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[GoblinCookie]

Why are you mentioning the "present economic order"? Aren't we arguing about a hypothetical future where private property may exist in dwarf mode?

Your big question was  "Why would a dwarf fortress invent private property?  That is not a rhetorical question Ribs but one that I want answered."

My answer to the question above is that is not entirely up to you, and that dwarves may wish to privetely own things whether you like them to do it or not, and it may be even something that is ingrained in dwarven culture if Toady says so.

That is not an answer, they cannot want something that does not exist and they have no concept of.  Why would the fortress presently choose to implement any economic order except the one that we presently have?  They naturally have no desire to cut the fortress into little pieces and those making the decisions are undermining their own power/control by privatising the fortress to any extent at all.  Without private property, culture is what the fortress makes it, since nobody has the right to produce culture that undermines the official fortress culture; if those running the fortress have no wish to see private property exist, consequently no works promoting private property are allowed to be made. 

Yes, Toady One can add things in arbiterily; just because something is anachronistic in context does not mean that it cannot mechanically be added in.  At the moment private property is just an arbitery limitation on the player, the game code forces the player to respect something that has no substance presumably because it is the law.  The player however would never invent it, so we have to ask why dwarf king X in Yr 0 passed a law that no player would ever pass; to quote the dev page.

Foundation of laws, both natural and supernatural

Laws are supposed to have foundations, they are not simply supposed to 'just be there'.  If it is supposed to be the case that private property god simply decreed that private property exist, well why is anybody worshipping the private property god anyway given that nobody important can see any value in it? 

Let me expand on the scenario even more, and make it more complicated for you. Let's say the dwarf in question was a carpenter. In this scenario, dwarven law is slightly less communist and permits merchants to trade with individuals in a desigated marketplace. Individuals can also use their wages to buy things from outsiders, if said outsiders are willing to accept local dwarven currency.

So our carpenter uses his savings to aquire wood from the outsiders. In his spare time, he's decided to make a few wooden furniture on his own with the wood he brought. He decided to sell the furniture he's produced in the market, and with the money he brought a casket of wine. Is the wine his?

Also, is this a bad way of handling idle dwarves? You asked why would you want to allow dwarves to have private property. Well, here's a scenario where a dwarf used his idle time to do something productive and bring wealth to himself without your help.

The wine is still not his.  That is because the coins he used to buy the wood are fortress coins which he then used to make fortress furniture which he then sold in return for fortress wine (which he can then drink).  At no point did he own anything that he is trading, since nobody has any reason to invent private property (as mentioned above).  There is also the small matter of why anybody invented wages as well. 

Since the fortress allows dwarves to trade their assigned wages with outsiders instead of simply trading them back to the fortress, what they have really done is given individual dwarves the limited right to trade with outsiders rather than restricting this to the Broker.  Until somebody invents private property these individual dwarves do not own the goods they are selling, anymore than the Broker presently owns the goods he is selling to the caravan.

Why would a dwarf fortress invent private property?

[JesterHell696]

Yes, our ability to understand language subconsciously is limited.  If we can make an analogy to ant pheronomes, what that means is that in order for pheronomes to transmit detailed information to an ant, that ant must be aware that there are pheronomes. 

A human can be consciously aware of the words used and what they mean but not of there subconscious effects, so ant can be aware of the information in pheromones but not aware of there "other" effects.

Every ant colony on earth has their own unique pheronome, so the information potential of pheromones is clearly quite vast.  The reason we have phased out our awareness of pheronomes is because sound is our primary means of communication.  Getting rid of pheronome consciousness frees up more 'memory' for our conscious awareness of sound and for our general conscious intelligence in general.  We could equally have gone nearly deaf but have developed a similar awareness of pheronomes that ants have.

I see pheromones as being drugs that have information attached to them making them a bad choice for individual conscious decisions because the effect the subconscious mind like a drug, but its the perfect method for transferring information between the individual cells of a body which is why ants are considered "super organism".

There is no direct evidence to believe that any creature other than ourselves has an actual consciousness at all.  Saying that any one other creature than humanity has an actual consciousness leads however to a slippery slope, if monkeys have consciousness then why not rabbits?  If rabbits have consciousness why not birds? If birds have consciousness why not reptiles?  If reptiles have consciousness why not amphibians?  If amphibians have consciousness why not fish?  If fish have consciousness why not insects? 

Exactly, without a definitive answer you basically decide where to draw the line using your subjective opinion and reasoning, mine is that insects are at best semi-conscious but most likely not possessed of a consciousnesses and as for why? its down to the complexity of their brain and I see the brain of an insect being too simple to house a fully developed consciousness.

Universal empathy gets there first.  We have to learn to *not* emphasise, the whole stuff about indifference to bullies is part of the general anti-empathy training that starts at birth. 

From what I've observed with my two nephews, niece and nine cousins is that universal empathy is taught first and anti-empathy is taught only after it becomes relevant, so of course empathy get there first because its training starts sooner.

No it is not.  The term pheronome has such a broad meaning that it's use alone does not specify what exactly they are talking about.  In this case we are talking about essentially an anaesthetic drug pheronome and not the kind of pheronome that the ants use to communicate.  No information is being transmitted, merely pain/distress is being dulled by it's effect. 

I feel that the communication pheromones of ants are not merely a communication tool but the foundation of a chemical hypnosis that effects their whole society.

I have managed to increase the site cap to 3000 before, but still the world is unnaturally undeveloped.  The site cap is not something that is in there because Toady One wanted to limit the number of sites, it is in there because there is a limit to how many sites the memory can cope with.  Adding in a whole legion of small peasant hamlets will result in a rather empty world, since it will hit the site cap quicker and thus stop growing. 

I think it would be possible to make it work, it just require changes to various thing

It really does not matter if it was originally a hobby.  Ultimately he is making something and even if it is only for himself the less he has to throw out/replace existing mechanics to move ahead then the better he is at what he does.  The problem is that everbody makes mistakes/bugs so some replacing is inevitable, but the more the new mechanics can seamlessly build upon the older mechanics the better the game developer is.   

My point is that if old mechanics are detrimental to future builds they can be removed, sometimes your going to have to smash an otherwise functional thing to make way for something else, your opinion seems to match the Chinese officials in that fixing the mistake by smashing down one building (feature) and starting again is not cost effective and so working around the mistake is the better solution but to do so can result in things like this.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2448694/China-builds-new-flats-path-motorway.html

If you can work with the mistake and achieve acceptable results fine but if it results in this fuckery I say accept the costs and fix it properly, I've done this before way back when I was still in school, I had a project that I'd made a mistake on and so I redid it from scratch and I got reduced marks because it was late but I was happy with the result which is the most important thing imho, so while I may have possibly gotten a higher result from the original being handed in on time my goal was self-satisfaction which is why I bought up that its was a hobby first.

So its not a question of "whats the most cost effective way to do it?" but "what way will result in the dev's being happy with the result?" and if that mean removing an old function that results in their "developer grade" lowering then that fine as long as their happy with the result.

No it is not a fundermental change.  We already have a central government that assembles armies larger than that of one site; it is merely abstracted.  Now all we are doing is becoming a cog in that central government, ruling over a region and commanding it's forces. 

On its own no but no change to the game is "on its own", think of it like a staircase each new step by itself is only a minor change in elevation but climbing to the top of the staircase is a major change and a staircase that goes high enough can be seen as resulting in a fundamental change because it can result in pressure changes.

Also because each individual stair needs some framework to hold it up and you need the preceding step before you can build the one after it without it collapsing you end up with place holder mechanics (scaffolding) that are only there until the framework (support structure), this is why I see this minor "non-fundamental" change is part of the framework that leads to a massive "fundamental" change later.

99.9% of the game elements are already abstracted.  The only elements of the world that are *not* abstracted are what appears on the map in Fortress Mode and what comes into the immediate proximity of your adventurer.  Here in the computer-world, memory and dev time are both finite; this means the game does not model every detail in the game world but only that which is relevant to the kind of game you are playing. 

Which is why I said necessary, I have no doubt that is it was possible he would fully realize all the games site at once and have them running simultaneously but that's not possible so by necessity he abstracts thing outside your fortress because your fortress is your keep and the surrounding hillocks your castle town and scattered peasantry.

Because in any computer game, whatever is not relevant to the player's experiance of the game is abstracted away; because *both* dev time and memory are limited.  This means that if you do not wish the player to concern themselves with work and production then you abstract these things away to focus on things that do concern the player.  A Feudal Castle does not concern itself with the details of the peasants growing stuff, it concerns itself with taxing the peasants and ruling over them. 

Toady does want the player to concern themselves with this production even as the play a role in they feudal politics and peasant growth, the fact that that's not what "perfect" replication of a feudal system is actually like is largely irrelevant because the player is the "overseer" not the baron himself, its best to think of the player as an abstracted entity like the barons "regent" whose handling the day to day management and your ability to affect the outside world is by acting as the barons "adviser".

For example Toady has said that he want the player to be able to control historical figures as adventurers but is unsure how to stop the player from killing of disliked figures like they do nobles so the players control of the fortress is like an abstracted control of those who do influence the fortress, basically its not your fort its his/theirs and you just run its day to day operations for him/them from the background, trading is a good example of this type of player influence.

So the player is the "hive mind" but dwarves are supposed to be self-determined individuals and as of yet Toady isn't sure how to resolve this issue without taking control out of the players hands so its been back-listed.

It can, however it involves completely altering the basic nature and mechanics of the game! 

I have a different interpretation of what the basic nature of the game is (fantasy world simulator that tells stories) I don't see it as altering that "basic nature" but changing the style in which the stories get written.

In a word modern Capitalism, something that did not develop until 17th Century Netherlands/England. 

I said right from the beginning that I don't study economics so the only economic structure I'm remotely familiar with is modern Capitalism.

You hold the position that rather than the game continuing to expand, it will simply be scrapped and replaced with a new game.

 
As I've said I don't see this see replacing the game but expanding it if a different direction then it has been previously, whats been done so far is merely foundation for what comes later and the self-sufficient though surplus production fortress was/is a place holder for that expansion that enables fully realized (from the peasantry level to the nobility level) and modeled economics systems.

He could expand upon what built and if that doesn't result in something like the "fuckery" I showed earlier that's fine but if whats currently in place is a hindrance to what the future economy is supposed to be and would require a "fuckery" type of work around then reduce the problematic system to rubble and rebuild.

Precisely.  While you can use Sociobiology against those infected with it, you should never allow yourself to fall for it. 

I think a misunderstanding standing is that you think Sociobiology is an infection that I caught from somewhere but many source's say that not how it works not just you and no one ever told me that is how it works or tried to convince me, that's just the conclusion that my reasoning arrived at after reviewing the evidence and from my point of view you the one's who "infected" with the idea that its something else at work, I believe everything about humanity can ultimately be defined though the study of biology eventually even free will.

I understand.  The key thing here is that is no direct way to arrive at the objective truth from a subjective experiance, our ability to observe objective truths depends upon a process of reasoning, however basic and instinctual.  This means that two people can observe the same information and come to different conclusions, which of them is correct is determined by whose reasoning is most sound.   

There no correct way to arrive at an objective truth but somethings have no objective truth to arrive at in the first place.

Morality and ethics are ultimately no more subjective than the question of whether a man is dead or alive.   

There is a difference imho, A thing holds the property of being dead or alive regardless of our observation of it that is not true with the ideas of good and evil because what is good and what is evil has never been a property inherent to a thing or action but a value assigned after observation (like beauty) making morality wholly subjective in nature, I think your a moral absolutist but I'm not, outside of the "hard" sciences like physics, chemistry and biology I think that.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

Sums it up nicely.

I do not see much replacement going on in the way you describe the game as developing. 

because where true individuals who given the same information can arrive at different conclusions.

Good and Evil are as mentioned before, no more subjective than Life and Death.  A Good creature or society has the characteristics of the living, it is growing, unified, whole, stable and functional.  An Evil creature or society has the characteristics of the corpse, it is diminishing, divided, disintegrating, unstable and non-functional. 

I have rejected your claim about good and evil = alive and dead.

I think its better to compare the "perfect" (socialist) society with herbivore zebra super herds which function on a collective all for one and one for all mentality and "imperfect" (capitalist) society as carnivore lions prides which compete with each other for land (hunting grounds) but collectively feed upon the zebras, with this comparison I see the lion as being the superior animal and even though they can out grow their ability to feed themselves and collapse from their own hunger without an adequate prey.

I was talking about self-sufficiency in surplus value terms.  That is never going to go away without making a fundermentally different game, but self-sufficiency might well go away.   

I don't see the removal of that surplus value production as a fundamental change.

Toady One abstracts 99.9% of all the content in the game. 

He only abstracts what he absolutely has to, if he could make it work with out any abstraction he would.

A reward system that rewards us for being altruistic is an altruistic reward system not a selfish one.  Nobody does anything without some kind of reward system being in place because that is how the mind works, it acts to achieve something it deems desirable.  What you seem to be trying to say is that altruism subjectively works by means of selfishness, but objectively they are acting altruistically.

   

I look at it like this, only if there is no reward is it selfless and only if its selfless is it altruism, the topic falls under non-"hard" science which makes the it a subjective thing as far as I'm concerned.

We have two words, a word called altruism and another word called selfishness.  Why do we have two words, because we are talking about different but related things.

Altruism sometimes requires selflessness, but selflessness does not require altruism.  To sacrifice yourself in order that another person might be cured of a common cold is selfless but it is not altruism; this is because altruism is fundermentally opposed to selfishness.  When seen backwards, to allow somebody else to sacrifice themselves to cure you of a common cold is quite selfish, that means that you are propogating selfishness through your selflessness as opposed to altruism.  Selfless and Selfish fit together like two opposite poles in the same magnet, Altruism on the other hand is hostile to the very existance of Selfishness. 

   

I look at the same information and reach a different conclusion, as far I can tell selflessness and altruism are synonymous and the text book definitions agrees so its a matter of semantics.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

Evil Cannot Comprehend Good comes into mind here.  A selfish person cannot comprehend what altruism really means since his frame of reference is selfishness.  To him then, altruism is simply the inverse of what he is; so it is the self-sacrificing selflessness by which other people destroy themselves for his sake.  That is because he cannot really comprehend anything outside of his own intellectual framework, the Self, he cannot think of Altruism as anything but Selfishness backwards. 

   

Because when someones frame of reference is different consistently results in them reaching different conclusion it possible to see the whole topic is subjective, whats good, whats evil, whats altruism and whats not are all dependent on how you picture them in your mind, so again if its not "hard" science the my answer is.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

Also if evil cannot comprehend good then good cannot comprehend evil and I would say that is a false claim.

Indeed, selfish creatures do sometimes cooperate.  Once they start doing so the group they create will either fall apart or they will develop altruistic tendancies because they end up having to think about what is good for the group (and their long-term interests) as opposed to themselves (and their short-term interests). 

As I've said I don't see that as altruism, its selfishness by proxy.

They do not need money anymore since everything they need can be replicated at no cost.  So why is being a mere peasant worth the end of the world?   

Its better to rule as a king in hell (post apocalypses) then to live as a peasant in heaven.

According to Capitalism you are indeed a commodity; you sell your labour power to the Capitalists, whether they be individuals or abstract collectives.  I do not see myself in that way, I see myself as a force or power; the more of me that there is, the more power or force I have. 

The fewer of you there is, the weaker you are.  Yet since you are a commodity, your value is dependant upon your scarcity; resulting it the bizzare world we live in where the 'rational' thing for the individual worker is to kill off all the other workers so there are fewer of them despite the fact that more workers can accomplish more than less workers.   

This is why it a subjective issue, I see you as a commodity and the current statue quo supports my belief more then yours making me more "correct" even though your belief is also "correct" from a certain point of view.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

What happens when they figure out your game?   

It'll never be figured out all at once, and as individuals figure pieces out you discredit them, dispose of them or use a distraction like entering a war to take the attention of the masses away from the "truth" of your game.

They are not private workers if the state/fortress is their direct employer.

 

The entire point of the guild is to change that, in the old economy if there wasn't enough work for the guild member to have decent pay they'd partition the mayor for more work, Toady just need to add in the ability for individuals both on and off site to hire the on site guild for jobs and combine it with other things that have been mentioned like leaseholds and you have the beginnings of a basic private enterprise.

Nothing as such, as I said you can add in anachronism all you wish, it is just irritating and causes problems if you want to make a more detailed simulation. 

The reason is that the fortress, as a surplus value producing entity has no need to tax the hillocks in order to sustain itself.  It can just continue to mine stuff and make stuff, while the hillocks can continue to grow stuff.  The two peacefully trade their respective goods, becoming more interdependant and consequently being drawn into forming a larger political union that can accomplish what they alone cannot.   

 

Or you could expand the game in such a way that you break the current system so its not adding anachronism at all.

Divide and conquer is exactly why you have private property leashes and then eventually true private property when the goverment loses control of what they have leashed. 

Think of government as an exchange.  The palace 'produces' government while the peasants produce taxes for the palace but while the palace is happy to have the taxes, the peasants do not want to part with them.  This means that eventually the system by which the peasants produce surplus value and the palace produces negative value is inherantly unsustainable for reasons you know well, the peasants pay for the palace's ability to crush them for not paying. 

If the peasants live in any sense in a collective, communal fashion then they *are* a government, which means they have little need to 'import' government from the palace.  The question for the palace is then how to create such a scarcity of the government commodity that people are actually going to pay for it.  By dividing the people up (or keeping them divided) into private plots they are both in need of protecting *and* at the same time poorly able to stand up to the palace.  The palace therefore 'solves' the problem that they produce negative value by artificially inflating the value of the one commodity they produce in abundance by destroying the competition.  Think of it as an example of hoarding goverment in order to drive up the market value *of* government so that people would actually willingly pay for it. 

The result of course is not very nice, but all the problems that their new institution creates drives up the demand for government.  People are impoverished and starving, well enter the government welfare state which naturally needs taxes to fund it.  Impoverished people become criminals, no problem enter the government police and government prisons; they also need taxes to finance.  On top of all the problems caused by the government created artificial lack of government that the government needs to solve there is of course a 'little extra' to sustain the lavish lifestyles of the government elite. 

The same thing however would not happen simply if we placed hillocks under the control of the fortress.  The reason that the fortress may represent a higher rung in the goverment of the civilization, but it is not actually trying to sell government, owing to it producing surplus value.  It wants strong, unified and stable hillock goverments because they are it's hillock government, the fact that the hillocks and fortress form part of a larger economic whole binds them together quite tightly.  The stronger their hillocks are in every sense, the stronger they are while ruling a swarm of scattered peasants makes them weak.

 

None of this is a reason why it can't be added to the game, it just expansion how its addition could be anachronistic in nature and how to model it so it doesn't it become anachronistic.

That is the best solution indeed, to have a variety of different economic/political systems rather than the One True System.  At the moment we have the One True Communist System, before that we have the One True Capitalist system.  Most civilizations should end up in the middle somewhere, because that is realistic and is probably what most people will want as well.

Somewhere in the middle is probably the goal.

Dunbar's Number comes to the rescue here.  What we do is give all sites a hefty bonus to their functionality under the initial communal system (or whatever raw-defined system they are using) when their population is below a certain number.  This means that initially they can indeed live like Argentine Ants, but once they reach a certain number defined in the Ini. file then the problems start to kick in that force solutions to be found.  It might also be a good idea to wait until the site limit has been reached as well (helps make things interesting in post site limit history). 

So basically changes to the initial system are only to happen once a site reaches a certain size.  This means that folks can still have the wrong values for their economic setup but their initial growth will not be crippled by it. 

I remember reading about Dunbar's Number before, I though it was interesting and could give a biological basis for racism as then its just he brains way coping with numbers higher then its natural capacity can handle resulting in stereotypes which negatively depict those whom are different.

At the moment the central goverment is simply looked after by the capital city and the local representatives of the central government (the barons) are looked after by their respective sites.  This is quite functional arrangement actually provided that the total civilization is small.  If the civilization gets very large however, this setup becomes a problem; the reason being that the local government of the capital city (the primary palace) which produces the surplus that sustains the core central government now has undue influence over the central goverment. 

Likely all the fortresses would collectively agree to pay for the palace precisely because it does not produce surplus value.  This means that they can create a neutral ground of sorts, that allows the central government to not favour the capital city.

I will say that it is possible that they make the palace for that reason of neutral ground but I read it as the primary palace being dwarven Rome or Machu Picchu but that could easily be wishful thinking.

[Ribs]

They naturally have no desire to cut the fortress into little pieces and those making the decisions are undermining their own power/control by privatising the fortress to any extent at all.  Without private property, culture is what the fortress makes it, since nobody has the right to produce culture that undermines the official fortress culture; if those running the fortress have no wish to see private property exist, consequently no works promoting private property are allowed to be made. 

Decentralisation of power happens voluntarily in several instances. The story of the dwarf and his wine casket is a good exemple of that. It's actually very simple: the player, who represents a government entity within the fortress can only do so much in terms of orders to keep the dwarves productive.  But if the dwarves have the incentive of private ownership, they may go out of their way to work on their own and accumulate wealth by themselves. You may even tax their efforts, making even more "public" money in the fortress. The reason why a state would voluntarily allow a private business to exist may very well be that said business is more efficient being private, and therefore more profitable to the state because the state has the ability to impose taxes on private businesses.

Why would a dwarf fortress invent private property?

A few pages back Bumper told you to stop being so attached to the way the game is right now. In the future, Dwarves will recive money for their various jobs and will probably be able to own more property. Let's imagine the game was like this from the beginning. Would it make sense to you if I asked:

Why would a dwarf fortress invent communism?

Laws are supposed to have foundations, they are not simply supposed to 'just be there'.  If it is supposed to be the case that private property god simply decreed that private property exist, well why is anybody worshipping the private property god anyway given that nobody important can see any value in it?

 
That could very well be the dumbest assumption I've ever seen in these forums. The problem with being so obsessed with Marxism theory as you are is that you begin looking at history in a completely linear way. "Oh society was like this, then it became like this under these conditions, and then because x and y happened capitalism and private property came into existance". You speak as if the concept of owning things is fetishistic and could only come about through some sort of religious worship. You also seem to think that private property in a society like DF would be anachronistic. Is that what focusing solely on Marxist philosophy thought you?

Because this is simply not the case.

People have discussed the idea of private property for a long, long time, gobbo. It's been a part of human culture for thousands of years. It goes beyond what your authoritarian, marxist view of how the world should or shouldn't work:

The ancient authors speculated about the relation between property and virtue, a natural subject for discussion since justifying private property raises serious questions about the legitimacy of self-interested activity. Plato (Republic, 462b-c) argued that collective ownership was necessary to promote common pursuit of the common interest, and to avoid the social divisiveness that would occur ‘when some grieve exceedingly and others rejoice at the same happenings.’ Aristotle responded by arguing that private ownership promotes virtues like prudence and responsibility: ‘[W]hen everyone has a distinct interest, men will not complain of one another, and they will make more progress, because every one will be attending to his own business’ (Aristotle, Politics, 1263a).

Dwarf fortresses are lively places where people are allowed to philosophise about higher concepts. Concepts like privete property can easily become popular ideas, and popular ideas can in turn become law. And you keep repeating "why would a player pass these laws". You assume dwarves will always be sheep.

First of all, it may not entirely up to them (the player). Some things could be out of player control. If most dwarves want something, a mayor may be inclined to pass that law to reflect on the wishes of the population. This could very well be how the game will go about certain laws. But supposing the player has complete power over which laws pass and which don't. Dwaves could see the player not passing the laws that they want or passing laws they don't want as arbitrary and unfair, and may become unhappy or even revolt. So that could be one of your incentivesfor doing so. If private property is a very popular concept, you may have a lot of trouble in keeping it away from your dwarves. You may even desire to kill those pesky intellectuals that keep corrupting the youth with these thoughts.

Also, it will probably be the other way around, considering where the development is going. Private property laws will probably be "the standard" to some degree, and most dwarven civs will probably have it by default. Considering how dwarves owned shops in the old economy, I wouldn't be surprised if Toady attempts to give them the ability to own private businesses again when he gets around to making the new economy.

To me, it would be completely fine if some thinkers came into the fortress and started spreading ideas that make private property look bad, and that in turn forced the player to make property more communal, etc., or risk revolt. To me, interesting gameplay and simulation is what matters. I'm not a boring ideologue.

[GoblinCookie]

A human can be consciously aware of the words used and what they mean but not of there subconscious effects, so ant can be aware of the information in pheromones but not aware of there "other" effects.

Yes, however if they are aware of the pheronomes existance they can also potentially become aware of the other effects as well. 

I see pheromones as being drugs that have information attached to them making them a bad choice for individual conscious decisions because the effect the subconscious mind like a drug, but its the perfect method for transferring information between the individual cells of a body which is why ants are considered "super organism".

There is an obvious difference between a drug that directly affects the emotional state of the brain and a scent that communicates information. 

Ants are in my view a superorganism because they all quickly transmit information to eachother and since they all have same basic nature they all act in a unified manner, since all their individual conscious decisions result in the same decision at the same time. 

Humans on the other hand do not all have the same information and also have different basic natures; in that regard they are very much the norm as far as creatures are concerned.  What drove the evolution of ants from normal creatures is the adaptation to living in a constructed underground. 

Exactly, without a definitive answer you basically decide where to draw the line using your subjective opinion and reasoning, mine is that insects are at best semi-conscious but most likely not possessed of a consciousnesses and as for why? its down to the complexity of their brain and I see the brain of an insect being too simple to house a fully developed consciousness.

How about a simple consciousness for a simple brain? 

In any case it is pretty much clearly the case that all the ant consciousnesses (if they exist) are all consciously coming to the same decision.  It is like we have 1000 versions of the same person all living in proximity.

From what I've observed with my two nephews, niece and nine cousins is that universal empathy is taught first and anti-empathy is taught only after it becomes relevant, so of course empathy get there first because its training starts sooner.

Indeed.  This brings us to the question of the importance of early abuse/bullying in the propogation of general evilness in society. 

I feel that the communication pheromones of ants are not merely a communication tool but the foundation of a chemical hypnosis that effects their whole society.

If all ants are by their individual nature cooperative and altruistic, then why would chemical hypnosis even be needed? 

I think it would be possible to make it work, it just require changes to various things

What Toady One would have to do is completely rewrite the site code in order to make it more memory efficient and by a massive amount.  I would gage that the better means to simulate a scattered peasant population would be to do things as we do with animal people, basically abstract them away but have then 'living' in a general area. 

My point is that if old mechanics are detrimental to future builds they can be removed, sometimes your going to have to smash an otherwise functional thing to make way for something else, your opinion seems to match the Chinese officials in that fixing the mistake by smashing down one building (feature) and starting again is not cost effective and so working around the mistake is the better solution but to do so can result in things like this.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2448694/China-builds-new-flats-path-motorway.html

If you can work with the mistake and achieve acceptable results fine but if it results in this fuckery I say accept the costs and fix it properly, I've done this before way back when I was still in school, I had a project that I'd made a mistake on and so I redid it from scratch and I got reduced marks because it was late but I was happy with the result which is the most important thing imho, so while I may have possibly gotten a higher result from the original being handed in on time my goal was self-satisfaction which is why I bought up that its was a hobby first.

So its not a question of "whats the most cost effective way to do it?" but "what way will result in the dev's being happy with the result?" and if that mean removing an old function that results in their "developer grade" lowering then that fine as long as their happy with the result.

The idea is to avoid building the flats in the path of you 'future motorway' in the first place.   

On its own no but no change to the game is "on its own", think of it like a staircase each new step by itself is only a minor change in elevation but climbing to the top of the staircase is a major change and a staircase that goes high enough can be seen as resulting in a fundamental change because it can result in pressure changes.

Also because each individual stair needs some framework to hold it up and you need the preceding step before you can build the one after it without it collapsing you end up with place holder mechanics (scaffolding) that are only there until the framework (support structure), this is why I see this minor "non-fundamental" change is part of the framework that leads to a massive "fundamental" change later.

The thing is that however many bricks you lay down to make a building the building still ends up being made of bricks.  If you take a bunch of Socialist sites and stack them on top of eachother as it were in order to make a bigger thing then the result is never a Feudal house. 

The componants for Feudalism do not exist and it would require a fundermental change in the game nature for it to do so.  The problem is that the fortress must not produce surplus value and must therefore have hillocks or other minor settlements under dwarf civilization control in the area in order to support it prior to it being created.  Toady can add in Feudal social relationships anachronistically, but their existance will never actually make any sense; nor would any player even invent them if he had a choice. 

Which is why I said necessary, I have no doubt that is it was possible he would fully realize all the games site at once and have them running simultaneously but that's not possible so by necessity he abstracts thing outside your fortress because your fortress is your keep and the surrounding hillocks your castle town and scattered peasantry.

When we visit a hillocks in adventure mode the hillocks is not abstracted but a concrete thing, it is the fortress down the road that is functioning abstractly.  Of course if we we were interacting with hillocks in your area then they would be functioning abstractly but it has nothing to do with the whole keep/peasant thing.  It has to do with the fact that due to memory constraints only things that are within the zone of the player are actually able to be modelled fully. 

Toady does want the player to concern themselves with this production even as the play a role in they feudal politics and peasant growth, the fact that that's not what "perfect" replication of a feudal system is actually like is largely irrelevant because the player is the "overseer" not the baron himself, its best to think of the player as an abstracted entity like the barons "regent" whose handling the day to day management and your ability to affect the outside world is by acting as the barons "adviser".

For example Toady has said that he want the player to be able to control historical figures as adventurers but is unsure how to stop the player from killing of disliked figures like they do nobles so the players control of the fortress is like an abstracted control of those who do influence the fortress, basically its not your fort its his/theirs and you just run its day to day operations for him/them from the background, trading is a good example of this type of player influence.

So the player is the "hive mind" but dwarves are supposed to be self-determined individuals and as of yet Toady isn't sure how to resolve this issue without taking control out of the players hands so its been back-listed.

The player is a spiritual being called Armok that possesses mortal beings.  The fundermental issue with the setup is, how much power does Armok have to control beings and what is the limitation of Armok's ability to possess beings. 

I have a different interpretation of what the basic nature of the game is (fantasy world simulator that tells stories) I don't see it as altering that "basic nature" but changing the style in which the stories get written.

The basic nature of the game is a detailed simulation of the details of ordinery life in a fantasy world.  If we make the fortress unable to produce anything itself then a whole raft of the game is abstracted away.  That is why I said that if Toady One makes the game into Crusader Kings I would quit, not because I do not liking playing Crusader Kings but because such an outcome calls into question his competance as a game developer. 

If our dwarves are just a bunch of idle nobles and all production is done by abstracted sites, towns and peasant villages; then why did Toady One go through the bother of coming up with a detailed system for our dwarves producing all manner of items, since we are now prohibited from doing so?  He could just have come up with an abstracted production system and come up with a detailed, memory hungry political/military simulation to start with. 

I said right from the beginning that I don't study economics so the only economic structure I'm remotely familiar with is modern Capitalism.

Which is quite anachronistic even if we are talking about actual middle ages.  For instance the modern company with it's shareholders was actually invented in 17th Century Netherlands, the reason why shareholders did not exist before is that before that pretty much all significant 'private property' belonged to a household, the 'owner' was the head of the household. 

As I've said I don't see this see replacing the game but expanding it if a different direction then it has been previously, whats been done so far is merely foundation for what comes later and the self-sufficient though surplus production fortress was/is a place holder for that expansion that enables fully realized (from the peasantry level to the nobility level) and modeled economics systems.

He could expand upon what built and if that doesn't result in something like the "fuckery" I showed earlier that's fine but if whats currently in place is a hindrance to what the future economy is supposed to be and would require a "fuckery" type of work around then reduce the problematic system to rubble and rebuild.

Perhaps the reason the future economy is 'supposed' to be something anyway is because the devs did not really understand what that economy is based upon; they were just mindlessly copying institutions from other games and history.  Instead of reducing the game to rubble and rebuilding they could instead understand that the game world they have created is not the middle ages at it's most basic level and set upon developing an economy for the world they have actually created.  This not only creates something that is actually new and creative but also saves development time at the same time. 

I think a misunderstanding standing is that you think Sociobiology is an infection that I caught from somewhere but many source's say that not how it works not just you and no one ever told me that is how it works or tried to convince me, that's just the conclusion that my reasoning arrived at after reviewing the evidence and from my point of view you the one's who "infected" with the idea that its something else at work, I believe everything about humanity can ultimately be defined though the study of biology eventually even free will.

It is a trick that works because Society created Biology; hence things like ants.  The trick is simply to swap the things around, rather than Society creating Biology (thus allowing even the biology to be changed eventually we have the Biology create the Society thus granting the humans no ability whatsoever to accomplish anything.  Humans can consciously change the way they live but they cannot change their flesh and blood.  If they have to change their flesh and blood to change the way they live then they are locked in chains unable to determine anything at all.

So the whole thing is basically a means of paralysing the human race.  It is pretty amusing therefore that one of the biologists has set out to disprove free will, that is afterall the whole purpose of the trick; to enslave the human race. 

There no correct way to arrive at an objective truth but somethings have no objective truth to arrive at in the first place.

The latter statement is correct but the first statement is incorrect.  If the first statement were true no objective truths could ever be known at all, since there is no correct means of reasoning to make sense of subjective sensory data. 

There is a difference imho, A thing holds the property of being dead or alive regardless of our observation of it that is not true with the ideas of good and evil because what is good and what is evil has never been a property inherent to a thing or action but a value assigned after observation (like beauty) making morality wholly subjective in nature, I think your a moral absolutist but I'm not, outside of the "hard" sciences like physics, chemistry and biology I think that.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

Sums it up nicely.

Exactly, a thing is good or bad irrespective of whether we percieve it or not because a good thing is a living thing and an evil thing is a dying thing.  The properties of the Life = Good while the properties of Death = Evil. 

because where true individuals who given the same information can arrive at different conclusions.

If we ants then we would not.   

I have rejected your claim about good and evil = alive and dead.

I think its better to compare the "perfect" (socialist) society with herbivore zebra super herds which function on a collective all for one and one for all mentality and "imperfect" (capitalist) society as carnivore lions prides which compete with each other for land (hunting grounds) but collectively feed upon the zebras, with this comparison I see the lion as being the superior animal and even though they can out grow their ability to feed themselves and collapse from their own hunger without an adequate prey.

No, the lions are the 'Socialists' because they actively cooperate for the greater good of the pride, taking risks of personal injury or death in order to kill the zebras.  The zebras super herd on the other hand are quite 'Capitalist' because when they see a lion they all stampede away from the lion because they personally want to be the one that does not get eaten.  If zebras put the collective above the individual they would instead charge straight at the lions, overwhelming them with their sheer numbers. 

Since it is the lions that put the collective above the individual they live while the zebras died.  If the zebras were more good, they would crush the lions who must be fewer in number due to the food chain literally underfoot.  As a result lions would quickly go extinct or cease or to prey on zebras; hence as a result countless zebra lives are saved. 

I don't see the removal of that surplus value production as a fundamental change.

Then you an idiot.  Changing fortress mode from a game focused upon concretely rendered production to one focused solely upon politics and abstract control of resources is a fundermental change by any stretch of the definition. 

He only abstracts what he absolutely has to, if he could make it work with out any abstraction he would.

Toady One is a software developer.  If he did not want to abstract things then he would be something else. 

I look at it like this, only if there is no reward is it selfless and only if its selfless is it altruism, the topic falls under non-"hard" science which makes the it a subjective thing as far as I'm concerned.

I look at it like that, the existance of a reward does not make a reward non-altruistic.  It is only if the altruistic deed is conditional upon personal reward greater than the cost of the act that they act become selfish. 

I look at the same information and reach a different conclusion, as far I can tell selflessness and altruism are synonymous and the text book definitions agrees so its a matter of semantics.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

The text books agree the two things are related, not that they are the same thing. 

Evil Cannot Comprehend Good comes into mind here.  A selfish person cannot comprehend what altruism really means since his frame of reference is selfishness.  To him then, altruism is simply the inverse of what he is; so it is the self-sacrificing selflessness by which other people destroy themselves for his sake.  That is because he cannot really comprehend anything outside of his own intellectual framework, the Self, he cannot think of Altruism as anything but Selfishness backwards. 

   

Because when someones frame of reference is different consistently results in them reaching different conclusion it possible to see the whole topic is subjective, whats good, whats evil, whats altruism and whats not are all dependent on how you picture them in your mind, so again if its not "hard" science the my answer is.

No, we are talking about what a thing is; not about the morality of the two things. 

Altruism and Selfishness are supposed to be opposing systems.  Selflessness however is quite compatable with Selfishness since the Selfish creature can simply exploit the Selfless creature by piling up demands that require that the other creature to sacrifice itself. 

An altruistic creature however will not sacrifice of themselves more than the benefit to another.  This is because they do not regard the self at all but solely the total good of everyone in general, treating their own good as equal to other people's good.  This means that Selfishness is in trouble because it cannot make demands of other beings to sacrifice themselves for it but the other beings can work together to defeat them. 

Also if evil cannot comprehend good then good cannot comprehend evil and I would say that is a false claim.

That the living man can see the corpse does not mean the corpse can see the living man. 

As I've said I don't see that as altruism, its selfishness by proxy.

So when a bee strings a being for the hive and dies rather than running away; were they being selfish? 

Its better to rule as a king in hell (post apocalypses) then to live as a peasant in heaven.

It really, really is not. 

This is why it a subjective issue, I see you as a commodity and the current statue quo supports my belief more then yours making me more "correct" even though your belief is also "correct" from a certain point of view.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

For once it is a subjective issue, you are right there.  The crucial thing however is that my view is Good while yours is Evil.  Mine leads to a society growing and getting more powerful, while yours leads to self-destruction because the rational thing for every individual is to kill off all the other individuals for reducing his value until everybody is dead. 

It'll never be figured out all at once, and as individuals figure pieces out you discredit them, dispose of them or use a distraction like entering a war to take the attention of the masses away from the "truth" of your game.

Eventually you run out of tricks. 

The entire point of the guild is to change that, in the old economy if there wasn't enough work for the guild member to have decent pay they'd partition the mayor for more work, Toady just need to add in the ability for individuals both on and off site to hire the on site guild for jobs and combine it with other things that have been mentioned like leaseholds and you have the beginnings of a basic private enterprise.

The purpose of guilds is to allow groups of workers to interact with the player in order to advance their own interests, which includes continuing to do the jobs that define them.  There were also no guilds in the old economy as far as I am aware. 

I have always covered the question of hiring people in this thread, it is anachronistic unless you can offer somebody more than they already have.  If everybody is already employed by the site (why would they not be?) then the only thing a hiring person can offer is something a site inherantly cannot provide, or another site. 

Bringing that subject up is how I created such mayhem in the first place.   

Or you could expand the game in such a way that you break the current system so its not adding anachronism at all.

The fundermental foundation of the game is such that it does not support the development of a Fuedal society.  You could add in scattered peasants, but that would not make the fortress need to tax them, which means no Feudalism; both sides of the equation are needed for that, not just one.  To have both sides of the equation would either transform the game fundermentally *or* would require that the fortress not be directly involved in Feudalism at all. 

Since Toady One talks about us having hillocks, we

None of this is a reason why it can't be added to the game, it just expansion how its addition could be anachronistic in nature and how to model it so it doesn't it become anachronistic.

If you do not need to tax the peasants in order to acquire surplus value then something else happens.  Would a fortress rather have the peasants produce wealth scattered about the place and collect only what they wrangle out of them or would it rather invite them to come join the fortress where they get the full value of their labour?  The obvious answer is the latter, the peasants are more valuable working for you than they are scattered about the place.  Even if you could manage to extract every ounce of surplus value from them, there is still the cost of the tax collectors to worry about. 

Somewhere in the middle is probably the goal.

That is what makes things interesting, since it means we have a scope for change in either direction, making for interesting politics. 

The hard bit is to figure out how the system would actually end up anywhere but the most extreme left (the Status Quo basically) in the first place. 

I remember reading about Dunbar's Number before, I though it was interesting and could give a biological basis for racism as then its just he brains way coping with numbers higher then its natural capacity can handle resulting in stereotypes which negatively depict those whom are different.

If there was a biological basis for racism then cuckoos would be extinct.  Creatures do not care about genetic relatedness, what they care about is social standing within the group.  Racism is a symbolic thing, being of a different race is a token that means outsiderness.

I have actually changed my mind.  I think that the simplest thing to do is simply to automatically set the policies of the creature in Yr 0 according to the character/values of it's initial Lawgiver, so mostly in line with the creature/values but with a potential for mistakes. 

I will say that it is possible that they make the palace for that reason of neutral ground but I read it as the primary palace being dwarven Rome or Machu Picchu but that could easily be wishful thinking.

The interesting thing is that the palace has fundermentally the same conflicts with the fortresses that created it as the Feudal palace does with it's own peasants but is too weak to really do anything but beg for crumbs, owing to how little those fortresses need it. 

[Toady One]

The thread has meandered off-topic, which isn't so much of a problem by itself, but people also seem to be losing their ability to be polite, so I'm just going to call it here.  Feel free to create new threads as necessary to continue any part of the discussion, but remember to treat people with respect as you go along.