About bacteria being as intelligent as dwarf fortress dwarves.
They are not.
Bacteria move via something called "run and tumble" which is a ridiculously simple algorithm to write in code. Dwarves are smarter then bacteria because they can pathfind, bacteria actually cant, and because for example they track memories while a bacteria doesn't, even at that simplistic a level, however a dwarf is in NO WAY as intelligent or complex as the simplest multcellular organism, which required a huge supercomputer with 400 computers to simulate the entire nervous system of (and they pulled it off, look it up, but still 400 computers)
And before you say :
"false bacteria are complex as heck"
complexity ~= intelligence.And while bacteria may be more complex then dwarves, they are not nearly as intelligent as dwarves.
But saying dwarves in dwarf fortress are less intelligent then bacteria is absolute nonsense.
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We can't compare that to an entire self-contained organism that runs its own instructions. The bacterium's complexity is its hardware! DF doesn't even simulate a CPU for each dwarf brain!
Wait a minute. I believe Untrustedlife is talking about the actions of dwarves vs. bacteria. Your reply, though, applies to the complexity of the hardware that dwarves and bacteria have. But hardware, a lower level than behavior, isn't necessarily relevant to how intelligent an entity is; to use the terminology of Douglas Hofstadter*, to argue thus "rests on a severe confusion of levels".
*Incedentally, I think that his masterpiece GEB is the sort of book everyone involved in this discussion would enjoy.
You get what I’m saying! Thanks!
I can be terrible at explaining my points sometimes.also I feel bad not letting this thread die.
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Edited stuff that I added later below-
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My closing statement:
Dwarves in dwarf fortress are NOT alive,
The definition of life from google:
the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.
Dwarves can “grow”, dwarves can “reproduce “ via a totally simplified version of reproduction, dwarves can do things but it’s not truly “functional activity “ (functional activity is the act of participating in ones own ability to survive, increasing its own survivability, dwarves could only very loosely be said to do this as they require the player to tell them to get food, and they sometimes run from monsters, but that isn’t true functional activity ) they don’t have cytoplasm , actual flowing blood or any actual physiology (though I think that definition of life is narrow minded as it does in fact prevent you from calling anything computerized life) .And they don’t go through continuous change. Which means they are really only half-life. (Pardon the pun)
But the “intelligence“ eg behavior, of a dwarf if defined by computing power is more “intelligent” then the behavior of the simplest living organism which is bacteria.
It’s ethical to kill and even torture dwarves, they aren’t actually alive nor are they actually “conscious” as they lack a nervous system. (But bacteria also lack a nervous system, but are actually alive)
It’s perfectly ethical to play dwarf fortress. Assuming “ethical “ means you aren’t harming another living thing.
It’s more ethical to kill a dwarf then to kill a bacteria as bacteria at least fits the definition of life.
Okay I’m done now :p.
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Topic: Is playing dwarf fortress ethical? (Read 48731 times)