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Author Topic: reproductive research project **NOW UNDERWAY!**  (Read 30488 times)

wierd

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Re: reproductive research project **NOW UNDERWAY!**
« Reply #60 on: June 30, 2013, 01:59:33 pm »

Something as trivial as eye, hair, and skin color is not appropriate at this phase of research.

However, if silver is one of the available candidates for eye color by the end of phase 4, I vote for that one. No exclusions on skin or hair color.

As for Sutramane's question about giant armadillos--- The embark *IS* on a savage biome, that routinely spawns animal men and giant animals.  I will see if the elven caravan will bring me giant armadillos.

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wierd

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Re: reproductive research project **NOW UNDERWAY!**
« Reply #61 on: June 30, 2013, 02:29:21 pm »

You know, groupQ is quickly becoming my favorite group.

I fired up Therapist, and low and behold...

GroupQ_Gen0_Unit1 has a rebelliousness of 78.
GroupQ_Gen0_Unit2 has a neurosis of 100!! (Often crippled by thoughts that everyone is judging and watching)

I think GroupQ qualifies for "Dwarf Trash", and thus are PERFECT fodder for this experiment!
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Deepblade

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Re: reproductive research project **NOW UNDERWAY!**
« Reply #62 on: June 30, 2013, 04:34:34 pm »

Actually, it appears that All dwarves in this public works project have Slate Grey colored eyes. ALL of them.

Barring recessive genes coming out, our color options have been eliminated down to, by group...

(I'm sure you can figure it out, but if you can't. The format is GroupLetter-Group# Unit# Skin Color, Hair Color)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If you're not against using DFhack I believe there's a marriage script, so you could give GG-G0 U2 The Bachelorette as his Fortress wife. If he dies at minimum dwarf age, 80, and she dies at maximum dwarf age, 130, then their age difference is almost perfect.

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Deepblade's Standardized Creature Parts, for when you're pissed about all the different types of animal products there are.

wierd

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Re: reproductive research project **NOW UNDERWAY!**
« Reply #63 on: June 30, 2013, 05:22:18 pm »

I have decided to allow all bachelors and the bachelorette to be the fortress's dedicated food, clothing, and hospital staff.

In other news, Group E just produced a pretty baby girl. Too bad she has to be culled due to spontaneous generation of negative traits.
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Grim Portent

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Re: reproductive research project **NOW UNDERWAY!**
« Reply #64 on: June 30, 2013, 05:55:13 pm »

Mmm, so much delicious evil !!Science!!.

I commend you for the great gift to Dwarven !!Science!! that this thread represents. I eagerly await any news of how trait inheritance works in the wretched bearded ones.

Who knows, maybe this will help us make them useful in the long run.
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There once was a dwarf in a cave,
who many would consider brave.
With a head like a block
he went out for a sock,
his ass I won't bother to save.

Sutremaine

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Re: reproductive research project **NOW UNDERWAY!**
« Reply #65 on: July 01, 2013, 07:46:07 am »

I will see if the elven caravan will bring me giant armadillos.
They need to be wild armadillos. The idea is that you order your unarmed civilians to kill them, which they can't do due to the animal's size and shell. So they keep on trying, gaining stats very quickly, and the armadillo does nothing but stay rolled up.
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I am trying to make chickens lay bees as eggs. So far it only produces a single "Tame Small Creature" when a hen lays bees.
Honestly at the time, I didn't see what could go wrong with crowding 80 military Dwarves into a small room with a necromancer for the purpose of making bacon.

Grim Portent

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Re: reproductive research project **NOW UNDERWAY!**
« Reply #66 on: July 01, 2013, 09:07:04 am »

It occurred to me to ask, is there a control group being maintained in the fort? Most forts don't keep track of the traits of their dwarfs so a normal fort can't be used to provide comparative data for the progression of desired traits in a normal fort compared to the test fort.

I ask only because a control could tell us if there is a natural progression among dwarfs to more desirable traits when not exposed to selective pressures like arranged marriage or regular culls.
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There once was a dwarf in a cave,
who many would consider brave.
With a head like a block
he went out for a sock,
his ass I won't bother to save.

wierd

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Re: reproductive research project **NOW UNDERWAY!**
« Reply #67 on: July 01, 2013, 01:21:41 pm »

Actually, the game keeps track of this for you. Any dwarf born or who immigrates to the site will have a persistent prefs page, even after they die.

This means that any non-experiment fortress can be datamined for that information, if the overseer(s) in question feel compelled to do so. (you can see how unconstrained breeding swirls traits around perfectly well with that info)

This experiment does not use a control, because it is more of a raw data gathering experiment, and keeping the control isolated is too difficult.  That is to say, the intent here is to measure the effect of culling, and to track rates of culling over several generations for phases 1 and 2 of the project. 

The reason that such information is useful, is, among other things, that it provides a mathematical baseline for predicting the timetables of eugenics projects, allowing a cost-benefit analysis.  It also will answer basic questions about dwarven inheritence, such as the previous question about Darwinian-vs-Lamarkian inheritence.  If you can pen up your proletariat beating on wild giant armadillos, and get magically, and profoundly superior baseline dwarves from the practice, that alone is worth something to know about.

This experiment is simply to get raw data, for the most part. Not explicitly to test a hypothesis, though there is in an intrinsic one, in that culling *should* result in multi-generation improvements over time.  However, again, I dont really need a control to show if this is the case or not.  Here's why:

Let's say that inherited traits are PURELY random, with no inheritance whatsoever. The rate of culling will be a linear line. It will never deviate, despite having been done for generations. The rate of negative traits spontaneously appearing  will likewise be flat, etc. (sure, it will be a little jaggy due to the RNG being involved, but the overall confidence zone will occupy a flat horizontal bar on the plot.) 50 generations should silence most noise, and 100 generations should silence nearly all noise. (this project will take a *LONG* time. to expedite the process, I have set baby:0 and child:1. I may need to set child:0.)

However, should there be an inheritance model of any sort, the culling represents a disruption in the equilibrium, and will manifest as a log-like curve over time. The exact fitting of that curve will give valuable insights into the impact of that inheritance model on resulting offspring. Those insights pave the way for more structured experiments. These kinds of experiments and studies are known as "Basic Research." From the data collected, better questions can be asked. (Such as experiments that involve controls: Does "beating up poor giant armadillos" positively influence the inheritence rate curve? etc.)

So, to collect useful data, all I have to really do is religiously cull offspring, and studiously label and track all births and unions, then process the data at the end of phase 2.

Like all science, this kind of experiment is *INTENDED* to be repeated by other people looking to verify and refine the data, and to be repeated as a baseline for other empirical studies.

Again, since one can just dump all the pref pages of all the dwarves that have EVER been members of their fortresses, and many members have multigenerational fortresses already, all I have to do is ask politely, and I can get a guaranteed contamination-free reference to plot curves against without adding further complications to an already highly ambitious project.
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Fluoman

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Re: reproductive research project **NOW UNDERWAY!**
« Reply #68 on: July 01, 2013, 02:05:10 pm »

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"hey, look, my left hand! It's only bones now, gosh, has it been that long since that cave dragon bit it off?"

RtDs!

wierd

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Re: reproductive research project **NOW UNDERWAY!**
« Reply #69 on: July 01, 2013, 03:12:14 pm »

LOL!

That is definately the way clinical studies for psychoactive medications are conducted!
(Seriously, many of them *barely* score better than placebo in double blind! That's right, giving people sugar pills is nearly as effective! [When they think they are getting real mdicine])

In any case, this is more raw research than directed single variable experiment. It is intended to enable said directed experiments, by establishing some boundries, and providing testable observations.

(You shouldn't just make hypotheses out of thin air, you see.)

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Red Line

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Re: reproductive research project **NOW UNDERWAY!**
« Reply #70 on: July 02, 2013, 01:59:01 am »

This is like Mendel meets Mengele.
You are amazing, OP.
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The culling continues.  10 babies have been born. 5 must be culled. Several are inspirations for birth control.

You see what happens when you marry for love, and not science NOW, dwarves?!

wierd

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Re: reproductive research project **NOW UNDERWAY!**
« Reply #71 on: July 02, 2013, 02:28:18 am »

I would like to ask Sutramaine how he gets raw attribute scores, rather than just general trait descriptors. That would be useful information for determining what the standard deviation is for the random skew, should it exist, and would help to derive exactly what kind of computation is performed when evaluating the attribute data of the parents when producing an offspring.
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Drazinononda

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Re: reproductive research project **NOW UNDERWAY!**
« Reply #72 on: July 02, 2013, 02:50:28 am »

I would like to ask Sutramaine how he gets raw attribute scores, rather than just general trait descriptors. That would be useful information for determining what the standard deviation is for the random skew, should it exist, and would help to derive exactly what kind of computation is performed when evaluating the attribute data of the parents when producing an offspring.

I'm not Sutremaine, but: doesn't Dwarf Therapist give numerical attribute displays? I haven't used it in a few years but that's what I remember, at least.
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Children you rescue shouldn't behave like rabid beasts.  I guess your regular companions shouldn't act like rabid beasts either.
I think that's a little more impossible than I'm likely to have time for.

wierd

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Re: reproductive research project **NOW UNDERWAY!**
« Reply #73 on: July 02, 2013, 02:59:13 am »

It does for skill points, and mental attribs, but I dont see any for toughness, disease resistance, etc.

I see him listing raw numbers for attrib increases from his various military experiments, and am just curious how he gets his numbers.
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Bdthemag

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Re: reproductive research project **NOW UNDERWAY!**
« Reply #74 on: July 02, 2013, 03:01:25 am »

Wierd, you are literally the dwarf fortress version of Hitler. This is frankly amazing.
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Well, you do have a busy life, what with keeping tabs on wild, rough-and-tumble forum members while sorting out the drama between your twenty two inner lesbians.
Your drunk posts continue to baffle me.
Welcome to Reality.
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