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#26: Mar 12th 2022 at 6:12:21 AM

Okay, so how do they perform said genetic engineering? Magic? The kinds of toolmaking required imply advanced materials science, which they can't have without first engineering these creatures to produce said materials. You have a chicken-and-egg problem.

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#27: Mar 12th 2022 at 12:02:30 PM

Couple of points here:

"Imagine create reef farms where the mollusks are bred to produce coral as strong as steel"

You're going to have to explain how anyone gets chitin as strong as steel. Do you know enough about biochemistry to make it seem plausible?

But the overall issue I think is the potential skill tree. Civilizations and their members don't just discover things randomly. It's not a matter of pure ingenious insight, people discover new things based on the discoveries of the past. So if this hypothetical underwater civilization invests it's resources into mollusk breeding, then yes, it's not unlikely they can develop usable armor, weapons, and even some type of underwater vehicle, but advancement is limited by the energy available. They are stuck at medieval style melee weapons unless they develop some sort of functional equivalent of gunpowder, and they are stuck at animal drawn wagons unless they discover the functional equivalent of steam power. How do they do that via animal husbandry?

I proposed several different approaches that might make it possible for the aliens to develop metallurgy, and therefore actual steampower and even electricity. Once they learn to pump atmosphere into underwater air-tight vessels a lot of technology becomes possible. That might put them on the path to surface colonization, even spaceflight.

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#28: Mar 12th 2022 at 1:12:01 PM

They are stuck at medieval style melee weapons ..., and they are stuck at animal drawn wagons ...

And.. that may be okay. One of the points made in the last post of the previous page, I think, was that not all civilisations have to be terribly advanced. A civilisation that only ever advances to their equivalent of our "mediaeval" is still a civilisation.

You're going to have to explain how anyone gets chitin as strong as steel.

I'm no biochemist, but I wonder whether it might not be possible to breed the animals to take up iron in the environment and deposit it in their coral-skeletons.

Based on some research, there does seem to be precedent for animals so doing—see this Wikipedia page.

... some sort of functional equivalent of gunpowder ...

Perhaps some sort of gas-powered weapon?

A creature is bred that produces gas and vents it into a high-pressure chamber, and that releases it suddenly on a certain stimulus being given. This is then fed into creature that is bred to develop a hard tube as part of its body, and into which has been inserted a dart.

Now, I imagine that gas build-up would be slow, so soldiers might carry multiple gas-animals with them for the purposes of reloading.

It wouldn't be as effective as gunpowder, I imagine, but it might be an advancement over spears and the like!

But the overall issue I think is the potential skill tree.

The thing is, we haven't had to develop that way, and so I'd argue that we don't really know what their skill tree might be.

Just as we're still finding new ways of doing things with our technological tree, we might find such a species surprising us with the things that it manages to invent, and the paths that lead to those inventions.

In short, I'm not willing to say that the set of things that we see for such a species to invent is in fact the totality of all that they can invent.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Mar 12th 2022 at 11:15:39 AM

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#29: Mar 12th 2022 at 3:00:12 PM

I'm always inclined to be skeptical of Bio Punk magic as an explanation, because species modification is hard.

In the absence of direct genetic engineering, what you're limited to is animal domestication, and the vast majority of animals are not conducive to domestication. (All Animals Are Dogs is not even close to realistic.) Of those that have been domesticated, artificial selection is limited to incremental improvements over each generation, turning minor things like incorporating an additional mineral into a walrus tusk into a years-long project that the original creator probably will just have to hope their successors follow through with. For some advancements, it would be necessary not just to breed for desirable traits, but to make those traits advantageous in a way that requires unrealistically fine-grained control of the environment. Prototyping is completely impossible - you can't make just one animal to see if your idea works. Science as a subculture would look very different from what humans are familiar with. (Not to dismiss the power of gardening! Look at the Amazon rainforest, which was cultivated to a significant extent and deserves to be considered a wonder of the world, but it's still a very different kind of advancement from what's connoted by "technology".)

The best way around this is obviously to focus on organisms with a short reproductive cycle, optimally microorganisms (which also - eventually - open the door to genetic modification, both of which would qualify as major scientific revolutions). Except microorganisms weren't discovered until the 1700s, and it was conditional on the development of high-quality optical lenses. If you're being really strict about "everything is biological", that means somehow finding or cultivating a person-scale species for which it is advantageous to be able to see bacteria, and then harvesting their eyes (and then, does the rest of the squid just go to waste?); otherwise, it means having enough knowledge of materials science to make them by hand, and since that knowledge isn't developed in a vacuum, why wouldn't engineers be applying it to other things? Research is a luxury; scientists get good glassware because it's also useful to other people.

(There are some exceptions to all of this - plants can accept grafted foreign tissue with much less issue than animals, so it would be easier to assemble a creature from prefabricated parts, and kleptoplastic organisms which can steal specific cells from other species would also be an interesting line of investigation... though if you take it far enough that way, you do run the risk of developing a culture entirely dependent on one magically convenient resource which is the only thing making their existence possible. Humans don't even use plastic that exclusively.)

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#30: Mar 12th 2022 at 3:52:03 PM

@Ars: "And.. that may be okay." Well, for certain fictional uses, you may be right.

"I wonder whether it might not be possible to breed the animals to take up iron in the environment and deposit it in their coral-skeletons."

That won't get you steel, dude. At best, it gets you a weak form of iron.

"A creature is bred that produces gas and vents it into a high-pressure chamber, and that releases it suddenly on a certain stimulus being given. This is then fed into creature that is bred to develop a hard tube as part of its body, and into which has been inserted a dart."

That's a fascinating idea, and one that has some precursors in the real world. But to be a gunpowder equivalent (that is to say, to make melee weapons obsolete) is going to require pressures that I'm not sure a biological substance can contain. A mere .22 long rifle, one of the weakest commonly used cartridges, produces chamber pressures of around 20,000 pounds per square inch. I think that would crack any organic substance.

"The thing is, we haven't had to develop that way, and so I'd argue that we don't really know what their skill tree might be."

Well, no, of course not. But in a work of fiction intended for a human audience, you have to preserve verisimilitude. Depicting an advanced society relying strictly on organic technology stretches credulity, at least if you are trying to preserve some degree of sci-fi hardness. But YMMV.

@Noaqiyeum: Very nice summary, thanks.

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#31: Mar 13th 2022 at 5:07:22 AM

In the absence of direct genetic engineering, what you're limited to is animal domestication ...

Hmm... Do you need to domesticate if you can catch and confine, thus limiting the availability of mates?

Now, not all species will accept that, as I recall—but is the set of species that will accept it the same as the set of species that will domesticate?

Well, for certain fictional uses, you may be right.

Which is what we're talking about, is it not?

That won't get you steel, dude. At best, it gets you a weak form of iron.

No, and I should perhaps have clarified that I wasn't suggesting that it would. Rather I think that I was pointing it out as a means of getting beyond just chitin/coral-skeleton, of bringing at least some metal into the species' technology.

That's a fascinating idea, and one that has some precursors in the real world. But to be a gunpowder equivalent (that is to say, to make melee weapons obsolete) ...

I did say that I expected it to be less effective than gunpowder!

Indeed, with that long reload time and relatively-large size that I imagine, I would expect it to more likely find a niche alongside melee weapons than as a replacement for them.

But in a work of fiction intended for a human audience, you have to preserve verisimilitude.

Sure—but then you also have willing suspension of disbelief. Most sci-fi technologies don't require that the author lay out a full map of the path to developing that technology—just that it seem plausible during the story.

And to me, personally, it seems plausible that there are technological tracks that might be found that could lead to a variety of advances, even if I don't know what those specific tracks might be.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Mar 13th 2022 at 2:09:19 PM

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#32: Mar 13th 2022 at 5:11:59 AM

Well, one option is to see how the plans to build an underwater city in real life (yes, it is actually a thing right now) plays out and go from there.

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#33: Mar 13th 2022 at 9:52:00 AM

Links?

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#34: Mar 13th 2022 at 10:47:49 AM

I don't do links, (paranoia) but here is the gist of it.

"Architects at the Shimizu Corporation have already designed a $26 billion project to create an underwater city"

You can google this from here on out.

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#35: Mar 13th 2022 at 11:42:16 AM

Many of these proposals for how a hypothetical underwater civilization could develop the equivalent of modern technology seem to contain basic assumptions about Technology Levels, but more to the point they assume that these beings, who have no contact with any other civilization, also know about technology levels and seek to progress along some sort of plan. That's not how it works.

When ancient humans were figuring out how to create bronze tools, they weren't consulting a manual that says, "Okay, your next step is to figure out metallurgy, then gunpowder, then..." Rather, all such discoveries came from observation of the world they lived in. We learned about metalworking because our campfires melted metals out of the rocks that we used to contain them.

An underwater civilization would have no exposure to fire and thus no way to learn that metals exist, never mind how to work them. Yes, there are volcanic vents, but relatively few species can dive to the required depths, never mind survive in those environments.

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#36: Mar 13th 2022 at 12:55:43 PM

Many of these proposals for how a hypothetical underwater civilization could develop the equivalent of modern technology seem to contain basic assumptions about Technology Levels, but more to the point they assume that these beings, who have no contact with any other civilization, also know about technology levels and seek to progress along some sort of plan. That's not how it works.

I may be mistaken—and I stand to be corrected if I am—but I have the impression that some of the arguments towards things like metals were in response to objections that such a species wouldn't have access to or develop specific things, and thus wouldn't likely develop.

For my part, I don't think that I'm assuming such technology levels.

(And indeed, I suggested that an underwater civilisation might develop in directions quite different to ours.)

An underwater civilization would have no exposure to fire and thus no way to learn that metals exist, never mind how to work them. Yes, there are volcanic vents, but relatively few species can dive to the required depths, never mind survive in those environments.

My thought would be that their environment might include some creature like the snail to which I linked above, but which for whatever reason ascends.

Perhaps as a part of its life-cycle: spawned in the deeps, where it develops a hard shell at the vents, then ascending higher as an adult where its chosen food is more abundant, or something like that.

(Presuming that the sentient species in question isn't amongst those few that can visit such depths. Or that they don't develop the means to do so.)

That said, I see that chitons and limpets apparently biomineralise iron minerals—albeit in small amounts—so it doesn't seem impossible to get a shallower species that provides access to it.

However, reading up on "mineralised tissues" on Wikipedia has suggested that access to actual metals may not be required, at least for some purposes: it seems that such tissues can become very tough indeed, tougher even than the minerals that they incorporate. As a result, for purposes that require something both tough and shaped, a biomineralised animal-part, grown to specification, might perhaps be a viable direction of advancement—even if using a non-metal mineral.

It wouldn't give all of the properties of a metal, of course, but some of those might be taken up elsewhere. For example, perhaps ultrasound—which travels well in water, if I'm not much mistaken—might allow for some degree of signal transfer.

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#37: Mar 13th 2022 at 2:01:36 PM

At best our hypothetical civilization could use husbandry to selectively breed organisms for useful purposes over many generations. I could see structures and tools being built out of bone or shell material, but I find it highly improbable that they could build complex machines or large-scale structures with such methods.

They could never discover gene theory, nor invent the tools to directly manipulate genetic material, since they would have no way to develop microbiology.

I freely stipulate that we could give them magic powers to overcome any or all of these difficulties.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 13th 2022 at 6:03:40 AM

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#38: Mar 13th 2022 at 5:41:03 PM

Ocean Spiral is a conceptual city proposed beneath the surface of the ocean

"The conceptual metropolis consists of two main elements. The first is a 500-metre-diameter spherical city, within which a tower accommodates homes and workspaces for up to 5,000 people.

The second element is a spiral structure that connects this sphere with a base station on the ocean floor, 2.5 miles down."

Very interesting, not to say ambitious, but with a multi billion dollar price-tag, I'll believe it when I see it.

@Fighteer: I'm afraid that I don't follow your logic. Late neolithic man knew metals only from natural deposits that one can find on the surface. Fire didn't have anything to do with it until much later. The skill tree went food, then pottery, then copper, then bronze, then iron. Note that that isn't the discovery order—I'm sure someone melted copper almost as soon as we invented a fire. But copper isn't useful until you need a way to mass produce tools faster than the next population center over. That's when efficient methods of production are developed and spread. So I imagine our hypothetical underwater aliens would first discover the uses of heat, mostly likely for food preparation, just like us. Around the same time, they can easily develop "air containers", using pretty much the same technology we did (an air container can be as simple as an upside down bowl). You then introduce a heat source into the air along with a combustible material and, voila, fire. When they get glass their ability to manipulate materials inside the air container will expand greatly, and the simple introduction of a hose allows the air to be replenished. From there the skill development tree proceeds more or less as ours did.

We would have a surprising amount of history in common with these underwater aliens.

Edited by DeMarquis on Mar 13th 2022 at 8:56:26 AM

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#39: Mar 13th 2022 at 6:07:48 PM

How do they generate heat to cook their food, though? Fires happen all the time above the water, but underwater the only source of temperature differential that would be enough to cook food would be near the aforementioned hydrothermal vents, and those would ruin the food with contaminants far faster than they would cook said food. They would also cook the chef, because convection is a thing.

The instant the first amphibian decides to come up to see what all that air and land is about, you can justify the evolution of an industrial civilization, but as long as they stay underwater there's no fire, and thus there is no metalworking, and thus there is no industry.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 13th 2022 at 9:09:29 AM

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#40: Mar 13th 2022 at 6:17:13 PM

Amphibian civilization is an entire 'nother thing, with it's own delightful possibilities. But as for underwater, the most obvious source of heat is the sun. Anything with a brain can tell that the brighter the overhead light, the warmer the water. From there, anything that concentrates sunlight can be used as a source of heat, lenses and mirrors are the obvious solutions. They will need a source of transparent or reflective material, obviously, which I admit is a little tough, because for humans the first available material was probably water. Shaping ice would do it, in water cold enough that obtaining the requisite temperature differential is a little easier. Maybe some of Ars' biomaterials would serve—after all, every eyeball contains a lens. So the idea itself is rather obvious.

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#41: Mar 13th 2022 at 6:27:43 PM

Again, convection under the water would prevent heat from concentrating enough to do anything significant. This is a major stretch to me. We haven't seen dolphins making ice lenses and they've had plenty of time to figure it out.

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#42: Mar 14th 2022 at 6:15:08 AM

Dolphins are smarter than us in some ways, but technological innovation isn't one of them.

But as for your objection, I can see that I didn't explain clearly enough. You don't need actual fire to prep many kinds of food. We cook over campfires because that's the temperature at which wood combusts. But slow cooking is a thing, it just takes longer at a lower temperature. So focusing sunlight using the local equivalent of a whale's eye could easily soften food, despite convection. Then, after someone invents the air container (not hard), they can start using actual fire for this. From there it proceeds as it did for us.

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#43: Mar 15th 2022 at 8:40:43 AM

but I find it highly improbable that they could build complex machines ...

I think that they might less produce complex machines than produce more-refined, more-specialised, and more-powerful "tool-organisms".

They could never discover gene theory, nor invent the tools to directly manipulate genetic material, since they would have no way to develop microbiology.

I'm not sure: I could see them perhaps developing creatures that produce lenses (starting with a creature that has a transparent membrane, and developing it from there). This would give them a magnifying glass. From there they might then develop a creature with two lenses (or strap two creatures together), giving them a telescope—or microscope.

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#44: Mar 15th 2022 at 9:05:26 AM

Hey Ars—pitting your biotech people against my underwater fire society might make for a fun game.

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#45: Mar 15th 2022 at 10:00:55 AM

Hah, it might indeed!

I could see it making for interesting gameplay options, plot options, or character options. A strategy game exploring their tech trees? A hero shooter focussing on individual variation? A visual novel exploring interactions between characters and civilisations? Something else entirely? There's a fair bit of potential there, I do think! ^_^

I maintain, of course, that mine would win :P

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#46: Mar 15th 2022 at 11:33:14 AM

"Eat Fire, snail breeder!"

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#47: Mar 15th 2022 at 12:30:29 PM

"GAH! What is this vile sorcery?!

"Very well, then—sic him, my pack of razor-edged guppies!"

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