The (not really) Official Endgame Summon Thread!

[llamabeast]

Obviously you can call anything whatever you want. However, "animal" has an accepted meaning, in the same way that "mammal" does. The accepted meaning of "animal" is, I believe, well-defined.

Using the accepted meaning of words (and we're pretty stuff if we don't, I'd say), I'm 95% sure animals came after plants. If they didn't, what would they eat?

Your fire point is an interesting one. Some more modern views of life see it primarily as a means for transmitting and propagating information through time. That would be where fire fails (the only information it transmits is pretty much a binary on-fire/not-on-fire bit). Otherwise you're right that fire seems to tick a lot of boxes.

The underlying reason that fire looks like life is this. Life takes in ordered, high energy "food" and breaks it down to a high-entropy, low-energy waste in order to fuel the propagation of its own information. Fire similarly reduces "food" to waste, but doesn't couple the process to any entropy-decreasing/information-creating processes like life does.

Of course the viewpoint where life is essentially an information propagation system has quirky consequences, such as self-replicating computer programs being "alive". Similarly good jokes are "alive" in that they are adept at reproducing and spreading themselves, often even adapting to improve their performance (people change the joke a bit and the better version gets retold more often).

[MaxWilson]

I think if you had said "heterotroph" instead of "animal" you would not have gotten the "Hunh??!!" reaction. Rather you would have gotten, "Well, duh."

"Animal" is pretty well-defined as belonging to the kingdom animalia, which excludes bacteria, for instance. If there were fungi which were genetically closer to humans than some animals, even very simple ones, it would mean there was probably something very strange going on with transgenic migration. That would be interesting, but apparently it's not what you meant.

-Max

[Lingchih]

MaxWilson said:
I think if you had said "heterotroph" instead of "animal" you would not have gotten the "Hunh??!!" reaction. Rather you would have gotten, "Well, duh."

"Animal" is pretty well-defined as belonging to the kingdom animalia, which excludes bacteria, for instance. If there were fungi which were genetically closer to humans than some animals, even very simple ones, it would mean there was probably something very strange going on with transgenic migration. That would be interesting, but apparently it's not what you meant.

-Max

Well, I haven't really been following this post for a while, but yes, there are fungi which are closer genetically to animals than plants, in the same way that corals, although appearing plantlike, are actually animals.

I'm an experienced, although technically amateur, Mycologist. I can look up the scientific papers on this, if you like, though I would rather spend my time playing Dominions.

[llamabeast]

I think HB's claim that we weren't sure about wasn't that some fungi are closer to animals than plants are, but rather that there are some fungi that are closer to humans than some animals are. I'm fairly sure that, using conventional definitions, this falls into the classification of "non-true".

[TheMenacer]

This is getting pretty far off topic folks, biology's pretty cool but until the developers integrate genetics, I doubt any of this is going to come up in Dominions 3.

[JimMorrison]

TheMenacer said:
This is getting pretty far off topic folks, biology's pretty cool but until the developers integrate genetics, I doubt any of this is going to come up in Dominions 3.

Dammit, don't burst my bubble!? Anyone remember Sim Life? I want a Sim Pretender who -sometimes- does what I want, as I guide his efforts to develop powerful magic and breed his race of super mutants out of Hoburgs.

Forget the summons, whatcha gonna do when the HOBURGS come for you???

[MaxWilson]

Point and laugh.

-Max