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Author Topic: Hybridisation: Mixing races.  (Read 10854 times)

GavJ

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Re: Hybridisation: Mixing races.
« Reply #60 on: October 27, 2014, 03:18:31 am »

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A genuinely homogenous culture with a long history of being such is actually completely non-racist.
Do you have any actual evidence of this? My personal experience screams loudly the opposite -- plenty of people I know from tiny rural midwestern US towns that are 100% white and have barely ever met anybody of another race (if so, incidentally, not in an ingrained local hierarchy) end up all-consumingly racist. And having traveled to some other countries, again especially (but by no means exclusively) in rural homogenous communities, have experienced some pretty severe racism myself on more than one occasion.

Or any evidence of racism not existing before the 17th century, for that matter... This quick wikipedia search suggests otherwise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism#History <--mentions dark skin described as a curse from God as of the 9th or 10th century. And by the 14th century (the setting of DF), the "contemporary" quotes provided in that article are already pretty in-your-face-flagrantly-racist.

Quote
You have never developed the tendency to classify people by skin colour because no opportunity to develop it ever existed. 
Of course you have. Humans learn to categorize. Period. They can do so on the fly -- you can learn new dimensions to categorize by, given correlating data, in a few MINUTES' time, easily. If you had to individually learn specific dimensions to categorize by from childhood in order to do so, then we would all be dead by now, because that would be extraordinarily non-adaptive.

I actually earn my paychecks by researching exactly this for a living - human categorization and similarity judgments. We give people brand new perceptual dimensions they've never seen before all the time for experiments, and they learn to meaningfully latch onto that information for categorization in the first few minutes of a half hours study. If not the first few seconds (the initial blip of behavior before it smooths out to a longer trend indicating understanding and practice with the task is probably usually under a minute, I'd say).

And that's just purely passive information I'm talking about, too. As in, not instructing them that it's even a dimension that exists, or that it's important, but them figuring it out themselves in a minute or two. If anybody were standing next to them telling them it was, then i have no doubt they could use the new information for discrimination instantly, on the first trial. In our analogy, if a single person in a society decides to categorize by race in those first minutes or hours or days of encounter with a new hybrid, then they could quite conceivably tell their neighbors of their thinking, and their neighbors could start to perceive the same way very rapidly, if they hadn't quite gotten there already.

And the "data" in this case is actually extremely strong - even stronger than in any of my experiments -- members of another physically apparent race are almost 100% ("almost" only because of very rare stuff like albinos etc.) correlated with not-us out of community status... It is almost literally a big colorful flag screaming to everyone nearby "Hey look at me! I'm not from here! You don't know me! I have not yet earned your trust or respect!"
« Last Edit: October 27, 2014, 03:26:02 am by GavJ »
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Dwarf fortress in 50 words: You start with seven alcoholic, manic-depressive dwarves. You build a fortress in the wilderness where EVERYTHING tries to kill you, including your own dwarves. Usually, your chief imports are immigrants, beer, and optimism. Your chief exports are misery, limestone violins, forest fires, elf tallow soap, and carved kitten bone.

Dirst

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Re: Hybridisation: Mixing races.
« Reply #61 on: October 27, 2014, 10:25:17 am »

I actually earn my paychecks by researching exactly this for a living - human categorization and similarity judgments. We give people brand new perceptual dimensions they've never seen before all the time for experiments, and they learn to meaningfully latch onto that information for categorization in the first few minutes of a half hours study. If not the first few seconds (the initial blip of behavior before it smooths out to a longer trend indicating understanding and practice with the task is probably usually under a minute, I'd say).
Are you talking about something like CMINDS or a diabolical Stickiness of Labels experiment?  Because the latter is far more like a DF Overseer.

People are really good at categorizing things, even while the "rules" underlying the categories are changing.  Small children, even ones who've seen lots of storybooks and cartoons with talking animals, pick up nearly instantly that real animals don't talk back to them.  Kids still talk to them anyway, but more like the way they talk to their toys.  If the animal actually responds (for example, by doing a trick on command) then the child is delighted and a whole new category is formed on the spot.

DF entity citizens should be wary of outsiders, but not xenophobic.  Basically each immigrant starts off with a "reputation" based on his/her/its origin civ, and gradually earns the trust of the "natives."  Some ethics/values should probably govern the magnitude of these effects, for example if immigrants' children inherit their parents' trust, start over from scratch, or something in between.
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GavJ

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Re: Hybridisation: Mixing races.
« Reply #62 on: October 27, 2014, 11:49:15 am »

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DF entity citizens should be wary of outsiders, but not xenophobic.  Basically each immigrant starts off with a "reputation" based on his/her/its origin civ, and gradually earns the trust of the "natives."  Some ethics/values should probably govern the magnitude of these effects, for example if immigrants' children inherit their parents' trust, start over from scratch, or something in between.
For outsider dwarves, this is how I would think of it.  But for hybrids, they're outsiders not just from your fort, but from your entire species, partially.

Especially in a world where goblins routinely murder anybody they meet, for instance, a dwarf-goblin hybrid should pretty obviously be trusted less by default than a stranger dwarf.

It would make plenty of sense for species that your civ has historically warred with or been in conflict with to enegender greater distrust (goblins > elves > humans, probably, but depends on your specific history), but any hybrid should still rank higher than any pureblood dwarf in default distrust, by some amount, I'd say.

Basically the same thing you're saying with civs, but extended to species as well (both issues taken into account). Keep in mind too, by the way, that you can lie about your civ much more easily than you can lie about your race... "Oh yeah, I'm totally from your civilization *darty eyes*" does not calm my nerves as much as seeing a pure dwarf who MUST have been born in a dwarven civ.
« Last Edit: October 27, 2014, 11:51:42 am by GavJ »
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GoblinCookie

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Re: Hybridisation: Mixing races.
« Reply #63 on: October 27, 2014, 12:33:28 pm »

Do you have any actual evidence of this? My personal experience screams loudly the opposite -- plenty of people I know from tiny rural midwestern US towns that are 100% white and have barely ever met anybody of another race (if so, incidentally, not in an ingrained local hierarchy) end up all-consumingly racist. And having traveled to some other countries, again especially (but by no means exclusively) in rural homogenous communities, have experienced some pretty severe racism myself on more than one occasion.

Pretty much the whole of human history prior to relatively modern times fits the bill for 'evidence'.  Why does the rise of racism correspond historically with increasing contact between races rather than the reverse?  As there is more contact between races and more mixing, there is more racism not less. 

The towns you are referring to are places with a whole history behind them of slavery and racist laws.  The whole of America was commited to racist laws and ideas at one point.  It is also doubtful that they have no contact with images of black people via for instance the media and such. 

Or any evidence of racism not existing before the 17th century, for that matter... This quick wikipedia search suggests otherwise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism#History <--mentions dark skin described as a curse from God as of the 9th or 10th century. And by the 14th century (the setting of DF), the "contemporary" quotes provided in that article are already pretty in-your-face-flagrantly-racist.

We have two genuine examples for the whole of ancient and medieval history (barbarians means foreigners not another race so ignore Aristotle).  In both cases we have a direct link to the slavery of people who are apparently of a different race. The important thing know what causes racism because in all cases prior to the modern period that racism has occured they have always happened because of people enslaving those of a different

Of course you have. Humans learn to categorize. Period. They can do so on the fly -- you can learn new dimensions to categorize by, given correlating data, in a few MINUTES' time, easily. If you had to individually learn specific dimensions to categorize by from childhood in order to do so, then we would all be dead by now, because that would be extraordinarily non-adaptive.

They interpret meanings.  If the people in charge have white skin and the people who are slaves have black skin people then interpret the meaning of skin colour to indicate qualities that are desirable against those that are undesirable because we would all rather be in charge than be slaves. 

I actually earn my paychecks by researching exactly this for a living - human categorization and similarity judgments. We give people brand new perceptual dimensions they've never seen before all the time for experiments, and they learn to meaningfully latch onto that information for categorization in the first few minutes of a half hours study. If not the first few seconds (the initial blip of behavior before it smooths out to a longer trend indicating understanding and practice with the task is probably usually under a minute, I'd say).

And that's just purely passive information I'm talking about, too. As in, not instructing them that it's even a dimension that exists, or that it's important, but them figuring it out themselves in a minute or two. If anybody were standing next to them telling them it was, then i have no doubt they could use the new information for discrimination instantly, on the first trial. In our analogy, if a single person in a society decides to categorize by race in those first minutes or hours or days of encounter with a new hybrid, then they could quite conceivably tell their neighbors of their thinking, and their neighbors could start to perceive the same way very rapidly, if they hadn't quite gotten there already.

And the "data" in this case is actually extremely strong - even stronger than in any of my experiments -- members of another physically apparent race are almost 100% ("almost" only because of very rare stuff like albinos etc.) correlated with not-us out of community status... It is almost literally a big colorful flag screaming to everyone nearby "Hey look at me! I'm not from here! You don't know me! I have not yet earned your trust or respect!"

What you say is the case, except when it is not.  If people of different races are integrated into your community to the point that they *are* hybrids, then why would anyone suddenly conclude that they were outsiders, especially if those being judged are hybrids.  So we either have a mixed population in which case nobody will normally conclude that the other race individuals are 'outsiders' or we have a homogenous population in which case they are 'outsiders' and that is a correct deduction rather than racism. 

If they treat outsiders as they treat outsiders then that is not racism.  It is not as if they cannot use other cues than race like accents, language or clothing to determine who are outsiders.  If they are viciously xenophobic as your comment about 'earning trust and respect' indicates they are then the standard of outsider suspicion applies to all and thus is not automatically racist; even if they do deduce your being an outsider from you being of a race not present in their group. 

It would make plenty of sense for species that your civ has historically warred with or been in conflict with to enegender greater distrust (goblins > elves > humans, probably, but depends on your specific history), but any hybrid should still rank higher than any pureblood dwarf in default distrust, by some amount, I'd say.

That is basically similar to my idea.  The problem is that it does make much sense unless both groups are racially homogenous.
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GavJ

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Re: Hybridisation: Mixing races.
« Reply #64 on: October 27, 2014, 02:40:58 pm »

We have two genuine examples for the whole of ancient and medieval history (barbarians means foreigners not another race so ignore Aristotle).  In both cases we have a direct link to the slavery of people who are apparently of a different race. The important thing know what causes racism because in all cases prior to the modern period that racism has occurred they have always happened because of people enslaving those of a different
I was responding to the claim that there was "no racism prior to the 17th century." This is false.

Whether it arises only from slavery is a separate question. Which also seems false, as there are many counterexamples to this. Americans today, for example, are routinely racists against asians of all sorts, against Middle Easterners, against hispanics, and on and on. We never had any Middle Eastern slave population, though. So the theory that is has to be rooted in slavery appears misguided.

I of course agree that slavery is ONE way to get a lot of racism broiling! But the evidence suggests that this is definitely not the only way. Most of the other types of racism described above are much more generically rooted in in-group out-group issues like "THEY are taking OUR jobs" or "THEY are using OUR tax dollars" or "THEY are squatting on OUR land that we just bought" etc. etc.

ALL these types of things would apply just as much to the ancient and medieval world as today. Pretty much as soon as you have an economy, all of the above kick into gear. So although I would expect paleolithic and mesolithic people to not be very racists (due to having less conception of ownership or property or homeland), from neolithic onward, the reasons to be racists multiply dramatically.

(Although there's also plenty of evidence of racism in paleolithic times anyway. Between Neanderthals and early homo sapiens, for instance, mixing seems to be very limited despite spatial proximity)




ANYWAY, unless you have a bunch of hard data about then versus now to quantitatively compare, what matters as far as I can see is "yes, there was definitely racism in medieval times. How much compared to now? None of us really know." Which means it's pretty much valid to implement for gameplay any amount of racism -- and we should just use as much as is fun for the game.

And I think racism would be quite fun, because it increases the depth of the game, adds extra challenges to the social scene, and provides significant gameplay depth to the hybrid idea, beyond just "mixing and matching doll body parts" that it would be otherwise.

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Why does the rise of racism correspond historically with increasing  contact between races?
Nobody has yet established that this claim is true. Putting it in the form of a leading question that assumes it is true does not make it so. Note that "violent clashes" is not the same thing as "being racist." You can potentially be quite racist without every clashing with anybody of another race. For instance, if people don't move around much due to lack of modern transportation...

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They interpret meanings
This is correct. And a goblin-dwarf hybrid carries a pretty distinct and obvious and legitimate MEANING that "this dude obviously comes from somewhere with goblins, or his immediate kin do. That makes him more potentially dangerous than a dwarf, because we know goblins are dangerous and we don't trust them."

This meaning persists even if you already have several trusted goblin-dwarf hybrids in town. Those ones may have earned your trust with time by now, but the new one can still be carrying fresh dangerous ideas from his possibly-goblin exposure, and has not yet proven otherwise.

You would be slightly less wary of them than if it were the first hybrid, but only along a sliding scale. Only a community of everybody being hybrids would hit the minimum level of racism against a new hybrid of that type coming into town.

By all means, the longer somebody stays in town without causing trouble, their individual racist treatment should lower. Absolutely.
« Last Edit: October 27, 2014, 02:43:26 pm by GavJ »
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GoblinCookie

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Re: Hybridisation: Mixing races.
« Reply #65 on: October 29, 2014, 12:55:23 pm »

Whether it arises only from slavery is a separate question. Which also seems false, as there are many counterexamples to this. Americans today, for example, are routinely racists against asians of all sorts, against Middle Easterners, against hispanics, and on and on. We never had any Middle Eastern slave population, though. So the theory that is has to be rooted in slavery appears misguided.

I never said that it exclusively arose from slavery.   I said that it arose from unequal contact, when two groups with a distinct appearance come into close contact and one group dominates the other because of whatever reason the groups tend to end up developing racism towards eachother. 

Americans have historically dominated Asians (Phillipines and Vietnam), Hispanics (Mexico and Latin America in general) and are presently dominating Middle Easterners (Iraq, Afghanistan).  Americans however are most racist against blacks historically speaking (and probably at present) because slavery is a particularly extreme example of the general sense of domination. 

I of course agree that slavery is ONE way to get a lot of racism broiling! But the evidence suggests that this is definitely not the only way. Most of the other types of racism described above are much more generically rooted in in-group out-group issues like "THEY are taking OUR jobs" or "THEY are using OUR tax dollars" or "THEY are squatting on OUR land that we just bought" etc. etc.

They really are not.  People in my country (Britain) raise much the same kind of objections to Polish people who are white as to middle-easterners or black people.

A lot of that is based upon competitives pressures that are part of Capitalist society (competition for jobs particularly) and not actually part of Dwarf Fortress.  What is going on there is that the existing elites are being accused of betraying the in-group in order to unduly facilate the rights of the out-group, regardless of the race of the outgroup. 

Where it gets complicated is that people who are already racist object rather strongly to those they consider inferior migrating as they will cause crime/corrupt the gene-pool.  They often manage to pass off their racial issues as a more generic in-group/out-group question. 

ALL these types of things would apply just as much to the ancient and medieval world as today. Pretty much as soon as you have an economy, all of the above kick into gear. So although I would expect paleolithic and mesolithic people to not be very racists (due to having less conception of ownership or property or homeland), from neolithic onward, the reasons to be racists multiply dramatically.

(Although there's also plenty of evidence of racism in paleolithic times anyway. Between Neanderthals and early homo sapiens, for instance, mixing seems to be very limited despite spatial proximity)

You seem to be confusing Racism with Nationalism. 

ANYWAY, unless you have a bunch of hard data about then versus now to quantitatively compare, what matters as far as I can see is "yes, there was definitely racism in medieval times. How much compared to now? None of us really know." Which means it's pretty much valid to implement for gameplay any amount of racism -- and we should just use as much as is fun for the game.

And I think racism would be quite fun, because it increases the depth of the game, adds extra challenges to the social scene, and provides significant gameplay depth to the hybrid idea, beyond just "mixing and matching doll body parts" that it would be otherwise.

The hard data is the number of references you can find as to racist ideas in literature and so on during the periods. There is only one instance of racism in the medieval era that I am aware of and that is not in Europe but in Tunisia.  Now that is rather easily explained as the result of North Africa having essentially invented the infamous slave trade that the Europeans would later latch onto to provide labour for their American colonies.  So yes the Tunisians were ahead of the curve by a few centuries but none of this proves anything in general. 

One does not have to prove a negative.  I do not have to prove that racism did not exist to any notable degree in medieval times, you have to prove that it did.

It is not fun to have racism automaticaly exist.  It it not fun to have obnoxious racist doctrine about the inherant inability of races to live together turned into a game.  It is particularly not fun if we do not have any choice about the matter because the other races just turn up. 

Nobody has yet established that this claim is true. Putting it in the form of a leading question that assumes it is true does not make it so. Note that "violent clashes" is not the same thing as "being racist." You can potentially be quite racist without every clashing with anybody of another race. For instance, if people don't move around much due to lack of modern transportation...

It is pretty much clearly established. If it were true that homogeny caused racism then in the medieval ages monks should have been sitting in their cells writing vast racist diatribes.  While people in the south of America on account of being a mixed society with plenty of black people around should have in a generation all turned into steller anti-racists by now having been so many centuries since slavery was abolished (we both agree that slavery causes racism). 

What we see is that racism increases as the European powers due to their improving naval technology come into more contact on an uneven basis with other basis, as slaves or imperial 'subjects'.  The relative decline of racism corresponds with reducing amounts of uneven contact between races as a result of the end of overt European imperialism. 

Contact on an even basis does not cause racism and actually reduces it. However racists always try to ensure that all contact with other races is on an uneven basis, so they make sure to 'segregate' the races while ensuring that their race holds all the top jobs and so will have plenty of contact on an uneven basis with them. 

This is correct. And a goblin-dwarf hybrid carries a pretty distinct and obvious and legitimate MEANING that "this dude obviously comes from somewhere with goblins, or his immediate kin do. That makes him more potentially dangerous than a dwarf, because we know goblins are dangerous and we don't trust them."

This meaning persists even if you already have several trusted goblin-dwarf hybrids in town. Those ones may have earned your trust with time by now, but the new one can still be carrying fresh dangerous ideas from his possibly-goblin exposure, and has not yet proven otherwise.

You would be slightly less wary of them than if it were the first hybrid, but only along a sliding scale. Only a community of everybody being hybrids would hit the minimum level of racism against a new hybrid of that type coming into town.

By all means, the longer somebody stays in town without causing trouble, their individual racist treatment should lower. Absolutely.

It is difficult to gage what is really going on here.  Is it really that they are racially goblins or is it that they happen to come from the The Cruelties of Glazing or somesuch goblin civilization. 

The question is important because we are assuming that the dwarf civilization of say The New Earth does not get on well with The Cruelties of Glazing.  If someone turns up the dwarf fortress that is a goblin-dwarf hybrid is the problem going to be.

Yikes! That person is half-goblin and goblins are evil.
OR
Yikes! That person is a Cruel Glazer and they are evil.

In the latter case one could use the former fact to determine the latter.  Or you could equally use other clues, so the race is only relavant if you actively going about pretending to be a New Earther as a Cruel Glazer.  Unless we add spying into the game, people's ability to determine in-group/out-group based upon race is not really relevent since the question is nice and binery.  Either you are a Cruel Glazer or a New Earther. 
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mate888

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Re: Hybridisation: Mixing races.
« Reply #66 on: October 29, 2014, 02:56:59 pm »

I think that, even though interbreeding should be a thing (but only between humans, elves, gobbos and dwarves, as kobolds lay eggs and breeding with animal people would be very weird), it should be very rare.
I mean, dwarves generally disike elves and goblins, and they really prefer to keep to themselves on their mountuains.
Humans and elves don't seem to be very tolerant, and I think that the only civ tht would have some exponencial race-mixing should be the goblin, as the quantity of other race people living on their towers being raised by goblins is usually very big, making the non-greens to be a full part of society.
Still, it should also depend on the number of other races on a civ, but still be considered taboo for most races.

Also about the inmortality problem: I could be either that mortals and inmortals don't really marry much for that reason, that only people with full inmortal ancestry to be inmortal and/or to make goblins and elves not inmortal, but instead to make them live very long (say, between 500 and 1000 years), making the other races viewing them as inmortals, and making the only way possible to be inmortal by turing into a vampire/necromancer.
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Re: Hybridisation: Mixing races.
« Reply #67 on: October 29, 2014, 04:50:13 pm »

I gently skimmed the topic, and am 'for' the crossbreeding, simply as yet another enhancement to storytelling (and other games have successfully used cross-species races to fairly decent effect)..

And humans hate :| They hate based on race or color simply because its easiest.. If we were all purple or black or white we'd still hate, just for different reasons.. Whoever said that the only thing that'll end racism is the arrival of an alien race was probably right ;) So we've got some creepy eight-eyed tentacle-creature to direct the useless hate towards..

I grew up in a town (central US) virtually void of black folks for thirty of my thirty one years and am not racist, even though they didn't live near me locally, and around the influence of older racist family members.. I still saw the Cosbys, and Fresh Prince, and plenty of other shows on TV that showed me very clearly that they're normal people (as actors, anyway, I didn't judge this by the characters they were portraying..). Just like Jeopardy and the Olympics should stand as solid proof against any "Men are better than wimmin!" sexists :> Idiots and bigots don't apply logic very well overall, so I've cast out all hope of fairness and equality.. And there will always be less-than-bright people full of hate and violence, regardless of their origins, and it'll probably be what ends our planet one of these days..

Lets hope humelves and gwarfs (doblins?) would be able to get along at least fractionally better than that ;)
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Zanzetkuken The Great

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Re: Hybridisation: Mixing races.
« Reply #68 on: October 29, 2014, 05:44:30 pm »

And humans hate :| They hate based on race or color simply because its easiest.. If we were all purple or black or white we'd still hate, just for different reasons.. Whoever said that the only thing that'll end racism is the arrival of an alien race was probably right ;) So we've got some creepy eight-eyed tentacle-creature to direct the useless hate towards..

I remember a quote from Terry Prachet (Probably gonna butcher it, but here goes)

"There is no racism as we know it in Discworld, because the blacks and whites are too busy ganging up on the greens."

I found the exact wording:

“Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because—what with trolls and dwarfs and so on—speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.”
« Last Edit: October 29, 2014, 05:46:35 pm by Zanzetkuken The Great »
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GavJ

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Re: Hybridisation: Mixing races.
« Reply #69 on: October 29, 2014, 11:16:10 pm »

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One does not have to prove a negative.  I do not have to prove that racism did not exist to any notable degree in medieval times, you have to prove that it did.
No, but one does have to at least read the basic wikipedia article on a topic (that was linked to for you in this thread) before writing a wall of text on the subject based on assumptions clearly contradicted in the article. Which, in the very FIRST SENTENCE of the medieval section, lists no fewer than SEVEN authors of texts from the time period with racist content (secondary source is a very well credentialed oriental history prof). And which then goes on to mention like two dozen other pieces of evidence...

I'm not exactly delving into my university's special collections here, pulling out obscure random stuff from hours of searching dusty tomes. This took literally 30 seconds to find:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism#Middle_Ages_and_Renaissance

Quote
Is it really that they are racially goblins or is it that they happen to come from the The Cruelties of Glazing or somesuch goblin civilization.
Well let's see... the only way to know they're from the Cruelties of Glazing would be to sit down and have a nice chat with them about their personal history and vital statistics (since they are sometimes born after your fort started, your dwarves can't know them personally from before. And you can look at their clothing and see that it has no insignia in game)

Whereas you can tell they're a goblin by just quickly glancing at them no matter what they're wearing....

Considering that when my dwarves encounter strange goblins, they instantly open fire from 30 yards away (as opposed to exchanging resumes), I'm gonna go with the latter interpretation as being... pretty obvious.
« Last Edit: October 30, 2014, 12:28:15 am by GavJ »
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Putnam

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Re: Hybridisation: Mixing races.
« Reply #70 on: October 30, 2014, 03:38:27 am »

Nah, the in-game hostility logic is, in fact, civ based. You head into a dwarven fortress of any kind in adventure mode and you'll see goblins mingling with dwarves with no ill will between them, or so they say when you ask how they feel about each other.

GavJ

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Re: Hybridisation: Mixing races.
« Reply #71 on: October 30, 2014, 04:15:33 am »

Yes I realize the code probably uses that...

But there's no logical justification for that being what actually happens in roleplaying / in-universe explanations. Since they attack on site with absolutely no identifying markings and a strange goblin they couldn't possibly have met before. There is only one explanation: It's a goblin.




A settlement is an entirely different matter -- you walk in there as an adventurer, you have NO idea what their history is. That might be the result of 7 generations of living together and building trust, which only initially began with exhaustive cautious diplomatic efforts, blah blah blah. Nothing about settlements in adventure mode therefore really tells us anything one way or the other, because they could have infinitely many possible stories behind them.  Your fort, though, you know the story (or lack thereof).
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GoblinCookie

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Re: Hybridisation: Mixing races.
« Reply #72 on: October 30, 2014, 08:17:15 am »

I think that, even though interbreeding should be a thing (but only between humans, elves, gobbos and dwarves, as kobolds lay eggs and breeding with animal people would be very weird), it should be very rare.
I mean, dwarves generally disike elves and goblins, and they really prefer to keep to themselves on their mountuains.
Humans and elves don't seem to be very tolerant, and I think that the only civ tht would have some exponencial race-mixing should be the goblin, as the quantity of other race people living on their towers being raised by goblins is usually very big, making the non-greens to be a full part of society.
Still, it should also depend on the number of other races on a civ, but still be considered taboo for most races.

Also about the inmortality problem: I could be either that mortals and inmortals don't really marry much for that reason, that only people with full inmortal ancestry to be inmortal and/or to make goblins and elves not inmortal, but instead to make them live very long (say, between 500 and 1000 years), making the other races viewing them as inmortals, and making the only way possible to be inmortal by turing into a vampire/necromancer.

The best solution is to make immortality default to 1000 years or so in regard to mixing with creatures with a defined lifespan.  So if we have two creatures, one of them with a defined lifespan and the other without, the game would determine the hybrid lifespan against 1000 years. 

The idea is to determine the characteristics of hybrids randomly but to exclude absolutely the following creatures from breeding. 

Beings with a different body type.
Beings that do not have the same materials.
Beings that do not reproduce in the same manner. 

And humans hate :| They hate based on race or color simply because its easiest.. If we were all purple or black or white we'd still hate, just for different reasons.. Whoever said that the only thing that'll end racism is the arrival of an alien race was probably right ;) So we've got some creepy eight-eyed tentacle-creature to direct the useless hate towards..

I remember a quote from Terry Prachet (Probably gonna butcher it, but here goes)

"There is no racism as we know it in Discworld, because the blacks and whites are too busy ganging up on the greens."

I found the exact wording:

“Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because—what with trolls and dwarfs and so on—speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.”

I think that hate is generally 'rational' in it's origins (not to say correct just it has underlying reasons) not that people automatically hate.  Historically black people became for accidental reasons primitive/poor/ignorant/slave in relationship to powerful white people, meaning that symbolically black skin represented undesirable characteristics.  People hate to be those things, hence those people are hated because of association. 

The interesting question is that because the whole thing is based initially upon categorization; race has to exist as a concept prior to anyone being able to attach desirable or undesirable characteristics to it.  In a fantasy world with orcs/elves/dwarves and so on, will humans still divide themselves into separate races or would they see themselves as one race classified against the above and skin color would not have symbolic significance. 

No, but one does have to at least read the basic wikipedia article on a topic (that was linked to for you in this thread) before writing a wall of text on the subject based on assumptions clearly contradicted in the article. Which, in the very FIRST SENTENCE of the medieval section, lists no fewer than SEVEN authors of texts from the time period with racist content (secondary source is a very well credentialed oriental history prof). And which then goes on to mention like two dozen other pieces of evidence...

I'm not exactly delving into my university's special collections here, pulling out obscure random stuff from hours of searching dusty tomes. This took literally 30 seconds to find:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism#Middle_Ages_and_Renaissance

Yes it is quite well documented that racism existed in Medieval North Africa and all the sources point to that area being racist. The problem is that they can be seen as ahead of the curve, they developed racism early due to developing early the conditions that would later become established during the Early Modern Era. 

In this case we have the Sahara desert replacing the role of the oceans and desert caravans replacing the role of ships, but North Africa is exceptional because of these conditions and the outcome is predictable as well.  They were ahead of the curve and crucially they are an area that has plenty more contact with black people than medieval Europe, thus refuting the concept that homogeneous societies develop racism. 

The central point I am making is that racism historically arose (or at least became notable) as a result of these particular conditions and is not something that has always been there.  Unless we first introduce the ability for those conditions to be replicated in-game then it does not make sense that racism would exist.

At the moment all contact is equal since there are no ruling classes in the society as even the sons and daughters of royalty are happy to dig the earth like everyone else.  If we accept that even contact between races reduces racism just as uneven contact reduces it then even if racism were to arise it would quickly dissipate as soon as other races became part of the settlement. 

Well let's see... the only way to know they're from the Cruelties of Glazing would be to sit down and have a nice chat with them about their personal history and vital statistics (since they are sometimes born after your fort started, your dwarves can't know them personally from before. And you can look at their clothing and see that it has no insignia in game)

Whereas you can tell they're a goblin by just quickly glancing at them no matter what they're wearing....

Considering that when my dwarves encounter strange goblins, they instantly open fire from 30 yards away (as opposed to exchanging resumes), I'm gonna go with the latter interpretation as being... pretty obvious.

They treat a human or an elf or another dwarf in exactly the same way as they would a goblin, provided that they come from that particular hostile civilization.

That means they have a way of determining civilization origin regardless of race.  We do not know exactly how they tell.  It is however not very smart for them to use race to determine origin unless both sides are known to be completely homogeneous.

If both sides have mixed populations you could easily end up killing one of your own goblins by mistake unless you check the non-racial cues whatever they are. But if you can determine civilization based upon something more reliable than race, why would race then mean that you come from a given civilization unless you are homogeneous in which case they are no hybrids and the whole issue of anti-hybrid racism is mute.
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GavJ

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Re: Hybridisation: Mixing races.
« Reply #73 on: October 30, 2014, 02:35:16 pm »

Quote
They were ahead of the curve and crucially they are an area that has plenty more contact with black people than medieval Europe, thus refuting the concept that homogeneous societies develop racism.

1) No it's not just North Africa. You still haven't apparently bothered to read that small section of text linked...
2) If documented racism occurs among people with lots of contact, that does not "refute" anything about homogenous societies. Obviously, homogenous societies with zero contact won't have DOCUMENTED racism, regardless of whether they are flagrantly racist or not at all, because there's no opportunity to have incidents that get recorded. They can just sit around being racist with nothing of note coming from it. It is the areas where occasional contact occurs that you have to look to to see what was underlying the society previously. Iberia and North Africa are actually decent examples of this, precisely because they didn't just have easy, open borders for both peoples to grow up with large exposure to other races, but both water and a desert in the way and thus made occasional contact, revealing not-particularly-logical widespread racism when they did.

Another nice example of this is if you've ever raised a puppy from a very young age in a homogenous home. It's hard to find human examples of people who have never seen another race member these days (yet are old enough to show racism), but happens all the time with pets. My family's current dog was born in a white breeder's house, has white fur himself, and grew up in our white home. Within his first few weeks, when he started going on walks far enough out, it was obvious: white people walk by, wags tail, licks. Black/hispanic people walk by: flipped his shit and ferociously barked at them, until we trained him not to eventually. VERY first contact, no history of them in any inferior roles (or any roles at all), no abuse from some hispanic guy in the past, nothin.

They are just the Unknown. The Unknown is scary and threatening. It's really as simple as that. Same exact reason people are afraid of change and the darkness.

Quote
The central point I am making is that racism historically arose (or at least became notable) as a result of these particular conditions and is not something that has always been there.
I know that. The issue is that your central point has no evidence to back it up.

It is critical to note that even if there WERE no evidence at all of racim prior to the 17th century (although there is), that would by no means be evidence of lack of racism, anyway. To prove that, you need specific accounts of people of different races meeting and affirmatively getting along great in various places. Which you have not provided.

If there were just no evidence at all either way, then the conclusion is "We don't know whether there was racism one way or the other for sure" NOT "There wasn't racism." Because you can't distinguish between no racism Vs. just not writing as much stuff down Vs. just not encountering as many outsiders due to more difficult travel, etc.

Quote
They treat a human or an elf or another dwarf in exactly the same way as they would a goblin, provided that they come from that particular hostile civilization.
This is impossible and irrelevant until you explain to us how a dwarf has any idea what civilization a visitor is from aside from race in a split second from 30 yards away, when nobody wears identifying images on their clothing.

Quote
unless you check the non-racial cues whatever they are.
Quoted for emphasis. You can't think of any.

Whereas I can cite very clear racial cues: individual civilizations have within-species racial features to them. When you embark, your civ mostly has olive-skinned dwarves or mostly has pale skinned dwarves, and mostly has connected earlobes, or whatever. You can go look for yourself in game (in fact, I think you taught me this earlier). I.e., you can easily distinguish who the bad guys are by race -- proper race as we mean it more modern-ly, not species. And not really any other way.


In fact, not being racist in DF world would be pretty stupid!
« Last Edit: October 30, 2014, 02:55:15 pm by GavJ »
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Dwarf fortress in 50 words: You start with seven alcoholic, manic-depressive dwarves. You build a fortress in the wilderness where EVERYTHING tries to kill you, including your own dwarves. Usually, your chief imports are immigrants, beer, and optimism. Your chief exports are misery, limestone violins, forest fires, elf tallow soap, and carved kitten bone.

Bumber

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Re: Hybridisation: Mixing races.
« Reply #74 on: October 30, 2014, 11:41:50 pm »

Quote
They treat a human or an elf or another dwarf in exactly the same way as they would a goblin, provided that they come from that particular hostile civilization.
This is impossible and irrelevant until you explain to us how a dwarf has any idea what civilization a visitor is from aside from race in a split second from 30 yards away, when nobody wears identifying images on their clothing.
Large tattoos? Posturing? Maybe everyone in the DF universe is polite enough to announce their intent. Explain how they can tell a force composed entirely of abducted dwarves, humans, and/or elves is from a hostile goblin civilization?
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