What would be the correct traits for humans irl?

[Nesos]

I can see Enduring. Humans with Enduring would live to 100 before having any risk of dying from old age, and I can see humanity getting to that point with better technology.

 

[Gutie]

What makes you think so? Among animals on Earth we are one of the slowest, without even mentioning long post-birth period when kids are fully dependent on others' care to survive.

I just stated as much. The prime period is able to be extended out in the game for all classes, and agin we are basing earth life to all races in game. You also fail to note that our longevity far exceeds most life on earth outside of large plant life, and our timeframe we can reproduce exceeds the lifespan of the entire lives of most animals on Earth as well.

EDIT; In short we drastically make up for the rate at which the breeding and rearing would do in longevity. One can cite insect life and plants as an example, but again we are presuming that other life will breed by the same notion. I suppose "quick breeder" is not so much as accurate as perhaps a longevity trait. Perhaps adding a population growth bump to such a trait is more in order.

 

[Rhel]

I personally went for Sedentary, Communal, Conformist for my custom humans. Seemed pretty accurate to me. Of course there's also a very good argument for adaptive and maybe enduring, but there's only so many trait points.

 

[Ikael]

In general, I don't think it is realistic to assign traits to humans until we can see how humans compare to other intelligent species. *cue interesting reply*

Thing is, us Homo Sapiens have, in fact, convived with other intelligent species, here, in our very own planet Earth. We had to compete against the physically stronger Neanderthals, and against the more intelligent Boskops.

We won. We ate them, killed them and f***ed them until we prevailed and they went extinct.

The tale of Sapiens VS Neandertals is well known: We were smarter, so we won. Oh, and we interbred with them, too, because us monkeys are horny like that.

The tale of the Boskops, however, is far more interesting. Boskops not only were far more intelligent than us and possessed a larger ratio of brain VS body mass than the modern human, but they also matured way faster. That last trait, which seemed like an advantage at the time, ended up being their demise.

Since their kids matured really fast, they didn't need to form social groups as complex and big as ours in order to reproduce and tend their offspring for years. Meaning that us Sapiens were able to muster far larger clans and tribes, and thus, outnumber them. Our social intelligence beat their "conventional", nerd-like intelligence. You make ingenious, bigger weapons, you say? We humans make bigger alliances.

So yes, we're social and communal, even for an intelligent species. Antropology is awesome

In regards to your point on pacifism, our disgust towards violence is seems to be an entirely a social concept considering the following

I get where you are coming from. I mean, I am a history nerd so it is undeniable that human history is full of bloodshed. But that is more of a bug than a feature, and one that it is on decline too. I highly suggest you to read this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence/dp/1531823971

It shows a trove of data that prooves that our tendency towards pacifism is both innnate (primitive humans had a smaller agression rate than other primates and mammals) and acquired (there are far less violent deaths as civilization progresses).

PS: As for breeding, this is a though call. Humans take wayyyyy to long to mature (12-13 years until we reach puberty). But in the other hand, we are one of the very rare mammals that are on heat every single day of the year and that can (and will) reproduce at any given time out of their own volition. So one thing compensates the other, I guess.

 

[Zelius]

Thing is, us Homo Sapiens have, in fact, convived with other intelligent species, here, in our very own planet Earth. We had to compete against the physically stronger Neanderthals, and against the more intelligent Boskops.

The WHAT?

...
The tale of the Boskops, however, is far more interesting. Boskops not only were far more intelligent than us and possessed a larger ratio of brain VS body mass than the modern human, but they also matured way faster. That last trait, which seemed like an advantage at the time, ended up being their demise.

Since their kids matured really fast, they didn't need to form social groups as complex and big as ours in order to reproduce and tend their offspring for years. Meaning that us Sapiens were able to muster far larger clans and tribes, and thus, outnumber them. Our social intelligence beat their "conventional", nerd-like intelligence. You make ingenious, bigger weapons, you say? We humans make bigger alliances.

So yes, we're social and communal, even for an intelligent species. Antropology is awesome

There is no evidence for the existence of a 'boskop' hominid. The entire thing is wild speculation based on a few fragments of skull.

 

[LsT_G]

The WHAT?



There is no evidence for the existence of a 'boskop' hominid. The entire thing is wild speculation based on a few fragments of skull.

The internet is a beautiful place to watch people get triggered about things you never knew existed.

 

[deezee]

Thing is, us Homo Sapiens have, in fact, convived with other intelligent species, here, in our very own planet Earth. We had to compete against the physically stronger Neanderthals, and against the more intelligent Boskops.

We won. We ate them, killed them and f***ed them until we prevailed and they went extinct.

The tale of Sapiens VS Neandertals is well known: We were smarter, so we won. Oh, and we interbred with them, too, because us monkeys are horny like that.

The tale of the Boskops, however, is far more interesting. Boskops not only were far more intelligent than us and possessed a larger ratio of brain VS body mass than the modern human, but they also matured way faster. That last trait, which seemed like an advantage at the time, ended up being their demise.

Since their kids matured really fast, they didn't need to form social groups as complex and big as ours in order to reproduce and tend their offspring for years. Meaning that us Sapiens were able to muster far larger clans and tribes, and thus, outnumber them. Our social intelligence beat their "conventional", nerd-like intelligence. You make ingenious, bigger weapons, you say? We humans make bigger alliances.

So yes, we're social and communal, even for an intelligent species. Antropology is awesome



I get where you are coming from. I mean, I am a history nerd so it is undeniable that human history is full of bloodshed. But that is more of a bug than a feature, and one that it is on decline too. I highly suggest you to read this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence/dp/1531823971

It shows a trove of data that prooves that our tendency towards pacifism is both innnate (primitive humans had a smaller agression rate than other primates and mammals) and acquired (there are far less violent deaths as civilization progresses).

PS: As for breeding, this is a though call. Humans take wayyyyy to long to mature (12-13 years until we reach puberty). But in the other hand, we are one of the very rare mammals that are on heat every single day of the year and that can (and will) reproduce at any given time out of their own volition. So one thing compensates the other, I guess.

First of all, the other intelligent species in question are species which are our closest evolutionary relatives - so they are not exactly a good approximation of what independently evolved intelligent species may look like.

Secondly, the "Boskops" are usually not considered a seperate species that competed with humans, but a variant of anatomically modern humans that likely serve as the ancestors of some people who are alive today (a simple Google scholars search can show that very few archeology papers published in the last 50 years argue for them as a seperate species: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=boskop&btnG=Search). While they did have above cranium sizes for humans, they were not outside the range of variation for anatomically modern humans, which is part of why they are considered to be anatomically modern humans. As for the idea that they matured more rapidly than modern humans... I'm really not sure where you got that from. Source?


So we're left with the comparison with Neanderthals, which, as I have already stated, is a flawed comparison due to our shared evolutionary history.

 

[Ikael]

I didn't knew that Boksops were that controversial. I heard from them first on the Discover Magazine, and they were latter mentioned in some Cracked articles. After further reading about the subject, it would seem to me that the issue is far from being settled, and that the Boksops's researchers certainly overhyped their discovery, since all points towards the Boksop being no separate species. Still, wow, what an ardent reaction

Regarding the comparation with Neanderthals, even if we compare ourselves with another intelligent and non-evolutionary related creatures, us humans come as far more social than your average ingelligent species. Dolphins are social creatures, yet they operate in very limited group sizes, even compared with our pre sedentary, pre technological ancestors. Octopuses are incredibly intelligent and probably more adaptative than ourselves, yet they are quite the loners, with only one recently discovered octopus sub-species being "surprisingly" social. Strangely enough, only the ravens come close to have a social structure comparable to the ones of primitive nomadic human societies, probably thanks to the fact that they also need a relatively long period to mature sexually as well. The fact that the Homo Sapiens needs a whooping 13 year period of childcare is a hell of an incentive for building up big, long lived social groups.

 

[deezee]

I didn't knew that Boksops were that controversial. I heard from them first on the Discover Magazine, and they were latter mentioned in some Cracked articles. After further reading about the subject, it would seem to me that the issue is far from being settled, and that the Boksops's researchers certainly overhyped their discovery, since all points towards the Boksop being no separate species. Still, wow, what an ardent reaction

Regarding the comparation with Neanderthals, even if we compare ourselves with another intelligent and non-evolutionary related creatures, us humans come as far more social than your average ingelligent species. Dolphins are social creatures, yet they operate in very limited group sizes, even compared with our pre sedentary, pre technological ancestors. Octopuses are incredibly intelligent and probably more adaptative than ourselves, yet they are quite the loners, with only one recently discovered octopus sub-species being "surprisingly" social. Strangely enough, only the ravens come close to have a social structure comparable to the ones of primitive nomadic human societies, probably thanks to the fact that they also need a relatively long period to mature sexually as well. The fact that the Homo Sapiens needs a whooping 13 year period of childcare is a hell of an incentive for building up big, long lived social groups.

Yeah, but leaving Boskops aside, humans are more social than relatively intelligent animals, but for the most part, intelligent animals are all more social than their unintelligent relatives. Dolphins are far more social than other cetaceans, crows are far more social than other birds. This suggests that for the most part, animals become more social as they become more intelligent, and humans are the most social because they are the most intelligent.

It's also worth pointing out I think it's fair to say that ANY learning species will need a relatively long childcare period compared to related species that are less intelligent. You can even see over the course of human history that, as education systems become more sophisticated, the amount of time humans spend as "children" has gradually increased. In many early societies, you became "a man" at 13, but in most modern societies it is 18 and most people do not become economically self-sufficient until their early-to-mid twenties. The exact details may differ - humans spend a lot of time in childhood partly because the brain takes a long time to reach its adult complexity. It's not hard to argue that other intelligent animals would face similar constraints - maybe slightly less if they didn't have the evolutionary constraint of the human birth canal and were able to develop further in the womb, maybe significantly more if they were born from say eggs, and develop less prior to hatching.

The big outlier here is the octopus. The octopus is fairly intelligent but asocial. It's been argued that the asociality of the octopus poses a constraint on further evolution of intelligence, since knowledge cannot be passed down from parent to child (the mother dies after her eggs hatch) but leaving that possibility aside, this represents a clear outlier. It IS possible that the octopus is a more normal form of intelligent animal and all the mammals (and the intelligent bird) are unusually social - in which case it is fair to conclude that humans are more social than most intelligent species. But it is also possible that most intelligent species are social and the octopus is the exception.

And of course, there is some doubt about whether we can draw conclusions from animals that are intelligent but non-sentient at all. It is possible that the evolution from an intelligent animal to a sentient being requires particular circumstances. For instance, some people here have argued aquatic species could not develop sentient because they could never discover fire. If that is the case, all of this analysis will tell us nothing about sentient species - since we only have a single data point on those.

 

[Ikael]

Mightily interesting points, Deeze.

Yes, it is clear that socialization and intelligence are closely linked, even if they are not linearly correlated. The argument about the birth canal is really interesting, for it is quite clear that while intelligence per se did not make us social, us humans had a huge incentive for creating complex societies and thus, passing and sharing knowledge, thanks to our extremely long cycle towards maturity.

As for sentience, this is an entirely different, even more inescrutable can of intellectual worms. The hard problem of consciousness is... well, hard. That bening said, I don't think that developing technology or fire is a prequisite for it, but rather it is the other way around. We humans have been able to develope a sense of aesthetics and abstraction since we were homo erectus, which incidentally, is when we started to master fire.

As for the argument of whetever technology is viable underwater or not, I think that we should look more at octopuses. They can use and fabricate their own tools. And sure, lack of fire is a hell of an obstacle for metal casting, but there are underwater magma veins and thermal vents that could very well be employed.

Finally, I must agree with you on your general argument. We don't know if us humans are the unusually social outliers or if the octopus is the unusually asocial outlier of intelligence. We can only speculate until we find another intelligent species. Which is why I always dreamed about the fabled "first contact". We are not only searching for company, but also for a mirror that allow us to better observe and understand ourselves

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

As for the argument of whetever technology is viable underwater or not, I think that we should look more at octopuses. They can use and fabricate their own tools. And sure, lack of fire is a hell of an obstacle for metal casting, but there are underwater magma veins and thermal vents that could very well be employed.

I've seen arguments as towards ceramics being a potential alternative to metals, too, and there's nothing to say an underwater species couldn't work out means of venturing onto the surface before metalworking was within their capability. Hell- octopuses are well-known for their habit of escaping their enclosures and wandering around on land to get what they want.

 

[General Retreat]

https://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence/dp/1531823971

It shows a trove of data that prooves that our tendency towards pacifism is both innnate (primitive humans had a smaller agression rate than other primates and mammals) and acquired (there are far less violent deaths as civilization progresses).

An interesting counterpoint to the argument for humanity's innate pacifism is Ian Morris' "War: What's it Good For?". Despite initially setting out to prove that war and conflict were a millstone hanging around humanity's collective necks and a general impediment to progress, Morris comes to some fascinating conclusions.

Despite his personal misgivings, he asserts that humanity has has been shaped and accelerated both socially and technology by conflict. Our history is one of progressively larger tribes assimilating one another, although I can't remember the book's conclusion well enough to remember how he tied the data into the modern period.

It makes for some gripping reading, if unsettling in the implications.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/War-What-Good-Conflict-Civilization/dp/0374286000

I've seen arguments as towards ceramics being a potential alternative to metals, too, and there's nothing to say an underwater species couldn't work out means of venturing onto the surface before metalworking was within their capability. Hell- octopuses are well-known for their habit of escaping their enclosures and wandering around on land to get what they want.

Another alternative is biochemical reactions acting as a substitute for fire as you'll see her-OH GOD THE SPIDERS, KILL IT, KILL IT WITH BIOCHEMICAL REACTIONS.