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[GoblinCookie]

Goblin, I feel that it’s important to remember that babies are not “free” to make, and when there are serious food shortages, animals often choose to/naturally don’t/ are unable to dedicate resources to/ (whatever I’m not a terminology sort of person )having more offspring.

Evolution also acts over a much longer and slower  period than short-term population booms and busts, so it’s not an invisible hand instantly acting to yank the prey out of the mouths of the increased number of predators.

Additionally, positive traits in a species can easily be conflicting and impossible to have both of precluding the inevitability of the creation of a min-maxed “super-prey”. For example being small and agile might make you better at avoiding predators, but being larger and fatter will make you more easily able to survive a harsh winter.



——

I apologise for any misconceptions, it’s been a while since I did anything in evolution.

I am very well aware of those things.  The problem is that exponential increase leads to such a massive overabundance of creatures that everyone starves to death, but because it all happens in one generation the general supply of food does not control the population, since there was plenty of food a single generation ago.  In reality the problem does not exist, because creatures populations do not increase exponentially, they increase in a more or less linear fashion and hence are controllable by various factors. 

The thing is that if we take the natural selection idea, then we will end up with this exponential increase since the sole criteria of fitness at an individual level is leaving as many surviving offspring as possible.  How does evolution prevent creatures from reproducing exponentially until they starve, when the individual creatures constantly evolve to leave as many surviving offspring as possible?

[thompson]

GooblinCookie, have you ever seen a predator-prey population model? You'll find populations actually oscillate. When the population is small, they have a surplus of food and breed profusely as most adults are in excellent physical condition. A few generations later food becomes scarce and the population crashes. It then recovers over the following few generations to repeat the cycle. How it all works in practice depends on a balance between many different competing predators and prey animals with different but often overlapping niches within the society.

If only 4 ducks reproduced in your pond, chances are it was a bad season for the ducks - perhaps they are already overpopulated and you're seeing the consequence of that.

[Thundercraft]

...The problem is that exponential increase leads to such a massive overabundance of creatures that everyone starves to death, but because it all happens in one generation the general supply of food does not control the population, since there was plenty of food a single generation ago.  In reality the problem does not exist, because creatures populations do not increase exponentially, they increase in a more or less linear fashion and hence are controllable by various factors.

I'm certainly no expert in zoology or evolution, but I doubt that population growth is quite so linear and predictable.

For example: While many readers may be aware of how science tells us that the domestic chicken originated as a wild jungle of the far east, I'm pretty sure many have not heard the details of how this jungle fowl lived and, more importantly, what prompted the locals to domesticate them.

In Thailand the Red Jungle Fowl is generally to be found in bamboo forest , and in fact is sometimes referred to the \"BambooFowl\" in bird books. Where the elevation of hills rises to a level unsuitable for bamboo we observed no jungle fowl.

... bamboo provides them with a good source of food at a time when most other sources of food are relatively scarce, since bamboo sheds its seeds in the dry season...

Thing is, bamboo only releases it's seeds every several years. This makes it difficult or impossible for local wildlife to consume all of them, especially since populations that rely on them for a food source would have to get by on other sources in the years between it's seeding year, thus keeping the population of bamboo seed-eaters in check.

From wikipedia:

Bamboos seldom and unpredictably flower, and the frequency of flowering varies greatly from species to species. Once flowering takes place, a plant declines and often dies entirely. In fact, many species only flower at intervals as long as 65 or 120 years.

One hypothesis to explain the evolution of this semelparous mass flowering is the predator satiation hypothesis, which argues that by fruiting at the same time, a population increases the survival rate of its seeds by flooding the area with fruit, so even if predators eat their fill, seeds will still be left over. By having a flowering cycle longer than the lifespan of the rodent predators, bamboos can regulate animal populations by causing starvation during the period between flowering events. Thus, the death of the adult clone is due to resource exhaustion, as it would be more effective for parent plants to devote all resources to creating a large seed crop than to hold back energy for their own regeneration.

But this jungle fowl has been genetically hard-wired to pump out lots of eggs when food is plentiful - during the year and dry season when bamboo goes to seed. It's as if Mother Nature perfected an egg-laying machine, so it can reproduce very rapidly to take advantage of abundant food.

That is why the jungle fowl became domesticated as the common chicken, because it could produce copious amounts of eggs if food is plentiful. The locals fed and protected the jungle fowl and, as a consequence, could gather lots of eggs.

[Dorsidwarf]

While I admit I forgot about epigenetics because it’s only relatively recently it hasn’t been considered theoretical fringe science, but rather a real thing; I have to ask how hybridisation of bird species supports the point you made. Two closely related species being able to produce a viable, genetically distinct hybrid species that breeds true  is fascinating, but how is it related to epigenetics, the direct effect of environmental conditions to produce a heritable change in phenotype?

[Thundercraft]

I have to ask how hybridisation of bird species supports the point you made. Two closely related species being able to produce a viable, genetically distinct hybrid species that breeds true  is fascinating, but how is it related to epigenetics...[snip]?

How did my point about hybridization relate to epigenetics? It does not. I brought up both subjects just to point out flaws or exceptions to your statement (merely because this inaccuracy greatly bothered me, not because I disagreed with the gist of the rest of your post):

Evolution also acts over a much longer and slower  period than short-term population booms and busts...

Then, tussock posted a bunch of claims, some of which I disagreed with. Claims such as "Variation within a species is not evolution" and...

Evolution is about genes, and their prevalence in a population.

So, I expanded on my earlier post, giving more details and references to back up my statements about epigenetics and hybridization. These are separate mechanisms, but each is capable of noticeable, significant evolution in years instead of many, many eons. The latter, hybridization, is hard to argue against because this is established science and can unquestionably result in a distinct new organism, whereas epigenetics is still new, not completely understood and, thus, still a bit controversial.

BTW: In case there's any doubt, here's a couple more academic articles in support of epigenetics as a form of evolution:

The Conversation : No, epigenetics and environmental responsiveness don't undermine Darwinian evolution
ScienceDaily : Epigenetics: DNA Isn’t Everything

...he still does not believe Darwin’s theory of evolution is put into question by the evidence of epigenetics research. “Darwin was 100 percent right”, Paro emphasises. For him, epigenetics complement Darwin’s theory. In his view, new characteristics are generated and passed on via epigenetics, subject to the same mechanisms of evolution as those with a purely genetic origin.

[SixOfSpades]

I'm going to talk about dwarven relationships & child-bearing now, if that's all right with y'all.

Only marginally. I feel that in most individuals, the Reproduction/Sex/Love triad of desires will all be roughly the same (and thus represent an overall "sex drive" in general), but I think there's value in keeping them distinct because it allows for modeling different behaviors. . . .

At the end of the day a creature has a basic nature in relationship to these things. . . . We need to start with the creature raws first, before we move on to how they interact with societies.

Which is why I said I was going to have the init file include settings at the Race level only, and let the civ-level specs be determined during worldgen. Suppose that dwarves have
[LOVE_PROPENSITY_AVERAGE:70]
[LOVE_PROPENSITY_VARIANCE:10]
This would mean worldgen randomly assigns each separate dwarven civ a Love average somewhere between 60 and 80%. Let's say that the Tournament of Papers got an 63% as its average. There is also a civ-level variance, which is equal to the racial variance, so every individual citizen of the Tournament of Papers will value love between 53 and 73%. If you changed the numbers in the raws, you could get vastly different cultures: For instance, suppose you set [MONOGAMY_AVERAGE:100] and [MONOGAMY_VARIANCE:45]. That would give you a race of dwarves that generally favored exclusive bonds of marriage, although certain nations could decide that multiple lovers is also an acceptable arrangement, including being cool with polygamous marriages. Individuals could have a personal Monogamy value as low as 10%.

Additional variables might be added as well, such as planting the civ-level variance in the init file (so it can differ from the race-level variance if you want it to), and optionally allowing the different genders of a given race to have different modifiers on certain desires.

Societies tend to vary little, they really tend to be either monogamous or polygamous as far as the vast majority of RL human societies and monogamy seems to be on the 'winning' side.

That's debatable. For instance, it's largely only those cultures influenced by the Abrahamic religions that see lust as something sinful: The Hindus, for one, were and are strongly in favor of it. China's "One Child" policy is an example of a society (briefly) embracing a different stance on reproduction. One could argue that the hippie subculture had its own ideas of Love that were profoundly different from the rest of their civilization . . . but of course their movement was too short-lived and too loosely-knit to be called a functioning society unto itself. So it's not just monogamy vs. polygamy, even when you limit it to real-life humans. Expand the scope to include dwarves, and elves, and goblins, and vast differences might crop up.

You have a point about the "NEED!" to reproduce also affecting dwarves that were already reproducing, but as all traits have a maximum, and breeding dwarves presumably started closer to the cap than non-breeders, I'm confident that it will still result in a net decrease in disparity.

The desires are not here being controlled by the population cap?

If we're talking about dwarves' sex drive kicking into overdrive in an attempt to repopulate the fort / species, then no, the population cap will clearly not be a factor. The cap may, however, cause the extinction of families, if other families breed up to the cap first. Hence my desire to have dwarves desire at least one of their kids to have a couple of kids of their own. Maybe Toady should consider having two population caps: One that stops migrants, and one that stops births. That way, you could allow plenty of room for new babies, without newcomers swarming in to fill your "need".

You (and Six of Spades) should know that it is not good manners to presume the ignorance of other people

When someone is able to cite specific examples of your ignorance, then their statement is no longer a presumption. And you yourself are hardly in a position to be critiquing anyone's manners, now, are you?

[GoblinCookie]

GooblinCookie, have you ever seen a predator-prey population model? You'll find populations actually oscillate. When the population is small, they have a surplus of food and breed profusely as most adults are in excellent physical condition. A few generations later food becomes scarce and the population crashes. It then recovers over the following few generations to repeat the cycle. How it all works in practice depends on a balance between many different competing predators and prey animals with different but often overlapping niches within the society.

If only 4 ducks reproduced in your pond, chances are it was a bad season for the ducks - perhaps they are already overpopulated and you're seeing the consequence of that.

No, 4 ducks reproducing is a good year for ducks.  Normally there are only about 1-2 ducks reproducing, but maybe that is a factor of the size of the pond, since I am comparing different duck ponds I have visited.  I suspect the maximum number of ducks reproducing is actually a hard number that is determined by the size of the pond, in 'good years' that number is met while in bad times even fewer ducks reproduce than the hard number.  In any case, the rule is consistent, I have never seen the majority of adult ducks reproduce in any duck pond. 

I am not talking about the facts of the matter however, I know that the facts are that population basically behaves as you describe, that is it oscillates.  The problem that is that given natural selection selects consistently in favour of those individuals that leave a greater number of surviving offspring, what we will not see is what we see but something else.  We would end up evolving an exponential increase of population followed by the extinction of the species because in 1 generation (this is important) the population goes like 5X over the amount of food that there is to eat.

My solution was to understand that natural selection works primarily at the level of the race.  The reason we don't commonly see exponential increase in population followed by extinction is because the latter detail means that the races that exponentially increase are unfit, only races that increase in a linear fashion can survive in the long run.  This is where we have to think about negative evolution, natural selection does not merely select for certain traits, it also selects for the inability to evolve certain traits.  The races whose members were simply unable to start reproducing exponentially were more fit than those that were able to do so, since races whose members are able to do this *will* inevitably do so. 

Of interest here is something I remember from the Origin of Species.  Apparently some traits are set up, so that one trait will always go together with another seemingly unrelated trait.  Of course Darwin does not know about DNA, so he has to think directly in terms of trait.  The same genes can have multiple effects, that means that you can make it so that some things cannot evolve, since any change to one thing, causes something important to stop working, which cancels out any benefit that the change might endow. 

I'm certainly no expert in zoology or evolution, but I doubt that population growth is quite so linear and predictable.

For example: While many readers may be aware of how science tells us that the domestic chicken originated as a wild jungle of the far east, I'm pretty sure many have not heard the details of how this jungle fowl lived and, more importantly, what prompted the locals to domesticate them.

It does not really matter how predictable it is, as long as we don't see exponential increase continuing forever.  The thing I am interested in is the mechanism by which we control exponential increase, which is to say we reduce the % of population growth as the total population increases, given that natural selection is selecting always those individuals that leave behind a larger number of surviving offspring. 

Which is why I said I was going to have the init file include settings at the Race level only, and let the civ-level specs be determined during worldgen. Suppose that dwarves have
[LOVE_PROPENSITY_AVERAGE:70]
[LOVE_PROPENSITY_VARIANCE:10]
This would mean worldgen randomly assigns each separate dwarven civ a Love average somewhere between 60 and 80%. Let's say that the Tournament of Papers got an 63% as its average. There is also a civ-level variance, which is equal to the racial variance, so every individual citizen of the Tournament of Papers will value love between 53 and 73%. If you changed the numbers in the raws, you could get vastly different cultures: For instance, suppose you set [MONOGAMY_AVERAGE:100] and [MONOGAMY_VARIANCE:45]. That would give you a race of dwarves that generally favored exclusive bonds of marriage, although certain nations could decide that multiple lovers is also an acceptable arrangement, including being cool with polygamous marriages. Individuals could have a personal Monogamy value as low as 10%.

Additional variables might be added as well, such as planting the civ-level variance in the init file (so it can differ from the race-level variance if you want it to), and optionally allowing the different genders of a given race to have different modifiers on certain desires.

The problem is those are general personality facets that are seemingly beings applied to all creatures in the same manner.  The thing is though is that the nature of the creature in question 'to start with' will make those personality facets express differently.  A creature that is non-monogamous is not going to become monogamous simply because you made it more loving, equally a highly monogamous creature is not going to become promiscuous simply because you made it more lustful. 

That's debatable. For instance, it's largely only those cultures influenced by the Abrahamic religions that see lust as something sinful: The Hindus, for one, were and are strongly in favor of it. China's "One Child" policy is an example of a society (briefly) embracing a different stance on reproduction. One could argue that the hippie subculture had its own ideas of Love that were profoundly different from the rest of their civilization . . . but of course their movement was too short-lived and too loosely-knit to be called a functioning society unto itself. So it's not just monogamy vs. polygamy, even when you limit it to real-life humans. Expand the scope to include dwarves, and elves, and goblins, and vast differences might crop up.

Remember we have to be talking not just about what people do but also "how they intend to reproduce".  A lot people are happy to play at being promiscuous, but few of them actually intend to reproduce that way, any babies born that way are considered a misfortune.  The reason I disregard everything except monogamy and polygamy is that those are the only serious reproductive systems humans use and when you think about it monogamy seems to be winning.  Except for some arab countries and a few tribes in Africa polygamy is pretty much extinct, but historically it was more common.  Think of all the countries that used to be polygamous in history and then consider if they are presently polygamous.  The Ottomon Sultans used to have several wives and lots of concubines on top of that, but the current Turkish President is only married to this woman.  The Chinese were semi-polygamous in that they have 1 wife but a number of subordinate concubines, but Mao's China basically enforced monogamy and so is an example of

Yes it is mostly the abrahamic religions (and Buddhism) that demonize lust.  However as the above response makes clear, I am not talking about how lustful the creatures are, I am talking about *what* they lust after and whether this has anything to do with reproduction. 

If we're talking about dwarves' sex drive kicking into overdrive in an attempt to repopulate the fort / species, then no, the population cap will clearly not be a factor. The cap may, however, cause the extinction of families, if other families breed up to the cap first. Hence my desire to have dwarves desire at least one of their kids to have a couple of kids of their own. Maybe Toady should consider having two population caps: One that stops migrants, and one that stops births. That way, you could allow plenty of room for new babies, without newcomers swarming in to fill your "need".

That simplifies things, we are continuing to determine babies born according to the cap and not according to the desires of the dwarves.

When someone is able to cite specific examples of your ignorance, then their statement is no longer a presumption. And you yourself are hardly in a position to be critiquing anyone's manners, now, are you?

What a nasty response; I am always very polite and never insult anyone ever.  More often than not 'specific examples of ignorance' only serve to demonstrate how little the audience has apparently understood about the intellectual background behind what the person is saying, it generally proves nothing. 

[tussock]

Social norms are not evolution. Just, no. We're a social animal, almost everything is massively influenced by social norms, including our environmental triggers for variation.

Not literally.  However they certainly evolve in a fashion that is fairly similar to how creatures evolve, the successful societies propagate more societies that are also successful in the same fashion while the failed societies die out.

Not similar at all. Like, just not. There's no genes. There's no heritability. There's no population. You might argue a society is like a living thing in some ways, that there's a huge number of components all working away doing their own thing with no awareness of what that means for the sum, some of which are useful and most of which are neutral and a few of which are harmful, and they're all massively inter-dependant, but the components in a society aren't anything like genes at all.

Look up Merriam-Webster's definition of evolution, yourself, and you'll find no mention of DNA, genes or the phrase "genetic structure". The definition of the word is not dependent on such. As long as modifications to an organism stem from natural biological mechanisms (as opposed to artificial means; i.e., genetic engineering) and as long as they are passed from one generation to the next, how can that not be considered evolution?

The mechanism of natural selection is genes, and their prevalence in a population.

Hybridisation is the mixing of genes from two recently separate populations into one new population.

Epigenetics, this may surprise you, works on ... wait for it ... genes. The biological regulators, they're constructed by and controlled by the products of ... genes. Yes, epigenetics produce variation in individuals in response to their environment, and explain why there's more than ten thousand different faces or whatever, but they do that by changing the expression of genes, after other genes made them do that.

So even if you did manage to pass on a epigenetic switch that was somehow stuck for all future generations, it's still a function of the prevalence of genes in a population, because it's stuck on that gene. Effectively you've broken the normal modification process for it, maybe an out-of-range error, somewhere back up the chain, which is also a gene somewhere or another, and in enough generations it could get paired with another gene that frees it all up again.

--

Anyway, I'm thinking you mean to say "variation can happen a lot quicker than genetic mutation", and it does because I was well fit last summer and now I'm not, but you're gunna miss that epigenetics are extremely limited. You can be taller and heavier than your grandparents if they weren't already extremely tall and heavy, or shorter and lighter if they weren't already extremely short and light. But then you can't be an elephant or a weretortoise under any circumstances, and the reason people get taller and heavier is changes in society, which again, completely dominates evolutionary concerns.

Don't get me started on ducks. Vile creatures. But most of them you see are males, and they all kill a lot of ducklings. Some species pair up and work together to protect their young, but the ducks you find in urban ponds are not those ones.

[Bumber]

No, 4 ducks reproducing is a good year for ducks.  Normally there are only about 1-2 ducks reproducing, but maybe that is a factor of the size of the pond, since I am comparing different duck ponds I have visited.  I suspect the maximum number of ducks reproducing is actually a hard number that is determined by the size of the pond, in 'good years' that number is met while in bad times even fewer ducks reproduce than the hard number.  In any case, the rule is consistent, I have never seen the majority of adult ducks reproduce in any duck pond.

You mentioned before that the majority of adults don't reproduce. That's how this whole derail from dwarves started, after all.

Have you considered the possibility that it's not the same ducks reproducing each year?

[SixOfSpades]

. . . Suppose that dwarves have
[LOVE_PROPENSITY_AVERAGE:70]
[LOVE_PROPENSITY_VARIANCE:10]
. . .
There is also a civ-level variance, which is equal to the racial variance, so every individual citizen of the Tournament of Papers will value love between 53 and 73%.

The problem is those are general personality facets that are seemingly beings applied to all creatures in the same manner.  The thing is though is that the nature of the creature in question 'to start with' will make those personality facets express differently.

Not ALL creatures; you probably missed where I specified that those example numbers were for dwarves. All races that Toady deems sapient enough to have scope for cultural variation could have their relationship-affecting traits present in the raws. As for "the nature of the creature in question," that's precisely what I'm suggesting be made pliable: That each of the 4 main races have their racial predispositions for Love, Lust, Reproduction, Exclusivity, and Friendship be made adjustable by the player.

A creature that is non-monogamous is not going to become monogamous simply because you made it more loving, equally a highly monogamous creature is not going to become promiscuous simply because you made it more lustful.

You're right, it won't--I hope I haven't implied that. Seemingly contrasting desires (such as high Love_Propensity but also low Exclusivity) aren't contradictory at all, they're just not what we're used to seeing.

Remember we have to be talking not just about what people do but also "how they intend to reproduce".  A lot people are happy to play at being promiscuous, but few of them actually intend to reproduce that way, any babies born that way are considered a misfortune.

I'm more than okay with unplanned/unwanted babies; bastards are good opportunities for stories, as are forbidden relationships frowned upon by society. Whether dwarves actually intend their liaisons to result in babies seems of relatively minor importance. The main point of procedurally differing societies is to provide (opportunity for) flavor, and if a dwarf's Thoughts screen shows that they are distraught after their baby was born out of wedlock, well, there's some flavor.

The reason I disregard everything except monogamy and polygamy is that those are the only serious reproductive systems humans use . . .

Are you talking about marriage, or about reproduction here? Either way, I've already provided examples of how (sub)cultures can have differing attitudes on Love, Lust, and Reproduction, and I think DF could benefit from that type of societal distinction, so I think disregarding them is a mistake. You could get, for example, a goblin society that has the expected high Lust and low Love, but also places a high value on Monogamy--with the suggestion being that this culture actually cares about who a goblin's parents (or at least its father) are. Perhaps they can inherit goods, perhaps they can inherit titles, perhaps they will be expected to follow in (one of) their parents' footsteps.

Except for some arab countries and a few tribes in Africa polygamy is pretty much extinct, but historically it was more common.  Think of all the countries that used to be polygamous in history and then consider if they are presently polygamous.  The Ottomon Sultans used to have several wives and lots of concubines on top of that, but the current Turkish President is only married to this woman.  The Chinese were semi-polygamous in that they have 1 wife but a number of subordinate concubines, but Mao's China basically enforced monogamy and so is an example of

Yes it is mostly the abrahamic religions (and Buddhism) that demonize lust.  However as the above response makes clear, I am not talking about how lustful the creatures are, I am talking about *what* they lust after and whether this has anything to do with reproduction.

Umm . . . I've got to say, that response doesn't make it clear. Can you try again?

When someone is able to cite specific examples of your ignorance, then their statement is no longer a presumption. And you yourself are hardly in a position to be critiquing anyone's manners, now, are you?

What a nasty response; I am always very polite and never insult anyone ever.

I have PM evidence to the contrary. Granted, you were pissed off at the time, so I'll do you the courtesy of not quoting you publicly, but you have insulted people. Quite recently.

More often than not 'specific examples of ignorance' only serve to demonstrate how little the audience has apparently understood . . .

Dude, it's not MY fault that you insist on failing to comprehend things like the mechanics of resource consumption. You calculate generations of ducks as if they just magically spring into being, and then announce that the duck population has exceeded critical mass and the entire ecosystem has collapsed. That is wrong on so many levels, but as I hate this entire derail I'll stick to the main three.
1) As has been previously stated in reference to the jungle fowl, fertility in most species is dependent upon nutrition. If food is scarce, the females simply don't have the energy/nutrients to invest in a large number of offspring. Meaning, if the duck population is nearing the upper limit of what the environment can support, there will be fewer ducklings.
2) Ducklings can't obtain food as readily as adults, and adults with many ducklings will be so invested getting food for them that they will have less time/energy to find food for themselves. If food is scarce, the adults won't die--the ducklings do, in fact very few of them will reach adulthood. If anything, this event will preferentially select those ducks with smaller brood sizes.
3) An entire generation of ducks doesn't all die at the same time, what the hell. The slower, weaker, less successful foragers die, and the faster, stronger, smarter, duck-eaters live. If the ducks have a good hear, the snapping turtles and peregrine falcons will have a good year after that. I am amazed at how you persist in thinking that large broods must inevitably mean a 1-generational ecocide.

[thompson]

Predation of nests is no doubt an important factor as well, but that's enough of that.

Getting back on track... I think marriage really needs to be handled by culture, and that should also determine family sizes to some extent. Obviously there should be variability. I'd like to see courtship implemented as well, possibility with some dwarves being more attractive mates than others (some professions more attractive than others, etc). And having a separate needs system for lust is an excellent idea. Adultery could make for some interesting consequences.

Until we know how Toady intends to implement culture it's probably premature to discuss how it should be implemented in the raws, though.

[GoblinCookie]

Not similar at all. Like, just not. There's no genes. There's no heritability. There's no population. You might argue a society is like a living thing in some ways, that there's a huge number of components all working away doing their own thing with no awareness of what that means for the sum, some of which are useful and most of which are neutral and a few of which are harmful, and they're all massively inter-dependant, but the components in a society aren't anything like genes at all.

That is why I said not literally.  I said analogously, in that societies in many respects behave similarly to living organisms, successful societies propagate other societies that are similar to themselves, unsuccessful societies die out.  There are indeed differences between the way the two work, but those are not usually very significant.  Creatures have DNA but societies have ideas, which work and propagate similarly.  One of the only real differences in how the mechanics work is that societies can copy the ideas of other societies but no creature can copy DNA of other creatures.  This allows for ideas to work in a virus-like fashion which actual DNA does not, an idea that destroys societies can potentially survive because it keeps jumping from one society to another, DNA cannot spread independently of the creature of which it is a part. 

So yes, there are differences but more similarities than differences as far as mechanics are concerned. 

Not ALL creatures; you probably missed where I specified that those example numbers were for dwarves. All races that Toady deems sapient enough to have scope for cultural variation could have their relationship-affecting traits present in the raws. As for "the nature of the creature in question," that's precisely what I'm suggesting be made pliable: That each of the 4 main races have their racial predispositions for Love, Lust, Reproduction, Exclusivity, and Friendship be made adjustable by the player.

What is the nature of dwarf sexuality and how are we establishing that to begin with?  We can assume that the present "stay faithful to spouse even if spouse is dead" is not the intended system fore dwarves even if isn't for humans. 

You're right, it won't--I hope I haven't implied that. Seemingly contrasting desires (such as high Love_Propensity but also low Exclusivity) aren't contradictory at all, they're just not what we're used to seeing.

Given those facets are universal to all creatures, it is not a good idea to try to express the basic nature of the creature's sexuality by such personality facets.  It is better to come up with a number of different systems, possibly using several for the same creature and apply to facets on top of those basic systems to 'tweak' how they behave. 

I'm more than okay with unplanned/unwanted babies; bastards are good opportunities for stories, as are forbidden relationships frowned upon by society. Whether dwarves actually intend their liaisons to result in babies seems of relatively minor importance. The main point of procedurally differing societies is to provide (opportunity for) flavor, and if a dwarf's Thoughts screen shows that they are distraught after their baby was born out of wedlock, well, there's some flavor.

If dwarves do not have 100% effective birth control, then that would presumably mean that we would also end with babies being born above the population cap.  If dwarves can always ensure that babies are not born to exceed the population cap, why would they not also be able to ensure that they did not end up with illegitimate children? 

Are you talking about marriage, or about reproduction here? Either way, I've already provided examples of how (sub)cultures can have differing attitudes on Love, Lust, and Reproduction, and I think DF could benefit from that type of societal distinction, so I think disregarding them is a mistake. You could get, for example, a goblin society that has the expected high Lust and low Love, but also places a high value on Monogamy--with the suggestion being that this culture actually cares about who a goblin's parents (or at least its father) are. Perhaps they can inherit goods, perhaps they can inherit titles, perhaps they will be expected to follow in (one of) their parents' footsteps.

There is not really any distinction in reality.  People tend to be reluctant to actually reproduce voluntarily except when they are married, at least in the de-facto sense.  The only real forms of marriage the overwhelming majority of human societies is basically 1 man + 1 woman or 1 man + several woman.  While promiscuity exists in all societies, it is basically based upon birth control, it exists because the humans think they can 'get away with it', that is they can avoid producing a large number of illegitimate children.  Additionally it tends to be favored by men rather than women, because they can more easily escape the consequences, a fact that means that much promiscuity tends to be essentially coercive in nature (prostitution, sexual abuse, rape) rather than consensual.  Promiscuous subcultures tend to be coercive mechanisms to this end, the social pressure acts to persuade the women to behave as the male members of the group wish them to, but since the whole thing is still based upon avoiding reproduction they do not have any independent prospects and thus are eternally parasitic on the wider monogamous society. 

A culture will not invent institutions that fly in the face of the biological nature of the majority of it's members.  That is because there is no basis for such a thing to ever come about, if goblins are predominantly promiscuous, there is no demand in that society to invent institutions of inheritance or otherwise that reflect any other system.  Changing things is hard if history tells us anything, no crank can turn up and wave a magic wand to impose a set of institutions without the support of a majority and there is no majority against the creature's own basic nature. 

Umm . . . I've got to say, that response doesn't make it clear. Can you try again?

The vast majority of formerly polygamous societies are now monogamous, that is a basic historical fact.  You just have to go through a mental list of societies that used to be polygamous and consider how many of them are still polygamous to realize the pretty much the whole world is now monogamous. 

I have PM evidence to the contrary. Granted, you were pissed off at the time, so I'll do you the courtesy of not quoting you publicly, but you have insulted people. Quite recently.

I did not directly insult you even then, angry as my response was.  You are the one that insults people SixOfSpades, why else go around calling people ignorant?  Is calling people ignorant ever going to enlighten anyone?  What is the purpose of this whole exercise except to insult me, you love to do that and clearly have no small amount of practice at it, hence you have correctly determined that calling me ignorant is the best way to insult me. 

Dude, it's not MY fault that you insist on failing to comprehend things like the mechanics of resource consumption. You calculate generations of ducks as if they just magically spring into being, and then announce that the duck population has exceeded critical mass and the entire ecosystem has collapsed. That is wrong on so many levels, but as I hate this entire derail I'll stick to the main three.
1) As has been previously stated in reference to the jungle fowl, fertility in most species is dependent upon nutrition. If food is scarce, the females simply don't have the energy/nutrients to invest in a large number of offspring. Meaning, if the duck population is nearing the upper limit of what the environment can support, there will be fewer ducklings.
2) Ducklings can't obtain food as readily as adults, and adults with many ducklings will be so invested getting food for them that they will have less time/energy to find food for themselves. If food is scarce, the adults won't die--the ducklings do, in fact very few of them will reach adulthood. If anything, this event will preferentially select those ducks with smaller brood sizes.
3) An entire generation of ducks doesn't all die at the same time, what the hell. The slower, weaker, less successful foragers die, and the faster, stronger, smarter, duck-eaters live. If the ducks have a good hear, the snapping turtles and peregrine falcons will have a good year after that. I am amazed at how you persist in thinking that large broods must inevitably mean a 1-generational ecocide.

Yet all of those responses are based upon nothing except a complete lack of understanding of what is being said.  I was always talking about exponential increase in population, that is an increase in population by MULTIPLICATION and never about linear increase of population.  The things you speak of are true if population increase in linear, in that case it takes many generations to go over the 'population' cap and hence conditions can control population by subtracting from the linear increase until we arrive at a stable population. 

If we are talking about exponential increase, then we do very end up with ecocide in 1 generation.  If you bothered to pay attention to the maths, then you would realise that.  Say we have 100 ducks in a duck pond that can support 200 ducks.  There is presently plenty of resources, twice as many resources as there are ducks and hence there is no shortage of food to deter those ducks from reproducing.  However ever duck produces about 10 ducklings, which amounts to an increase in the population of 5X when you consider that only half of them are female.  In one generation we now have 500 ducks in a duck pond than can support 200 ducks.  No superducks magically exist in the population that can live on less than half the food of the normal ducks and if they did it would not matter, since the population would simply get even larger. 

In empirical reality this is not what happens.  The majority of ducks seemingly choose not to reproduce each year, which ensures that any population increase is linear enough that the above situation never occurs.  Staggered over many generations it is now possible for the increasing scarcity of resources to reduce the rate of population increase to nothing and hence prevent us ever ending up with the above extinction scenario. 

Have you considered the possibility that it's not the same ducks reproducing each year?

It does not really matter.  A duck that has babies every year leaves more offspring than one that waits it turn in the duckling queue and hence is 'fitter'.  In any case swans do not have that luxury since they are monogamous and do reproduce every year.  In that case however they have half the babies that ducks have (about 5 rather than about 10) and the majority of the swans are 'unmarried' and go around in large bachelor groups.  One of such groups actually exists in the duckpond I mentioned, they never reproduce because it is the 'married' swans that live apart elsewhere that do so and their babies end up joining their group once they grow up.

[Thundercraft]

Interestingly, as I was browsing YouTube today, I happened across this science video on Big Think that caught my eye, which happened to relate to both evolution and ducks. Right away the narrator, Richard Prum (Professor of Ornithology and Head Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at Yale), said something which I thought I should share with this discussion:

What duck sex teaches us about humans, incels, and feminists | Richard Prum
@0:06

According to aesthetic evolution, animals are agents in their own evolution; that is, through their choices they end up shaping their own species.

He goes on from there to talk about how ducks are unusual among birds, notably for how they have two different types of reproduction - both the usual kind when two mutually seek each other out and, also, forced copulation. He claimed that choices (forced copulation) of duck ancestors have shaped the evolution of the species into their current state. (It goes into quite the detail, such as how certain species of duck have males with features clearly evolved for forced copulation and females with features clearly evolved to resist or thwart forced copulation - features so highly evolved in females that forced copulation fails something like 98% of the time.)

Isn't this evidence in support of the claim that sociology can have a direct impact on evolution and, to an extent, can be directly linked...?

[Bumber]

If dwarves do not have 100% effective birth control, then that would presumably mean that we would also end with babies being born above the population cap.  If dwarves can always ensure that babies are not born to exceed the population cap, why would they not also be able to ensure that they did not end up with illegitimate children?

The population cap is imposed by the overseer's divine will, not the dwarves. A dwarf-imposed strict cap would involve dwarves leaving the fort, or some serious self-control. Abstinence is the only 100%, after all.

Yet all of those responses are based upon nothing except a complete lack of understanding of what is being said.  I was always talking about exponential increase in population, that is an increase in population by MULTIPLICATION and never about linear increase of population.  The things you speak of are true if population increase in linear, in that case it takes many generations to go over the 'population' cap and hence conditions can control population by subtracting from the linear increase until we arrive at a stable population.

This is what happens in reality:

It's neither linear nor purely exponential.

If we are talking about exponential increase, then we do very end up with ecocide in 1 generation.  If you bothered to pay attention to the maths, then you would realise that.  Say we have 100 ducks in a duck pond that can support 200 ducks.  There is presently plenty of resources, twice as many resources as there are ducks and hence there is no shortage of food to deter those ducks from reproducing.  However ever duck produces about 10 ducklings, which amounts to an increase in the population of 5X when you consider that only half of them are female.  In one generation we now have 500 ducks in a duck pond than can support 200 ducks.  No superducks magically exist in the population that can live on less than half the food of the normal ducks and if they did it would not matter, since the population would simply get even larger.

In empirical reality this is not what happens.  The majority of ducks seemingly choose not to reproduce each year, which ensures that any population increase is linear enough that the above situation never occurs.  Staggered over many generations it is now possible for the increasing scarcity of resources to reduce the rate of population increase to nothing and hence prevent us ever ending up with the above extinction scenario.

You neglect the fact that the ducklings actually need to survive to adulthood. It doesn't matter how many ducklings are hatched if over half of them die before maturity. There's not a magic stockpile to eat from. They have to travel farther and search longer as the supply diminishes. Inversely, the more ducks there are, the easier it is for them to be eaten. There's also the ability to migrate to another ecosystem while the old one recovers. The math is useless if it ignores critical variables.

It does not really matter.  A duck that has babies every year leaves more offspring than one that waits it turn in the duckling queue and hence is 'fitter'. [...]

There is no 'queue'. A duck must 1) Successfully mate, 2) Be fertile, and 3) Be healthy enough to avoid a miscarriage of the embryo.

• In the first, the male needs to demonstrate fitness to the female, either by mating ritual or forced copulation. The decision to have kids can be affected by the perception of overcrowding, likely even for ducks. Humans have the older brother effect, and this could apply to other species.
• The second one is complicated. There are variables that determine how many offspring (if any) an organism is capable of in a given year. For consideration: Nourishment, stress (overcrowding/dead children), old age, severe injury, disease, and having reproduced too recently. These can apply to the willingness to mate as well.
• The third criterion is mostly the same as the second. Dwarves could theoretically have a risk of dying while giving birth.

I would hope it goes without saying that each egg or infant requires an equivalent amount of mass (at 10% food efficiency) from the parent. Each failed attempt has a cost in time and resources, which can affect fitness.

Getting back to the main point, dwarf forts should not be populated by the offspring of a few individuals. The other residents are not going to remain celibate while ~3 couples pop out 100+ babies over the years. There are social and biological pressures in place that drive everyone else to procreate while the population is sufficiently low.

[SixOfSpades]

Getting back on track... I think marriage really needs to be handled by culture, and that should also determine family sizes to some extent.

Yes, I was thinking that each civ's Exclusivity value (determined in worldgen) would determine the acceptability of monogamous vs. polygamous relationships within that civ, while the civ's stances on Law & Tradition would control whether the people involved actually get married or not. Effectively-immortal people like elves and goblins would really have to consider if they wanted to spend *the rest of their lives* legally bound to each other. As for family sizes, I'd prefer to see that be closely tied to the parents' Family traits.

I'd like to see courtship implemented as well, possibility with some dwarves being more attractive mates than others (some professions more attractive than others, etc).

There have been a couple of threads on courtship, I even started one for a Matchmaker noble, who compiles lists of which dwarves might be a good romantic match for which other dwarves, and (for a nominal fee) will provide encouragement and coaching to get them to agree to marry.
Attractiveness is pretty complicated, not to mention subjective. If you're just talking about pure aesthetic appeal, should there really be an attribute for that, and should that attribute have more effect on those dwarves who really appreciate art and natural beauty? Also, I think we're all agreed that high Strength is universally good . . . so, should all dwarves be attracted to more muscular types, or should some go for the small & weak, while others have a preference for hanging sacks of fat? Mental attributes can be even more complicated: Suppose a dwarf has a high Anger_Propensity. Should he seek a mate who is similarly inclined, so they can have screaming matches followed by angry sex? Or should he be more attracted to his opposite in this regard, someone who can balance him out & temper his rage with calm? It's quite the can of worms.
One thing I am sure about is that I think along with preferences for sard or jaguar leather of whatever, dwarves should have preferences for things like height, eye color, beard length, hairstyle, etc. (Opening the door for dwarves to alter their hair to match the preferences of their desired mates.) Most importantly, each dwarf's preferences should state the gender(s) that he/she finds attractive (unless the raws have set the incidence of homosexuality to be zero, in which case this statement of preference would be wholly redundant).

Adultery could make for some interesting consequences.

"He is the father of Melbil Lobsterpaddled and Ezum Towerstones. He believes he is the father of Cog Dustwheel."

Until we know how Toady intends to implement culture it's probably premature to discuss how it should be implemented in the raws, though.

Except that our suggestions and discussions let Toady know what (at least some of) the players hope to see, so in this sort of case putting the cart before the horse is actually helpful. One thing I do find curious, however: Many users (myself definitely included) have all sorts of plans about how civilizations could/should be procedurally diversified in worldgen, how they could all have different cultures, religious practices, wardrobes, diets, music, etc. But the thing is, I've never seen actual confirmation that is is even planned. Have Toady and/or Threetoe ever given a definite yea or nay if different societies of the same race will truly have noticeable differences from one another?

All races that Toady deems sapient enough to have scope for cultural variation could have their relationship-affecting traits present in the raws. As for "the nature of the creature in question," that's precisely what I'm suggesting be made pliable: That each of the 4 main races have their racial predispositions for Love, Lust, Reproduction, Exclusivity, and Friendship be made adjustable by the player.

What is the nature of dwarf sexuality and how are we establishing that to begin with?  We can assume that the present "stay faithful to spouse even if spouse is dead" is not the intended system fore dwarves even if isn't for humans.

Well, if anyone gets to define the canon values, it's obviously Toady. But just ballparking here, I'd say something like . . . Love_Propensity 40% (with a 30% variance), Lust_Propensity 35% (20% variance), Reproduction 50% (15%), Exclusivity 90% (25%), and Friendship 60% (30%). So in order of relative importance (in general), monogamy > friends > having kids > falling in love > getting laid.

You're right, it won't--I hope I haven't implied that. Seemingly contrasting desires (such as high Love_Propensity but also low Exclusivity) aren't contradictory at all, they're just not what we're used to seeing.

Given those facets are universal to all creatures, it is not a good idea to try to express the basic nature of the creature's sexuality by such personality facets.  It is better to come up with a number of different systems, possibly using several for the same creature and apply to facets on top of those basic systems to 'tweak' how they behave.

Glossing over the "all creatures" generalization, it seems a rather good idea to define a race's sexual behavior by isolating its various motivations and setting them individually. But hey, if you truly want multiple different systems affecting each creature, by all means go ahead & construct that.

If dwarves do not have 100% effective birth control, then that would presumably mean that we would also end with babies being born above the population cap.  If dwarves can always ensure that babies are not born to exceed the population cap, why would they not also be able to ensure that they did not end up with illegitimate children?

As Bumber said, overseer controls should not be confused with dwarf behavior.

Are you talking about marriage, or about reproduction here?

There is not really any distinction in reality.

Well, that's one hell of an overstatement, but I see your point. Still, whether or not people are reluctant to reproduce while unmarried is rather irrelevant against the fact that it happens all the damn time. (Although to be fair, it used to be far less common, as Western societies frowned on it a lot more.) I would say the whole promiscuity culture of "baby mama"s and such definitely falls outside the sphere of actual polygamy.

A culture will not invent institutions that fly in the face of the biological nature of the majority of it's members.

Many major religions have orders whose members are sworn to total celibacy, for life. Is that not the very definition of violating a major biological imperative? Or do you not consider monasteries to be an "institution"?

. . . if goblins are predominantly promiscuous, there is no demand in that society to invent institutions of inheritance or otherwise that reflect any other system.  Changing things is hard if history tells us anything, no crank can turn up and wave a magic wand to impose a set of institutions without the support of a majority and there is no majority against the creature's own basic nature. 

It doesn't necessarily have to involve change: If a group (such as goblins) has a trait (such as promiscuity) with a large variance, then a subgroup of less promiscuous individuals could exist without changing the average promiscuity of goblins in general. If that subgroup decided to leave the larger society, and strike out to form a civilization of their own, BOOM, new culture with a (somewhat) different set of ethics--perhaps in slight opposition to the rest of their race, and even their own basic nature.
 

You just have to go through a mental list of societies that used to be polygamous and consider how many of them are still polygamous to realize the pretty much the whole world is now monogamous.

Monogamous as far as actual marriage is concerned, yes. I've heard of no meaningful indication that extramarital sex has decreased.

I did not directly insult you even then, angry as my response was.

Did you not save a copy in your Sent folder? I can bounce it back to you if you'd like.

You are the one that insults people SixOfSpades

Ah, but that's just it: I actually don't insult people, I only insult you. The majority of people are willing to learn from instruction. The majority of people are willing to learn from examples. The majority of people can learn from rational argument and references to experts. The majority of people can at least comprehend whether or not their views are unpopular. But not you. You represent The Great Unteachable, the guy who's read the first chapter of every book in the room. You have learned just enough to decide that there's nothing else worth learning. It is your precise combination of intelligence, ignorance, and arrogance, that has earned my malevolence.

What is the purpose of this whole exercise except to insult me

To ensure that nobody mistakes any of the more ridiculous of your notions as having any rational basis. So that the concept of "intelligent debate" does not give way to "one guy saying the same foolish things over & over." To reassure anyone who might read this that, even in Trump's Post-Truth era, there are still places where facts DO still matter. And to teach forum users a really handy life hack which can save them a LOT of time: If GoblinCookie disagrees with somebody, that's because GoblinCookie is wrong.