Quote:
Originally Posted by ziratha
>learn to love
>love the robot
>sign up for a 20 year mortgage with the robot
>get in fight with robot
>take the house in the divorce
>get your groove back.
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>In your mind only, as a theoretical excercise significantly after you are no longer in danger of being imminantly squished by robot fist and thereby losing your prescious, prescious internal thinky bits.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wigmund
So how does IRREDUCIBLE COMPLEXITY work Squishy? You have time to ponder this before the GENTLEMANLY ROBOT's HAND decides what to do next.
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Basically, we can't "power up" the laser until we have a number of specific, related (yet independantly semi-sensible) evolutions which would logically contribute to the over-all 'powering' of the laser. In other words: you can't have a motor without all the parts. Right now, to extend the analogy, we've got a simple bicycle motor - it uses pedals to turn a basic gear that moves a chain attatched to two wheels for the express purpose of moving it. The mechanical parts are all present and made of a similar element - effectively making it self-sufficient (it's part of us, we supply the external power).
What we're talking about is turning this into an internal-combustion engine, like a motorcycle, or even race car. The "chain" needs to become a serpentine belt, we need pistons instead of pedals, fuel-storage* and fuel* instead of our current 'us' power, the fuel injector, the spark plug, the antifreeze (and storage elements), the battery (different from fuel, we may already provide this), the radiator, and all the other individual parts of the engine.
All of this is metaphorically speaking, of course - I have no idea "how" our current laser eyes work - and I bet our squishy protagonist doesn't know either, he just uses it, as we would our arms or eyes 5,000 years ago - with no modern scientific understanding of our bodies, just how
we do it.
The analogy above, however, is what irreducible complexity is all about. If an internal combustion engine is missing only
one part, it doesn't work - it is irreducibly complex. I grant that the machine - the car or motorcycle - can be moved without the engine, but that's really slow and ungainly, and the motor itself - the normal driving force - can't and won't work. Alternatively, if it does, it won't work long: it'll overheat and catch fire (potentially blowing up) or simply break and never work again. That said, we aren't trying to make a car - we don't need the AC, the heater, the stereo, or anything else 'extra' for simple comfort. We need to go minimal until we know we can survive the game, whatever that is... which brings up the point that we still don't know what we're doing, exactly, or what the rules are.
When we
do try to make changes we will need to understand what rule-system we're working off of (which it seems to be a near-ideal physics-and-chemistry system with sci-fantasy biological overtures) in order to know what we do need. We may need to abondon the laser eyes, sadly - it might be prohibitively expensive. Alternatively, we might just have to grow into it - literally, we might not have enough bio-mass right now. You can't stick a motorcycle engine on a bycicle - you have to have a large and strong enough framework to support it.
To get back to the quotes in question: the reason that the quoted post was the opposite of how irreducible complexity works, it's like saying "Hey, guys, I know how we can save a ton of money - instead of buying all the motorcycle parts, we can build a unicycle (they're much cheaper) and then use
that the same way we would a motorcycle, including filling up its internal combustion engine with really high quality fuel that we make in our distillery in our house! Brilliant!" while Ahra's response indicates "No, that's stupid, you need the (larger and more complex) motorcycle body
and the engine - you can't reduce it to being a unicycle to avoid paying the price. Further your distillery will wreck that engine faster than you could sneeze 'oops'."
*fuel: it will require more than what we can give it now. I'm going to say we have to find a powersource greater than "ourself". Perhaps somehow converting the gold thing, but I'm not certain.
EDIT:
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Dang. Kirby is... is really an impressively accurate conceptualization for what we are. Consumption leads to utilizing
what we consume to achieve a limited set of "higher" evolutionary states. Pokemon has been an adequate analogy until now, but Kirby is even better, as he can 'sacrifice' unwanted power for another more useful one. Huh. I wonder if - upon consuming the dweller - he can inherent some of its properties (including the hypnotic mouth effect which would, in theory, be infinately useful to an all-consuming cuteness). Again, I reitterate, we don't know the rules yet - we need to be more aware of what's going on. I'd suggest a better brain - but we need to get out of here first, so our current one can't be squished.
Also: dang it, krylo, why are you so much better and faster at saying everything I want to? Well played, good sir, well played.
EDIT PART 2:
No, we're totally not godless. We totally worshipped that mega mushroom, the strange mushroom, and/or whatever primal and/or divine spirit was "behind" such a glorious thing.
ALSO, while I wholeheartedly embrace the cute in general, we may - at some point - need to evolve past that/mature to the point that we can truly survive. As evidenced by Kirby, we are probably some ways off from that, but I would like us to keep our options open.