zompist bboard

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I've been thinking about the golems having a compulsion to build things and take advantage of anything in their environment to achieve this, including sapients. They view anything as either building material or building tools.

I suppose they were designed to do something, and they're simply carrying out what they're designed for, except their masters aren't on the scene to guide them.

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It was about time I changed this.

I think ol bofosh did a pretty good job making the golems into something interesting, even disturbing.

"What do they need?" is always an excellent question to ask about a culture. As golems don't need food or sex, that eliminates a bunch of motivations and problems. But how about...

-- really good minerals to eat (surely they don't all just eat silica)
-- land
-- military glory
-- control over other golems' reproduction
-- science
-- stories, music, pictures, jewelry, pets, games
-- the destruction of the unholy
-- understanding and mastering the magic of their own existence
-- aping of human abilities
-- new forms (e.g. creating golem lions, golem capybaras, golem fish)
-- removing inconvenient detritus (i.e. trees and animals) from promising sources of rock

Also, I see no reason you can't make subspecies of golems with slightly different problems. Perhaps there's a magical virus that's making them fall apart faster, and they need a solution for that. Maybe they need a rare element, they've mined it all out from the vicinity, and the only source for more is each other. Maybe they've discovered the ability to digest mud (and lost the ability to digest pure rock), which opens up habitats but perhaps brings parasites or symbionts.

I think the bigger problem at this stage is... everything ought to be boring, because these are only primitive 'cultures'. The complicated and distinctive ideosyncracies of civilisation mostly won't have developed yet.

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Blog:

But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!

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Huter-gatherer societies can be incredibly diverse, especially since they can be all over the map in terms of their level of social organization and sedentism. The sedentary foragers of the Pacific Northwest had almost nothing in common with the Khoi-San speaking peoples of the Kalahari Desert, but both are really interesting in their own ways.

I was of the impression that we were working on neolithic or bronze age cultures as well. So you've got basically the palaeolithic all the way up to Mycenae and Shang China to work with. Plenty of variety there.

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"I'm sorry, when you have all As in every class in every semester, it's not easy to treat the idea that your views are fundamentally incoherent as a serious proposition."

I want to make a semi-nomadic culture on the steppe and desert region in P5/6 and I'm just trying to work out the temperatures. It seems to be in the middle of the temperate zone, but it is right near the ocean. Can anyone tell me if the ocean would more likely be carrying warmer currents from the south, or colder currents from the north? It seems like if it has a warm current from the south it would be more likely to have hotter summers (and possibly colder winters?) Any guesses? I was looking at Patagonia as the closest Earth parallel I could find, and it seems that the Atlantic coast has a warm water current from the north that causes hot summers and cold winters.

Ocean currents basically flow in big clockwise circles in the northern hemisphere, so it would tend to have a warm current since its on the eastern side of the consinent. This would tend to make the region warmer year-round, as far as I know.

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Adúljôžal ônal kol ví éža únah kex yaxlr gmlĥ hôga jô ônal kru ansu frú.
Ansu frú ônal savel zaš gmlĥ a vek Adúljôžal vé jaga čaþ kex.
Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh.

I'll just go ahead and take P6, P5, and Pr5 for this nomadic culture, i.e. the whole east coast of the desert. I hope taking three squares is okay, but I figured no one else is really burning with desire to take this expanse of arid land, so my nomads claim it.

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It was about time I changed this.

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I basically assumed golems just lack the impulse to place a supernatural being as the source of a phenomenon they don't understand, but just shrug and go 'Does not compute'. I don't think it's necessary to make them atheists, but just that they'll have a predilection to be irreligious/non-practicing, and not a likely source of world religions. A golem that claims to believe in a pancreator seems fine to me, they just wouldn't really care that much about that fact, nor would take great offense at someone's disagreement. They can be, like, non-practicing Unitarians or somesuch.

TL;DR
Golems are mellow?

I figured it was that they were simply so logical and practical and focused on their general tasks that the main part of spirituality they couldn't grasp is faith. To believe in something for which no evidence at all exists. When someone incredulously asks, "Do you think this perfect world was all just created by chance?" a golem would just say yes, not because it doesn't believe in the concept of a divine creator, but because it has no evidence of one, and does not even understand the point of speculating on things that lack evidence. This would also mean their culture would develop at a slower speed because they have less imagination, mostly only making discoveries by chance, but a strong motivation to continue doing what they do.

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Blog:

But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!

Not even out of the stone age and we've already got philosophical questions about AI.

For my golem culture, their sapience I consider to be sophisticated imitation. At the end there is a "defect" appears that leads them to recognise and understand sapience (rhetorical: how can you recognise or understand sapience if you don't have a little yourself?). That is to say, they have developed an internal dimension that might be called "soul", or at least personality (and personhood).

Even Matrix's description of golems as "aesthetes" borders, for me, on the spiritual and not just material. From a mechanical point of view it could just be a compulsion or program that drives them to make "pretty things", in a similar way that mine are driven to build things (for them, the world is either builidng material or tools for such). Or maybe they really do have an internal appreciation of art that isn't just a "progam" (which whiffs of "religion" - at least in a simplified form).

It's interesting to see what each person makes of the golems and their inner life.

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It was about time I changed this.

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Adúljôžal ônal kol ví éža únah kex yaxlr gmlĥ hôga jô ônal kru ansu frú.
Ansu frú ônal savel zaš gmlĥ a vek Adúljôžal vé jaga čaþ kex.
Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh.

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Zomp, can we have a link to a big version of the revised map?

Here's the latest map, with land grabs and a couple of corrections.



We have 33 claims, which is pretty remarkable. Should be a very interesting world!

With the two cultures I've claimed I've also assumed the existence of other human cultures between them and possibly up in the northwestern projections of Torco's continent. Maybe hunter-gatherers or agricultural. If anyone is ambitious they could come up with some stuff for that.