| Speculative biology is simultaneously a science and form of art in which one speculates on the possibilities of life and evolution. What could the world look like if dinosaurs had never gone extinct? What could alien lifeforms look like? What kinds of plants and animals might exist in the far future? These questions and more are tackled by speculative biologists, and the Speculative Evolution welcomes all relevant ideas, inquiries, and world-building projects alike. With a member base comprising users from across the world, our community is the largest and longest-running place of gathering for speculative biologists on the web. While unregistered users are able to browse the forum on a basic level, registering an account provides additional forum access not visible to guests as well as the ability to join in discussions and contribute yourself! Registration is free and instantaneous. Join our community today! |
| On Plausibility; mulling on the nature of criticism | |
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| Topic Started: Aug 19 2017, 03:37 PM (626 Views) | |
| Dr Nitwhite | Aug 19 2017, 03:37 PM Post #1 |
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Luddite
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On Plausibility Plausibility- the quality of seeming reasonable or probable, to seem plausible Possibility- a thing that may happen or be the case What are the considerations you make when creating a new future evolution organism? Its appearance, its means of acquiring energy? What about it adapts it to its environment, or what drove its evolution? Perhaps what odd behaviors it displays? Generally, the idea congeals and the behaviors and morphology flesh themselves out but ultimately, this organism must pass a vague muster- is it plausible? I think this might be the wrong question to ask, either of oneself or of others. Allow me to explain. Plausibility, I think, is often looked at as an inherent feature of a certain organism or group of organisms, “quadrupedal birds are implausible”, “terrestrial cephalopods are implausible”, and so on. These phrases are sometimes uttered casually, or used in brief critiques or projects (and for more than just the examples given). I think this is a fundamental mistake in thinking about a spec concept. There’s two ways the “implausibility” critique seems to manifest, either that a concept is implausible because its current form prohibits it, or that the organism is contrived- there are too many steps in between the current form and the conceptual one that collectively they become incredibly unlikely. I disagree most strongly with the first argument, and the second I might be inclined to agree with- but with a few but large qualifications. The Fluidity of Morphology I’m inclined to disagree with any criticism that posits something like “x is implausible (or occasionally, impossible!) because their ancestral anatomy prevents them from taking this form”. This argument, at its core, ignores that an organism isn’t the product of its ancestral anatomy, but its environment. Evolution is driven through progressive natural selection, and given enough time progressive tinkering can turn Pikaia gracilens (or its ilk) into Homo sapiens. The thing to keep in mind here is the scale involved- hundreds of millions of years. Think of all the extinction events, major climatic changes, and thousands upon millions of tiny little pressures that nudged something in the direction it ended up. Making blanket statements such as “theropodal mammals are implausible, since mammals aren’t anatomically suited to this” (we’re ignoring pangolins and jerboas here) would be to forget this, and saying that it is impossible might as well deny it. Naturally, an organism with radically changed morphology would have an explanation due- extraordinary change takes extraordinary explanation. But so long as an explanation is present, one should be good to go. Of course, this bleeds well into the next line of argument, that the scenario or explanation in which a specific animal changes its morphology so drastically would be incredibly unlikely. Let’s discuss that idea further in the next section then, shall we? Contrived, or Derived? That previously mentioned argument (that something is implausible because the specific event that led to its evolution are, when taken together, unlikely and contrived so that organism could exist) is wholly true- but then again when you look at the full host of scenarios that are possible any particular one becomes implausible. Anyone who has dabbled in xenobiology knows this- if there’s other worlds with life, the chances of them converging anything but mildly with earth life are abysmal. So too is the chances of any future evolution scenario playing out. Blanket statements about a certain group being around, for instance, become increasingly improbable. One might suppose that rodents probably won’t go extinct in the next five million years, but can you make the same claim about fifty million years? One could easily envision a scenario where an even more adaptable, fast-breeding clade develops that simply out-compete rodents, and after fifty million years of this the last rodent perishes, perhaps the shift occurs after a minor extinction event that dropped rodent diversity enough to allow this new group to begin its conquest. Even predictions of climate and geology are up to interpretation (though significantly more predictable). Ultimately, labeling an organism as implausible due to the unlikeliness of its evolutionary history assumes that the organism is a prediction of what will happen- not the work of someone reflecting on the possibilities of what may come to pass. Speculative evolution is just that- speculative. So long as the concept is explained, all things are equally unlikely. Speculation as Scientific Art, not Artistic Science I think this is something that we speccers often forget- speculative evolution is art that’s based in science- that is to say, it is not science. We do our best to root our creations in accurate predictions, but the vast majority of these predictions are shaky, even the more widely accepted models of future tectonics and climate are only accurate to a point, and even where they are accurate they may be contentious. It’s time we accept this. But I don’t want to be misinterpreted here- some speculations may be wholly, for lack of a better term, implausible. But this is never the result of the organism, but that organism’s evolutionary history. Of course, one may quite justly be thinking “Aren’t you arguing the exact opposite? That any concept would work if explained?”. And I’d be forced to tell you I am. But there’s an important piece to the puzzle we’re missing. Taking Stock of Major Changes It is my position that anything physically possible could be plausible. But it’s important to keep in mind that any major shift in morphology would take some many millions of years and a very convoluted evolutionary history. And with any great change, not just one facet is going to do so. If one were to speculate on the nature of terrestrial sharks, for example, the sharks in question would bear only a slight resemblance to a modern shark. One can’t stick legs on a shark and call it a day, no matter how well they describe the events that led to fins turning into limbs. One has to take stock of how those events, which led to the desired change, also affected the rest of the organism. For example, let’s take a rather innocuous example- a seed eating bird is introduced to an island with no competition, and a whole lot of different foodstuffs. One population begins moving toward carnivory, and soon becomes a specialized insect hunter, it’s bill narrowing from the large seed-cracker it once was. Ok. but one needs to realize that the rest of the animal must also adapt. It must change its behavior to that of a hunter, learn to recognize aposematism, perhaps develop more effective camouflage, maybe change the shape of its wings to allow more acrobatic flight. Now let’s kick it up a notch. Let’s suppose that we want to stick legs on a shark. To grossly oversimplify, the animal takes its first steps by punting along the bottom like a ray, and the fins slowly develop to be more muscular and effective in launching the animal from the bottom to attack prey or escape danger. Some of these species shrink in size to escape larger predators that have evolved and to better ambush prey. After a small extinction event, the sharks are one of the lucky survivors, and radiate into several forms. Some of them are smaller, and move into mangrove swamps. At this point, they practically have limbs, and eventually they develop pseudo-lungs to deal with oxygen shortages. After a major mass extinction on land that drive amphibians to the brink, the sharks get their chance and invade the “frog-like” niche. Some eventually break their ties to water entirely. Our sharks have legs, and are wholly terrestrial! But would they would nothing like their ancestor, we’ll suppose the Blacktip Reef Shark. At each step of the way, our speculative shark must sacrifice some of its sharkness. The long, tubular body of a shark is suited for chasing down other fish midwater, not punting along the bottom! The shark would have to flatten itself, not necessarily to the extent of a ray, wobbegong, or flounder, but this would be helpful. It’d probably lose the characteristic dorsal fin entirely. Then, as it transitions to be a sort of “underwater frog” that leaps up from the bottom on powerful psuedo-limbs to capture prey from the middle of the water column, it might be expected to change its specific bauplan again. It’d perhaps become more squat, now looking something like the cross between a stonefish and a skate. Its mouth would widen, perhaps its teeth would become thinner and more numerous to better trap prey item in the gape. I could go on here, but I think you get the picture (and we’re only two events down the chain). And, of course, all of these changes would be going on perhaps for hundreds of millions of years. So yes, perhaps some things are “implausible”, such as our initial, land-shark-with-legs-slapped-on animal was. But I’d like to take this line of reasoning a step further. The LSWLSO isn’t just implausible, it’s impossible. It wouldn’t be possible for a land-shark to be a spitting image of a shark other than for the limbs, evolution by natural selection wouldn’t allow it. No scenario, no matter how contrived, would allow it. There are no implausible organisms- only impossible ones. Asking the Right Questions Perhaps, when we formulate our creations, rather than ask ourselves whether an animal is plausible, we ask if it’s possible. Is it possible that this animal could physically exist? And furthermore, we must ask ourselves- “is the scenario that results in this creature going to change it in ways I hadn’t considered? Would my proverbial LSWLSO be changed in ways I hadn’t considered when it made its journey to land?” If the answer to the first question is no, perhaps you should stick it someplace in a fantasy setting, not your spec project. If yes, consider the second if the answer is no than congratulations! You’re organism is just as likely as any other! But if the answer is yes, and I’m sure it almost always will be, don’t fret. I think that’s the fun in speculating, after all. I’m very curious to hear what you all think. |
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Speculative Evolution Projects- Other Relevant Work- Final SE Lifelist standings BREAKING NEWS We interrupt your regular programming to bring you this cutting edge report. ATTENDANCE DROPS DRASTICALLY ON SE SERVER This past Monday on Discord, famous server Speculative Evolution took a hit in the attendance office when it's offline member list suddenly reappeared. Mods scrambled to rectify the situation, but unfortunately there was little anyone could do. Server member Ivan was asked what he thought of the situation. "So long as Flisch, lord of machines and scion of Urborg lives, all will be well". SE, (in)famous for it's eccentric userbase, has recently been spiraling downward, and now we have hard conformation of the decline. Moderator "High Lord" Icthyander states "There is nothing to be concerned about, Discord is merely changing its UI again", but members are beginning to suspect the honesty of their staff. Stay tuned, we'll be back with more at 11. | |
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| Rodlox | Aug 19 2017, 05:25 PM Post #2 |
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Superhuman
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I agree with all of this, with the partial exception of one thing: the walking-while-underwater shark would look like a bamboo shark, because thats what they already do. ![]() |
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.---------------------------------------------. Parts of the Cluster Worlds: "Marsupialless Australia" (what-if) & "Out on a Branch" (future evolution) & "The Earth under a still sun" (WIP) | |
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| Tartarus | Aug 19 2017, 06:50 PM Post #3 |
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Prime Specimen
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Very good points. I agree that plausibility is often viewed as synonymous with likelihood and this often leads to the misconception than an unlikely thing is an impossible thing. This is why, for example, I myself have never agree with the whole "terrestrial squids are implausible" assertion. I can agree that it is a very unlikely thing to occur but I think a line of evolutionary changes that grant them internal support structures to move about on land is still within the realms of possibility. On likelihood it should also be noted that really all speculative evolution projects show unlikely things. No matter how plausible one tries to be the fact still remains that we are really speculating on things we really have no certain knowledge on. Also, I like your terrestrial shark example. Indeed a derived terrestrial shark would probably bear no more resemblance to a "conventional" shark than a human does to a Eusthenopteron. |
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| Empyreon | Aug 19 2017, 07:04 PM Post #4 |
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Are you plausible?
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A fabulous treatise on the concept. I absolutely love that you dial in to the art aspect of Spec Evo. There is a strong vein of creativity in the process we all go through as we speculate, and recognizing this origin of our speculations is vital when considering plausibility. It's also important to recognize the traditional forces that affect creativity, most notably the paradox that creativity and imagination tends to thrive when constrained within limitations. If we use this measuring stick of plausibility as such a limitation, then it can force us to look at things differently, and yield a much more robust and interesting creation. Let me give an example to support my point: Sigmund Nastrazurro has put extensive thought into the plausibility of ballonts, explaining the physical limitations on lighter than air life, and ultimately scrapped aspects of his project as a result. Many would look at this as a travesty; why not tolerate a little bit of fantasy in a project that otherwise conforms to physics as we understand them? Many will decide to allow for this deviation in their own projects, while others may make a similar choice to Nastrazurro. At the time, I was putting a good deal of work into my Charybdis project. As I looked at the math and physics presented in the Furaha blog, I saw that while ballonts just couldn't work in the Furaha setting, they were not only possible but likely--plausible-- on Charybdis. Too often we interpret "implausible" to mean "impossible." The phrases you shared, as used in the community, are too often taken as, "X is implausible, so just trash it." The notion of implausibility becomes a negative thing, and a block on our creativity. Instead we should accept the challenge, reading the phrase as, "X is implausible, so can you contrive an explanation for its derivation and existence?" The "right questions" you talk about ask those very things: here it is, the organism in broad strokes; the most likely-- the plausible-- evolutionary paths to its existence influence its appearance and behavior in such ways. In other words, if the answer to your first question is "no", and you're unwilling to change it, then to a fantasy setting it goes. If the answer is "yes" then great, the first step has been accomplished. Your second question, placing it under the litmus of plausibility, only benefits it, turning it into a more robust and interesting end product. We can't be scared of the notion of plausibility, and should readily apply it to even our fantasy settings. Every creative fiction, even fantasy, asks for a certain degree of suspension of disbelief, and the more plausible we can make things, the more a given audience can accept and appreciate our work. At the end of this, I'm left with a question: like I said before, I love your post, but what prompted it? What is your motivation to share thoughts on this? |
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Take a look at my exobiology subforum of the planet Nereus! COM Contributions food for thought
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| Setaceous Cetacean | Aug 19 2017, 08:01 PM Post #5 |
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Insert Funny Creative Title Here
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I agree 100% with all of this. Speculative evolution, at its heart, is presenting what life could look like if it had taken a different evolutionary path. It is a science-based art, not the other way around. |
If you like balloons, the color red, or mixotrophic plants derived from photosynthetic vertebrate-analogues, then check out my xenobiology project Solais
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| Dr Nitwhite | Aug 19 2017, 08:10 PM Post #6 |
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Luddite
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Excellent question! I can't say it's been any particular reason individually, but there's a lot that probably lead to it. I think most of it has been seeing people (more in the past than now, but it still happens occasionally) just discarding people's ideas offhand as "implausible", and not explaining that the organism itself might be possible, just the scenario put was inadequate, or themselves being of the opinion that a certain organism is wholly implausible. As I said early in the post, I think that this line of reason leads us to forget how evolution works. And it's important as speccers we have a concrete idea of what evolution is. The ideas that morphology is immutable for instance, can be misleading. On the flip-side, assuming that the rest of an organism won't change as it is put through a series of pressures, only one feature, is similarly fallacious. As I began to think about the issue, a whole number of other thoughts and ideas I'd had separately began to attach themselves to the idea, and ultimately they all coalesced into a single work, which you see here. Even if these issues aren't really present as much as they'd been, I think this is still an important discussion to have and perhaps a way to clear up some misconceptions. Plus I find it really interesting to think about in general, and an interesting point to discuss. On spec being art you put under the scrutiny of plausibility (or, as I like to say, the plausibility of a scenario), I wholly agree with you. I think you put quite wonderfully what I was alluding to in the last section.
I agree entirely. I think that, unless it's impossible, most scenarios are equally improbable (or probable if you like), since as you say we are dealing with something we have no certain information on. You can't make concrete predictions in this light, and thus you're forced to... well, speculate! That, I think, is where the art comes in. |
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Speculative Evolution Projects- Other Relevant Work- Final SE Lifelist standings BREAKING NEWS We interrupt your regular programming to bring you this cutting edge report. ATTENDANCE DROPS DRASTICALLY ON SE SERVER This past Monday on Discord, famous server Speculative Evolution took a hit in the attendance office when it's offline member list suddenly reappeared. Mods scrambled to rectify the situation, but unfortunately there was little anyone could do. Server member Ivan was asked what he thought of the situation. "So long as Flisch, lord of machines and scion of Urborg lives, all will be well". SE, (in)famous for it's eccentric userbase, has recently been spiraling downward, and now we have hard conformation of the decline. Moderator "High Lord" Icthyander states "There is nothing to be concerned about, Discord is merely changing its UI again", but members are beginning to suspect the honesty of their staff. Stay tuned, we'll be back with more at 11. | |
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| Tartarus | Aug 21 2017, 12:56 AM Post #7 |
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Prime Specimen
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What about future evolution scenarios? These are not speculating on "what if life had taken a different path?" but rather on "how will the paths taken so far continue in the future?" |
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| kusanagi | Aug 21 2017, 01:03 AM Post #8 |
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Adolescent
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Every event is probabilistic. Therefore there was alternate possibility, and from probabilities are informed plausibility. The more attention is played to the probability of possibilities, the more scientific the artistry is. |
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| peashyjah | Aug 21 2017, 07:36 AM Post #9 |
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Bydo
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I agree with all of this! Speculative Evolution, at its best, is becoming more accurate and plausible over time. |
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Discontinued projects: The New Ostracoderms (i might continue with this project again someday) The Americas (where in 58 million years from now in the future North and South America has both become isolated island continents) All Expansions (my attempt at expanding the universe of All Tomorrows by Nemo Ramjet aka C.M. Kosemen, started June 6, 2018) Anthropozoic (my attempt at expanding the universe of Man After Man and also a re-imagining of it, coming 2019 or 2020) New Cenozoica (my attempt at expanding the universe of The New Dinosaurs and also a re-imagining of it, also coming 2019 or 2020) All Alternatives or All Changes (a re-telling of All Tomorrows but with some minor and major "changes", coming June 10, 2018) | |
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| Setaceous Cetacean | Aug 21 2017, 07:57 AM Post #10 |
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That's a good point. I was just thinking of creating xenobiology projects. If the life in the project looks very similar to Earth life, even if that is the most plausible given our knowledge of evolution, it would not be nearly as interesting or, in my opinion, fun as creating creatures that are reasonably divergent from Earth's life. |
If you like balloons, the color red, or mixotrophic plants derived from photosynthetic vertebrate-analogues, then check out my xenobiology project Solais
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| Dr Nitwhite | Aug 21 2017, 02:42 PM Post #11 |
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Luddite
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While this is undeniably true, my argument here is that the data we have allows for very very loose predictions about future evolution (though perhaps some more concrete ones can be made for things like future climate and continental movements). |
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Speculative Evolution Projects- Other Relevant Work- Final SE Lifelist standings BREAKING NEWS We interrupt your regular programming to bring you this cutting edge report. ATTENDANCE DROPS DRASTICALLY ON SE SERVER This past Monday on Discord, famous server Speculative Evolution took a hit in the attendance office when it's offline member list suddenly reappeared. Mods scrambled to rectify the situation, but unfortunately there was little anyone could do. Server member Ivan was asked what he thought of the situation. "So long as Flisch, lord of machines and scion of Urborg lives, all will be well". SE, (in)famous for it's eccentric userbase, has recently been spiraling downward, and now we have hard conformation of the decline. Moderator "High Lord" Icthyander states "There is nothing to be concerned about, Discord is merely changing its UI again", but members are beginning to suspect the honesty of their staff. Stay tuned, we'll be back with more at 11. | |
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| kusanagi | Aug 22 2017, 06:26 AM Post #12 |
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Adolescent
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I'm unsure: true off the wall evolutions are rare. Some spec bio projects have multiple of them. |
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| Dr Nitwhite | Aug 22 2017, 12:51 PM Post #13 |
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Luddite
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I'm not sure what you mean by "truly off-the-wall", but I'm still of the opinion that folks underestimate how derived things can become. Imagine we where having this discussion in the late Devonian, and we where looking at a few little Acanthostega-esque critters. In our speculations on what life might be like, 380 million years or so into the future, I don't think we could come within miles of where things turned out. I imagine lots of projects would feature creatures with flat heads, eight toes, and smooth skin that rear their young in water. I mean, how plausible is it really for these things to have an egg without a water-permeable shell? And even if we bought this "integument" business, you mean to tell me that they'd somehow fly on it? I'd warrant that our Devonian speculators would consider those ideas pretty "off the wall". Even if we went forward in time and where looking at the common ancestor to all the dinosaurs, and it turned out that it had some sort of fuzzy integument, I think we'd still have a pretty hard time coming up with birds. It's easy for us in the present to look at the tree of life as something continuous, with seemingly derived animals having what now seems to be obvious intermediates stretching back through the eons (well, perhaps not in every case). But we still have another 380 million years, and then some. Who's to say what "off the wall" things might happen? |
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Speculative Evolution Projects- Other Relevant Work- Final SE Lifelist standings BREAKING NEWS We interrupt your regular programming to bring you this cutting edge report. ATTENDANCE DROPS DRASTICALLY ON SE SERVER This past Monday on Discord, famous server Speculative Evolution took a hit in the attendance office when it's offline member list suddenly reappeared. Mods scrambled to rectify the situation, but unfortunately there was little anyone could do. Server member Ivan was asked what he thought of the situation. "So long as Flisch, lord of machines and scion of Urborg lives, all will be well". SE, (in)famous for it's eccentric userbase, has recently been spiraling downward, and now we have hard conformation of the decline. Moderator "High Lord" Icthyander states "There is nothing to be concerned about, Discord is merely changing its UI again", but members are beginning to suspect the honesty of their staff. Stay tuned, we'll be back with more at 11. | |
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| Empyreon | Aug 22 2017, 01:56 PM Post #14 |
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Are you plausible?
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Exactly! For many, speculative evolution goes something like this: "Isn't this critter I made wild?! Here's how I think it could actually happen. What do you guys think?" And that's where the problems arise... ![]() ...Because we put a lot of thought and effort into our projects. We dot our i's and cross our t's, and present it to the community one way or another. We open it up for feedback, welcoming any praise and insightful analysis of our work. We think we're ready for the other stuff: people with a different perspective point out something problematic in our work, and point it out. We think we're ready, but the truth is that these details often blindside us; if it didn't then we would have spotted it ourselves! And so the notion of plausibility becomes this bogeyman waiting to pounce, or at the very least a source of tension and anxiety. Some people bandy the word "implausible" about as an absolute, synonymizing it with "impossible," which only exacerbates problems. Or the very work involved with exploring plausibility may seem to take more effort or intellect than the speccer thinks is available, ignoring the very resource this community can be. Speculate! Dream up wild and imaginative things! Throw it all to the wolves, and let them find holes in your work. Patch up the holes and watch your project improve as a result. |
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Take a look at my exobiology subforum of the planet Nereus! COM Contributions food for thought
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| Beetleboy | Aug 22 2017, 02:00 PM Post #15 |
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neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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Well said sir! Also, lots of intelligent and insightful comments here Nitwhite. Good work - this is a certainly a useful topic for beginners and even the old-timers. |
| ~ The Age of Forests ~ | |
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