The Factory Floor - 2018-10-16 (page 1 of 2)

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5:01 AM

@elemtilas Well. I still can't say I understand the thought process that gets you to this being racist. I still don't believe that it is and I plan to continue with the world I have in mind. You of course are free to disagree and vote/comment as you see fit.

Thanks for coming to chat to discuss.

5:18 AM

@elemtilas what about the plethora of folklore and myths (what we call oral lore/tradition) that exist on creatures such as elfs? Where do we draw the line? What about Babylonians or Atlantians? Scythians and Amazons?

@scohe001 maybe see how they do with a magical game of CalvinBall. The rules are never the same each game. I'm not sure you can make one test for flexibility, maybe you can.

@scohe001 this may help you as well in designing your programming test.

antirez.com/news/112

Many people will be training to be in the 1000. Various training programs will abound.

2 hours later…

7:12 AM

scp-wiki.net/scp-055

antimemes hmm...

scp-wiki.net/we-need-to-talk-about-fifty-five

Generalise, there may be more than one "type" of hidden world, effectively speaking

We are all familar with those which exists as parallel universes

But we can also have:

Negative abstractions
Nomenon
Antimemetics
Ghosts
Phasing entities
and many more

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Questions

Is there way to prove Mandela Effect? Worldbuilding started existing yesterday. The problem is, I am only one remembering it. You remember me being one of highly reputated users. You remember me posting questions, answers and comments. You remember upvoting or downvoting my questions and answers...

8:23 AM

user image

No, the very existence of <insert new hidden sector> is the most exciting thing

The presence of any new hidden sector we can access to promised a wealth of cthulu level knowledge we have never seen before

3 hours later…

11:45 AM

I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew, anyone else ever worked up a planet completely size, geochemistry, atmosphere etc... based on the desired emergent geomorphology?

@Ash no, i just modified earth and ignored some parts I don't care

@dot_Sp0T I've done this sort of thing before when I designed an Alderson Disc but that was a much simpler geomorphology and I was activity studying geochemistry at the time; this is giving me a headache.

12:49 PM

@Ash Are you working backward from a desired geomorphology or are you working forward from planet size, geochem, atmosphere, etc?

@Green From a geomorphology back to a world on which it's possible.

And to what resolution are you planning to take this? Accurate calculations for prevailing winds and ocean currents is non-trivial.

@Ash What's your end-state geomorphology?

@Green At this stage I'm only worried about a particular landform, in this case igneous dikes high enough to act as permanent precipitation barriers for orthographic rainfall.

@Ash Just to make sure I understand: You want gigantic volcanic mountains so high that they form permanent and perfect rainshadows on their leeward side. Did I get that right?

@Green Not volcanoes but huge feeder dikes crisscrossing the landscape.

1:00 PM

Ah, (just looked up feeder dikes) So the dikes are created but then the surrounding layers are worn away to leave just the dikes behind?

How big do you want these dikes to be?

If you can draw out the geometry and layout of the dikes you want, I think I can design a geological process to get you that layout. Or, I'll waste my morning trying :)!

What do you mean by 'orthographic rainfall'?

@Green Mile or so high, the formation/distribution bit is easy enough, its the geochemistry to have a durability contrast that has them stay standing while that much country rock is removed.

@Green Sorry orographic rainfall, the weather caused by clouds being forced over high terrain.

Do I have the option of changing the igneous rock to metamorphic rock or does it need to stay igneous rock? Also, what time scales do I have to work with?

@Green If you can think of a way to metamorphose the unit and still have the country rock erode faster than the dike then go for it. 4 billion years of erosion give or take.

Does the orientation of the dikes need to stay parallel to each other?

1:15 PM

@Green Better if it doesn't but the need to stay reasonably vertical.

@Ash Gotcha, give me a little bit of time and I'll get back to you.

How big a field do you want of these dikes?

@Green Planetary, like I said I can do that bit easily enough it's the relative chemistry:surface gravity for the size and durability that's giving me issues.

@Ash Fairly uniform distribution across the entire planet's surface?

@Green Yup, including the "oceans", which are really shallow anyway, no crustal difference between land and sea, tectonically inactive world.

How thick are you planning the atmosphere to be?

...specifically, how much atmosphere is there above these dikes?

And how close together are these dikes supposed to be in terms of average size/area of the valley floor between the dikes?

Are you attempting to use the dikes as a means of complete geographical isolation for the valley floors between them?

1:28 PM

@Green Fairly vertically narrow, totally pressure similar to Earth but with far more water vapour as a percentage of total gases.

@Green Rainfall isolation of narrow coastal plains from jungle interiors is the primary aim.

Is rainfall distinct from snowfall or do you care about all precipitation?

@Green All precipitation.

@Ash Here's the problem I see with your requirement for all precipitation. At crazy high altitudes of 80 to 85KM, on Earth, there's still water vapor in the form of extremely high curriform clouds.

List of cloud types

The list of cloud types classifies the tropospheric genera as high (cirrus, cirrocumulus, cirrostratus), middle (altocumulus, altostratus), multi-level (nimbostratus, cumulus, cumulonimbus), and low (stratocumulus, stratus) according to the altitude level or levels at which each cloud is normally found. Small cumulus are commonly grouped with the low clouds because they do not show significant vertical extent. Of the multi-level genus-types, those with the greatest convective activity are often grouped separately as towering vertical. The genus types all have Latin names. The genera are also grouped...

Granted, the amount of water at that altitude is very small but any amount of turbulence that will pull down that super high, cold air down to a lower altitude could translate into precipitation of some kind. It won't be much but it will be some.

@Green But the Andes keep the Atacama bone dry at only 6-7km high. I'm thinking the stratosphere will be at most 5km thick on this world.

1:54 PM

@Ash Thank you, I wasn't aware of that place.

2:05 PM

@Green @CortAmmon I sandboxed it. worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6806/54384

@JohnLocke Your question made much more sense to me after I identified the circumstances as 'steady-state' instead of 'transient'. Everyone has been answering the transient state of the electron-less field. You want an answer for the steady state.

What happens at the interface between the field and the rest of the universe.

@Green Do you mean the part about the air pressure?

@JohnLocke I meant overall steady state. What happens when this field runs for years and starts off small enough then grows so that there is no big explosion.

@Green I decided to just leave that out, the concept is just that I want to ignore a big explosion

@Green Wow really? I suppose it is one of the more extreme environments on Earth.

2:12 PM

@JohnLocke Fair, but it was easier for me to reason about your circumstances when I had a start-up process to get to the steady-state operating conditions. Do it however you like.

Mornin all.

@Ash I know a lot of things but extreme geography isn't part of that right now. My brain is mostly full of del operators and derivatives.

@James I'd like to share an insight I had during a conversation with my wife about our big conversation yesterday in here.

@Green Please do.

I tried to explain it to my wife but I think I made her black out...she got all glazed over and nodded and smiled.

2

@JohnLocke So this field region is going to be a vacuum, I'm pretty sure. Thermal energy of the surrounding atmosphere is going to push neutral atoms into the field. The freshly stripped proton will continue for a while till the forces of all the other naked protons overcome the thermal momentum then push the proton back out.

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Questions

Is this answer plausible? Tags: science-basedphysicselectricityreality-check (notice there is no biology tag, that is not part of the question) Based off this question and my answer to it. The premise of the original question is as follows- there is a field of set length (presume a 3 dimensiona...

2:16 PM

@James I too explained to my wife what happened. She pointed out that comparing two groups of people, for us, as well-off privileged white guys is easy and doesn't carry associated pain of experience.

For many people, the act of being compared, in and of itself, relates to exceptionally painful memories.

She gave the counter example of how my extremely negative experience with religion makes it so that I can't go to see the play, The Book of Mormon.

It's too painful/awkward for me to go see it.

I can see the line of argument, at least it follows a logical path I can appreciate. But does it apply if the people don't exist? I still struggle to see the offense I guess.

@JohnLocke Exiting protons will push back against incoming neutrals. Eventually, some kind of equilibrium will be reached between incoming neutral air and outgoing ions. I don't have any idea of the net current between these two areas but I imagine there will be some.

@James I don't think the offense is in the act of comparison itself but in an observer's association with acts of comparison to extremely painful experiences or ethical violations.

I'm not sure we can see the offense because our perspective/experience doesn't include painful comparisons.

Certainly, not the same way that our colleague from yesterday viewed it.

I think we handled it right though.

@Green Ok, now I get what you're saying. The net current is not really a concern, I think that will be fairly unimportant. Is there a better way to phrase what I said there?

I can see both sides too. He feels as if you are saying "The Scythians weren't really people; they were orcs", etc.

It's further implied that their actions weren't actions of people, but of orcs.

Then you get into things like "people wouldn't do <custom>--they did it because they were orcs".

@JohnLocke There will be current. All those naked protons will desperately want to get a warm wavy blanket of electrons back. Those will have to come from somewhere. I'm still working out the model.

2:29 PM

Then anyone who is descended from those groups or has those customs can be shamed as in "your ancestors were orcs" or "you know that custom was started by the orcs--behave like a person, why don't you?"

@Green So this begs the question...er...should the questions continue?

@JohnLocke This is still going to be a bonkers energetic reaction. These are the ionization energies for Carbon There is a TON of energy wrapped up in all the electrons for a mol of Carbon.

Hard to say. I'd say rephrase them as "which ancient people groups had traits X, Y, and Z" and post them on History.

@Green I think that's the same thing as the larger lightning effect- the ions are plasma so they steal electrons from nearby atoms, but the field has even less electrons, so the now-stable atoms give up the electrons and ionize again

A mol is a lot.

what-if.xkcd.com/4

2:31 PM

@Hosch250 That might be better.

And really gross apparently.

@James It gets disgusting when they form a planet and then their gravity crushes them

@James I think the questions should continue. I appreciate that some people are very uncomfortable with the subject matter but accomodating people's comfort isn't something that WB has optimized for. Meta-WB is full of questions about "I'm offended about subject X|Y|Z. What do I do about it?"

@Green So just transferring electrons will release energy?

@Green True. And I did try to understand...it just didn't work.

2:35 PM

@JohnLocke The ionization energy will have to come from somewhere. If the field removes the electrons (and the ionization energy associated with all those electrons) then the energy to deionize those protons will have to come from somewhere too.

@Green From electrons in the surrounding air, right? That's good because if the atoms really want electrons they will rip them off neutral atoms

@James I'm not sure that yesterday's conversation could have ended differently. Using phrases such as "Any objectification is malice" reaches into the realms of absolutes where persuasion is exceptionally difficult.

"good" meaning there will be more lightning

@JohnLocke I'm not sure that this field isn't actually a really cold proton accelerator.

@JohnLocke Hey. I want to see you do this (I love lightning storms), but I don't really want a first-row seat. Can you arrange for me to be at least a planet or two off?

2:38 PM

@Green That won't be instantaneous enough, will it?

@Green I do despise all absolutes...

hehe

@JohnLocke I'm still working out the naked proton - neutral air interactions.

@Hosch250 Nope, if all works out, the Sun will rip itself apart as the protons repel each other. You will need to be at least a solar system away

I thought you were putting it on the earth, not the sun?

I guess I'll go a solar system or two away and watch the supernova.

@JohnLocke Given that most nuclei in the Sun are already ionized, I think we'll be okay. :-)

2:41 PM

@HDE226868 Also, the sun is really big and really far away.

@Hosch250 I am making a wild theory that the plasma might reach from the upper atmosphere to the solar wind.

@HDE226868 Awww. Physics always ruins the fun.

IIRC, the solar wind is already plasma?

@HDE226868 I'm glad you're here. I'm working out the energy flows for naked protons interacting with neutral air molecules.

It's pretty crazy.

@Green Those are all words that I know how to spell.

@Green That sounds . . . complicated.

2:42 PM

@Hosch250 "The solar wind is a stream of energized, charged particles, primarily electrons and protons" Source. Something is bound to happen

@James And somehow it is still confusing

@HDE226868 I don't know any other way to do it though.

@JohnLocke Oh, I can spell the crap out of that whole sentence. I just have no idea what it means.

3

Let me introduce you to the world's biggest battery!

@Hosch250 money.cnn.com/2017/11/23/technology/…

@James Okay, so the more electrons an atom has, the more energy it takes to strip off the lower layers of electrons.

2:45 PM

@Hosch250 beat you to it

@JohnLocke Proton-proton repulsion is, classically, the main obstacle to fusion; it's called the Coulomb barrier. However, it's not enough to blow the Sun apart, and in fact it can be avoided by quantum tunneling - which only happens a small fraction of the time, but often enough to allow stable fusion.

@Green That I vaguely understand from my biochem days 13ish years ago. Actually 16 years ago.

@Green But will the atoms give away electrons to needy protons?

I am picturing the little pictures that look like solar system models.

@James For comparison, to strip all electrons from 1 mol of carbon is equivalent to energy contained in a common car moving between 40 and 50 mph. It's a lot.

2:49 PM

@Green I'm now wondering if collisional excitation/ionization will happen. At least in astrophysical settings, electron-electron collisions are usually responsible for ionization, but interactions between protons and bound electrons might be able to do the same to the neutral atoms on the air, no?

@James If the planets ripped moons off of each other and repelled apart. It's a very violent solar system

@JohnLocke Right, so there will be a huge energy sink as the naked protons soak up the spare electrons till there's equilibrium between what the protons can steal and what the neutrals will donate.

@HDE226868 Yeah. Above certain energies/temperatures the temperatures of the electrons and the heavier particles will equalize.

@Green But then more atoms come out of the field needing electrons, so the equilibrium will not be reached until there are no electrons at all.

@JohnLocke I mean your idea.

We'd never have to use a fossil fuel again.

@Hosch250 Good luck containing it. It will blow apart any matter that is in it. Green also suggested it will be an energy sink, because the electrons are going away

2:54 PM

@JohnLocke how long is this field going to run? Days, weeks, months, years, millenia?

@Hosch250 You could use this field as a battery with the knowledge that you are hastening the end of the planet.

Something something dark matter

did i help?

@James You remind me of Pooh.

@Green As long as there are electrons to steal and the earth is intact. I don't think the electrons will last long if there are the amounts of lightning that I predict.

Awwww...that's the nicest thing anyone has said to me all day.

@JohnLocke Lightning doesn't destroy electrons. It just moves them.

2:56 PM

Really, I just want to find out how much lightning there will be. I am not planning to actually build one.

@Hosch250 Either it's magic or it moves the electrons far away, like into outer space. I just want the effect of them disappearing.

I'd say unknown. Either it's a complete ball of plasma, or nothing happens, or anything in between.

(thinking)

Most likely the first.

user image

Probably there will be so much glowing plasma so fast that there won't be enough lightning to talk about.

2:59 PM

@Green Me too. (thinking...) Error: Memory Overflow

@HDE226868 do you think the exiting naked protons would be going fast enough to fuse with incoming neutrals?

@Green I want to say no, just because I can't imagine the temperature being remotely high enough.

Not fuse, but probably become some sort of molecule.

@HDE226868 Agreed. And these protons aren't just protons but heavy carbon|nitrogen|oxygen nuclei which are far far harder to fuse than mere hydrogen.

At least temporarily, until the electrons flowed closer into the hole.

@Green Would they stay as nuclei?

I think they'd get ripped apart once the electrons left?

3:06 PM

@James is a naked proton confirmed?

@Hosch250 That, I'm not sure of. I know that lonely neutrons will energetically decay in a very big way. Protons don't decay (proton accelerators).

is a naked proton still naked if it has a shirt?

2

@AndyD273 Honestly I have no idea what is going on at this point

I don't know if the nuclei disintegrates if it's fully ionized.

@Green No, but I think they'd separate from each other.

I'm not sure a Helium one would, but I think a Nitrogen one would be big enough to.

3:07 PM

@Hosch250 If protons and neutrons do separate then we're back to gigantic explosions again.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what would happen.

Especially when you start getting iron ones in there :)

Me either. But I'm wearing pants. They do keep the bits from freezing off around this time of year, so not all bad.

I dont't think that nuclei disintegrate since I've never heard of deuterium evaporating when it's ionized.

@Green Depends, if by "completely ionized" you mean you rip the electrons out of the neutrons then the nucleus will pop as it's now all protons that repel each other. The only time you wouldn't notice a change would be with basic hydrogen.

@Ash So the conclusion is no lightning?

3:11 PM

@Ash except the neutrons hold the protons together. The electrons don't press the protons together. They're held together by the neutrons.

On sub-atomic scales, the protons are super close together and the electrons are super far away. If neutrons weren't holding the protons together in a heavy nucleus (heavy >= deuterium) then we wouldn't be here.

This is the realm of the strong and weak nuclear force which I only barely remember.

@Green There are electrons inside neutrons, that's why they weight slightly more than protons, a neutron is basically a proton with an electron stuck to it, if you strip the electrons out of the nucleus as well as out of their orbits you end up with a big bunch of protons that try and get away from each other as fast as possible.

@Ash That isn't the objective, so I'll specify only orbiting electrons in the post.

@Ash Then that's a different electron removal field than I was assuming. If you're working with a field that strips absolutely all negative charges, those in the electron shells and those contained in the neutrons then we're back to a really really big boom again.

Meh. I like big booms.

@Hosch250 Can you lie?

3:17 PM

Hey, @JohnLocke, I've done calculations, and it seems like you're going to be generating a huge amount of electric charge if any significant fraction of protons, for whatever reason, remain in the box.

Yeah, I usually do it before I sleep.

box/sphere/region of space/etc.

@Green An atom stripped of all it's orbiting electrons will be a very positive ion and will probably try and get away from it's neighbours if they're equally ionised (a smaller bang), but will hold together in and of itself.

@HDE226868 I assumed those positive charges would repel each other and the box is a perfect vacuum. Quantum foam would be the only thing left.

@Ash I agree.

Sometimes I wonder if physicists have any idea of what they are talking about anymore when they can only observe effects of effects of effects of the thing they are studying.

3:20 PM

@HDE226868 You'll also have a large current where those naked nuclei attempt to scavange electrons from nearby neutrals.

...and those freshly ionized atoms attempt to scavenge electrons from their neighbors.

@Green . . . Interesting. I wonder if you could indeed maintain a near-perfect vacuum this way.

@HDE226868 Seems like a good approach to me. Normally, you have to mechanically move atoms out of the vacuum area with turbo pumps. This approach gets all the naked nuclei to leave because they want to.

@JohnLocke So I know how you're going to get your lightning. The field turns off and all those electrons suddenly come rushing back into a very small space. They will very energetically try to equalize themselves. That will be bonkers amounts of lightning.

That's not a steady state thing though. After a few fractions of a second, all those electrons will be somewhere else.

@HDE226868 The same kind of thing happens in electric wires. All the charge is on the surface of the conductor, never in the interior.

Okay, you're gonna need an electric model and you're going to need a kinetic/physical model.

@Green From your post above, wouldn't all that electron stealing be what I would need for lightning? Why do the electrons have to reappear?

3:37 PM

@JohnLocke They would reappear when the field turns off because violating conservation of mass really bugs me. The electrons aren't here anymore but that just means they are now "there".

@Green I think the model would be simpler if you presume the air molecules do not move. Airflow won't be a big contributor if there is equilibrium.

In a pure electric model, yes, there would be a huge inflow of electrons from the surrounding areas to the box. If we assume a good conductor completely encompassing the field out to infinity then eventually, the field will ionize the entire universe.

@JohnLocke I'm not sure that's true that airflow won't be a factor.

This model has at least four regions. The inner region has zero electrons and is a perfect vacuum since all the positive nuclei repel each other.

@Green But plasma is conductive. It's a chain reaction, at least within the atmosphere.

@JohnLocke Plasma is conductive but there are also neutral regions, called the plasma sheath where the plasma is at least neutral or positive.

Anyone have a complete list of the colony worlds in Wil McCarthy's Queendom of Sol series? I can put it together but that will be irritating.

3:42 PM

So, you get a bubble around your plasma.

In order to get lots of lightning, you have to have really high voltage. I'm not sure we get high enough voltages across big enough regions.

@JohnLocke care to set a size for this field? A spherical 1m^3, 10m^3 region?

@Green Would the model be simpler if I just called the field a solid? Gasses don't pass into it, so that simplifies the airflow issue. I would just say that the atoms of the field are nuclei without electrons, and when they steal an electron from the surrounding air/plasma the electron disappears/shoots off into space.

@Green In my post I say about the size of a person, but the size can be anything from an elephant to a large molecule.

@JohnLocke That doesn't make it any easier since all the complexity is in the interactions between the inner region of super high temp naked nuclei, then the transition zone to the normal neutral molecules.

@Green Ok, the atoms in the field are magical so they do not start off at high temp.

No matter will stay inside the area of influence of this field. Any neutral particle that wanders in will instantly turn into a naked nuclei that wishes to get as far away from all the other positively charged nuclei as it can. Electrostatic pressure will create an empty space around the electron scavenging zone.

@JohnLocke They don't start that way, but they will become high temp. The electrostatic forces that cause all those naked nuclei to get away from each other are really strong and form a really high acceleration gradient. Temperature = average kinetic energy so those nuclei will be going pretty fast. Maybe not particle accelerator fast (millions of electron Volts) but thermally fast (tens of an electron volt).

@HDE226868 If I'm messing up this explanation, please let me know.

@Green Ok, I'm out of ideas. Is there any way I can get a global lightning storm with this? I am hoping I can make the lightning last as long as I have the field, instead of sucking up all the electrons and dropping them all in the same place when I switch it off.

Not a bad idea, but then you get into the electron moon xkcd and naked singularities.

3:54 PM

All those high temp nuclei trying to get away from each other will encounter a mixing zone where they try to get as many electrons back as they can. I expect that electrostatics will pull in neutrals but I don't know those mass flow rates.

@JohnLocke Honestly, this is complicated enough (merging electric and kinetic models is hard) that the only people who would roll their eyes at your idea would be a very small set of physicist/engineers....and I don't think they are your target audience.

Just handwave it and say that your magic electron scavenging field sucks up all the surrounding electrons across a gigantic voltage.

Proving out your idea is computationally hard (like thousands of CPU hours hard). I'd just handwave it.

Even on small scales of a meter or so, it's very hard. Reasoning about a planet's electrical system and flows is too much for me to even start on.

(Yay! Green dominates the conversation again! groan)

@Ash Sadly, I don't have such a list. I've not heard of that series.

@Green I've posted a question over on the Sci-fi stack so hopefully that bears fruit. It's a good series, McCarthy used to be a nano-materials engineer so it includes some really interesting future-tech and what could be done with it.

@ash and I'm back to your problem about the basalt dikes.

@Green Doesn't have to be Basalt, that was part of what I was trying to work out, what kind of interesting igneous rocks I could use with a not-quite-earthly geochemical make up, but it was just hurting by head.

4:10 PM

Ok...did no one get my Sir Mix-alot reference?

@James I didn't even see your last post sorry.

What's that?

Also, to make a bad twist on that, if someone says "no" often, you can call them "Sir Nix-alot".

@Hosch250 I was actually replying to you :D

54 mins ago, by Hosch250

Yeah, I usually do it before I sleep.

No, I don't know Sir Mix-alot, sorry.

55 mins ago, by Hosch250

Meh. I like big booms.

55 mins ago, by James

@Hosch250 Can you lie?

@Hosch250 You're not missing much...early/mid 90's musician...I mean kinda a musician.

4:13 PM

Eh, I'm from '95, so whatever.

"Baby Got Back", also known as "I Like Big Butts", is a 1992 song written and recorded by American rapper Sir Mix-a-Lot, from his album Mack Daddy. The song samples the 1986 Detroit techno single "Technicolor" by Channel One. At the time of its original release, the song caused controversy with its outspoken and blatantly sexual lyrics about women, as well as specific references to the female buttocks which some people found objectionable. The video was briefly banned by MTV. "Baby Got Back" has remained popular and even anthemic since it was originally featured on the album Mack Daddy in 1992...

...I've said this before and I will say it again, Worldbuilding and this chat are Weird

Hey, I didn't bring that up...

One of the old people in here will get it.

@JohnLocke So when I look at your question and your goal, the big issue I see getting in the way is going to be distance. It's going to take some very special conditions to create a global storm. The issue that you're going to have the most trouble overcoming is not the stripping of electrons. Its that an effect which causes a minor thunderstorm on the other side of the Earth is going to end up being utter armageddon nearby.

You're going to have to find a way to distribute the charge rather equally, and probably find a way to do it through the earth rather than through the air. The earth will offer more opportunities to get the charge from one side to the other evenly. (Though I'm still not 100% sure if that can be done)

Also, another effect which could be great fun to deal with is van Der Wall forces. A strong charged source (like your naked protons) attracts neutral atoms by repelling their nuclii and attracting their electrons.

@James Partly because it's highly active, at least during my on hours, we have more opportunity to get completely off-topic.

4:24 PM

Can someone explain why people think my orc question is POB?

0

A: Finding real world historic examples of cultures/organizations/tribes to represent Orcs

You may want to make up an extinct nilotic people. The current locals the Mursi and Suri people in Ethiopia would be good inspiration. Since you want a tribal people you are not going to find much about extinct ones since they would leave very few records but that leaves you open to add or chang...

@JohnLocke ... I wonder if you could use that to create a jet engine. Instead of using heat to expand the gas, you use the electrostatic forces. That would give you a stream of particles. I don't know if that'd help, but it's an interesting symmetry breaker that might do something useful.

@James So my opinion would be that it isn't POB, though there are an aweful lot of criteria, so it might be hard to pick a "best" answer. I get an inkling that the issue is that the issue may be in the symmetry you seek. Personally, when I look at "Orcs tend to distrust gnomes and dwarves whose small stature leads to a belief that they are sneaky and underhanded." I think "wow, that's going to be tricky," because that also suggests that we're going to need to identify symmetries

for those two races as well

@CortAmmon Upcoming questions! :)

But since they have not been defined yet its not as big a deal

Just thinking out loud, I wonder if some of the "POB" questions like this might be resolved by specifying a target audience. If this is a children's book, the Orcs need to be someone like the Scottsmen, known for their big stature and that would be sufficient. However, if this was a book for adults, the political intrigue aspect of their interaction with other cultures would be a far greater concern.

Just thinking "yes,it's opinion based... and here's the demographic whose opinion matters!" =)

@CortAmmon Huh...that's and interesting thought...I am not sure I've ever done that on a question here but it makes sense.

I don't think I've ever seen it done. Could flop dramatically! =)

4:35 PM

I thought orcs were dwarf-sized.

But then I've only read LOTR.

@Hosch250 LOTR's Orcs are strange, for one thing there are two kinds that are given three different names.

@James They are looking for a way to get rid of it, since none of the other things they tried worked? Downvoting hasn't made it go away, flagging hasn't mad it go away. Being apoplectic hasn't made it go away. Maybe POB can make it go away...

@CortAmmon I like that.

@CortAmmon Ok, thanks everyone for the help. I guess I'll stop hijacking the thread now. On the bright side, this is so improbable that I will never have to worry about being proved wrong. As @Green said, this is unlikely, but we don't know enough about the atmosphere and electricity flow to tell for sure. As for the Earth, I knew that would be a factor because of its conductivity, but I figured that would be even more complicated and wouldn't give me the lightning I wanted.

I guess I should delete my sandbox post.

4:51 PM

@JohnLocke yeah, absolutely. Proving you wrong would require a PhD's worth of work. No worries.

@James I've seen this happen a few times, the reality is that the previous question on Elves is also POB since we can argue a whole bunch of different options fairly well but it was allowed to roll through as a one-off; but a second question in the same vein gets slapped down, and fast. I did note that you may not get to ask more than one of these questions when you first mentioned it.

I've yet to see a single WB question that didn't have two equally good, differing answers.

I don't think POB should even be a close vote here.

@Hosch250 There's a difference between two or three valid answers and "I can defend almost anything I put here." which is what I've always considered to be the hallmark of a POB question.

Its true that POB is a little different here, but the standard on the site is that if you provide context and criteria on which the question can be judged its not POB.

@James Welcome to the "You only get to ask that once" club. I ran into the same problem with my Three Books Series.

4:57 PM

@James Even that doesn't necessarily work out unfortunately.

Well, you did that.

@Hosch250 Sorry who did what?

I am pretty confident on my OT/POB knowledge, I wrote the recent version of the How to ask

2

James set criteria.

@Hosch250 Yes he did, like I said unfortunately you can still get slapped with a POB verdict even when you DO set good criteria, it's part of the gap between how things should work and how they actually do.

5:01 PM

@Ash Right but with the criteria I set some of the options will meet more of them, making them better answers.

@Ash Either that, or people are using the POB CV incorrectly based on their personal opinions about how it should work, which is fittingly ironic

@AndyD273 People almost certainly are, because they are people.

There's criteria for answer and criteria for sorting. James' questions generate lots of plausible answers. The criteria needs to be how to pick a best one. Given the relatively abstract nature of these questions, that may be pretty tricky.

@Green Is it fair to say you can go down the list and figure out which answers are better though?

@James There's an awkward thing there, several of the Elf answers have the same number of hit and miss points, mine's one of them, but I would consider my answer worse rather than equal to several others simply because they have better formatting, they're not superior in their content but they're easier to read.

Worldbuilding Meta

5:08 PM

0

Q: Seeking community advice/consensus on rolling back edits that invalidate answers

Yesterday I answered a question that had a given scope. Today I saw that the question had edits that changed its scope. I saw it because of a downvote to my answer - I believe it was due to my answer no longer being valid. It could even be flagged as NAA and I would agree. This is not the first ...

@James There won't ever be a perfect fit though, how do you pick the best out of a group of answers with similar content, argued differently, that hit the same number of criteria but each hit a different specific set of criteria. If there are enough criteria to judge a good answer on it actually clouds the issue rather than clarifying it.

@Ash Interesting angle. I don't think I've ever seen someone say too many criteria is a problem here...but I can see your point. We don't really deal with perfect fits here though...we leave that to Physics and Stack :)

I wonder if a criteria is that the language also has to be dead? Like, apparently, there are still native Norman speakers. Scythian is not only an extinct culture, but also an extinct language (just to pull one out of the list)

@James There is that, in the Elf case you have 10 criteria; there's several answers that hit 5 or 6 criteria, acknowledge a miss on two or three and fail to mention a couple at all, if there wasn't an answer that made an argument for hitting 8 points you'd have a problem.

In the Orc case you've complicated it further by requiring a society that interacts with a fixed Elf nation as well.

Mithrandir24601

5:25 PM

@Green I think @James could maybe think about not just listing the criteria, but listing them in some sort of order of importance

@Mithrandir24601 That's a very good idea.

@Mithrandir24601 That's actually a good idea, especially if it's presented with a set of needs and then important secondary factors that will be used to decide which answer is best.

Mithrandir24601

@Ash Yeah, sounds good :)

@Mithrandir24601 That I can definitely do...though I will probably wait until the next question to put them in order of importance...don't want to invalidate or devalue any existing answers.

Mithrandir24601

@James That seems fair - as long as every post you make improves, you'll end up becoming an important and valued member of the Worldbuilding community ;P

2

5:31 PM

@James Hmm, I wonder if you are approaching this whole problem backward. I wonder if it would be a little easier to say "I have an fantasy alternate world. There is a civilization of orcs. I want to model them after a human culture that went extinct within this time frame. These are the cultural traits I would like them to have..."

@AndyD273 Ah, then the comparison is implicit instead of explicit. That might help a lot with the racism claims.

@AndyD273 Yeah its the same question but I think that makes it more tractable and less open to personal opinion arguments.

@James an observation: There are plenty of groups that are going to match whatever arbitrary criteria you specify. Tons of groups have been really violent to their neighbors. Tons of groups have been really handy with tools and craftsmenship. Perhaps a part of the POB complaint is that these attributes are so common across history.

Anyone we know about will be exceptional for their era because no one writes about the boring people.

Furthermore only the societies that did culture a certain way, i.e. left stone and metal artifacts for the archaeologists and/or written material for the historians is in the picture, that precludes a huge amount of history and makes most of the cultures that are usable surprisingly similar.

@Ash Trooth!

Dear WB, I love love love that we try to help people get their questions answered, no matter their starting point as long as the asker is willing to refine their question. Thank you all for being so great!

2

5:51 PM

@Green "Anyone we know about will [have survived long enough to create things that leave artifacts] because no one writes about the [ones that were wiped out and erased from history]" FTFY

From what I can tell, archaeologists don't care if a civilization was boring. "they made pots, and ate fish! Amazing!"

@James so you've done Orcs and Elves, and Dwarves are incoming... what other races are you planning?

Gnomes and Humans.

6:27 PM

@Ash I'm gonna min/max these rocks for erosion rates. Should be fun.

@Green Go for it anything that comes out of the exercise is going to help me out no end, feel free to use rock salt as the country rock, because reasons.

@Ash Salt based economy?

@Green Fair point. I can get more specific.

@AndyD273 This is the question its all based on

35

Q: Medieval politics with fantasy races

So it occurred to me while developing the political landscape for my world, that throwing fantasy races into the mix in an absolute monarchy/feudal system and pretending they just fit right in may in fact have some problems. What I am attempting to generally figure out is: How would including f...

politics medieval fantasy-races

6:43 PM

@Green my dude, could you act as a relay for me to order sth that is only delivered into the Domestic US?

@dot_Sp0T Likely not. I'm moving to Canada sometime soon.

@James is nailed down in the US. You might try him.

I'm torn between the Celts/Scythians at the moment...the idea of orc bands roaming the steppes has a certain appeal, but are geographically off (which can be worked around in the story) the celts have a lot I like but seem a little technologically advanced for the Orcs in my head. Normans are also cool but again a little more tech than I would like what with the ship building

@James can I try you?

@dot_Sp0T What's up

@dot_Sp0T What is it? If I get it, could you relay me a CD from an Austrian music group?

6:46 PM

@Hosch250 We have a volunteer!

in VBA Rubberducking, 2 mins ago, by KySoto

yeah, we are trying to make the world burn

in VBA Rubberducking, 3 mins ago, by KySoto

user image

@Hosch250 And we're damn good at it.

@dot_Sp0T Just curious what you are trying to order?

@James I wanted to order some merch from the good folks at birdsarentreal.com/collections/all (in this case, but in the past I missed out on many other cool things that are US only)

@Hosch250 I can check out the stores here, but I am not Austrian

Yeah, I'm not certain I could ask you to go through with it anyway.

6:50 PM

@Hosch250 why's that?

@Hosch250 I did a chocolate trade with dot_Sp0T last year. A++ experience would do it again.

They wanted me to mail cash, which is kind of fishy, but they have several videos of themselves on YouTube and some snippets on their website from their CDs.

That's why ^

Basically, it's typical of small businesses, but somewhat fishy over the internet.

I am sort of inebriated, so may I come back to you folks tomorrow..?

It would cost me an arm and a leg to get the Euros over there safely (they wanted me to mail them, and our mail is horrid unreliable).

@Green it'll be somewhat less in volume this year tho, last year was utterly expensive to ship^^

@Hosch250 if youre up tomorrow we can find a way to exchange contact data and I can see

6:52 PM

@dot_Sp0T That's perfectly fine.

Cool.

@dot_Sp0T Wow. That site is just magical.

"The only way to properly explain, is with words." - Birds aren't real. That's pretty deep.

Told ya

This is really broad right?

0

Q: A Mountain appearing in the desert

What would happen if a mountain just appeared in a desert? This would happen by magical means, but what would happen to the surrounding ecosystem if a large mountain just appeared in the middle of a sandy desert? I haven't thought of the specifics (height, radius, etc.), but would like some help...

magic environment climate

6:56 PM

I mean *snore*

or maybe unclear what you're asking

*zZzZzZzZzZz*

so, bird flu is a lie? And what about Thanksgiving? So many questions

3

@Ash are you around?

7:16 PM

I have a process proposal for getting your big dikes.

7:38 PM

@James As I said, I really have no problem at all with the underlying premise of your world. I should think that in 2018 people would be more aware of these kinds of injurious approaches to doing things. Your question basically assumes a much darker, more archaic mindset. It sounds like something someone would say back in the 1950s or so. Apparently, for a number of folks hereabouts, this just isn't an issue.

If you don't have a problem with it, then you are taking offense on the part of someone else who might be offended by it?

@elemtilas Curious do you read fantasy?

@elemtilas So, direct comparison between a dead culture and an imaginary culture doesn't work. How would you propose getting the kind of information that James is seeking? How does one go about comparing any two groups of people, real or imagined?

8:02 PM

@elemtilas Say I need to write a real life paper about the differences in equality between whites and minorities in the US in 2018. How do I advocate on behalf of minorities if I can't make any comparisons between those two groups? What would you suggest I do?

8:25 PM

@James i put your orcs question to some friends of mine, who's opinion I respect, about whether the question was racist or not.

One said:

> Yeah I think it's hard to avoid racism writing in a fantasy setting that throughout generations and iterations has borrowed from Tolkein; the best way to avoid it is probably to subvert Tolkein's model altogether, to make up a whole new system rather than relying on the fraught one that everyone has been remixing for the past 80 years

Also:

> Yeah, but you could make them so they don't track so easily. For instance, you could go into it without that as your goal, which was not the case when Tolkien was deliberately trying to create a racial/cultural mythology that valorized anglos

> Or stick to ideological groups that aren't so racially homogenous

8:43 PM

@Green This one I definitely get...I mean Tolkein wasn't exactly subtle. That said is the modern day incarnation of stuff that came from him, DnD for example, racist because it stemmed from a racist or at least anglo-centric worldview?

@James It seems really easy to see it that way.

And I don't know how you would purge the racial influences of orcs and elves.

Another fun part is defining the line between "race" and "culture".

(And don't get me started on whether it's OK or not to borrow aspects of another culture. I wish I could axe the cultural appropriation people.)

Race tends towards negative while culture tends towards positive--or used to.

Wait, totally serious question here... the orc and elves in tolkien were racist?

@AndyD273 apparently they were. First I've heard of it too.

8:58 PM

OK, glad it's not just me. I've read those stories countless times, and I've never once though "wow, those orcs are totally [some real world group]". You'd have to be pretty racist to think that way.

@AndyD273 Certainly, you'd have to have a different set of cultural knowledge than you and I have.

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