun, not even another sun.

(Another option with bi-trinary solar systems, is to give them the ability to build binary & trinary Ring/sphereworlds http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif - but I severely doubt anything that huge would ever be implemented http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

[ May 13, 2003, 02:15: Message edited by: Dingocat85 ]

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

niven did a nice listing of various big stuff in one of his books, including how to get a ringworld to move, magnetic, spinning, sun for fuel. am i to brief sometimes?

[ May 13, 2003, 04:31: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

Maybe an sphere world should be as big as a Red Giant, but then of course it would overlap the other planets.....
One question, when an sphere world is build, isn't it suppose to block the sunlight completely, thus making all the other planets in the solar system too cold to be habitable without domes?

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

A bit of background on ringworlds etc.

Niven did write 3 very good books based on a ringworld, including all the physics required etc. Also spawned an RPG and several other books.

It basicly works out that the RW needs to be made of a material as strong as an atomic nucleus (imposisble). To generate gravity its spun at 770 million miles per second around the sun. To do this requires as much energy as our sun produces in several billion years and is therefore impossible. Day/night is generated by panels (Shadow squares) on an inner orbit. Both these panels and the ringworld are not in stable orbits; i.e. if an asteroid hits either panels or RW they would eventually drift and crash into the sun, or each other. This also happens if there is a gravity disturbance, by another planet for example. Corrected by giant thrusters of some sort. Atmosphere is held in by walls 1600 km high at the endge, however if anything punctures the bottom, all the air is forced out and the resuting thrust crashes it into the star. Again.
It has a mass that is only about 350 times that of earth, it is about a million miles wide and about 600 mllion miles long, all habitable. Thats about 3 million earths! Big, very big.

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

if you can put one more impossible in there we can all go have breakfast at Milliways. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

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we couldn't do it, but someone with 90 million years of research probably could. if you could find some way of lowering inertia....

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

The problem is, if you can build one of these, why do you need it? You would probably have mastered mass-energy convserion, intergalactic travel, and many other things. So why go through all the effort? Yes one of these has the area of 3 million planets, but thats only a fraction of all the planets in the galaxy.

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

sphereworlds: a how-to guide

A typical sphereworld is a solid shell, however without anti-grav everything falls into the sun. If you spin it then all the atmosphere moves to the equator and it bulges. You could cover the inside with solar cells and inhabit the outside.

Another aproach is to use a large network of orbiting platforms, like satalites. They dont have gravity and you would need a lot to completly block the sun complelely however. Also if one crashed then you would get a chain reaction.

My personal favourite would be to build a set of ringworlds, all at diffferent angles within each other.

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

In a game context, the size of a ringworld would vary depending on species and/or sun. A cold species would want a larger ring/cooler sun etc. Ideally you would only have the ringworld and one sun in a system, plus warp points. However, the ringworld should have no mineral content. After all you only have what you put there in the first place!

Ive experimented with pre-generated ringworlds in a system. Its not too bad but either they have to be gas/none (they apear in other places otherwise) or you have to re-write all the systems that have planets of any/any/any type to be more specific. I cant find any appropriate pictures though, Ive resorted to copying the star background and drawing a circle on it with paint!

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

One reason to build one is to have 3 million very high quality, custom-built planets, all conveniently located in the same solar system, so that you can do whatever you want to do on a massive scale without needing to waste time and energy shuttling stuff back and forth between 2 million star systems. Also, you can do as Niven's Ringworld engineers did, and build in a bunch of ecosystems, installing all sorts of living things in a huge zoo, where each exhibit is a whole planet in size, with plenty of geography to explore.

Plus, if you can, why not? Having mastered the universe, sounds like a fun project to keep you busy for a while. You're already able to play god on a little scale, creating custom living organisms and such, so why not go all out and make a custom planet, only make it bigger and better than the planets! Be good practice if you want to start building netowrks of stars, too - start small http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

or better yet, neworks of black holes - i bet you could get a lot of energy (or *something*) out of an orchestrated system of black holes, somehow.

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I havnt read the culture novels so im not too sure about this but here goes. I got some background from the site below, by banks himself (apparently)
culture orbitals and stuff

A bit of basic research shows that it would have to be as strong as a ringworld. I like the idea of building it from pairs of plates and cables(sound familiar?), you could apply that to ringworlds too, to a degree. An orbital would be useable if unfinished, you would just have to have temporary walls around the edge. Ringworlds could be built from orbiting plates, but couldnt be spun at full speed untill completed.

Each orbital holds 20 earths surface and 1 earth can be made into 1500 orbitals. By contrast a ringworld is made from 250 earths and has 3 million times the surface area. So by orbitals 1 earth => 30000 earths and by ringworld 1 earth => 12000 earths. So orbitals are more efficient (in terms of surface area/mass ratio) and easier to make (cos smaller).

I have found one reaseon for contruction, going back to the original dyson sphere. Since all known energy is derived from the sun (eventually) to achieve maximum efficency you would have to cover all the sun with solar panels to harness it to maximum capacity. This is a sphereworld (without being lived on). It wouldnt have to be very large, only to about the orbit of mercury at most. Surely it would be easier to start a small star separatly though? cold fusion, for example

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Thats not stricly true. There is no concious disire to "fix problems". Its simply that those that do not "fix problems" die. Conside a group of foxes and a group of rabits. The foxes chase the rabits, the slow rabits are caught and die, so the remaining rabits are the only ones that can breed and the next generateion are on average faster. The slow foxes don't catch any rabits and die of starvation. Therefore only the fastest foxes breed and the next generatin is also, on average, faster than the previous one. This kills the slower of the new rabits, which get faster, and then starve the slower foxes, which get faster,..... and so on ad infinitum. Until you get light speed rabitts http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

We have ears because long ago things with ears did better than things without ears. Then things with relatively good ears did better than things with relatively bad ears. etc

Its a great debate whether this applies to emivromentaly mannipulative organisms (humans) because there nothing to compare us with. As a species, nothing hunts us, we dont have to struggle for food, we change our eviroment to suit us rahter than us changing to suit our enviroment, virtually everyone has children.

The question is, given everything else is equal, will a group that builds a ringworld do better than a group that doesn't build a ringworld. But how do you measure better?

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Nothing hunt us?
We hunt ourselves, and waste our lives and resources in civil wars, from an species perspective.
And some of us do have to struggle for food, and all of us have to adapt to the enviroment that we have changed.

.

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

Ok then, point accepted

No other species hunts us. We are plagued by simian tribalism and teritoriality from our ancient genetic heritage that has little relevance to our "sentient" minds. Our selfish genes that once drove us to band together with others who were likely to hold other copies of those genes in order for those genes to prosper and spread now propell humanity on a hopeless course towards essesive resource accumulation and short term gains at the expense of long term survival. Unless our minds can surpass our genetic makeup, we are doomed to destroy ourselves in overpowering greed and guttony. Evolution had no design, no forsight, no plan, no morals, no order, no direction, no skill, no predictability, no rules, no fairness, in humanities creation. It simply is, because it could not be otherwise. Do we have the will to plan, to survive the evolutionary forces that would destroy us? Can our society evolve fast enough that we can survive without destroyed all the resources we need? Could the earth ever support a species like us again? Evolution may have given birth to us, and the earth may be our cradle, but you cannot stay in the cradle forever.

[/End Rant]

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

I thought that Dyson Spheres were inhabited on the inside like a Ring World, but completely encompass the sun to trap all energy and possiably hide from the rest of the universe (wasnt it a Star Trek movie that found a bunch of Dyson Spheres?).

*sigh* too bad we have to mess around on this rock of a world instead of going out to the "Last frontier"

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Actually, there is the theoretical possibility of using one to get energy - Microscopic black holes produce Hawking Radiation - the smaller the black hole, the more radiation produced. However, you can't readily control the rate of production (it is a function of the black hole's mass, which can be difficult to change). You could also capture energy by feeding the black hole matter - gas dropped into a black hole heats up to compensate for the gravitational potential energy loss, and hot gas produces light, some of which can escape the gravity well from the black hole.

Mind you, to get this energy, you have to be able to manipulate a small black hole, which is probably very difficult (if possible) and very dangerous.

[ May 14, 2003, 22:33: Message edited by: Jack Simth ]

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That was the original idea, but the mass of the Dyson Sphere is useless for producing gravity inside the sphere, as the gravitation produced by the mass "below" you is cancelled out exactly by the rest of the sphere (assuming an even distribution, that is) leaving only the mass of the star to pull on you - which means things tend to drop into the star if they aren't anchored down. Some form of artifical gravity, or anti-gravity would be required.
Likewise, the star isn't affected by the gravity of the sphere, and can wander around, probably impacting on the sphere's inner surface, unless some controlled force is applied.

In other words, to get a Dyson Sphere to work, you need artifical gravity and the ability to move stars around at will - in addition to the matter needed to build the sphere, the materials technology so that the sphere maintains its shape, and possibly a few other things.

If you plan on living on the outside, you can drop the artifical gravity, but not the rest.

[ May 14, 2003, 22:34: Message edited by: Jack Simth ]

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Wife: Honey!!! YOUR son is doing it again...
Husband: *chuckles* what is my son doing this time?
Wife: Well *hands on hips* he took that Science kit you got him for Christmas out back and just opened a tiny black hole!!! And now all the cloths I have drying on the line are getting sucked into it. So you go out there and FIX it now!
Husband: Yes dear *smiling* *under his breath* Thats my boy!

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evelution has no explanation for intelligence and rules it out. why? chemicals aren't intelligent. chemicals have gravity. lots of chemicals have lots of gravity. lots of chemicals don't have intelligence. unless everything is intelligent, in which case, i may not win, but you will lose.

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Your empire would never get the chance...there would always be some sort of problem or another facing the empire, and unless you had a "purpose" to building a Ringworld, you'd ***never*** get it built.
Every single living organism on this planet (so naturally, every single living organism in the universe aswell) wants to do only one thing: Find and fix problems. Evolution long ago realized that the universe was very, very far from perfect conditions for any living organism...so, the only way to have an organism maintain (and maybe even proliferate) its species' survival, would be to have it endlessly looking for, and fixing problems.
So, no matter how happy your population got in real life, there would always be someone that was unhappy, wanting their problem to be fixed. If you stifled their unhappiness, feelings of discontent would build up, until - you guessed it - Revolution time.
Look at it this way: Your ears are designed to hear, so if there's no sound, they won't work. Your tastebuds are designed to taste, so if there's nothing to taste, they won't work. Organisms are designed to fix problems - so if there are no problems to fix, the organism won't work.

Here's a quote from The Matrix, that backs me up:

Agent Smith: "Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program...Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from."

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The only thing physicists see as a use for black holes (besides a big trash can http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif ) is going forward in time, in a sense. Assuming you have enough fuel to do this, if you approach a black hole at a specific angle (and at a fast enough speed that you avoid getting sucked in), you'll get whipped around the black hole (very fast, since the gravitational pull of a black hole is so high), and get slung away from it, traveling at incredible speeds.
The faster you're traveling in space, the slower time moves for you - in other words, 1 second for you on your fast ship, would be longer than 1 second on Earth - in this example, 1 second on your ship would result in a good deal of time passing on earth.
When your ship finally slows down and starts moving at more reasonable speeds, you will have hardly aged, while the rest of the everyone & everything else will have aged considerably.

[ May 14, 2003, 12:19: Message edited by: Dingocat85 ]

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

OK, so apparently a Niven-esque ringworld is technically impossible since the materials required cannot physically exist.

How about an Orbital from the Culture novels? They look like ringworlds, except that they don't encircle the star, they just orbit it in the same way a planet does. They are much smaller (only a few hundred thousand or million miles across, if memory serves, although that still offers many multiples Earth's surface area) and because the star isn't at the centre of the ring, all the night/day problems are avoided straight off.

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Dangerous? Is that where all the neighborhood cats have gone? Dear me, what a terrible accident. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

Like Mom always said, "It's all fun and games until someone gets radiation poisoning." Or was it "until someone gets knocked past an event horizon"?

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

evelution has no explanation for intelligence and rules it out. why? chemicals aren't intelligent."

Evolution has very little to do with chemicals actually. That's a couple levels too low.

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

from an evelotionary point of view, where chemicals and electromagnatism and electricity. none of these explains intelligence, becuase none of these has been shown to have intelligence.

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

narf, you're missing my point I think. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Evolution doesn't work on the chemical level. (well, not in the sense biologists are talking about)

Move up to organisms and populations. There you CAN get intelligence supported by natural selection- if it results in the intelligent variant having more offspring or surving better.

Whether the indivudual molecules or atoms have intelligence is irrelevet; intelligence is an emergant property, like a heartbeat, breathing etc. Looking at one cell, you couldn't predict it. Take a human heart cell by itself, and it would be a sad, useless critter. Link it up with other, differently specialized cells though, and you've got something useful.

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Thats not stricly true. There is no concious disire to "fix problems". Its simply that those that do not "fix problems" die. Conside a group of foxes and a group of rabits. The foxes chase the rabits, the slow rabits are caught and die, so the remaining rabits are the only ones that can breed and the next generateion are on average faster. The slow foxes don't catch any rabits and die of starvation. Therefore only the fastest foxes breed and the next generatin is also, on average, faster than the previous one. This kills the slower of the new rabits, which get faster, and then starve the slower foxes, which get faster,..... and so on ad infinitum. Until you get light speed rabitts http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Ah, but the foxes and the rabbits - even the ones that die - are still trying to fix problems.

In the foxes' case:Each fox is trying to fix the problem of not having enough food to eat.
In the rabbits' case:Each rabbit is trying to (ah! ah! ah! ah!) stay alive, fixing the problem of their lives being in danger.

The foxes that die because they can't catch food, and the rabbits that are too slow, are animals that can't fix their problems...So, evolution is just survival of the animals best suited to fix their problems.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Intelligence actually is an evolutionary trait. Without intelligence, organisms get better suited to their environment via natural selection. Those less suited to their environment die off, the better-suited breed, etc. etc. - in other words, , and the organisms adapt to the environment (via mutations given to them at birth), propelled by death (of the weaker).

The more intelligence an organism has, the more it gets better suited to its environment via innovation. Just like the non (or almost non-)intelligent organisms, those less suited to their environment die off, the beter-suited proliferate & breed, etc. etc. - but the difference is, the environment is adapted by the organisms - Intelligence is giving organisms a chance to improve their own ability to survice, instead of using nothing more than their naturally imbued abilities.

There are two extremes on this specialization vs. adaptability spectrum:

On one end, you have Insects. Insects are very specialized, almost perfectly adapted to their current environment. The problem is...is the environment changes into something they're not adapted to, the insects die off. This is why insects have such short lifespans, and breed so quickly...those weaker-suited insects die before they can "make" more of their weak, not-suited-to-survive-in-this-environment kind. Conversely, those that are better sutied to the environment breed & breed & breed, and the whole cycle of better-suited insects making more of their kind goes on & on.
This mass breed/death cycle propels evolution, giving every newly created insect a slightly different variation - and those with advantageous variations proliferate & make more of their kind.

The other side of the spectrum is, of course, humans. Next to reptiles, Humans have one of the longest lifespans out of all creatures on this planet. Why? So they can think up more innovations, ways to manage their problems better.
Including a naturally adaptible chassis, humans can survive in a variety of environments and through a variety of problems armed with two things: tools (clothing, cars, bow & arrow), and knowledge (those purple berries are bad, this is the best knot to use when rigging a ship's sails). But neither tools nor knowledge come to a human at birth; they are acquired, used, and improved upon. Humans are such intellectual creatures, that the solutions they come up with (cars, iron working) create their own problems (pollution, dependency on metal)...we are also the only creatures we know of that have routinely engaged in genetic manipulation (horses used to be only strong enough to pull things, i.e. chariots, wagons - then they got stronger, and they could have stuff on their back, i.e. packhorses, horseback riders - then they got so strong, they could even wear armor, i.e. knights & cavaliers.
The intellect of humans also allows us to have complex social bonds, letting a soceity function as a whole - but that's a whole different story.

Note 1: There is some knowledge that has become so essential, and has been basically the same knowledge every time it was used, that people are born knowing that knowledge. Otherwise known as Instinct, some examples are eating & sleeping.

Note 2: Some scientists think that the only reason humans are so smart, is that when deciding between a man with intellect and a man who's fit, women have repeatedly chose those with brains http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

EDIT: Humans are also remarkable, because they have a form of communication that can express an infinite amount of ideas...

[ May 15, 2003, 06:52: Message edited by: Dingocat85 ]

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

my point was, that although the brain is a complex computer and could come up with ideas, that doesn't explain why i exist. chemicals and energy can't come up with me, they just are acted upon, there is nothing there to act.

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

Im slightly worried now. This is getting terrible close to "what is consiousness" and "souls" and therefore "God".
"You are not a beutiful and unique Snowflake."-Tylor Durgen

What is different between human intelligence and others is unclear. Many animals have a complex social structure (e.g monkeys,lions), many animals comunicate (e.g dolphins, whales), quite a few use tools (e.g. otters, thrush) and can teach others (e.g. chimpanzees, New Calidonian Crows)

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

Pet peeve: most animals communiate, not just a few. Or do you think those bird calls are for their health? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

"my point was, that although the brain is a complex computer and could come up with ideas, that doesn't explain why i exist. chemicals and energy can't come up with me, they just are acted upon, there is nothing there to act."

Which is waaay the heck outside evolutionary theory, which is what you brought up. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif You want the "What the hell am I doing here?" aisle.

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

no, i'm saying evelutionary theory can't explain and rules it out. if we are unintelligent chemicals and electricity, there's no way we could be intelligent. i, by my very existence, rule out evelutionary theory.

nobodies yelled yet.

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

Ummm... narf, chemicals do not have to be intelligent for the sum total of what is composed of those chemicals to be intelligent.

The theory of evolution DOES NOT make any claims as to how life began, only as to how it changes.

You do not rule out the theory of evolution; you in fact are good evidence of it's validity.

I think you should go do some research on evolution (on university web sites and such, not random .coms, or better, in books and such http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ) and stop posting about it until you learn what evolution actually is. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[ May 15, 2003, 08:51: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">All brain functions are the result of chemical and electrical signal and morphlogy.
It's easy to map brain functions to different areas using functional MR scans and PET scans during brain activities.
Brain damage affects the brain functions (Cognitive, emotional, functional) in a predictive way.

True we have barely touched the surface of the knowledge required to fully understand the way we think, but we are moving along and learning more for each day.
It seems very propably that we one day will understand it completely.
It is after all based on the natural laws, it's all chemistry and electricity.

That doesn't imply that that's all we are, we are more than the sum, but that is also true of most complex things.
Take a pen for example, it's clearly more than the sum of it's parts.
(And no, I do not say that we are the same as a pen http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif )

All this doesn't rule out the possibility of a deity if you are inclined to belive in such.

[ May 15, 2003, 09:05: Message edited by: Ruatha ]

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

ok. something quick. i am trying to change my sleeping hours. therefore, i am tired and sound less comprehensible than i am. but, i have made a point.
you cannot make something more complex and expect it to get intelligent. you can only say that in theory, while in fact there is no link.
now, i must sleep.

[ May 15, 2003, 09:18: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

Actually, you can. It happens every second of every day, and has been happening for every second of every day for all of eternity. All systems get more complex as time goes on. Entropy is always increasing. More chaotic systems are be definition more complex. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

Complexity does not mean intelligence. But then what is? Computers can do math faster, store more data, but are they inteligent? Where in the animal world do you draw the line? are dolphins/whales smart? What about apes/monkeys?

This is getting rather Zen. Or maybe it isnt because it doesnt exist? Who am I, Am I Me? Since this entire thread is mearly an imterpretation of an arangement of magnetic feilds and electrons, does it exist?

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">We're not doing that- not every complex system is "expected" to gain intelligence. For example no-one is expecting the global telephone network to suddenly achieve sentience. (although that would make a cool scifi book=-)

However, it is scientifically provable that at least one very specific kind of complex structure (the brain) gives rise to (or is required to harbour) intelligence.

Your argument seems to be equivalent to "this bit of unrefined metal can't open a tin, therefore tin openers do not exist."

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">that depends entirely on how you define intelligence/ sentience.

Why does there have to be a line anyway? Why not just have a big, vague sliding scale? Better yet, a six-dimensional graph with lots of axes and different colours.

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Axes imply a scale, since weve agreed you cant scale ro measure intelligence. The graph would not have axes, or values. Ha! Integrate that!

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That sounds troublingly circular, since Evolution was formed specifically to explain our existence.

Before a discussion of evolution gets any further, I would like to point out a few things about how theories and science work.

Science: the dogma that is wrong

In science, we make up reasons for why the world works the way it does. These are hypotheses and humans have probably been doing this for as long as we've been here, or longer. What makes science better than other dogmas is what you do next.

After forming a hypothesis the scientist finds a way to test it. This test should not only be a "if this works, I'm right" setup, it should also cover "if it turns out this way, I'm wrong" circumstances.

The greatest thing about science is that it is often wrong. It is in a continual climb of improvement.

But what if it's about Napoleon, Doctor Wally?

There are two kinds of theories for which this is very difficult, in fact almost impossible. The first are sociological theories, as the test group or the control group tend to be subjected to inhumane situations in order to prove or disprove the theory. See the Stanford Prison Experiment or the Johnson/Tudor Stuttering Experiment for examples of some of the least inhumane experiments. Note, if you will, that sociological theories are still tested today, but the limitations on the test that can be done also limit the theories that are proposed.

The other sort of theory that is difficult to test are historical theories. The Theory of Evolution and the theory "Democracies don't make war on each other" that I have brought up in the Iraq thread are both theories of this sort. Most of the time theories of historical matters are of such a scale, and deal with matters so unreachable, that proving them is a matter of waiting for something new to be found.

Alternately, you can use the theory to suggest that something would exist is a certain place and of a certain nature. This is the way we will prove the theory of evolution: we search for the 'missing links' that the theory of evolution specifies must exist between differing species.

Now I speak about things

Unfortunately, we have not yet found any conclusive evidence in this matter. There are a number of places that we could look for such things, a number of dramatic transitions rich in the possibility for such a find: water-to-land, ground-to-air, land-to-water, ape-to-man. But, despite the fact that so many separate species seem to have made the first three transitions, we have not found a proper candidate.

Not that you'd be aware of that, if all you listen to is popular media. It turns out that any currently existing water-to-land transitional species is at it's 'evolutionary limit' and is unlikely to finish the transition. And no fossil evidence has produced any water-to-land transitional species that could be an ancestor to any other known land species.

The land-to-air transition seems the most promising, really, since it has happened twice recently (avians and mammals), because the animals involved were of fairly sturdy structure (unlike the soft amphibians), and because we have so much fossilized material from the time period when we're pretty sure at least one of these transitions (avian) must have happened.

I'm sure you are aware of the Archaeopteryx. This species is certainly the strongest contender for a 'missing link', but even here there are uncertainties. Archaeopteryx can be seen as having both some of the features of an avian and some of a dinosaur, but it remains a strong possibility that Archaeopteryx is no ancestor to modern avians. The likelihood that it developed along side them is very real. Then there is the matter of the stuttering steps: we have several wonderful examples of Archaeopteryx in fossilized form, but none of other steps in the process, before or after Archaeopteryx.

I was under the impression that there were no strong examples of land-to-sea transitional species, but I could be wrong.

In the matter of ape-to-man, we again run in to the problem of relation. We can find creatures that are much like man, or creatures that are much like apes, but nothing in between. An additional problem is that many of the older examples of homids do not seem to have lead to modern man at all, but instead represent dead ends in an evolutionary paradigm.

These facts do not disprove evolution, in fact most support it or at least can be fit into the evolutionary paradigm with trivial supposition. But the difference between "the best idea we've got" and "downright fact" is an important distinction to make.

A couple additional things to note.

We're lucky to have a fossil record at all. The conditions required to make a fossil are exacting and rare. There are some creatures that will may never know of, because they were made of too-delicate stuff, or because none of their members died in the right place at the right time.

It speaks strongly of the Theory of Evolution that even the Creationists have incorporated some of its principles into their world-view. 'Creation Science' now purports that animals can, in fact, change to suit their environment (they do still maintain, however, that one sort of creature cannot change into another sort). While this is a reactionary movement, its members may still have something to contribute to the scientific community if they focus on more scientific method and less on philosophical detractions.

In closing

I would like to say at this time that I am uncertain of my intentions in this rant. I do not know what I meant to accomplish by saying these things, but I am fairly sure that I have said all I meant to. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you or your family.

Thank you.

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well I was trying to imply that a single scale to measure intelligence wouldn't do- that intelligence is not just one single value but a the combination of many different attributes. My arbitrary value of 6 is probably a little mean.

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

That theory about evolution have never convinced me.
The fact that life seems to evolve doesn't mean that we come from an ameba.
And all those bones are doubtfull at best, fraudulents at worst.
Anyway, to tell the truth, I will never belive in evolution not just because of all the inconsistence I see, but because Evolution is the official theory of the whole world, and official theories are official because they serve to someone interests, and since I'm not that someone, then its very likely that theory benefits someone that its interested in keeping me on the dark, whatever that dark may be.

Humm...... I guess I'm having a bad day today. All 4 post that I have posted today are anti-corporations and full of grammatical errors..... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[Edit] What did I edit?

[ May 15, 2003, 16:43: Message edited by: Aloofi ]

Re: "Real" ringworlds
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Buddy, you're starting to sound paranoid.

I don't think multi-cellular life would have come from amoebas. An amoeba has no reason to take the trouble needed to go multi-cellular, no present-day eukaryotes do really.

The life that would have taken a multi-cellular approach was probably something we don't have anymore. It likely took the collective approach to meet a certain goal, and having met that goal better with a multi-celled form, drove all its single-celled ancestors out of that niche. Now the only single-celled life left are those that fill a niche in which multi-cellular life simply can't compete.

That said...

Science does not serve any one man. Popularised pseudo-science certainly can, but true science serves only humanity as a whole.