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mlooney

Story Friday, May 8, 2020

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4 hours ago, hkmaly said:

You're right, she has baggage she's not dealing with; I didn't think of that as a mask, but it really is. I don't think she lives day to day hiding it, not in the sense that she's seething and puts on a front, but it's always churning in her.

So I said she makes no sense, horrible background, way too cheery, and Jerry says, "Yeah, she's hiding that from herself." That makes sense, but it's a stretch that she could do that and still be as functional as she is. I've known people like that, the weirdness is evident somewhere. People are like toothpaste, squeeze hard enough and it comes out somewhere.

This might have something to do why she was so obsessive about Sam and Sarah. Or why she's sometimes very insistent on someone 'is a very nice person'. Doesn't want to lead the card games. Has confidence issues. Gave up her abilities for a spell. OK, there are symptoms. Hmm, I'm going to have to think about this.

My only conclusion is that Tedd, even during his most dysfunctional early phase, is good for her.

 

4 hours ago, hkmaly said:

..., it's only noteworthy because the dynamic seems reverse to how they appear in public.

... how they were in public, Rhoda's changed. She's more assertive.

 

4 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Yes ... however, she may be better at it that your dad. So far, we don't even know her goals for Nanase, so we can't be sure how well her behavior works for those.

I made similar mistakes with my older kids, it was not a good experience for them. From my perspective, having been at both ends of this, the primary outcome is alienation.

I can't swear I would have done as well academically as I did without my dad's overbearing approach, but I suspect I would have done well. Much of my success was from outside reading, which I did because I wanted to. I was surprisingly well versed in history despite a distaste for the classes (meandering and repetitive, repeatedly covering the same ground every few years; very opinionated presentation).

Track record with kids, older excelled, but the shoving does not seem to have served him. If anything, he lacks self control, which might have been better served if he made his own choices. The next one floundered anyway, but then does well in the corporate environment in spite of poor academics.

With the rest, helping them find their way seems to have worked out more consistently.

 

4 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Yes, even without Tedd's technology or Grace's biology there are options (although adoption wouldn't help in this case), but it still reduces the chance to have children somewhat.

It reduces the chance of unplanned children. Any lesbian that wants to have a child should be able to find a willing male participant, and she can be very selective.

There can be legal barriers; here for instance, there is no legal way to be the father without incurring the financial responsibilities; there must be loopholes for sperm donors, but I don't know how those are defined (I know this because I know a coworker who is in that situation).

Adoption is actually competition, when you are able to plan. "I want three kids. Hmm, lets adopt one of them."

 

4 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Not always, yes. As I mentioned, Nanase might sometimes wonder if she wasn't too impulsive, but I think she can't resist too long.

Of the two of them, Ellen is more impulsive, and Ellen's impulsiveness might egg Nanase on, or it might caution her to hold back.

 

4 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Fox is connected to Nanase's subconscious even when not directly controlled. I think it may be more like masturbation than incest. Specifically, I think that NANASE has the capacity to enjoy things Fox feels.

I'm not sure how exactly would various things with Fox feel. But I think that Nanase does. That they might find out that some things don't feel right but that they tried.

Note that the loss of credibility was failure of direct control AND that Nanase might be better at it now.

Hmm, we're not far off in how we are viewing this, yet we seem to be reaching different conclusions.

I don't think Nanase is fully aware of what Fox is thinking nor feeling when Fox is semi-autonomous. The link is subconscious. So, when they are playing video games, they are actually competing. Contrast that with the fairy dolls; Nanase's consciousness moves to the fairy doll. She experiences the fairy doll's body and perspective, while her own body sleeps. She inhabits it.

Now she said she can directly control Fox, but that seems particularly useless if it works the same way. She can't do twice as much, she's asleep while she's in Fox. (Also, neither masturbation nor incest, they can't interact in direct mode, if it works the same way) Ellen could, but why bother? Unless you're doing something hazardous, and want to remain safe, direct control Fox makes little sense.

To the extent Fox can be autonomous, she becomes useful. Recall, Nanase was given the spell to use Fox as a decoy. She wants her to be able to act Nanase-like on her own.

The real question then, is how deep that goes from Fox's perspective. Is she a participant, or a fancy, flesh and blood Real Doll?

 

4 hours ago, hkmaly said:

You're right, saying that she's FV5 male was incorrect. What I meant was that she started as FV5 male (which is not same as being male), and I think that the dreamworld memories helped her a lot to not feel like Elliot's copy ... but, yes, definitely didn't do anything to lower her libido.

... the Archie incident might not lower her drive, but it would inhibit her impulsiveness to achieve what that drive demands.

 

4 hours ago, hkmaly said:

... funny point but I don't think so. I also don't think her livespan was lowered due to being part squirrel.

I don't think so either, but because it is fiction, and narratively it would not make sense.

Fertility zone and lifespan are related, from a gene's point of view. "Let's get cracking, make some copies of me." ... "Well, now you're useless. Time to turn you off."

 

4 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I don't think that people without ANY fairy in ancestor would be rare. I think they are EXTINCT. That every human in current EGS world has some fairy ancestors, though not necessarily fairy genes. Reference.

However, that doesn't need to be true when we speak about Adrian specifically. He may not be that old.

That puzzle piece does not fit there. Seriously, the immortals make no sense if you try to pin them down to a scientific framework. What the H3!! are they? If they are incorporeal, how do they then manifest corporeally and successfully mate with humans, bearing a nominally human child in Pandora's case. Did the humans appear first, then the incorporeal copies, or are humans based on incorporeal immortals? If so, how did these events occur? Why is there a connection? Was evolution subverted in this case?

Or, as we've seen, Pandora Chaos Raven has many forms and extensions. Maybe they can take on any form they want, maybe they have, and maybe everything is descended from a fish-lizard / immortal fish-lizard hybrid eons ago. H3!!, maybe two immortal protozoans got together at the dawn of time and created all life.

This is one of those, "if you think about it too hard, it makes no sense." In particular, a hypothetical immortal common ancestor, ... believe what you want, I think it ruins the context, and it's hard to patch in a rationale.

FWIW, Adrian is only hundreds of years old. I'm sure you know that, so why bring up, "He may not be that old"?

 

6 hours ago, hkmaly said:

You are pessimist. I don't plan to die or stop reading EGS for any other reason. (Granted, not everything goes according to plan ...)

You are in good company:

Quote

“I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying.

 I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.”


Woody Allen, The Illustrated Woody Allen Reader

 

6 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Also, it's still open question if dying forces you to stop reading webcomics. Philosophers and theologists are arguing about it for thousands of years already. Well, ok, not SPECIFICALLY about webcomics, but about related questions.

If you are capable of following webcomics after you die, presumably you are capable of other things, things which may be more meaningful to you at that point. Maybe your personal list of people you need to haunt?

 

6 hours ago, hkmaly said:

She's happy with the autocleaning purity. Something different but equally desirable to her.

She was indeed, but she seems to really like the busty forms, too.

 

 

 

 

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7 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Yes, it appears mutual and healthy, it's only noteworthy because the dynamic seems reverse to how they appear in public.

Friends and acquaintances who are into BDSM are adamant that if it's done ethically, the sub is very much in charge. The dynamic literally is the reverse of how it appears.

(And they think that the title character of Fifty Shades of Gray should have been arrested before the end of chapter 3.)

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4 minutes ago, Don Edwards said:

Friends and acquaintances who are into BDSM are adamant that if it's done ethically, the sub is very much in charge. The dynamic literally is the reverse of how it appears.

(And they think that the title character of Fifty Shades of Gray should have been arrested before the end of chapter 3.)

There is even the term "Topping from the Bottom" that applies to the sub being in charge.  It's sorta tongue in cheek about the way that power exchange relationships work in the real world. 

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2 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

This is one of those, "if you think about it too hard, it makes no sense." In particular, a hypothetical immortal common ancestor, ... believe what you want, I think it ruins the context, and it's hard to patch in a rationale.

The thing is, given a person living at a certain time, X amount of time later the odds are very high that either that person has NO living descendants, or essentially EVERY living person who plausibly could be descended from that person IS.

For example, pretty much everyone who has European ancestors within the past 200 years is descended from Charlemagne.

Adrian is not old enough that pretty much everyone with recent European ancestors is descended from him. And apparently he's of limited fertility - limited enough that "elves can't have children with humans" wasn't quickly seen to be false.* But he's old enough that a child he fathered when he was 20 would likely have millions of living descendants - or none. And Susan proves that "none" is not the case.

 

* Yes this is plausible. Real-world, there are cross-species matings that rarely produce viable, fertile offspring - as opposed to the vastly more common situation of never producing any offspring at all. Viable but non-fertile offspring are also possible, even with sexual variation: female ligers and tigons are fertile, but males are sterile; llama/camel crossbreeds are viable but are known not to be fertile with either parent species - whether they are fertile with each other is undetermined; mules are horse-donkey crossbreeds and almost invariably infertile, with something like 5 documented births going back to the Roman Republic. There are also cross-species matings that happen sufficiently often, and so consistently produce viable fertile offspring, that one wonders why they are considered to be separate species: Wolves, dogs, and coyotes; brown bears and polar bears...

 

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1 hour ago, Don Edwards said:

The thing is, given a person living at a certain time, X amount of time later the odds are very high that either that person has NO living descendants, or essentially EVERY living person who plausibly could be descended from that person IS.

For example, pretty much everyone who has European ancestors within the past 200 years is descended from Charlemagne.

Adrian is not old enough that pretty much everyone with recent European ancestors is descended from him. And apparently he's of limited fertility - limited enough that "elves can't have children with humans" wasn't quickly seen to be false.* But he's old enough that a child he fathered when he was 20 would likely have millions of living descendants - or none. And Susan proves that "none" is not the case.

If you read back on the thread, we were estimating about half of Europe; there would be isolated pockets that had no Adrian blood.

 

1 hour ago, Don Edwards said:

Yes this is plausible. Real-world, there are cross-species matings that rarely produce viable, fertile offspring - as opposed to the vastly more common situation of never producing any offspring at all. Viable but non-fertile offspring are also possible, even with sexual variation: female ligers and tigons are fertile, but males are sterile; llama/camel crossbreeds are viable but are known not to be fertile with either parent species - whether they are fertile with each other is undetermined; mules are horse-donkey crossbreeds and almost invariably infertile, with something like 5 documented births going back to the Roman Republic. There are also cross-species matings that happen sufficiently often, and so consistently produce viable fertile offspring, that one wonders why they are considered to be separate species: Wolves, dogs, and coyotes; brown bears and polar bears...

Immortals are not merely a different but similar species (not canon, you cold spin a tale in which they were), and it is not at all clear that humans are the only things they can spawn with. Maybe EGS Oz is overrun with half-breed bunnies or worse yet, cane toads.

My objection is to the notion that all EGS humans must be descended from Immortals because there's Adrian, but HK is not saying all are descended from him, just that if he exists, they must have been interbreeding for a long time, and by now, everyone is descended.

I think Dan was winging it, and it doesn't have to make sense at that level.

 

1 hour ago, Don Edwards said:

... one wonders why they are considered to be separate species: Wolves, dogs, and coyotes; brown bears and polar bears...

... different genomes in the base examples, and a propensity to not interbreed, though possible.

 

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8 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

My only conclusion is that Tedd, even during his most dysfunctional early phase, is good for her.

We didn't actually saw Tedd in his MOST dysfunctional "so withdrawn Nanase though he is mute" phase.

But yes, he's definitely good for her.

8 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
15 hours ago, hkmaly said:

..., it's only noteworthy because the dynamic seems reverse to how they appear in public.

... how they were in public, Rhoda's changed. She's more assertive.

Not sure. Like, yes, she is getting more assertive, but until the outburst at Diane which was NOT in public she was still more shy. It remains to be seen how assertive she will be in public now.

8 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
15 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Yes ... however, she may be better at it that your dad. So far, we don't even know her goals for Nanase, so we can't be sure how well her behavior works for those.

I made similar mistakes with my older kids, it was not a good experience for them. From my perspective, having been at both ends of this, the primary outcome is alienation.

Well, yes, the alienation will definitely be one of the results, but Nanase's mom might consider it worth it. As I said: we don't know her goals so hard to say ...
... also, we don't know how good would she be if she tried to be less strict.
Personally, I don't think her method of raising kid (-s? Is Akiko getting same treatment) is good, but it's likely SHE thinks it's necessary.
 

8 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
15 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Yes, even without Tedd's technology or Grace's biology there are options (although adoption wouldn't help in this case), but it still reduces the chance to have children somewhat.

It reduces the chance of unplanned children. Any lesbian that wants to have a child should be able to find a willing male participant, and she can be very selective.

There can be legal barriers; here for instance, there is no legal way to be the father without incurring the financial responsibilities; there must be loopholes for sperm donors, but I don't know how those are defined (I know this because I know a coworker who is in that situation).

Should be, but it's entirely possible that the additional hurdle will discourage some. And Nanase herself DID sounded discouraged. And Nanase's mom could know her good enough to predict that.

8 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Adoption is actually competition, when you are able to plan. "I want three kids. Hmm, lets adopt one of them."

I meant that adopted kid would not have the "royal" magic genes.

8 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
15 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Not always, yes. As I mentioned, Nanase might sometimes wonder if she wasn't too impulsive, but I think she can't resist too long.

Of the two of them, Ellen is more impulsive, and Ellen's impulsiveness might egg Nanase on, or it might caution her to hold back.

Yes, definitely. I think it's mostly the egg one. I also think that Nanase might be having more ideas but it's the encouragement from Ellen why they end up actually doing them.

9 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

I don't think Nanase is fully aware of what Fox is thinking nor feeling when Fox is semi-autonomous. The link is subconscious. So, when they are playing video games, they are actually competing.

She's not aware of what Fox is thinking and yes they are actually competing when playing. However, feelings are different and are partially subconscious.

9 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Now she said she can directly control Fox, but that seems particularly useless if it works the same way. She can't do twice as much, she's asleep while she's in Fox. (Also, neither masturbation nor incest, they can't interact in direct mode, if it works the same way) Ellen could, but why bother? Unless you're doing something hazardous, and want to remain safe, direct control Fox makes little sense.

Well, if she's actually asleep and not comatose - that is, if she still feels her normal body - there MIGHT be something more she can do.
Also, there seem to be lot of similarities between Fox and Susan's fairy, and Susan seems to be able to do lot of middle ground between direct control and fully autonomous.

Now, not sure if this counts as middle ground or if it was autonomous mode, but remember how Susan was tickled through the fairy. We don't know for sure, but I'm assuming that it works similar with Fox ... and that tickling is not only feedback ...

(Note that in any case, I was saying "more like masturbation" ... not exactly like it.)

9 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

To the extent Fox can be autonomous, she becomes useful. Recall, Nanase was given the spell to use Fox as a decoy. She wants her to be able to act Nanase-like on her own.

The real question then, is how deep that goes from Fox's perspective. Is she a participant, or a fancy, flesh and blood Real Doll?

I think that Fox is neither distinct personality nor automaton (and even automaton would be step above Real Doll).

I see two possibilities: either her personality is based on copy of Nanase in moment of casting the spell, to be discarded every time she's unsummoned, or she IS Nanase in a way because the link is bidirectional. Both options sounds like pretty deep, although the first one would be extremely creepy for reasons completely unrelated to sexy times. Also, both options would be complemented with some modifications to make her work well as decoy, instead of, for example, arguing with Nanase who's the real one.

9 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
15 hours ago, hkmaly said:

You're right, saying that she's FV5 male was incorrect. What I meant was that she started as FV5 male (which is not same as being male), and I think that the dreamworld memories helped her a lot to not feel like Elliot's copy ... but, yes, definitely didn't do anything to lower her libido.

... the Archie incident might not lower her drive, but it would inhibit her impulsiveness to achieve what that drive demands.

It might, however it seems that it mostly convinced her that males are not for her.

9 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
15 hours ago, hkmaly said:

... funny point but I don't think so. I also don't think her livespan was lowered due to being part squirrel.

I don't think so either, but because it is fiction, and narratively it would not make sense.

Fertility zone and lifespan are related, from a gene's point of view. "Let's get cracking, make some copies of me." ... "Well, now you're useless. Time to turn you off."

It doesn't make sense from the point of "just how random the evolution of Uryuom's reproduction was" either. I mean, it doesn't seem much random. Maybe something similar to "our" Will of magic designed it.

And yes there is relation, however genes don't have point of view. It's just trial and error. Noone decides that person is useless when no longer fertile. Your livespan is determined by how useful your ancestor were in old age. As long as you are raising your children fitness - for example, by raising them - you are still useful.

Also, men can be fertile much longer than women, and most genes for livespan are shared between men and women. Women have shorter fertility mostly because the chance to die for mother on childbirth was so big they didn't NEEDED to be fertile longer. In fact, stopping being fertile could raised women livespan (because she avoided another risky pregnancies) and allowed her to raise her older children instead ...

And finally, frankly, we don't know what is Uryuom natural timespan OR fertility zone. We also don't know what is natural timespan for grandchild of fairy. Diane and Grace might surprise us by living longer than all others. Assuming, of course, that Tedd won't look at healing, because personally I think he should be able to prolong person's livespan with magic a LOT.

9 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

That puzzle piece does not fit there. Seriously, the immortals make no sense if you try to pin them down to a scientific framework. What the H3!! are they? If they are incorporeal, how do they then manifest corporeally and successfully mate with humans, bearing a nominally human child in Pandora's case. Did the humans appear first, then the incorporeal copies, or are humans based on incorporeal immortals? If so, how did these events occur? Why is there a connection? Was evolution subverted in this case?

Or, as we've seen, Pandora Chaos Raven has many forms and extensions. Maybe they can take on any form they want, maybe they have, and maybe everything is descended from a fish-lizard / immortal fish-lizard hybrid eons ago. H3!!, maybe two immortal protozoans got together at the dawn of time and created all life.

This is one of those, "if you think about it too hard, it makes no sense." In particular, a hypothetical immortal common ancestor, ... believe what you want, I think it ruins the context, and it's hard to patch in a rationale.

Science is not something you can turn off. Sure, you can say "it's just comic, wizard did it" but then you must accept ANYTHING. Including the fact you just denied yourself a lot of fun with speculating how it COULD work.

For start, I don't think they are truly incorporeal. They can move to another plane of reality, but they can be touched normally when on material plane. And yes, while Pandora was only one who was seen to have many forms, this may be result of later limitations ; I assume that humans evolved first and THEN fairies took human (mostly) form (which doesn't exactly answer when fairies appeared and from where ; THAT might be related to where magic came from).

And I specifically linked the article about Identical ancestor point. Read it carefully. There's nothing hypothetical about it. Eventually the point is reached where all people in the past population fall into one of two categories: they are common ancestors, with at least one line of descent to everyone living today, or, they are the ancestors of no one alive today, because their lines of descent are completely extinct on every branch. The chance for it NOT happening, given enough generations, is zero. Now, at some point the elves entered into the population - and when they did, same rules started to work for them. Unless someone would very carefully work hard to maintaining two separate populations without any contact, the mixing eventually reach the point where everyone has some of those elves as ancestors - but, obviously, just having them as ancestors doesn't mean having all their genes, so only some people have magic talents.

5 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Immortals are not merely a different but similar species (not canon, you cold spin a tale in which they were), and it is not at all clear that humans are the only things they can spawn with. Maybe EGS Oz is overrun with half-breed bunnies or worse yet, cane toads.

Probably not, however I think it's only because fairies are not INTERESTED in breeding with bunnies or toads. If they would be interested, I suspect it would be possible.

Also note that Uryuoms seem to be able to breed with basically anything, why should fairies be less capable?

5 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

My objection is to the notion that all EGS humans must be descended from Immortals because there's Adrian, but HK is not saying all are descended from him, just that if he exists, they must have been interbreeding for a long time, and by now, everyone is descended.

Yup ; I'm saying that there are actually indirect hints that Adrian is one of the youngest elves, that most of the interbreeding happened earlier.

5 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

I think Dan was winging it, and it doesn't have to make sense at that level.

Unfortunately, I fear he is indeed winging it. On the other hand, Dan seem to be open to make EGS making MORE sense. He explained hammers ; he might adapt the world to make sense with this. He didn't DIRECTLY say anything which would make it impossible yet ...

9 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

FWIW, Adrian is only hundreds of years old. I'm sure you know that, so why bring up, "He may not be that old"?

We are not sure how old Adrian really is, but we are even less sure how old the point of identical ancestors is. It COULD match. It's unlikely, but we can't rule it out.

9 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
16 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Also, it's still open question if dying forces you to stop reading webcomics. Philosophers and theologists are arguing about it for thousands of years already. Well, ok, not SPECIFICALLY about webcomics, but about related questions.

If you are capable of following webcomics after you die, presumably you are capable of other things, things which may be more meaningful to you at that point. Maybe your personal list of people you need to haunt?

Speak for yourself. I'm sure I can manage to read at least several webcomics and have time left to haunt some people.

9 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
16 hours ago, hkmaly said:

She's happy with the autocleaning purity. Something different but equally desirable to her.

She was indeed, but she seems to really like the busty forms, too.

She just asked DSL if she can reduce them.

8 hours ago, Don Edwards said:
16 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Yes, it appears mutual and healthy, it's only noteworthy because the dynamic seems reverse to how they appear in public.

Friends and acquaintances who are into BDSM are adamant that if it's done ethically, the sub is very much in charge. The dynamic literally is the reverse of how it appears.

Hmmmm ... that would then make even more sense for Catalina and Rhoda I guess ...

8 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

(And they think that the title character of Fifty Shades of Gray should have been arrested before the end of chapter 3.)

Didn't read it, but it doesn't surprise me.

6 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
7 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

... one wonders why they are considered to be separate species: Wolves, dogs, and coyotes; brown bears and polar bears...

... different genomes in the base examples, and a propensity to not interbreed, though possible.

Especially in case of brown bears and polar bears, distance. Apparently, they are not separate long enough to became different species, and maybe occasional interbreeding would be enough to keep it that way, but the distance ensures the interbreeding remains occasional.

Of course, if you look really hard at the definition of species, you find out that bears are not real problem. Problem are ring species where the definition simply FAILS. Formally, because the ability to interbreed is not transitive.

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1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

We didn't actually saw Tedd in his MOST dysfunctional "so withdrawn Nanase though he is mute" phase.

But yes, he's definitely good for her.

They are good for each other.  Funny how that works like that.

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3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

We are not sure how old Adrian really is, but we are even less sure how old the point of identical ancestors is. It COULD match. It's unlikely, but we can't rule it out.

Pandora claimed shortly before her reset to be 600 years old. She was due for a reset, which normally happens at about 200 years, when Adrian was born. So he's roughly 400.

The European most-recent-common-ancestor point - which would be more recent, possibly considerably more recent, than the identical-ancestors point, was probably about 600 years ago. Or, according to another estimate I found, about 1,000 years ago. Somewhere in there. Either way, significantly before Adrian was born.

(The common-ancestor point is where it's expected that an entire population will have *at least one* common ancestor. The identical-ancestor point is where the entire population has *all* of their ancestors in common.)

 

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3 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

Pandora claimed shortly before her reset to be 600 years old.

Did she? Where? I must've missed that, the most precise statement I know about is when she said that she's saying she's 299 for centuries.

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Assuming that she does mean "at least two" centuries, then she's at least in her 500s. This meshes well with the assumption that it was around 1700-ish that human nations started to seriously suppress knowledge of magic to the point where public witch burning ended due to a popular disbelief in the existence of witches.

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3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Did she? Where? I must've missed that, the most precise statement I know about is when she said that she's saying she's 299 for centuries.

If I'm recalling correctly, it is a calculation in Sarah's head based on a comment by Pandora. It may have been Tedd.

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7 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

She was due for a reset, which normally happens at about 200 years, when Adrian was born

Just for a point of reference she was 150 when she met Blaike and was 156 when Adrian was born, and 166 when Blaike was killed.

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10 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
13 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Did she? Where? I must've missed that, the most precise statement I know about is when she said that she's saying she's 299 for centuries.

If I'm recalling correctly, it is a calculation in Sarah's head based on a comment by Pandora. It may have been Tedd.

No calculation from Sarah.

13 hours ago, ijuin said:

Assuming that she does mean "at least two" centuries, then she's at least in her 500s. This meshes well with the assumption that it was around 1700-ish that human nations started to seriously suppress knowledge of magic to the point where public witch burning ended due to a popular disbelief in the existence of witches.

Ok ... she said "a few centuries" and yes, that would mean AT LEAST 200. However, we have no estimate from other direction - she can still be thousand years old. We don't even know how old she actually was when she STARTED to claiming she's 299 - it was almost certainly at least 299, but could be more.

In fact, we can't be sure she KNOWS how old she is. She might've lost count. While Adrian probably knows when he was born quite exactly, as historian, he may not feel the need to remind Pandora.

That said, I consider more likely her age will be between 600 and 1000. I would still be interested in any comment proving that, or helping specifying her age otherwise.

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On 5/13/2020 at 6:18 PM, hkmaly said:

No calculation from Sarah.

Ok ... she said "a few centuries" and yes, that would mean AT LEAST 200. However, we have no estimate from other direction - she can still be thousand years old. We don't even know how old she actually was when she STARTED to claiming she's 299 - it was almost certainly at least 299, but could be more.

In fact, we can't be sure she KNOWS how old she is. She might've lost count. While Adrian probably knows when he was born quite exactly, as historian, he may not feel the need to remind Pandora.

That said, I consider more likely her age will be between 600 and 1000. I would still be interested in any comment proving that, or helping specifying her age otherwise.

I've been looking for something more precise, have not found it, if I locate it, I will post.

'A few' is imprecise; a couple is defined as two, but can mean 'in the ballpark of two'; most people have a couple of kids, this does not sound odd, even though 'two or three' is normal. A few could mean down to two, but I would take it to generally mean more, out of context 'a small handful'; low to mid single digit. Again, out of context, and this is splitting hairs, at least three. Relatively, it could mean anything. I serve a customer with tens of thousands of users. 'A few had a problem' might mean low hundreds.

Several would be more than a few. It seems even less precise. "I ate several steaks", even three could be several. But if you said, "I have several pencils, and you had only a few, I'd say you are misusing the term.

Hmm,thinking about it, I might say 'a few' to mean a low portion, but I wouldn't say 'several' to mean a higher portion, I would either say 'more than a few' or jump directly to 'many'. This is not hypothetical, we talk about customer issues like this. Very relative to the sample set size. And we will have numbers to back up the shorthand assessment, this is just a verbal framework to highlight levels of severity to management. 

So how old is Pandora? Susan sums it up pretty well. And I mostly agree with your numbers, three hundred plus a minimum of three hundred more, so 600 is the low side. 1000 is a good top end; 1200 would be stretching 'a few'.

Frankly, my 600 figure was conservative and cautious; I think 800 is a better estimate. Split the difference.

Adrian might not know exactly how old Pandora was but he could ballpark it pretty well; a mature immortal, but under 200 years when he was born. Add 100 years to his age and you'd probably be close. This raises a question, why doesn't longevity have the same ill effect on elves? (EGS half breeds) If they are inheriting the immortal's nature, you'd thing they'd inherit that susceptibility.

My oldest son, when he was a toddler, if you told him what an imprecise word or phrase meant, he would take the definition to be very precise, and would misapply terms based on that. I cannot recall an example. He had some strange language issues. He caught on to pronouns, but failed to understand that they needed context; he'd say, "Look at that" and expect you knew what he meant.

 

 

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17 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Hmm,thinking about it, I might say 'a few' to mean a low portion, but I wouldn't say 'several' to mean a higher portion, I would either say 'more than a few' or jump directly to 'many'. This is not hypothetical, we talk about customer issues like this. Very relative to the sample set size. And we will have numbers to back up the shorthand assessment, this is just a verbal framework to highlight levels of severity to management. 

I rarely know how many customers are affected by some problem until just before fixing it. If at all, if the fixing script crashes in half without printing how many cases already fixed.

18 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

'A few' is imprecise; a couple is defined as two, but can mean 'in the ballpark of two'; most people have a couple of kids, this does not sound odd, even though 'two or three' is normal. A few could mean down to two, but I would take it to generally mean more, out of context 'a small handful'; low to mid single digit. Again, out of context, and this is splitting hairs, at least three. Relatively, it could mean anything. I serve a customer with tens of thousands of users. 'A few had a problem' might mean low hundreds.

Yeah, few is very imprecise. We can say what it USUALLY means, but it doesn't help guessing specific case.

20 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Adrian might not know exactly how old Pandora was but he could ballpark it pretty well; a mature immortal, but under 200 years when he was born. Add 100 years to his age and you'd probably be close.

I think we can assume that Pandora did told him how old she is before she reached two hundred.
 

21 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

This raises a question, why doesn't longevity have the same ill effect on elves? (EGS half breeds) If they are inheriting the immortal's nature, you'd thing they'd inherit that susceptibility.

Because it's not actually the longevity having this effect. Problem is that fairies gets more powerful the older they are - and it's this power (and clairvoyance coming with it) which is making them crazy. Basically, if it would be longevity it would depend a LOT on lifestyle of particular immortal ; the quite fixed limit of 200 suggests it's more like biological fact.

Elves may be getting slightly more powerful with experience, but not with age itself and not too powerful. Basically, elf will NEVER get as powerful as 200 years old full immortal - and therefore not as bored. They need to deal with not-always-nice effects of longevity but apparently that's manageable and turns you more into cynic than crazy.

30 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

My oldest son, when he was a toddler, if you told him what an imprecise word or phrase meant, he would take the definition to be very precise, and would misapply terms based on that. I cannot recall an example. He had some strange language issues. He caught on to pronouns, but failed to understand that they needed context; he'd say, "Look at that" and expect you knew what he meant.

So? Some girls won't understand men can't read their minds even as old as 30, the fact some toddler expects you read his mind about what he meant by "that" don't seem notable.

(Also, some people, generally understanding that common language words don't have exact definition but never accepts it as good idea, became famous mathematicians.)

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On 5/12/2020 at 9:19 PM, hkmaly said:

And yes there is relation, however genes don't have point of view. It's just trial and error. Noone decides that person is useless when no longer fertile. Your livespan is determined by how useful your ancestor were in old age. As long as you are raising your children fitness - for example, by raising them - you are still useful.

Also, men can be fertile much longer than women, and most genes for livespan are shared between men and women. Women have shorter fertility mostly because the chance to die for mother on childbirth was so big they didn't NEEDED to be fertile longer. In fact, stopping being fertile could raised women livespan (because she avoided another risky pregnancies) and allowed her to raise her older children instead ...

It's all about the genes. They are the data system biologic evolution runs on. The rest of what we, ducks, and chipmunks are is just meat based machinery for the genes. Yes, they do decide when you are useless and no longer fertile. They don't care two wits about your goals, other than how your goals further the genes' agenda. When we loose sight of that we tend to shoot ourselves in the foot.

In as much as your advanced lifespan furthers the genes agenda, you have an extended lifespan. For us, it is considerable. We are one of the longer lived species on the planet. And, in our case, it is as you say, we train others.

 

On 5/12/2020 at 9:19 PM, hkmaly said:

And finally, frankly, we don't know what is Uryuom natural timespan OR fertility zone. We also don't know what is natural timespan for grandchild of fairy. Diane and Grace might surprise us by living longer than all others.

Yeah, those are true. You'd think that if the longevity is inherited, that it would be noteworthy and widely known. And how far down the line would it extend?

 

On 5/12/2020 at 9:19 PM, hkmaly said:

Science is not something you can turn off. Sure, you can say "it's just comic, wizard did it" but then you must accept ANYTHING. Including the fact you just denied yourself a lot of fun with speculating how it COULD work.

Yes, you can turn it off. It's called 'fantasy'. The rule of thumb for good writing is break one rule, 'FTL is possible', 'magic happens'. But, reading this comic, we have accepted that anything can happen in their universe. Speculate how it works all you want.

 

On 5/12/2020 at 9:19 PM, hkmaly said:

For start, I don't think they are truly incorporeal. They can move to another plane of reality, but they can be touched normally when on material plane. And yes, while Pandora was only one who was seen to have many forms, this may be result of later limitations ; I assume that humans evolved first and THEN fairies took human (mostly) form (which doesn't exactly answer when fairies appeared and from where ; THAT might be related to where magic came from).

Voltaire did a Cheshire Cat fade out that says whatever they do, they can in a practical sense be as incorporeal as they want to be without significant difficulty.

Pandora seems to be less capable of holding a fixed form at that stage of her longevity; it seems to be related to her growing instability; well, yes, it's exactly that, less stable.

 

On 5/12/2020 at 9:19 PM, hkmaly said:

And I specifically linked the article about Identical ancestor point. Read it carefully. There's nothing hypothetical about it. Eventually the point is reached where all people in the past population fall into one of two categories: they are common ancestors, with at least one line of descent to everyone living today, or, they are the ancestors of no one alive today, because their lines of descent are completely extinct on every branch. The chance for it NOT happening, given enough generations, is zero. Now, at some point the elves entered into the population - and when they did, same rules started to work for them. Unless someone would very carefully work hard to maintaining two separate populations without any contact, the mixing eventually reach the point where everyone has some of those elves as ancestors - but, obviously, just having them as ancestors doesn't mean having all their genes, so only some people have magic talents.

Read it carefully. There is something hypothetical about it: "This model assumes random mate choice and is unrealistic for the human population, where geographic obstacles have greatly reduced mixing across the entire population." The numbers assuming a random mixing each generation are guaranteed to be inaccurate, because the assumption, 'a random mixing each generation' is inaccurate. Careful hard work is unnecessary, distance accomplishes it. Still true today, if less so. Even if you acquire the distant ancestor, the portions won't match.

So dragging this thing into the discussion of immortal bloodlines spreading across the population, I think we reached our point of agreement that since Adrian had an offspring early on in his life something like half of Europe could be his descendants. Would that extend to all of Asia, Africa, and indigenous America? Probably not.

Consider, too, there are more than geographic barriers to interbreeding. Ethnicity, caste, and religion can be barriers. Political beliefs.

You want to extend this beyond just Adrian? Where's the basis? We have insufficient information to proceed. What is the rate that Immortals interbreed with humans? Do you know the timeline? Much depends on when Immortals appeared. You posit that Immortals came after humans, that gives a different answer than Immortals observes early hominids. What are immortal preferences in a mate?

I am guessing you think it's fairly common, I'm guessing it is rare. It wasn't Pandora's first thought, nor even her third.

 

On 5/12/2020 at 9:19 PM, hkmaly said:

Yup ; I'm saying that there are actually indirect hints that Adrian is one of the youngest elves, that most of the interbreeding happened earlier.

I suppose it is possible. Please cite why you think so.

 

On 5/12/2020 at 9:19 PM, hkmaly said:

Of course, if you look really hard at the definition of species, you find out that bears are not real problem.

Steven Colbert assures me otherwise.

 

On 5/12/2020 at 9:19 PM, hkmaly said:

 Problem are ring species where the definition simply FAILS. Formally, because the ability to interbreed is not transitive.

True. Mostly true. Genetic material can travel from the endpoints toward the other end, very slowly, through the entire middle.

The name seems problematic. These are broken rings; the one thing they are not is an actual ring. That would be interesting; no gap, but the opposite middles can't interbreed. Such a system could arise naturally on a world with an environmental band that circled the globe.

 

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1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:
On 5/13/2020 at 3:19 AM, hkmaly said:

And yes there is relation, however genes don't have point of view. It's just trial and error. Noone decides that person is useless when no longer fertile. Your livespan is determined by how useful your ancestor were in old age. As long as you are raising your children fitness - for example, by raising them - you are still useful.

Also, men can be fertile much longer than women, and most genes for livespan are shared between men and women. Women have shorter fertility mostly because the chance to die for mother on childbirth was so big they didn't NEEDED to be fertile longer. In fact, stopping being fertile could raised women livespan (because she avoided another risky pregnancies) and allowed her to raise her older children instead ...

It's all about the genes. They are the data system biologic evolution runs on. The rest of what we, ducks, and chipmunks are is just meat based machinery for the genes. Yes, they do decide when you are useless and no longer fertile. They don't care two wits about your goals, other than how your goals further the genes' agenda. When we loose sight of that we tend to shoot ourselves in the foot.

In as much as your advanced lifespan furthers the genes agenda, you have an extended lifespan. For us, it is considerable. We are one of the longer lived species on the planet. And, in our case, it is as you say, we train others.

But the genes are not sentient. They don't decide using any decision mechanism. They don't care about your goals, sure, but they actually don't care about ANYTHING. It's just that the more "selfish" genes survived longer. It's all emergent quality from basically simple mechanism applied in large quantities. Evolution works without anyone deciding anything.

It's true that for humans, it gets simpler to think about physical processes in terms of intent and decision. Consider Fermat's principle: " the path taken by a ray between two given points is the path that can be traversed in the least time". Does it mean that the ray is somehow looking at possibilities and deciding which path would be best? NO. The physical principle of what's happening is completely different (and much more complicated, as visible if you read rest of article). But the original formulation of Fermat's principle works, and is easy to understand for humans.

The same is true with genes. What is actually happening is hard to describe in human language, but the result is very similar to genes following goal of most propagation. Until it isn't. Because genes don't care, and if some result doesn't happen enough often, it doesn't get optimized and is basically random.

Our current society is, from genes "point of view", just blink of an eye. There was little to none evolution of human species in last hundred years, because evolution simply isn't that fast. Yet the conditions changed a lot. When we look at what's happening, we don't see something already optimized by genes goal of propagation: we see how genes, optimized mostly for cavemens, with slight changes based on first agriculture societies maybe, work in conditions radically different from what they were optimized for.

For example, why do we have "epidemic" of obesity? It's not because it would be advantageous for genes ; quite the contrary. But until hundred years ago, hardly anyone had enough food to become obese. Therefore, it's not optimized. It's all sideefects of something which made sense in completely different situations.

1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:

In as much as your advanced lifespan furthers the genes agenda, you have an extended lifespan. For us, it is considerable. We are one of the longer lived species on the planet. And, in our case, it is as you say, we train others.

We don't have precise biological clocks counting our lifespan. We have SOME clocks, but those are all tuned to something completely different. We actually live longer because we care about our bodies better than was possible in past. We have better nutrition, medication ... genes didn't have time to react to that.

That's advantage we have against them. Our brain can react WAY faster than genes. After all, that's why the genes "decided" to create it: this ability to react faster than evolution was obvious advantage.

1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:
On 5/13/2020 at 3:19 AM, hkmaly said:

And finally, frankly, we don't know what is Uryuom natural timespan OR fertility zone. We also don't know what is natural timespan for grandchild of fairy. Diane and Grace might surprise us by living longer than all others.

Yeah, those are true. You'd think that if the longevity is inherited, that it would be noteworthy and widely known. And how far down the line would it extend?

Maybe it is. It took quite a long time before we knew about the unusual colors of hair, despite everyone in-universe knowing about it.

Similarly, there might be known fact that some people have hereditary longer livespan, but without any details. Might seem ti be little correlated to the unusual colors, but not enough to be statistically significant ...

Of course, most of those people, like Susan, are tens of generations from the fairy. Diane is half-elf, second generation. Noone like that appeared since legends ... and, well, you know how long Methuselah for example was supposed to live? To 969.

1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:
On 5/13/2020 at 3:19 AM, hkmaly said:

For start, I don't think they are truly incorporeal. They can move to another plane of reality, but they can be touched normally when on material plane. And yes, while Pandora was only one who was seen to have many forms, this may be result of later limitations ; I assume that humans evolved first and THEN fairies took human (mostly) form (which doesn't exactly answer when fairies appeared and from where ; THAT might be related to where magic came from).

Voltaire did a Cheshire Cat fade out that says whatever they do, they can in a practical sense be as incorporeal as they want to be without significant difficulty.

That could've been optical effect caused by him moving between planes of reality.

1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Read it carefully. There is something hypothetical about it: "This model assumes random mate choice and is unrealistic for the human population, where geographic obstacles have greatly reduced mixing across the entire population." The numbers assuming a random mixing each generation are guaranteed to be inaccurate, because the assumption, 'a random mixing each generation' is inaccurate. Careful hard work is unnecessary, distance accomplishes it.

Not that much, although that bit is on different article. It would have been especially rare to mate with somebody who lived in another country. However, Chang et al. found that a rare person who mates with a person far away will in time connect the worldwide family tree, and that no population is truly completely isolated.
 

1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:

So dragging this thing into the discussion of immortal bloodlines spreading across the population, I think we reached our point of agreement that since Adrian had an offspring early on in his life something like half of Europe could be his descendants. Would that extend to all of Asia, Africa, and indigenous America? Probably not.

Consider, too, there are more than geographic barriers to interbreeding. Ethnicity, caste, and religion can be barriers. Political beliefs.

None of those barriers are impervious. But it's true they may slow the spread.

1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:

You want to extend this beyond just Adrian? Where's the basis? We have insufficient information to proceed. What is the rate that Immortals interbreed with humans? Do you know the timeline? Much depends on when Immortals appeared. You posit that Immortals came after humans, that gives a different answer than Immortals observes early hominids. What are immortal preferences in a mate?

I am guessing you think it's fairly common, I'm guessing it is rare. It wasn't Pandora's first thought, nor even her third.

It was common enough LOT of rules were established for that case.

But you are right we have insufficient information. It's just ... even if it was rare, just the fact it happened few thousand years sooner had big effect.

And we DO know that people from all parts of world have magical talents. There is no obvious correlation to anything.

1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:
On 5/13/2020 at 3:19 AM, hkmaly said:

Yup ; I'm saying that there are actually indirect hints that Adrian is one of the youngest elves, that most of the interbreeding happened earlier.

I suppose it is possible. Please cite why you think so.

Because when Adrian was born, Pandora was already spreading the lie her previous incarnation told to her about elves being infertile. Lie which was SPECIFICALLY created as a reaction to immortals getting too involved in lives of their families.

1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:
On 5/13/2020 at 3:19 AM, hkmaly said:

Of course, if you look really hard at the definition of species, you find out that bears are not real problem.

Steven Colbert assures me otherwise.

I don't know him, but are you sure he is evaluating the bears from point of definition of species?

 

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8 hours ago, hkmaly said:

But the genes are not sentient. They don't decide using any decision mechanism. They don't care about your goals, sure, but they actually don't care about ANYTHING.

You are looking at this top down, and it is giving you a wrong impression. I realized at one point that evolution was Turing complete. Much later, I realized that initial revelation was wrong. Evolution is a huge ensemble of massively parallel Turing complete activities. There are decision mechanisms all over the place in it, stochiastic trials taking place every moment. It may not be anything we recognize as sentient but decisions are being made all the time.

I take issue with genes 'don't care about anything'. It is a very humanocentric point of view, but to be fair, you and I are human. Consider this, what is 'care'? Genes do not do anything we would recognize as caring, but they hugely exhibit emergent goal driven behavior, as a side effect of 'success'. The ones that have failed are irrelevant to the question, other than as a background for contrast.

Can you ask an individual gene what it is thinking? No, the question has no meaning. It is only in the aggregate that successful genes have an impact.

 

8 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Because genes don't care, and if some result doesn't happen enough often, it doesn't get optimized and is basically random.

They don't get hurt feelings when they fail; they cease to exist. Call success and emergent form of caring.

If it isn't happening often, the gene is failing.

It isn't really random. There are significant biases. That's how the system works. If it were truly random, it wouldn't work; there would be no propagation of success.

 

8 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Our current society is, from genes "point of view", just blink of an eye. There was little to none evolution of human species in last hundred years, because evolution simply isn't that fast. Yet the conditions changed a lot. When we look at what's happening, we don't see something already optimized by genes goal of propagation: we see how genes, optimized mostly for cavemens, with slight changes based on first agriculture societies maybe, work in conditions radically different from what they were optimized for.

For example, why do we have "epidemic" of obesity? It's not because it would be advantageous for genes ; quite the contrary. But until hundred years ago, hardly anyone had enough food to become obese. Therefore, it's not optimized. It's all sideefects of something which made sense in completely different situations.

A good case for this is sickle cell anemia. It may be a strategy for combating malaria.

 

8 hours ago, hkmaly said:

We don't have precise biological clocks counting our lifespan. We have SOME clocks, but those are all tuned to something completely different. We actually live longer because we care about our bodies better than was possible in past. We have better nutrition, medication ... genes didn't have time to react to that.

That's advantage we have against them. Our brain can react WAY faster than genes. After all, that's why the genes "decided" to create it: this ability to react faster than evolution was obvious advantage.

A clock of interest to longevity is your telomeres. You age as your telomeres degrade, and yes, it is imprecise. You can combat this aging. To the degree that you are successful, your telomeres become less effective at killing off cancerous cells.

Our brains are faster than evolutionary changes. In an engineering sense, they can often be underdamped control systems; the thing that crashed rockets in the 1950s. In spite of this, they often serve us well. We like to think so. It's nice to be able to read comics and chat on forums.

The gene's jury is still deliberating this one. Let's see if we survive COVID-19, Putin, and Trump. (... and a host of similar concerns.)

 

8 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Maybe it is. It took quite a long time before we knew about the unusual colors of hair, despite everyone in-universe knowing about it.

Similarly, there might be known fact that some people have hereditary longer livespan, but without any details. Might seem ti be little correlated to the unusual colors, but not enough to be statistically significant ...

Of course, most of those people, like Susan, are tens of generations from the fairy. Diane is half-elf, second generation. Noone like that appeared since legends ... and, well, you know how long Methuselah for example was supposed to live? To 969.

I quite honestly do not know what to make of the Biblical claims for longevity. It is not impossible, but seems so highly unlikely. My first guess us that it does not mean what we think it obviously means, but I don't know what else to substitute. I suppose it might reflect an alternate calendar system that kept track of age in months, that was badly translated. If you buy that the flood is not a world wide event, an isolated clan of humans with extreme longevity could have co-mingled and been diluted down to where their longevity was no longer functional. More troubling than Methuselah is Shem, who is said to have lived for hundreds of years after the flood. The truth is, I don't know, I wasn't there, and I am skeptical that all the details and such were handed down accurately.

 

8 hours ago, hkmaly said:

That could've been optical effect caused by him moving between planes of reality.

"That could have been <handwave>." Sure. Whatever floats your boat. It looked cool enough.

 

8 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Not that much, although that bit is on different article. It would have been especially rare to mate with somebody who lived in another country. However, Chang et al. found that a rare person who mates with a person far away will in time connect the worldwide family tree, and that no population is truly completely isolated.

None of those barriers are impervious. But it's true they may slow the spread.

... then again, back to your ring species example ...

And, yes, we are in agreement, slowing was the point.

 

8 hours ago, hkmaly said:

It was common enough LOT of rules were established for that case.

But you are right we have insufficient information. It's just ... even if it was rare, just the fact it happened few thousand years sooner had big effect.

And we DO know that people from all parts of world have magical talents. There is no obvious correlation to anything.

OK.

 

8 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Because when Adrian was born, Pandora was already spreading the lie her previous incarnation told to her about elves being infertile. Lie which was SPECIFICALLY created as a reaction to immortals getting too involved in lives of their families.

Ah, fair enough. I'm not sure I understand the immortal's logic to that, but I'm not a magical being residing in another plane of existence, so what do I know.

 

8 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I don't know him, but are you sure he is evaluating the bears from point of definition of species?

He is evaluating bears from the point of view of spoofing a FOX talking head pundit, a particularly air headed one, off on a tangent about threats to America. Bears were number one on his list, several years ago.

 

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11 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
20 hours ago, hkmaly said:

But the genes are not sentient. They don't decide using any decision mechanism. They don't care about your goals, sure, but they actually don't care about ANYTHING.

You are looking at this top down, and it is giving you a wrong impression. I realized at one point that evolution was Turing complete. Much later, I realized that initial revelation was wrong. Evolution is a huge ensemble of massively parallel Turing complete activities. There are decision mechanisms all over the place in it, stochiastic trials taking place every moment. It may not be anything we recognize as sentient but decisions are being made all the time.

We may have different definition of word "decision". Computer doesn't decide something. It just follows the program.

11 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

I take issue with genes 'don't care about anything'. It is a very humanocentric point of view, but to be fair, you and I are human. Consider this, what is 'care'? Genes do not do anything we would recognize as caring, but they hugely exhibit emergent goal driven behavior, as a side effect of 'success'. The ones that have failed are irrelevant to the question, other than as a background for contrast.

Yes, it's very humanocentric point of view. And it will likely remain so unless we find alien race which would be able to convince us it's caring in different way.

11 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
20 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Because genes don't care, and if some result doesn't happen enough often, it doesn't get optimized and is basically random.

They don't get hurt feelings when they fail; they cease to exist. Call success and emergent form of caring.

If it isn't happening often, the gene is failing.

It isn't really random. There are significant biases. That's how the system works. If it were truly random, it wouldn't work; there would be no propagation of success.

Read the condition. The propagation of success happens if the result happen.

Before first eyes evolved, the color of animals was basically random, because it was not relevant to anything, it was not tested. Only after eyes started to be used animal colors and patterns started to be relevant to survival, some were defined as "successful" and started propagating more often.

11 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
20 hours ago, hkmaly said:

For example, why do we have "epidemic" of obesity? It's not because it would be advantageous for genes ; quite the contrary. But until hundred years ago, hardly anyone had enough food to become obese. Therefore, it's not optimized. It's all sideefects of something which made sense in completely different situations.

A good case for this is sickle cell anemia. It may be a strategy for combating malaria.

It is good case for something else. Malaria and similar parasites exists for much longer than our civilization, so people started to adapt.

... well, ok, it IS being argued that agriculture made malaria more dangerous, but I mentioned that move to agriculture might be the freshest development our genes had time to react to.

11 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

A clock of interest to longevity is your telomeres. You age as your telomeres degrade, and yes, it is imprecise. You can combat this aging. To the degree that you are successful, your telomeres become less effective at killing off cancerous cells.

It's very imprecise and primary related to cancer, with aging stuff basically sideefect. Cavemen rarely died due to telomeres degrading. Or cancer. BECAUSE the telomeres mechanism was WELL adapted to cavemen livestyle.

11 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Our brains are faster than evolutionary changes. In an engineering sense, they can often be underdamped control systems; the thing that crashed rockets in the 1950s. In spite of this, they often serve us well. We like to think so. It's nice to be able to read comics and chat on forums.

The gene's jury is still deliberating this one. Let's see if we survive COVID-19, Putin, and Trump. (... and a host of similar concerns.)

Of course we likes to think so, but remember what part of body is doing that thinking. And liking.

The brain already proved it's worth. It made us superior to sabre-toothed cat, wooly mammoth, dire wolf, bison, california grizzly bear, eastern cougar, cascade mountains wolf ... sure, it may have some more long-term disadvantages, but I wouldn't say COVID-19, Putin and Trump to be between them. We are almost sure to survive all of them. It may reduce our numbers but that's GOOD for evolution, makes it faster.

The long-term disadvantages of brain include global climate change - it SHOULD provide considerable advantage here but only the results matter - and nuclear weapons or maybe nuclear material in general, because to genes won't matter if we go extinct due to nuclear war, nuclear waste or some nuclear experiment gone wrong.

And then the ultimate challenge: colonization of other planets. If we ever successfully colonize other planet, it will be ultimate proof that brain is superior to anything else ever appearing on Earth because it will SPREAD OUR GENES THERE. If we don't, well, nice try.

11 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
21 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Of course, most of those people, like Susan, are tens of generations from the fairy. Diane is half-elf, second generation. Noone like that appeared since legends ... and, well, you know how long Methuselah for example was supposed to live? To 969.

I quite honestly do not know what to make of the Biblical claims for longevity. It is not impossible, but seems so highly unlikely. My first guess us that it does not mean what we think it obviously means, but I don't know what else to substitute. I suppose it might reflect an alternate calendar system that kept track of age in months, that was badly translated. If you buy that the flood is not a world wide event, an isolated clan of humans with extreme longevity could have co-mingled and been diluted down to where their longevity was no longer functional. More troubling than Methuselah is Shem, who is said to have lived for hundreds of years after the flood. The truth is, I don't know, I wasn't there, and I am skeptical that all the details and such were handed down accurately.

We don't have any good theory what could make those claims to be true in OUR world. The same may be true for most of EGS scientist. However, it is very likely that in EGS universe, the cause of Biblical claims for longevity, as well as wide range of legends about gods, are fairies - simply because of Occam's razor. It's not proof, of course: Occam's razor is heuristic, not an irrefutable principle ... but is still useful tool with real results.

12 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
21 hours ago, hkmaly said:

That could've been optical effect caused by him moving between planes of reality.

"That could have been <handwave>." Sure. Whatever floats your boat. It looked cool enough.

It definitely looked cool enough but without actually analyzing it with scientific equipment it doesn't tell us anything precise about immortals.

Yes, it COULD also prove they are or can be incorporeal. But it's not only explanation.

12 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

And, yes, we are in agreement, slowing was the point.

And we seem to be in agreement that it would be slowing enough to limit distribution of Adrian's descendants. But I don't think it's slowing enough to limit distribution of older elves genes.

12 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
21 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Because when Adrian was born, Pandora was already spreading the lie her previous incarnation told to her about elves being infertile. Lie which was SPECIFICALLY created as a reaction to immortals getting too involved in lives of their families.

Ah, fair enough. I'm not sure I understand the immortal's logic to that, but I'm not a magical being residing in another plane of existence, so what do I know.

Well, I'm also not sure how was that supposed to work, but on the other hand, it SEEMS it's mostly worked. It will probably be related to specific situation which happened in past and without that context it's hard to evaluate the logic of it.

Adrian case MIGHT mean it was shortsighted, but despite their clairvoyance, Immortals might not see that in advance ...

 

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1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

We may have different definition of word "decision". Computer doesn't decide something. It just follows the program.

We do indeed. I would call any conditional test and branch a decision. The computer is doing essentially what we or any other living thing does, branching behavior based on information. You could argue more effectively that a human made the decision through programming than you could argue that it isn't a decision.

I suppose it's a case of to-may-to/to-mah-to.

 

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Yes, it's very humanocentric point of view. And it will likely remain so unless we find alien race which would be able to convince us it's caring in different way.

What is caring? You know from experience what it is at a functional level, but what about when you pop the hood and examine the engine? What are any of your emotions? They may be more complex than tropisms, but they have a similar fundamental nature. What you experience is an emergent thing that affects that other weirdness, the 'you' that is running on that meat based supercomputer in your cranium. In a very real sense, we are all simulations. A notion of awareness that recursively notices itself.

 

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Before first eyes evolved, the color of animals was basically random, because it was not relevant to anything, ...

It's a good thing you said animals, because that is sooooo not true of life in general. Color is relevant to absorption and reflection of wavelengths of light, and depending on the mechanism, all organisms that photosynthesize have color, even microscopic organisms, and, though we've never observed them, we can reasonably conjecture that applies to ancient ones as well, because it's part of the mechanism. Free swimming euglenas both eat and photosynthesize. They have eye spots, too, because sensing the presence of light is useful when it's one of your food sources. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say eyes evolved pretty early.

 

 

 

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I just remembered the XKCD about how brain is faster than evolution, specifically related to COVID-19:

Pathogen Resistance
33 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:
1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

We may have different definition of word "decision". Computer doesn't decide something. It just follows the program.

We do indeed. I would call any conditional test and branch a decision. The computer is doing essentially what we or any other living thing does, branching behavior based on information. You could argue more effectively that a human made the decision through programming than you could argue that it isn't a decision.

I suppose it's a case of to-may-to/to-mah-to.

Yes, the human programming it made the decision how the program should be reacting to that condition. Well, to A condition. It's possible that he specified the condition incorrectly and there is bug in code which appears when different, unexpected condition appears and triggers the test despite the human not meaning that.

33 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:
1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Yes, it's very humanocentric point of view. And it will likely remain so unless we find alien race which would be able to convince us it's caring in different way.

What is caring? You know from experience what it is at a functional level, but what about when you pop the hood and examine the engine? What are any of your emotions? They may be more complex than tropisms, but they have a similar fundamental nature. What you experience is an emergent thing that affects that other weirdness

Yes. There are neurotransmitters involved, but, well ... if our brains were simple enough for us to understand them, we'd be so simple that we couldn't. (Ian Stewart)

33 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

the 'you' that is running on that meat based supercomputer in your cranium. In a very real sense, we are all simulations. A notion of awareness that recursively notices itself.

Well, if "you" means ego, definitely. Ego is simulation of awareness done on hardware which needs to cheat a bit to manage it because it's not powerful enough for the real thing.

I would argue that "I" am more than my ego, but I must admit it's my ego doing the arguing.

33 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:
1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Before first eyes evolved, the color of animals was basically random, because it was not relevant to anything, ...

It's a good thing you said animals, because that is sooooo not true of life in general. Color is relevant to absorption and reflection of wavelengths of light, and depending on the mechanism, all organisms that photosynthesize have color, even microscopic organisms, and, though we've never observed them, we can reasonably conjecture that applies to ancient ones as well, because it's part of the mechanism. Free swimming euglenas both eat and photosynthesize.

Yes, that was deliberate. I'm not qualified to discuss how random is color of photosynthesizing organism. It's definitely less random than for animals, but I would need to know much more about absorption and more importantly the chemistry of photosynthesis to know if there is still place for any randomness.

Although ... like, most trees have leaves which turn different color in fall/winter. I think this "different color" may be adaptation to animals with sight already. Just like color of trunk of tree. Except I'm not sure if those features - leaves, trunks - evolved before the eyes or after.

33 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

They have eye spots, too, because sensing the presence of light is useful when it's one of your food sources. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say eyes evolved pretty early.

Wiki: The first proto-eyes evolved among animals 600 million years ago about the time of the Cambrian explosion.

However, not sure if there weren't light-sensing organs simpler than that. Also, not sure when ability to see color evolved, as that's actually separate to just light and dark, on the other hand not MUCH harder and you can guess something just by value, soo ...

 

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"Brains are the worst" "I wondered what those were for"

:P

 

5 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

... but I would need to know much more about absorption and more importantly the chemistry of photosynthesis to know if there is still place for any randomness.

There are different color photosytesizing catalysts but the ones that don't use chlorophyll are algae, and tiny doesn't mix well with 'cover up the photosynthesis mechanism'.

There are plants with foliage that is not green. I don't know how those work.

 

5 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Although ... like, most trees have leaves which turn different color in fall/winter. I think this "different color" may be adaptation to animals with sight already. Just like color of trunk of tree. Except I'm not sure if those features - leaves, trunks - evolved before the eyes or after.

That's different. Those leaves are dying and being shed. The color is the color of the underlying structure after the chlorophyll is reabsorbed by the plant.

 

5 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

However, not sure if there weren't light-sensing organs simpler than that. Also, not sure when ability to see color evolved, as that's actually separate to just light and dark, on the other hand not MUCH harder and you can guess something just by hue, soo ...

The ability to see specific colors is much simpler than imaging. For color selection, you tune the sensor. For imaging, you need to build a processor.

It is immediately useful too. The photosythesizing organism, reflects some color. When it is detecting light, it needs to know if the light is eat worthy. It's like a sense of taste for light.

 

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18 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
18 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Although ... like, most trees have leaves which turn different color in fall/winter. I think this "different color" may be adaptation to animals with sight already. Just like color of trunk of tree. Except I'm not sure if those features - leaves, trunks - evolved before the eyes or after.

That's different. Those leaves are dying and being shed. The color is the color of the underlying structure after the chlorophyll is reabsorbed by the plant.

Yes, but this structure's color doesn't influence the photosynthesis, so ...

18 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
18 hours ago, hkmaly said:

However, not sure if there weren't light-sensing organs simpler than that. Also, not sure when ability to see color evolved, as that's actually separate to just light and dark, on the other hand not MUCH harder and you can guess something just by hue, soo ...

The ability to see specific colors is much simpler than imaging. For color selection, you tune the sensor. For imaging, you need to build a processor.

It is immediately useful too. The photosythesizing organism, reflects some color. When it is detecting light, it needs to know if the light is eat worthy. It's like a sense of taste for light.

Yes, but that doesn't really tell us how long it took :)

 

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2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Yes, but this structure's color doesn't influence the photosynthesis, so ...

The point being, the leaf is dead. It is mostly a non factor in the evolution of the tree at that point. It is conceivable that the color of the leaves cold attract a parasite, like us, tapping maple trees, but mostly doesn't matter.

 

2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Yes, but that doesn't really tell us how long it took :)

The point being the affinity and the benefit existed eons ago, providing opportunity, also eons ago. Evolution is nothing if not opportunistic.

 

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1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:
4 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Yes, but this structure's color doesn't influence the photosynthesis, so ...

The point being, the leaf is dead. It is mostly a non factor in the evolution of the tree at that point. It is conceivable that the color of the leaves cold attract a parasite, like us, tapping maple trees, but mostly doesn't matter.

The leaf is dead but it can't really get THAT far from the tree, which is still living.
But assuming it IS non-factor, then the color is random. No "decision" happened on that. Well, ok, some colors are more likely due to which chemicals remain there, but there ARE multiple colors involved ...

1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:
4 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Yes, but that doesn't really tell us how long it took :)

The point being the affinity and the benefit existed eons ago, providing opportunity, also eons ago. Evolution is nothing if not opportunistic.

Actually there are plenty of opportunities evolution was not able to take advantage of, because the required change was too big step at once. Also lot of opportunities which took long due to how complicated they are.

Unless ... well ... you CAN argue that evolution managed to get to the Moon using the brain as middle step due to not being able to evolve rocket engines powerful enough directly ...

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