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[scourge728]

while others have a preference for hanging sacks of fat?

Are you suggesting we give the dwarves fetishes?

[KittyTac]

Ouch. GC just got (deservedly) roasted.

[tussock]

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.

There used to be a very large proportion of marriages forced due to pregnancy, at least in western society. I've done family history, the birth date of the first child is usually under nine months after the date of the wedding before reliable birth control was a thing. It was just normal for women to marry the guy who got them pregnant (or one of the guys who it was most likely to be), and for men to literally not have any choice in that matter.

That was unchanged for ... I mean, it's in the old testament of the bible, as the law.

What's changed since the 70's is birth control mostly works and women with children can legally get support without marriage, and divorce is allowed without cause, so people can choose what they want instead of just making do with pot luck, and marrying someone you don't even like that much, there's just no point any more.

[SixOfSpades]

while others have a preference for hanging sacks of fat?

Are you suggesting we give the dwarves fetishes?

No, just preferences. Given Toady's stated & demonstrated resistance to in-game sex, I think it's safe to say there will never be anything kinky in DF, whips & chains notwithstanding.

There used to be a very large proportion of marriages forced due to pregnancy, at least in western society. . . . It was just normal for women to marry the guy who got them pregnant (or one of the guys who it was most likely to be), and for men to literally not have any choice in that matter.

Oh, I've got nothing against dwarves having "crossbow" weddings, but I should also point out that dwarves could just as easily not have them as well. As the old feminist saying goes, "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle," and for dwarves it's even more true: Literally any (able-bodied) dwarf can do literally any job, and food, shelter, & clothing are all free, so it's not like she needs a husband to provide for her. So the only pressures for a single mom to marry would be cultural in nature, and this thread is about opening up different cultural norms.

That was unchanged for ... I mean, it's in the old testament of the bible, as the law.

So is selling your daughter to her rapist for 50 shekels of silver. I hardly need to point out that dwarves worship entirely different gods.

[GoblinCookie]

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...?

I wish I had sound on my 'work computer' so I could watch your video.

Actually it is not two different types of reproduction, it is two different types of sex.  That is because female ducks have complicated corkscrew vaginas which serve to prevent the majority of duck rapes from resulting in ducklings, as you put it only 2% do.  When we take into account that the majority of female ducks every year don't seemingly choose to reproduce at all, it starts to get interesting.  Perhaps duck rapists are basically the result of a 'disagreement' between the female ducks and the male ducks about the number of ducklings that should be born this year. 

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.

So is the overseer magically forcing all dwarves to become celibate here? 

This is what happens in reality:

It's neither linear nor purely exponential.

Indeed, but the default state for population increase is exponential.  The only way for it to be anything else is for us to actually propagate genes for traits that result in individuals leaving behind fewer surviving offspring.  It does not matter here whether that trait is a lack of inclination or a lack of competence. 

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 actually matter whether it is the ducks own will (which it is as far as I can tell) or something nasty that kills so many offspring that exponential increase does not matter.  The problem is that natural selection will result in the constant increase in the number of surviving offspring per individual, regardless of whether the creatures are doing the controlling or something else is. 

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.

Yes, all those hurdles can force only a few ducks to reproduce even if they want too.  The problem is that natural selection is constantly selecting for ducks that are better at overcoming those hurdles.  The solution is that at a higher (racial) level, natural selection is also selecting against uber-fertile creatures because races of those creatures starve to death, leaving only less fertile races alive. 

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.

They would if they were ducks, but maybe dwarves are not ducks.  In any case we have to think about how we are going to keep population under the population cap.  The two options are reduce the number of reproducing individuals (the duck option) or reduce the number of babies per couple through birth control (the modern human option). 

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.

Yes, the different system in operation in a creature should be defined as a % which reflects there general prevalence.  However we have to distinguish between reproductive systems (human monogamy and polygamy) and non-reproductive systems (human promiscuity), disallowing cultures from selecting a non-reproductive system as their normative system. 

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. [/quote]

It's a good system if all creatures are essentially the same.

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

What overseer?

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.

The point is that in game terms that has to be modelled under the "whoopsie pregnancy" mechanic rather than the "choose to have baby" mechanic. 

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"?

As I have explained with ducks, celibacy is actually quite natural.  Individual creatures frequently choose not to reproduce even though they theoretically could and that is a necessity to avoid extinction of the whole species. 

Monasteries are not cultures, they are subcultures.  In ironic effect they are rather similar to the promiscuous subcultures, in that despite not producing enough offspring to replicate themselves they survive 'parasitically' by feeding off the main culture.  But neither have the potential to form a new culture, they are doomed to forever remain in the shadow of the wider culture they depend upon to feed them with people to replace their numbers.

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.

In which case we are talking about a different society made up of monogamous goblins.  They are leaving because their basic nature is contradictory to that of goblins in general and in effect are creating a different race entirely. 

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

*If* a proportion of the human race are naturally polygamous, you would actually expect extramarital sex to increase if monogamy is imposed on marriage. 

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

The closest I got to insulting you is when I said you "placed yourself at the head of the ignorant mob".  But why are digging this stuff up anyway, nothing good will come of it?

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.

You don't seem to understand what cleverness is all about.  Reading books does not make you clever, it might make you more knowledgeable, but the cleverness is still that of the person who wrote the book, not yourself and you will never become cleverer than they are if all you do is read their wirtings.  Cleverness is about the application of logic and the ability to disregard the illogical opinions of others, that is it is about the disregard for popularity.  It is not about books, nor is it about the amount you know; it is about what you and what you believe. 

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.

As I said, you wish to place yourself at the head of the ignorant mob.  The more stupid you are, the less you understand and the more things other people say seem 'ridiculous' to you.  I don't care if people think what I say is ridiculous, that is because they so much beneath my level they cannot comprehend anything being said.  They are also too ignorant to ask me to clarify what they don't understand.

[Bumber]

So is the overseer magically forcing all dwarves to become celibate here?

Or infertile. Not only dwarves, but the animals too. Default cap is 40 per species, IIRC.

The abstinence comment referred to the idea of dwarf-imposed contraception. You can't guarantee everyone would actually use the 100% effective contraception any more than you can make them all voluntarily celebate.

Yes, all those hurdles can force only a few ducks to reproduce even if they want too.  The problem is that natural selection is constantly selecting for ducks that are better at overcoming those hurdles.  The solution is that at a higher (racial) level, natural selection is also selecting against uber-fertile creatures because races of those creatures starve to death, leaving only less fertile races alive.

But if only those few ducks reproduce, then that causes a selection bias for more of that kind of duck. The actual solution is a mechanism that reduces fertility/breeding in response to triggers. Like the aforementioned Older Brother effect that increases the likelihood of successive male offspring being gay. Or the epigenetics that caused obesity in the generations after a famine. It's not the case that every so often there's a great duck extermination that returns the race to the status quo. A mechanism evolved early on for Animalia, in order to prevent mass extinctions from happening again.

They would if they were ducks, but maybe dwarves are not ducks.  In any case we have to think about how we are going to keep population under the population cap.  The two options are reduce the number of reproducing individuals (the duck option) or reduce the number of babies per couple through birth control (the modern human option).

Maintaining the population cap isn't the problem. We have a game setting to handle that. It's making sure 3 couples don't have 30 children each, and then nobody else gets children because of said game setting. 30 couples with 3 children is preferable (unless you're playing Antman Fortress.)

[SixOfSpades]

However we have to distinguish between reproductive systems (human monogamy and polygamy) and non-reproductive systems (human promiscuity), disallowing cultures from selecting a non-reproductive system as their normative system.

Hm. I personally was setting the qualifier for true polygamy as the mutual acceptance of the arrangement by all parties (i.e., no cheating). Anything less is just promiscuity, whether it results in offspring or not.

. . . it seems a rather good idea to define a race's sexual behavior by isolating its various motivations and setting them individually.

It's a good system if all creatures are essentially the same.

I do support the idea of the races being clearly different species (no human/elf interbreeding, etc.), but boolean traits aren't really conducive to procedurally generated cultures. It's just my opinion, but I think ranges of behavior would best be determined by scaling variables, not there-or-not tags.

The closest I got to insulting you is when I said you "placed yourself at the head of the ignorant mob".

Oh, come now. How could you forget

You don't understand anything and simply bluster about trying to pass yourself as some kind of representative of the forum audience, as though your dislike of me is automatically shared by everyone.  You represent the ignorance of the unthinking mob and nothing else, sadly.  Your ideas are bad ideas, ignorance is where they come from and you act as the spokesmen for others like yourself; lesser men to myself might regard your words as worth something but I have no interest in what the unthinking mob has to say.

As I said, you wish to place yourself at the head of the ignorant mob.  The more stupid you are, the less you understand and the more things other people say seem 'ridiculous' to you.  I don't care if people think what I say is ridiculous, that is because they so much beneath my level they cannot comprehend anything being said.  They are also too ignorant to ask me to clarify what they don't understand.

Thank you. I think we all now know what we need to know. As I have quoted Aristotle to you before, "We are what we do repeatedly." And you have made it abundantly clear what it is that you do here.

[scourge728]

I do support the idea of the races being clearly different species (no human/elf interbreeding, etc.)

Need I remind you of the clymene dolphin (A species created by the mating of two different species of dolphin that is completely fertile) the liger, and of course the mule (neither of which are fertile)

[SixOfSpades]

I do support the idea of the races being clearly different species (no human/elf interbreeding, etc.)

Need I remind you of the clymene dolphin (A species created by the mating of two different species of dolphin that is completely fertile) the liger, and of course the mule (neither of which are fertile)

There's some scientific disagreement about the precise meaning of the word "species", but one of the major camps define it as "a group of organisms that are both characteristically distinct (they can be identified as an X) and genetically isolated (they cannot produce viable offspring with anything BUT another X). By this definition, the "two different species of dolphin" you mention are in fact the same species of dolphin--just as poodles & bulldogs are the same species, regardless of any physical differences. There is some serious debate as to whether or not dingoes and grey wolves should also be classified as the same species as domestic dogs, as all three types of canines can successfully interbreed. Hybrid animals that themselves are not ever fertile, such as mules, show that their parents are of the same genus, but different species.

If you want to hurt your brain, read about ring species, and try to wrap your mind around the concept of two animals being of the same species and different species at the same time.

Fantasy hybrids like half-elves and half-orcs are fine, but I hardly think DF needs them. Besides, given that all creatures were created in a time before time (which, depending on how long you choose to let history run in your worldgen, was hardly ever more than 1000 years ago), it's clear that they cannot share ANY kind of common ancestor.

[KittyTac]

Half-elves and hybrids, in general, are very likely to be implemented later on, because they commonly appear in fantasy novels.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Half-elves and hybrids, in general, are very likely to be implemented later on, because they commonly appear in fantasy novels.

And in Threetoe's stories, so guaranteed to be something they'll want to try at some point. Once procgen race and entity raws are a thing post-Mythgen, half-elves/goblins/gorlaks are surely only a step away (long several-month step perhaps, but that's the way it goes).

[GoblinCookie]

Or infertile. Not only dwarves, but the animals too. Default cap is 40 per species, IIRC.

The abstinence comment referred to the idea of dwarf-imposed contraception. You can't guarantee everyone would actually use the 100% effective contraception any more than you can make them all voluntarily celibate.

What I was saying is that accidental babies would logically happen over the population cap, unless everyone is actually becoming celibate.

But if only those few ducks reproduce, then that causes a selection bias for more of that kind of duck. The actual solution is a mechanism that reduces fertility/breeding in response to triggers. Like the aforementioned Older Brother effect that increases the likelihood of successive male offspring being gay. Or the epigenetics that caused obesity in the generations after a famine. It's not the case that every so often there's a great duck extermination that returns the race to the status quo. A mechanism evolved early on for Animalia, in order to prevent mass extinctions from happening again.

Indeed, there are all sorts of things potentially going on. 

]Maintaining the population cap isn't the problem. We have a game setting to handle that. It's making sure 3 couples don't have 30 children each, and then nobody else gets children because of said game setting. 30 couples with 3 children is preferable (unless you're playing Antman Fortress.)

That however requires contraception.  A dwarf couple would naturally produce about 24 children in a lifetime. 

Hm. I personally was setting the qualifier for true polygamy as the mutual acceptance of the arrangement by all parties (i.e., no cheating). Anything less is just promiscuity, whether it results in offspring or not.

It is not really possible to really be 'faithful' in the polygamous system.  Afterall you have to be sort of 'unfaithful' to your present spouse(s) in order to get more of them than you have already.  That however only really applies to human polgamy, there is an inhuman system of polygamy favoured by for instance gorillas, by which you don't 'marry' individuals to from a family but you attach yourself to a pre-existing group of females. 

That is a system that can be modelled in the game, but is clearly not part of the human makeup.  Then there is the leonine system where a group of males attaches itself to a group of females. 

I do support the idea of the races being clearly different species (no human/elf interbreeding, etc.), but boolean traits aren't really conducive to procedurally generated cultures. It's just my opinion, but I think ranges of behavior would best be determined by scaling variables, not there-or-not tags.

It is quite possible to have multiple tokens active simultaneously in the same creature.  I think we model all the different behaviours separately but have the potential to have the same creature to manifest several behaviors, with a relative number .  Some key distinctions I can think of are.

[REPRODUCTIVE] does the creature actually intend to reproduce in this fashion.
[CULTURAL] does the creature manifest this behaviour only if the culture approves of it.

As mentioned, cultures will not accept as their family model systems that are non-reproductive. 

You don't understand anything and simply bluster about trying to pass yourself as some kind of representative of the forum audience, as though your dislike of me is automatically shared by everyone.  You represent the ignorance of the unthinking mob and nothing else, sadly.  Your ideas are bad ideas, ignorance is where they come from and you act as the spokesmen for others like yourself; lesser men to myself might regard your words as worth something but I have no interest in what the unthinking mob has to say.

As I said, you wish to place yourself at the head of the ignorant mob.  The more stupid you are, the less you understand and the more things other people say seem 'ridiculous' to you.  I don't care if people think what I say is ridiculous, that is because they so much beneath my level they cannot comprehend anything being said.  They are also too ignorant to ask me to clarify what they don't understand.

Thank you. I think we all now know what we need to know. As I have quoted Aristotle to you before, "We are what we do repeatedly." And you have made it abundantly clear what it is that you do here.

I largely stand by what I said before, as angry as it sounds everything I said then is basically true, even if I would have responded with more respect for you personally had I wrote it now.  You are also continuing to respond weeks later when you specifically said you would not do so in your PM; why? 

Since you like to refer to the classical times, remember what happened to Aristotles philosophical 'grandfather' Socrates?  The ignorant people don't understand what the wise man says, so they hate the wise man and seek to silence him.  There words are always the same, it's always "that's ridiculous" or "that's dangerous" or some variation thereof.  They do this because they don't actually have anything to say in response that holds water. 

Dismissing what I said earlier without a response because "that's ridiculous" is exactly what you did.  Now to justify that you engage in this insane demonisation affair, which brings back historical memories; many historical memories in fact.  I guess you don't generally get all the way to the hemlock in one move, as it were.

[Dorsidwarf]

Hey GC your ideas for game implementation are neat even if your understanding of a great deal of underlying mechanics is hilariously misinformed to a degree that you get weirdly and angrily agressive when called out on it.

Also just a note if you find yourself constantly confronted by ignorant fools who are simply too low intelligence to comprehend your grand ideas, you might want to consider that maybe some of those ideas are wrong rather than crying persecution.

[SixOfSpades]

Half-elves and hybrids, in general, are very likely to be implemented later on, because they commonly appear in fantasy novels.

And in Threetoe's stories, so guaranteed to be something they'll want to try at some point.

Well, okay. I can't say I agree with it, but I won't mind as long as it's something I can turn off locally.

Hm. I personally was setting the qualifier for true polygamy as the mutual acceptance of the arrangement by all parties (i.e., no cheating). Anything less is just promiscuity, whether it results in offspring or not.

It is not really possible to really be 'faithful' in the polygamous system.  Afterall you have to be sort of 'unfaithful' to your present spouse(s) in order to get more of them than you have already.

That depends on the wording of the original wedding vows. If Sally swore to take both Jake and Steve as her lawfully wedded spouses, forsaking all others, then yes, marrying Brian later on would be a violation. But if there was no clause prohibiting additional spouses, she's legally free to play the field and still be considered faithful.

[REPRODUCTIVE] does the creature actually intend to reproduce in this fashion.
[CULTURAL] does the creature manifest this behaviour only if the culture approves of it.
As mentioned, cultures will not accept as their family model systems that are non-reproductive.

Okay, so let's consider the common human behavior of unmarried sexual promiscuity. As you say, those who participate in it do not intend to reproduce thereby, and as well, society does not approve of it--in fact, society will usually exert pressure on those participants (who thus conceived a child) to marry each other. As this kind of promiscuity would be neither [REPRODUCTIVE] nor [CULTURAL], by your definitions, could a creature thus flagged against promiscuity still engage in it? If not, by what tags would you describe the current human model?

. . . lesser men to myself might regard your words as worth something but I have no interest in what the unthinking mob has to say. . . . I don't care if people think what I say is ridiculous, that is because they so much beneath my level they cannot comprehend anything being said.  They are also too ignorant to ask me to clarify what they don't understand.

Thank you. I think we all now know what we need to know.

I largely stand by what I said before, as angry as it sounds everything I said then is basically true, even if I would have responded with more respect for you personally had I wrote it now.

Your stubborn unwillingness to admit fault continues to be a defining trait of your character, sadly. But at least you mention the capacity to respond with respect; let's work on that. You may or may not have a single gram of humility about you, GoblinCookie, but you could at least pretend. You can do THAT much, I am sure.

Now, you do have a point about mob rule and being shouted down: The truth is always the truth, no matter how many people say it ain't so. But that's not what I see when you take one of your stands: I usually see you starting from a rather inexplicable conclusion, and awkwardly reaching for arguments that only tenuously seem to support your claim. Meanwhile, a handful of other posters collectively say, "WTF, dude," and explain why they disagree with you--sometimes with links. You almost infallibly respond to their rebuttals only by trenching in deeper, and sometimes exploding with anger. Which, of course, accomplishes nothing.

You are also continuing to respond weeks later when you specifically said you would not do so in your PM; why?

I only said I wouldn't respond to those points that I consider not to merit a response: If someone has mustered a reasonable counter to one of your arguments, I will consider your point conclusively disproved. No matter how many times you wish to bring it back up, I shall consider it dead, and usually not respond to it. Now, as why I do respond; To change you. To metaphorically look over your shoulder, and remind you that (so far) pretty much everyone who's weighed in on the issue being discussed disagrees with you. To, at the very least, make you angry, to make you angry when you are wrong, and thus condition you to hate to be wrong. With the ultimate goal being, of course, that you end up being wrong less often. You have the capacity to think, GoblinCookie, which is a valuable trait and not to be underestimated--but don't you overestimate it either. Being smarter does NOT equal being better, and simply thinking is NOT enough, particularly if you do your thinking and your speaking in the wrong order.

Since you like to refer to the classical times, remember what happened to Aristotles philosophical 'grandfather' Socrates?  The ignorant people don't understand what the wise man says, so they hate the wise man and seek to silence him.

Oh please. Unpopularity does not equal genius. It's a grievous fault to say that it does, and an even worse one to believe it for oneself.

  There words are always the same, it's always "that's ridiculous" or "that's dangerous" or some variation thereof.  They do this because they don't actually have anything to say in response that holds water.

That's true in some cases: I myself have noticed that if someone is opposed to the idea of women breastfeeding their babies in public, they will invariably say, "It's disgusting!" If you then ask them, "Why is it disgusting?" they will have no cogent response: They honestly don't know. There is a sharp disconnect between their Reason and Emotion, and they weren't expecting to have to bridge that gap. They have shot their wad, as it were, and have no continuation.
But that's not what I've seen happen here on the forum. Here, people who disagree with you, GoblinCookie, have had logical rebuttals in plenty: Because in fantasy literature, the concept of 'clan' is always associated FAR more closely with family than with government. Because to reduce an entire dwarf fortress to nothing more than a shop is a gross oversimplification. Because to give every dwarf in the fort the exact same first two names violates the very purpose of a name. Because the great Houses of Lannister, Stark, and Targarygen were NOT named after their goddamn buildings. And those are just the things that I've caught you saying. You are no Socrates, not by a damned sight, and it's high time you accepted that.


Anyway. There are no ornithologists among my circle of friends, but I do have a Riparian Analyst (specialist in rivers & streams and their associated wildlife), and that should be close enough. She mentioned, unsurprisingly, that one person watching one duck pond over one summer is not a significant sample size, and she also said that in general, intentionally limiting the offspring of one's own species (let alone one's own offspring) is practiced only by apex predators and other large carnivores--such as lions, wolves, hyenas, and some baboons. This usually takes the form of a social structure wherein only the more dominant individuals are allowed to mate--so if you were to claim that this gives authentic biological precedent for current Dwarf Fortress behavior, you would have to justify why those dwarves lucky enough to marry should be considered intrinsically "dominant". Meanwhile, in real life all prey animals, including ducks, generally try to increase their population as rapidly as possible.
She pointed me at some links: http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/top-predators-limit-their-own-numbers/
The wiki article on reproductive suppression has some interesting exceptions, and of course there's also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-reproductive_sexual_behavior_in_animals . . . which incidentally points at mallard ducks having a particularly high incidence of male homosexuality, thus probably helping to explain why so few of your females appeared to have a mate.

And that is hopefully all of this DuckTales charade that I will have to play.

[Dorsidwarf]

Don’t many social creatures also carry out the practice of killing any unattended/unprotected offspring that aren’t theirs? I know lions will do this when there’s a change in pride leadership