The Factory Floor

HDE 226868

14:12

whistles in the empty cavern

James

@HDE226868 Get outta my house.

@FoxElemental to a certain extent it depends...

certain flags put things into review queues

mod specific flags are generally going to be related to clean up "no longer needed" or "rude/abusive"

oh and spam stuff too.

HDE 226868

Oh, yeah. Enough spam or rude/abusive flags specially deletes a post without mod intervention needed.

James

Feel free to click on the flag links under questions/answers and comments, each of them offers a list of options. If what you are trying to do isn't listed there is an "other" option that allows you to add text and tell us your concern

HDE 226868

@James I opened a couple of doors to leave, but they were all closets containing Cthulhu, so I stopped trying. You have a strange house.

7

James

@Green There is an interesting question in there somewhere.

HDE 226868

14:49

@FoxElemental It might take a while for someone to write an answer to a bountied question. People tend, I think, to take more time on these answers; there's not a huge incentive to rush and write something only partially thought-out.

Gryphon

14:59

@JoeBloggs By the time Constantine (who was the emperer who converted btw) converted, it wasn't just a cult anymore.

James

15:28

@HDE226868 Bahahahaha

Inflationary_Bubble

15:40

Hi again. This time I'm talking about something different than I usually talk about... Opposable thumbs and potential substitutes for them. So, I've seen several questions on Stack Exchange asking whether some nonhumanoid aliens could develop technology. A lot of the discussion will be about "how can they manipulate objects?"

I've seen potential substitutes for opposable thumbs mentioned such as: tentacles, beak and claws (based on tool-making birds), a very complex beak, very complex crustecean-like mouthparts, tongues, raccoon-like paws, a false thumb like a panda's, and even multiple small creatures working together.

However, then some will deny that any such appendage will work. Then an argument starts up.

I'm wondering how to really prove to what degree something can manipulate objects.

Well, many of these are based on something real-life animals have, but it's difficult to test with them specifically. I was thinking of a robot. Perhaps we could see whether a robot could be created with those appendages and then how well it could manipulate objects.

I know that it can be difficult to make even robots with actual hands work. Also, you may say it won't be done because there is no practical use for it. Then again, robot manual dexterity has been improving. Maybe we could create these robots for fun - or it could be useful for a nonhumanoid rescue robot. I've heard of ideas for them.

Or use a simulation. (Yeah, I know I love simulations). Simulate these appendages and compare them to a human hand. Maybe it would be complex, but I know simulations have been made of various legs and gaits, which is where I got the idea from. What do you think?

Joe Bloggs

16:09

@Gryphon Yeah, I know, but one mans hokey old religion is another man's space wizards.... OK. That analogy didn't go the way I expected it to..

I mean, an argument can be made for it either never being a cult or still being a cult, depending on how broadly you want to tar a group with the actions of a minority.

as the most formal definition of cult I've seen declares that cults 'use or encourage brainwashing techniques, manipulation and sometimes outright violence to gain and keep members'

regardless of size or orthodoxy.

Trish

grumbles I got a little problem with all the answers to a question of mine: All target on 'Stealth and how to break it' and not on the actual maneuver that they shall evaluate...

1

Q: Feasibility of "stealthily deployed missiles" in 0G

Let's take a more advanced than world of now. Due to increased efficiencies commercial and military spaceflight in the solar system became feasible enough to colonize the inner planets. Detection equipment such as cameras, radar and IR detectors remain mostly unchanged though, energy shields are ...

all of the answers... go haywire away from the question... well, one is at least somewhat close.

Inflationary_Bubble

Hmm... Let me test how to use the permalink. chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/44906679#44906679

Yep, it's working! Now I'll wait for someone to notice the question I asked...

Secespitus

@Trish If one is on-target you could edit your question and write something in the beginning like "Please focus on the maneuver like [example answer]. Most answers are currently talking too much about stealth and how to break it instead of evaluating the core question."

Trish

I did edit...

I made it even more clear now... I mean... is 4 times calling it out enough?

Secespitus

16:24

@Trish Sometimes some people jumpt on something and then others jump on what they see in the existing answers. In case you would like some eyes on your question before posting it on Main you might want to try the Sandbox for future drafts. That could at least reduce the risk of something like that happening.

If the answers are currently completely off you could leave an explanatory comment and flag as "not an answer". The comment is relevant so that reviewers see what exactly the problems are and that you as the author think the question isn't sufficiently answered.

Trish

to me, all the answers are worthless and off. I flagged like most of them

Inflationary_Bubble

16:40

Hmm... Let me just copy the stuff I wrote previously.

Hi again. This time I'm talking about something different than I usually talk about... Opposable thumbs and potential substitutes for them. So, I've seen several questions on Stack Exchange asking whether some nonhumanoid aliens could develop technology. A lot of the discussion will be about "how can they manipulate objects?"
I've seen potential substitutes for opposable thumbs mentioned such as: tentacles, beak and claws (based on tool-making birds), a very complex beak, very complex crustecean-like mouthparts, tongues, raccoon-like paws, a false thumb like a panda's, and even multiple sma…

Hey! It was so big, but I could still copy it!

Trish

hmmm, let's see: you could circumnavigate the thumbs problem with gripping tail or tentacle appendages. Or suction cups.

bird claws have an opposable 'thumb' claw

Inflationary_Bubble

@Trish But would it actually work? That's the problem!

Trish

check out octopodes, they can do it.

Inflationary_Bubble

I'm not sure what the structural requirements for manual dexterity are!

Trish

at least for simple tools, octopodes can. They have muscles that can tensen to pretty much bone density tough...

Inflationary_Bubble

16:44

@Trish I've heard about octopi. For some reason, however, they generally don't make tools per se. They can do things such as open jars, however. So I'm not sure whether a hypothetical octopus-like creature could physically make tools.

Trish

birds of prey seem to have the structural integrity for manipulation and at least a basic ability.

Inflationary_Bubble

@Trish Again, birds of prey don't make tools. Some birds, such as ravens, can.

But I don't know how complex it can get. How would you prove that? You probably can't get a raven to make a hammer...

I suppose the minimum to make a civilization is being able to make tools that can create more tools.

Trish

the question of making comes after using them. once a being uses basic tools and has an interest in making them better (drive 2 in the tools race), they might invent ways to make them on their own.

apes use tools, but have generally no drive to increase their usability much.

Inflationary_Bubble

Especially once they can create more complex tools. For example, humans don't have the manual dexterity to create the tiny parts of a computer, but they can create robots and so on that can do it for them.

Trish

the tool problem is: humans started using tools LONG before making them better.

Mike Nichols

16:47

Thoughts on the closure of this question as too opinion based? worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/113733/…

Trish

Why=Opinion based, yep

Inflationary_Bubble

@MikeNichols I'm not sure. It's not about what would happen, it's about what could happen. Any possibility whatsoever is acceptable.

I suppose a lot of people will disagree with me, however.

Trish

if any is acceptable, it is opinion based, there is no best answer

Mike Nichols

Certainly that is the case for the majority of the questions on worldbuilding?

Inflationary_Bubble

@Trish If that's what opinion-based really means on Stack Exchange, I guess that's fine then.

HDE 226868

16:50

@MikeNichols I'm on the fence. On the one hand, I think there are specific concerns that the OP needs addressed, and I think it's quite possible to reference real-world tasks that robots already do.

Inflationary_Bubble

Also, @Trish, my question isn't about motivation specifically (that is another topic), but about physical possibility.

HDE 226868

In particular, they argue (and I'm also looking at comments they made under the answers) that the central problem is that robots could pack up and leave a job at any time. I think that an answer should address that objection, and I think that that's possible to do.

Inflationary_Bubble

For example, the most clear example is that of a perfect sphere without appendages. No matter how much it wanted to make tools, it couldn't without some external help because it couldn't manipulate objects. (I suppose maybe multiple spheres could work together to do so, but I'm not even sure of that).

I've been looking up the specific properties of the human hand which allow for high manual dexterity, and whether they could be implemented in another form, but it's hard to find specifics on the Internet for some reason.

Mike Nichols

"why" questions are some of my favorites on worldbuilding because of the wide range of creative answers they generate. They are often some of our most popular and they certainly are not always closed. Some examples from my own recollection: worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/4918/… and worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/91897/…

Inflationary_Bubble

@MikeNichols I agree.

Trish

16:57

@Inflationary_Bubble if it is about possibility, don't ask Why, but "HOW" - How usually has a best answer.

Inflationary_Bubble

@Trish I actually asked a question about "Tentacles as hands," but it got closed. That's why I'm on chat now, to see whether it would work better.

Trish

hmm, have a link?

Inflationary_Bubble

@Trish I think it's in my profile.

Also, I'm in two conversations right now: the "manual dexterity" one, which I started, and the "why questions" one, which someone else started. They aren't related much.

Trish

worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/73509/… ? it's open

Inflationary_Bubble

@Trish Whoops. That was my mistake. I suppose I was thinking about some downvotes it got previously.

Also, I suppose some of my ideas are broader than tentacles, as I mentioned at the beginning.

Trish

17:00

it's not a good question though. Exlain a bit about your aliens. Like... state if they have 5 tentacles per hand, or just 1 tentacle per "arm" and how many... and my answer to the sphere? look at Shoggoths

totally formless blobs of gooey stuff that can manipulate its body to form any tool needed - it does never invent tools to make, it becomes the tools it needs.

Inflationary_Bubble

@Trish Shoggoths? A. They're fictional, and from a story where hard, detailed science isn't used that much. B. Nowhere does it state in the stories that they can do that (at least not in the original Lovecraft story I read.

C. A large, soft creature with no skeleton would collapse under gravity on Earth, I believe.

D. What about metals and so on? Those are needed for some tools, as far as I know. I think there are limits on shaping your own body, even if it is very soft.

Trish

at the mountains of madness describes what I broke down there

Joe Bloggs

@Inflationary_Bubble it does state exactly that. It’s the story with the city in the Arctic where shoggoths are first introduced as the tools of an underwater race... I forget the name though.

Trish

@JoeBloggs At the Mountains of Madness

Inflationary_Bubble

I suppose if you don't want to obey a lot of physical laws (which might have been what Lovecraft was going for, to increase the horror and incomprehensibility) it would work, but I would like to obey as many physical laws as possible.

I know what story they came from.

Trish

17:04

and octopodees technically can have ANY size under water, due to their density being pretty much that of water.

Inflationary_Bubble

@Trish You might be correct. But I'm also interested in land-bound creatures.

Trish

lan bound.... look at snails

Inflationary_Bubble

How would aquatic creatures create technology without fire, anyway? That, I guess, is another problem.

Joe Bloggs

octopodees is my new favourite pluralisation of octopus.

Trish

snails are squishy, and they can glue stuff to their body.

Joe Bloggs

17:06

There’s a question somewhere on here about amoebas with free-form skeletons.

Inflationary_Bubble

Snails? Well, they don't make tools, as far as I know. But how does gluing stuff allow for building complex tools. It wouldn't let you shape anything.

Whoops, forgot a question mark.

Joe Bloggs

3

Q: Amoeba Skeletal Structure

So I am making these giant(human sized) amoeba-like aliens and to have something this big it requires a skeleton to maintain shape and to support its body but also needs to be flexible so it can do as an amoeba does and change shape to move. So my question is what sorts of weight supporting struc...

science-based creature-design xenobiology bio-mechanics skeletons

Trish

if you have sticky tentacles (or a sticky grip-tail-ike-structure), you could start to hold stuff without a thumb.

Inflationary_Bubble

@Trish Maybe. But unless I remember it wrong, I read somewhere that tentacles aren't as dextrous as hands are. Also, there may be problems with tentacles or similar evolving on land. (Could it even happen)?

I feel that often, the discussion has no actual evidence to back it up.

So I wondered whether building robots or using simulations to test manual dexterity would work.

Joe Bloggs

The big advantage hands have is strength. Rather than relying on small muscles our hands can apply force from our entire forearm

Trish

17:09

you don't need massive dexterity to start with: hands only became dextrous over evolution.

Inflationary_Bubble

@JoeBloggs @Trish I know things could change over evolution. But could anything else change to become dextrous as hands?

Joe Bloggs

Tentacles are more dexterous but weaker

hands areva very fine balance

fun pub quiz fact: you have precisely 0 muscles in your fingers.

Trish

our hands sacrifice strength for dexterity (compare apes). Tentacles are SUPER dextrous and only strong when squeezing, not so much when pushing.

Joe Bloggs

and only strong if the whole tentacle is engaged

Trish

@JoeBloggs not totally correct: there is one pair - to mpve the thumb in and out

Inflationary_Bubble

17:12

@Trish @JoeBloggs Could tentacles, or anything else, evolve for, say, more dexterity, even with less strength?

Joe Bloggs

@Trish you’ll note I said fingers ;-)

Inflationary_Bubble

Or could they already build tools?

With less dexterity?

Trish

yes, you can use and make simple tools with less dexterity. Apes.

Joe Bloggs

@Inflationary_Bubble octopodees (love it) already build, so strength and dexterity are both there, it’s just the tool use.

Trish

take a stick, and sharpen it is the first tool usually attributed to humankind.

Joe Bloggs

17:13

and ants are pretty handy with just mandibles..

Trish

ants don't use tools for their mandibles are all the tools they need.

Inflationary_Bubble

@Trish @JoeBloggs Hmm... But even with, say, a human-like mind somehow, how complex could those tools get with just those appendages? Could they build, say, a simple robot if the civilization advances enough?

Trish

very.

Joe Bloggs

@Trish depends on if you define silk producing larvae as a tool... hmm..

Trish

it depends mainly on ingenuity to invent or better tools

Inflationary_Bubble

17:15

I'll use that as the boundary, because as I said before, once you build a robot that can build more complex tools, your manual dexterity isn't terribly important. Before, it is more important.

I wonder why the robot idea wouldn't work - or could it?

Trish

@JoeBloggs that's more a machine (it's as big as them!) than a tool XD

Joe Bloggs

also tool use may be selected for. Once that starts happening it’s mostly down to luck what appendage you started with: you will get better at using tools

Mike Nichols

Some more good "whys": Why would merfolk have hair?, Why would a colony need to relocate?,

Inflationary_Bubble

What I mean is, we can't really train ants (say) to build even a tool as simple as a hammer, as far as I know, so build antlike robots and program them to see what they can build. Works for other possible appendages.

Mike Nichols

Why fill a dungeon with puzzles?, Why would giant mechs use melee weapons?, Why would a staff increase the magic power of a mage?

Joe Bloggs

17:17

@Trish machines are just really complicated tools, surely?

Mike Nichols

Should all of these why questions have been closed?

Inflationary_Bubble

@JoeBloggs There are structural limits on evolution.

@Trish Get the robots to build a tiny hammer :)

Trish

@MikeNichols those are well defined. in contrast to "Why would you manufacture humans"

Mike Nichols

How does "Why would a staff increase the magic power of a mage?" possibly have a non-opinion based answer?

Trish

the thing is, you need to get a good frame - the robot one has (imho) a lacking grame.

Inflationary_Bubble

17:18

@Trish "Why would we manufacture humans?" Look to evolution and natural selection! (I don't know what the question is actually about, I'm just joking).

Trish

@MikeNichols you would need to elaborate your magic system, and that should answer the question naturally.

Joe Bloggs

@Inflationary_Bubble that’s because ants are small and dumb, but others (corrida) do perfectly well using simple tools with their mouthparts.

Inflationary_Bubble

@JoeBloggs What's a corrida?

Joe Bloggs

@Inflationary_Bubble a typo. Corvids.

Inflationary_Bubble

@JoeBloggs Also, I wondered whether there are limits to how dextrous some appendages can get. Evolution is constrained by physical laws, after all.

@JoeBloggs But we can't train corvids to build the robot. Some claimed that there are limits to their dexterity.

So build the corvid robot and program it to build stuff. I wonder whether someone would do that.

Mike Nichols

17:22

@Trish If you look at the answers to that question, each of them defines an entirely unique magic system. Staffs as conduits, staffs as tools, staffs as energy storing containers, staffs are magical poles on which gods are carried...

@Trish There are a lot of very fun, creative, and cool answers to the question. It's a joy to read. But you can't possibly argue that choosing among those answers isn't wholly opinion based.

Inflationary_Bubble

Note: Assume any appendages and alien scenarios I am talking about involve aliens with human-like intelligence and the motivation to make tools. Therefore, the only question will be about physical possibility.

Or, perhaps, a robot or simulation programmed to build tools.

Joe Bloggs

Hang on: if evolution is involved then you don’t need to train anything: assume it will occur if it can.

Inflationary_Bubble

@JoeBloggs Okay. What I meant is testing, in this world at this time, for physical possibility.

A lot of the stuff I hear is hypotheticals.

This is understandable because we haven't found any aliens, much less nonhumanoid ones, yet.

Joe Bloggs

@Inflationary_Bubble and I’d say if the corvids are social enough and have a reason to use tools as a group then it’s a hop skip and jump to groups of corvids working in concert to make complex tools. From there you’re off to the races

@Inflationary_Bubble so testing a wild hypothetical in the real world?

Inflationary_Bubble

What I meant is: can we test your claims of possibility on this very world, @JoeBloggs

With a robot or something?

Where's the impossibility in a robot?

Joe Bloggs

17:27

@Inflationary_Bubble yes. If you build a robot to mimic a wildly hypothetical creature that hasn’t evolved and program it to do something, then yes.

Inflationary_Bubble

@JoeBloggs I'm not sure what you meant.

Yes, creating a robot wouldn't prove that something could actually evolve.

But it would prove something is physically possible, and that's a step.

I'm not asking anyone here to actually build a robot.

Joe Bloggs

Could actually evolve is a tricky one. Damn near anything could evolve, it’s just tricky to show it’s likely to. But we’re assuming improbable, so..

in that case social corvids

the test robots are car manufacturing robots

Inflationary_Bubble

I was just wondering, actually, whether someone has done it. Or whether there is some kind of hard proof of physical, if not evolutionary, possibility.

Car manufacturing robots have actual, sort of humanlike hands, don't they?

Joe Bloggs

rekatively few degrees of freedom, limited grasping capability, work in concert to build another thing

some are just suckers on an articulated arm: easily less dexterous than a bird’s beak, neck and spine

there are any number of experimental tentacle robots for grasping sensitive objects that display remarkable dexterity

and some evdn stranger contraptions whose purposes I won’t even pretend to know.

Inflationary_Bubble

@JoeBloggs I should do research on them, then.

"Degrees of freedom" are another thing I'm interested in.

Are they what creates "manual dexterity?"

Joe Bloggs

17:33

You might get a lot of maths references

ok: a degree of freedom in a mechanical sense

Is a plane of motion that a joint or series of joints has

so your elbow has one DOF

It can only move in one way

Inflationary_Bubble

How many DOF does your hand have, then? And would anything else with the same DOF have the same fine manipulation capability?

Joe Bloggs

if you look at the knuckle on your index finger that attaches to your hand

Inflationary_Bubble

Incidentally enough, I heard that an octopus tentacle has infinite degrees of freedom, but when manipulating something, reduces to be more like a human hand. I wonder whether that's true.

Joe Bloggs

that would have two. You can move it up and down or side to side

Inflationary_Bubble

Okay, I'll look it up.

Okay, the human hand has 27 degrees of freedom.

Joe Bloggs

17:37

good to know!

anyway, gtg!

Inflationary_Bubble

Could anything else have so many degrees of freedom? And would it necessarily be as dextrous as the human hand?

What does gtg mean?

Shalvenay

@Inflationary_Bubble got to go

Inflationary_Bubble

Well, what a coincidence! I have to go to! Bye!

dot_Sp0T

18:12

hurray

Shalvenay

hey there @dot_Sp0T and @FoxElemental

dot_Sp0T

how are u folks?

we really need to ramp up the chatter again

FoxElemental

Hello, @Shalvenay. I have to leave now but I'll be back later this evening

Joe Bloggs

@dot_Sp0T Heya

@Shalvenay Hey there

@Shalvenay You may be interested to know that @dot_Sp0T and I are testing out Microscope using the medium of The Internet

dot_Sp0T

18:31

THE INTERNET **dark rumbling**

Shalvenay

hey there @JoeBloggs -- how goes the testing? :D

Joe Bloggs

@Shalvenay It goes well. So far there's a sort of... Asian industrial revolution?

Shalvenay

@JoeBloggs xD

Joe Bloggs

And it seems to work quite well as a slightly asynchronous thing

Shalvenay

how are you doing it btw?

Joe Bloggs

18:37

Google slides

Shalvenay

ah, interesting, I heard that but wasn't sure how you were making that work?

Joe Bloggs

@Shalvenay Seems to be going OK so far. Slides for periods, boxes for events and scenes, and liberal use of the comments to expand on the boxes

Shalvenay

@JoeBloggs ...interesting xD poke BESW over in RPG.SE chat about your experiences sometime

Joe Bloggs

@Shalvenay They a microscope-r?

dot_Sp0T

18:53

oh boy, I'd love to have a stab at it with BESW on the team

Joe Bloggs

@dot_Sp0T I know not the person you speak of, but they sound epic.

Shalvenay

@JoeBloggs they've been wanting to find a good way to play it online for a while now

Joe Bloggs

@Shalvenay The Scenes might require something a bit more interactive if you really want to dig into the roleplay

but that's nothing Skype or Hangouts can't fix.

And the joy of Slides is that you can add and move things without too much issue, and comment to add more detail without it cluttering everything up

Plus: Worldbuildy goodness.

dot_Sp0T

@JoeBloggs They are a regular over at the RPG.SE and were going in and out in this chat for some time as well (if I don't mix up people)

Joe Bloggs

19:17

@dot_Sp0T aah!

dot_Sp0T

19:28

Some may say @Shalve nay... but I say @Shalve YES

3

Joe Bloggs

@Shalvenay: Reckon we can squash an extra person in if you want to join us?

FoxElemental

20:55

Hey all

Mithrandir24601

@FoxElemental Ni hao!

FoxElemental

@Mithrandir24601 Hello!

@JoeBloggs Hello to you too!

FoxElemental

21:12

4 days canonical bounty remaining for my long name questionon Writing. Starting to wonder how long it'll take for someone to reply

anyways, I have to go

But if anyone could help me with this or this Sandboxed question I'd really, really appreciate it.

They're kind of long--this is an alternative. Thank you in advance

Shalvenay

21:40

@JoeBloggs maybe?

Worldbuilding Meta

22:08

0

Q: Review queue alerts?

Ever since I hit the mark for review queue privileges on new questions and new answers to old questions, I've noticed something odd. If only one queue has a new post to review, the review queue icon shows as empty. I have to actively click on and enter the queue to see the alert. The red "active"...

bug reviews review-queues

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