May 9, 2024: The May '24 Report is up.
News: April 23, 2024: Dwarf Fortress 50.13 has been released.
News: February 4, 2021: Dwarf Fortress Talk #28 has been posted.
News: November 21, 2018: A new Threetoe story has been posted.
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EchinodermAny classification like that is more than a bit suspect to me, because it's wrong. It's ignoring many realities of biology. A mollusk might be defined as a soft-bodied creature with a shell, but there are mollusks without shells and soft-bodied shelled creatures that aren't mollusks.
gastropod
Arthropod
Vertebrate
mammal
Note how *ALL* of them are descriptive of a high level external FEATURE of the creatures, and not a specific set of diagnostic criteria!
(Feel free to look up the etymology of any others you like! You will *gasp!* find they all follow the same pattern!)
(For instance, to be considered a "Mammal" in the jargon sense used by current biologists, the creature must have a 4 chambered heart, must be endothermic, must produce milk, and must have live young supported via a placenta during gestation. By definition they are all vertebrates, being a subclass of vertebrate life. To be a 'mammal' in the literal sense of the word, it just needs to have milk producing breasts)
The use is archaic, but NOT incorrect. If I were saying something like "Fleshball crawls on its stomach, and all gastropods are molluscs, therefor fleshballs are molluscs", that would be flat out wrong. That is NOT what I said, and NOT how I used it. I said "Gastropods, like molluscs"-- EG, "Things that crawl with a single appendage on their stomach, like molluscs". The issue is one of pedantry in this case on the part of being slavish to established jargon.Mollusks are very rarely gastropodal in the sense you used the word. Pretty much the only ones are platyhelminates and, of course, most gastropods.
(In this case, Taking a previously ordinary phrase, like "hedgehog like skin" from latin, and making it mean something VERY specific that only applies within a very limited subset of the educated public, making its use unintelligible to most, hence, JARGON. Compare, 100 years from now some confectionery researcher specifies a very specific meaning to the word "Candybar", asserting that only chocolate coated confections with a soft candy filling can be called a "candybar", thus excluding things like "butterfingers" from being "candybars"--- Against an ordinary person describing a toffee drizzled marshmallow stuffed granola bar as one. Literally, "Candybar" means "Bar shaped candy", and can apply to anything from a bar of ribbon candy, to a bar shaped serving of taffy. Your argument that "We have used candybar to refer only to soft filled chocolate confectionary for like, EVER! Calling a butterfingers bar a candybar is just plain wrong!" does not make the appropriation magically superior to its original use. It just means you are beholden to established jargon.)The simple fact is, you're using "gastropod"--a specific term with a specific meaning--to mean something completely different. Your definition of gastropod-like applies to almost everything that doesn't swim or walk, which is to say dang near every animal on the planet. Your exact same logic can be used to call a pigeon a mammal, a platypus a reptile, or an annelid a roundworm--hell, you could probably call one a ribbon worm--not to mention the problems when you apply the same logic to non-biological sciences. Say, calling a motorboat a helicopter--both are different from vehicles which travel through a similar medium by their propellers.
I'm not making the definitions up!And we used to think the sun revolved around the Earth. Your point?
The ORIGINAL methodology for taxonomy classification was by observed characteristics only, and how certain animals looked and acted a lot like certain other animals.
For a long time even, things like bats were classified as avians even!
Many species were reclassified after DNA was discovered, and previously held assumptions about taxonomy were shown to be simple falsehoods.
"Vermiform" literally means "Worm like"- which is why it applies to snakes, which have a worm-like body. Your own example of an alternative usage does not help your case here.I fail to see why. "Vermiform" does not coincide with actual taxonomy, which is my issue with the words.
The argument is one of "Jargon" vs "Literal meaning". "Arthropod" means "Hard feet", "Echinoderm" means "Spiny skin", "Vermiform" means "Looks like a worm", Gastropod means "Stomach foot", "Vertebrate" means "Has a spine", etc.Those are all literally translated meanings of the word, which I doubt anyone who knew enough Greek and/or Latin to understand them would use those over such words as "Spiny" when they're useful.
Much like if we discovered an alien species that has a rigid spine like structure, but has absolutely no relation to anything on earth, we would call it a vertibrate, even though it does not belong in ANY of our taxonomical models! We would do this, even if it is radically alien and has no central nervous system. (Say, a distributed one instead.) This would make it CLEARLY not belong in the earth based life "vertebrate" category-- but where else are you going to put it?Into a differing taxonomy with new clades made for the new world?
Likewise if we found a cold blooded, egg laying alien creature that lactates, with genuine nipples. By definition, it would be mammal, possessing true mammary glands, even though it CLEARLY would not fit with earth mammals, lacking a 4 chambered heart, and lacking the production of a placental mass, since it does not bear live young and lays eggs instead.I don't think that sounds much like a mammal at all, actually.
In short, what I am getting at is that you are being complacent about what each of those adjective means, having enjoyed a very stable period where they have come to hold a very specific meaning in addition to their literal meaning. That changes when you start throwing in really bizarre creatures that do not fit the established categories' new implied meanings.So...don't use well-established words to mean something marginally similar to what they used to mean?
DF has things that are created solely out of the RNG! It doesnt obey those conventions. A giant one eyed pterosaur with 3 breasts, and a grey chitinous exoskeleton with warty bumps defies classification under your convention for use of those adjectives. Under literal use, like I have been using, you could classify it as a vertebrate mammalian arthropod. (I can just feel that making your blood pressure rise too. LOL)Or, you know, not classify it without further study into the FB and related species. And if classification must be done, I certainly wouldn't pigeonhole it into arthropods or chordates.
I fully understand about misuse of jargon, being a former IT specialist, turned engineer. Hearing people call the system chasis the "CPU" makes me cringe-- but it isn't fully wrong either (It IS what does all the processing), just not proper use. (Proper use clarifies the individual components inside it, with the CPU having a specific definition. The assemblage is know as the "System chassis") In instances where there isn't a proper descriptor, a close but improper one has to suffice. That's the point I am getting at. We are being presented with creatures that simply dont fit the taxonomy model, but need adjectives to describe them. Using archaic and no longer used literal descriptors is what we have to fall back on. Complaining about that use doesn't make you look very open minded.The problem is, you are the only person who I have ever heard use "gastropod" in such a manner. Not to mention that flesh balls are almost nothing like gastropods. They're less like gastropods than they are like jellyfish, sponges, or dust bunnies.
By your same logic anything that creates acid is oxygen because oxygen literally means "acid producer".Excellent example, which I wish I had thought of. (This actually fits his logic better than calling a flesh ball "gastropoid," because a flesh ball doesn't have a stomach or even a ventral side to crawl on!)
10ebbor10: "Because we all know that Toady has the final say in whatever happens. These ethics were written up by Toady, and reflect what he wants the respective races to be, and hence, dwarves enslaving people is unlikely to happen. ..."Assume for a moment that you're right and Toady's game at the initial release was all DF was going to be at that point, minus fairly minor features.
this is a bit weird since that goes against the whole purpose of the suggestion forum. we suggest things that we think would improve the game. he sees it and decides if he wants it. maybe hes first intentions where far different from what the game is now, multi z leves for example, but people suggested it and now it's there. or is this one of those guidelines, like the 1450's tech level? i dont view it being the same thing since dwarfs having slaves dont go against preconception of fantasy dwarfes that i know of. if toady somewhere stated that "dwarfs would never take slaves" as some fundamental part of his vision for the game, i will accept this and drop it, but to me it just seems he put it in the ethics, when he made the races and didnt think too much about it.
GreatWyrmGold: "...that goes against real-world AND in-game ethics..."You were asking why people were opposed to slavery. I answered.
i dont see how the real world ethics have any relevance here. after all we murder countless innocent elves and migrants...?
Both of you have one strong argument however; why do we NEED slaves?Like we don't have ways of dealing with unhappy thoughts.
well.... hmm...
i guess the idea of a slave is someone of lower value, that is explendable. we already treat migrants this way so hmm....
maybe if we make killing slaves having less consequence that killing regular dwarfs? say that there is no unhappy thought generated by anyone else when they die. then you could make them do all the dangerous stuff.
then you have a dwarf (or goblin, elf whatever) that doesnt suffer from bad thoughts due to shitty living conditions, never have any high skill levels, and its safe to kill the dwarf without concsequence. that seems at least a bit usable to me.Not to me.
Hmm...You started the oatmeal farm where you were at the time. The hoe is also buried.
Take hoe from my farm and make it into a pick.Get mining pick. Mine steel, plutonium, and uranium.
Also I had an idea. What if once we got our dock, mine and mill up and running we began production... of a university.Sounds neat, but what would we teach?
(fire resist 10 remember? Druce TOLD you guys what to not use!)No, I didn't remember that. Still, that two damage is more than I'd be likely to do any...
Ah, I feel like everyone seems to forget I'm part of Arthur's alliance, even Arthur.Sorry about that.
enter metal shackNo one stops you, but the door is stuck. [2] You cannot open it.
Get mining pick. Mine steel, plutonium, and uranium.Where would you get the pick? They were all in that facility you destroyed.
Respawn. Follow Persus.You run into a door!
Have horse run to settlement while I ride it.Youdo.
Respawn as Wolverine ((The x-men guy)) Then laugh how my bones won't break sine they are metal! ((this time))[[1] You respawn as a plush wolverine. As in, the animal.
We're about to find out.My turn?Aren't hellcats immune to fire?
I will use my cone of fire on the same area as last turn.
24 damage to any cats in the area, unless they make their saves.
