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| On Plausibility; mulling on the nature of criticism | |
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| Topic Started: Aug 19 2017, 03:37 PM (632 Views) | |
| IIGSY | Aug 22 2017, 05:04 PM Post #16 |
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A huntsman spider that wastes time on the internet because it has nothing better to do
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Wait, even better. Imagine a Cryogenian speccer with no prior knowledge had to come up with descendants for Otavia antiqua (most ancient known animal). Do you think he could possibly come up with snails, tapeworms, ants or humans? |
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Projects Punga: A terraformed world with no vertebrates Last one crawling: The last arthropod ARTH-6810: A world without vertebrates (It's ded, but you can still read I guess) Potential ideas- Swamp world: A world covered in lakes, with the largest being caspian sized. Nematozoic: After a mass extinction of ultimate proportions, a single species of nematode is the only surviving animal. Tri-devonian: A devonian like ecosystem with holocene species on three different continents. Quotes Phylogeny of the arthropods and some related groups In honor of the greatest clade of all time More pictures Other cool things All African countries can fit into Brazil
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| kusanagi | Aug 23 2017, 02:57 AM Post #17 |
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Adolescent
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Otavia is probably an inorganic pseudofossil and were O. poriferan it was probably not on the EU metazoan stem. In any case there are worm traces and Rugoopsis from the Riphean of Siberia, the latter possessing epithelium, and from the same area Eosolenoides, a problematicum that was perhaps anthozoan(?). I would hesitate to assign either to a modern phylum but the former is at least Eumetazoan. Cryogenian theory is flawed. Multicellular algae came far earlier than animals, and animals go back as far as the Riphean. |
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| Rodlox | Aug 23 2017, 03:08 AM Post #18 |
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Superhuman
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aaaand you just took my 'fawooosh air and hand zooms over skull' award. |
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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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| Fazaner | Aug 23 2017, 03:20 AM Post #19 |
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Шашава птичурина
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That's all good, but i think point flew over your head. Try to imagine a complex path that led to parrot, or spider or even human, but without knowledge of them, only small, primitive, sponge-like random ancestor of modern animal life. You would defenetly wont came up with this world, and that is the point of this here, sometimes people put walls on their thoughts, 'this is impossible, this is improbable' without the thinking how thing in question could evolve in that form and how long it might take. For most of features to evolve you need two things pressure and time, and that is what made descendants of first fish to discuss here about this. |
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Projects (they are not dead, just updated realy slowly, feel free to comment): -World after plague After a horrible plague unleashed by man nature slowly recovers. Now 36 million years later we take a look at this weird and wonderful world. -Galaxy on fire. They have left their home to get out of war. They had no idea what awaits them. My Deviant art profile, if you're curious. Before you get offended or butthurt read this | |
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| kusanagi | Aug 23 2017, 04:08 AM Post #20 |
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Adolescent
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True enough. But let me illustrate my own point. What are the turning points in creating the familiar extraterrestrial lifeforms we usually create, inferred from life on Manhome? 1. Abiogenesis (probability unknown) 2. Eukaryotisation (probability unknown) 3. Multicellularisation (plural event, usually as photo synthesisers) 4. "Eumetazoisisation" (happened only once on Earth) People handwavium the improbabilities of 1, 2 and 4. Only 3 is probable, once the first two prerequisites have occurred. So yes people regularly rely on handwavium and also alien space bats such as removing mammals at mass extinctions without explanation, more than they realise. I guess this is fine for the initial scenario, as a hypothetical, and we all do it. But, reasonableness of the assumptions affects total plausibility. No?
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| LittleLazyLass | Aug 23 2017, 12:53 PM Post #21 |
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Proud quilt in a bag
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Going back in the conversation a bit, this particular little and unassuming post caught my interest. It works as a perfect example of what Nitwhite is pointing out: our over-compensation to stay within the familiar, stuff that's unarguably reasonable "plausible" as we often use the term. Some sharks already walk underwater, so clearly a future shark would do it the same way. But there's room for variation here. What if the ancestor is a wildly different shark than those of the bamboo sharks? What if it lives in a different ecosystem with different pressures (perhaps we'd be inclined to talk about a Library shark in the Katrina Sea)? Different competition? Why is a shark that for this or that reason we decided would look different than a bamboo shark more "implausible" than one that looks quite similar to one? Of course convergent evolution is something that should be kept in mind, but wildly different paths can also be taken for the same reason. |
totally not British, b-baka! You like me (Unlike)I don't even really like this song that much but the title is pretty relatable sometimes, I guess. Me What, you want me to tell you what these mean? Read First Words Maybe | |
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| Dr Nitwhite | Aug 23 2017, 02:14 PM Post #22 |
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Luddite
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I'm not sure that it does is the thing. I can see where you're coming from with future evolution scenarios that are very near future, but when we go to the far future I think people can be too conservative. "Playing it safe" and not changing things too much may seem reasonable (and probably is when we're dealing with near-future scenarios), but the further into the future you go the more conservative you are, I'd argue the more implausible you're speculations would be. I think the big takeaway here that I'd like to impart is that "reasonableness" is incredibly difficult to gauge, especially as you propel yourself further and further into the future. I think it's this same "reasonableness" that can chase us away from derivity as well, and as you travel further and further into the future the more cumulative changes things will accrue, and thus creatures that seem "reasonable" may actually be "implausible". |
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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 23 2017, 02:36 PM Post #23 |
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Adolescent
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Far future needs a near future envisioned beforehand: this is the frustration that there is not more spec climatology and spec tectonics to match spec bio and help constrain plausibility. (Scotese did a great paper recently but...) Thinking what can happen given a few more million years is a red herring given what can happen in a far shorter timescale. After mass extinctions it only takes 10my to have a recovered ecosystem. Human evolution illustrates rapid evolution very well, as does the size increase of Harpagornis. Its really not what I mean by plausibility. A Manambulator as envisioned by Dixon is scarcely probable on countless grounds; something like his horrane requires time not because of the apomorphies, but for the implicit need for one or more transitional ecological and morphological stages in which novel traits might emerge. But just scaling up small mammals such as rodents or mustelids is clearly plausible owing to how many times this happened to related or convergent species already in our timeline. |
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| Dr Nitwhite | Aug 23 2017, 03:01 PM Post #24 |
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Luddite
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This is actually a really good point, but not mutually exclusive, I think, with mine. As I've stressed previously, a good speculative creature will have a good explanation, and if transitional forms need to be covered they ought to be.
I actually quite agree, I think I misinterpreted your point earlier. But yes, oftentimes, plausibility issues lie in the scenario, not the creature necessarily. If you can't explain how a creature got to where it was, evolutionarily and ecologically, than there's probably something wrong. That was one of my points in the original piece. Though you're entirely right, evolution can be rapid, I don't think that throwing time out offhand would be entirely correct. Except in some instances (such as mass extinctions, as you mentioned), a lot of the ecological changes needed for evolutionary change can be protracted over very long time periods. |
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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 23 2017, 03:45 PM Post #25 |
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Adolescent
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The much maligned Dinosauroid fits into the horrane category (plausible but requires assumptions). There are birds with pygostyles that stand upright if they do not walk round as such. Reckon Russell's bipedal theropod as a basal avibrevicaudan instead of a troodontid and some of the details then work better. Except things like plantigrady and viviparity, but as with the horrane something similar can be considered possible. Imagine its ancestor as an arboreal omnivore, a kind of flightless maniraptoran lorisiform or phalangerid with grasping hands and feet, walking semi-upright on branches like a parrot, and you have a dinosauroid ancestor - its not that improbable especially if you consider our own ancestry preadapted us. |
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| kusanagi | Aug 23 2017, 04:02 PM Post #26 |
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Adolescent
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Hint: if you doubt upright posture can be normal for birds look at a runner duck. And imagine a theropod with the same posture and different proportions maybe the foramen magnum shifted more underneath the cranium as in pachycephalosaurs and some birds, but very little bend in a fairly stout neck. Feet are maybe zygodactyl but definitely perching: this is the descendant of an arboreal non-volant similar to some semiflightless birds today. Grasping, clawed hands for food gathering, and jaws and teeth suited to omnivory whilst still being used as an accessory hand - perhaps a beaked hand. True its not strictly orthograde, but I'm not defending the original bauplan, nor trying to start debate as to how the dinosauroid might have evolved. I'm just trying to check its overall plausibility without nitpicking over Russell's precise details. |
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| IIGSY | Aug 23 2017, 04:15 PM Post #27 |
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A huntsman spider that wastes time on the internet because it has nothing better to do
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Well, I'm not talking about EUmetazoans, I am talking about metazoans including sponges. |
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Projects Punga: A terraformed world with no vertebrates Last one crawling: The last arthropod ARTH-6810: A world without vertebrates (It's ded, but you can still read I guess) Potential ideas- Swamp world: A world covered in lakes, with the largest being caspian sized. Nematozoic: After a mass extinction of ultimate proportions, a single species of nematode is the only surviving animal. Tri-devonian: A devonian like ecosystem with holocene species on three different continents. Quotes Phylogeny of the arthropods and some related groups In honor of the greatest clade of all time More pictures Other cool things All African countries can fit into Brazil
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| kusanagi | Aug 23 2017, 04:30 PM Post #28 |
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Adolescent
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I'm unsure about such time distances and its often unknown what the ancestor of a phylum looked like: topologies of the crown mollusc tree for instance depends upon the assumed outgroup. Its hard to estimate the probability of something evolving from an unknown ancestor. However amazing convergences such as segmentation between nephrozoan phyla show a high probability of homoplasy, perhaps as shared, preexistent genes came to form the template for evolutionary parallels? (This means if segmentation thus came so easily to earth's metazoans it maybe can't be assumed it would to bilaterally symmetrical aliens without the same genetic inheritance. People overlook this.) As far as multicellular life goes, Eumetazoa was the improbable biggie. Though if we had intermediates between them and the outgroups Trichoplax and Porifera our origins would feel less mysterious. Looking at what we know for sure it just looks like a big jump, and it is one made but once on earth. |
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| Empyreon | Aug 28 2017, 05:06 PM Post #29 |
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Are you plausible?
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I was thumbing through a book the other day (Extraterrestrials by Dickinson and Schaller) and I came across a page that made me think of this thread. The section detailed Dale Russell's Dinoman, a speculation on an evolution toward sapience for dinosaurs in a scenario where they avoided extinction. Here it is... This case has long been regarded as "bad speculation" for a number of reasons. When you look at how the troodon body is contorted and forced into an extremely (as we call it here) humanesque shape, complete with plantigrade feet and a belly button, it doesn't take much thought to see how far fetched of an end product you have here. Critiques for Russell's Dinoman are replete. But does that make it impossible? The answer, when considering the myriad possibilities, has to be no, it's not impossible. Highly unlikely, and discussions about precisely what it has going against it can be productive, but not impossible. The same goes, I think, for any other project. A robust analysis of a creature's plausibility (or an ecology's) should take place, but it shouldn't be dismisses out of hand just because it's falling into a category people have deemed "too stupid to ever be real". |
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Take a look at my exobiology subforum of the planet Nereus! COM Contributions food for thought
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| DroidSyber | Aug 28 2017, 05:15 PM Post #30 |
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I'll cut ya swear on me mum
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Not entirely relevant to the above post, but why does the Troodon have two fingers? |
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Non Enim Cadunt! No idea how to actually hold down a project. | |
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Only 3 is probable, once the first two prerequisites have occurred. So yes people regularly rely on handwavium and also alien space bats such as removing mammals at mass extinctions without explanation, more than they realise. I guess this is fine for the initial scenario, as a hypothetical, and we all do it. But, reasonableness of the assumptions affects total plausibility. No?



You like me 






7:46 PM Jul 10