Microcivilizations Topic

except you can in fact based on the exponential speed of human advancement decreasing the chance of you dying to zero could be possible within the next 100 years by making yourself be an intergalactic hivemind that uses ftl communication developed to solve lag for massively multiplayer games that people in different star systems play. this is an example not what i think will actually happen

Ah, but even with this extremely out there example there is still a chance of you dying. What if this ‘intergalactic hive mind’ experiences technical failures, or even shuts down completely? Then if you are digitized you would either be effectively dead, perhaps recoverable, or actually dead, deleted or destroyed when wherever your data is stored is destroyed

That still wouldnt make it 0%, it would make it 0,00000000000000000000000001% maybe, but it will still be higher than zero. In science there is only one proven thing, qnd that is that there are never perfect 100% or 0% chances of something happening.

Most of reality doesn’t run on chance, though. Especially not evolution.

We are not talking about chance, but statistical probablity of something happening.

Also, the mutations that are selectes are still based partially on chance.

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it would have several safegaurds in place and multiple backups of my mind and it is intergalactic so there could not be a catastrophe that wipes out all of my backups and there could not be a virus that does the same as any
mind containing satellite would immediately shut down all communication systems and run an adaptive antimalware program that is always battling an adaptive false malware program that is instantly terminated should it try do deal damage to the host satellite and on the offchance the malware still overruns the satellite it will self destruct

Those are not you, you know right? Even with backups you will die, the one to be revived will be a replica, not you.

There is always a chance, even with these safeguards. None of these safeguards are 100% full proof

Is it likely, in this scenario, you would be destroyed? No. But it is most certainly possible

Anyway this is off topic back to microcivilizations

they would be me if they were constantly updated with my current mind in it’s exact configuration and my mind would be a program being run on all of these satellites at once with each one running a different part like your neurons in your brain sending and receiving signals to run your mind except clusters of neurons communicating with eachother in a way that does not abide by the laws of time so the backups would only be used to repair my mind anyways

Above zero is not enough. I’ve seen some chance numbers that are so low that even if we take our current estimate of the number of planets in the entire observable universe, that thing wouldn’t happen.

But how do you know that going from having just a biological brain to that arrangement doesn’t count as dying? Or being a separate existence from your current self?

first of all i would only do that if i had an unfixable wound or incurable virus. second i would make my brain into a machine made of nanites so i could upload it into the satellite arrangement instantly upon a life threatening wound such as a bullet making contact with my skull

i would have my brain’s nanite arrangement and current firing states uploaded to the satellite system as soon as my physical body acquires a life threatening wound so it would probably be me still but if it isn’t oh well but just in case i do not get transferred to the system and instead get copied i would wear active armor that can detect any threats before i do and stop them before i notice them

Well that’s a pretty cheap answer. As in it is pretty obvious if you have just two choices: dying or potentially carrying on living in another form (where the worst case scenario is also just dying).

I re-read the Ant Man part, again. And I am still unsure of how would the Ants know what the optimal form for metallurgy is.


The exterminator is a fair game, they could pick it up. But here is the deal - an exterminator could stomp the surface of a colony, sure. But the real weapon of an exterminator, and the reason why he is so efficient, is in the face of deadly chemicals. Which ants cannot really mimic. The only thing they do is waste their manpower and actually reserve most ants from participating in a fight. How do the ants forming the torso, the head or the hip help in the fight? I believe it would be more efficient for them to instead cover more surface area as possible and keep as many ants as possible in a position to attack.


I have already discussed the “My Brain” point here. The communication between my body is much more intimate than the communication I could have with other individuals. I gave an example of how I could perceive colour, based on signals from my sensory organs and then a caricature created by my neurones, which actually work in tandem and make up what’s me. However, I cannot possibly describe to you how a colour looks like. And even if we were one hundred people in a room, that wouldn’t change.

I am not sure how ants could communicate via bioluminescence, I cannot imagine that truth to be told, but I am unsure if that would really fix the problem of individual ants being unable to communicate between each other the same way your body does. I find it highly unlikely that they would morph into a single entity via time, as the rewards of that would be… Well, far away in time. So there is no immediate initiative, no immediate reward and advantage for a bunch of ants to evolve such a mechanism.


Obviously this isn’t an argument against the existence of an Ant-Man ingame. If it’s within the realm of physics, sure, pull it off. However, I doubt it would be efficient or particularly easy to pull off. Or at least it shouldn’t be.

But even with the ant man there comes the question: The ants are now human sized, with a single ant being akin to a cell (at least if I understood your idea correctly). What’s the micro about that?

(look it’s filler text)

It reminded me of this scene in sga*

(the machine kills you if you give the wrong answer to the riddle. the correct answer is rewarded with a battery that gets energy from other universes)

Sheppard: “You ever heard the term two heads are better than one?”
Rodney: “That’s a common misconception”
Shepard, irritaded, to the man holding them at a gunpoint: “Give me the gun, I’ll shoot him myself”

Because of the square cube law, any ant sized piece of metal (hold by an ant blacksmith) would cool very fast.

our muscles are optimised for their use. could the same muscle made from ants, having a much less muscle percentage, hold a hammer and swing it?(that is what comes to my mind when i picture blacksmiths. there may other ways for metalworking)

that can be faster than our brains, but not enough cells(ants). An individual ant may do more calculations than just logic operations in order to make this ant brain be smarter than a worms brain.

but this would be unintentional uplifting, not a civilisation developing on its own

The bees can flap their wings as much as they want. In the end, there would only be a slightly higher pressure in that room, all the air entering it exiting from the gaps around the bees. What is the mechanism generating the “high enough” hunderds of degrees? There isn’t any air that is suddenly compressed.

No, even with hypotetical extremophile adaptations a bee can’t get hotter than 212 degrees fahrenheit, after that it would boil an not survive.

I googled the wasp thing and found this. How would bees apply heat to the metal in the center to melt it, but not be effected themselves? They are literally touching it

I saw this in youtube some time ago. I think this is what it it referencing

But it wouldn’t be a natural civilisation. Ants can’t go to space if humans don’t let them to.

They can make larger spaceships ammed by a much larger crew, but it probably needs metalurgy.

This is unnecessary methaphysics talk. All ants need to do is act as if they understand the knowladge, whether or not they “really understand” doesn’t matter.

Ants have pretty small brains, smaller than crows, which is an animal that is said to be intelligent. Either the ants would need to act as a building blocks for a larger brain, or the queen may have a large brain. An intelligence other than “find water, find a place for the next colony” is needed to unlock the tech editor. An individual ant doing the orders and feedback mechanisms of the pheromones isn’t going to make an extension for carrying water from pottery. (also water works differently at that scale, which technologies may an ant need?) We know a large brain irl can do the tech editor stuff.

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Will small species (which I will define as species weighing less than 1 gram) be capable of progressing through the awakening stage and beyond?

There are several issues that come with this scale:

  • A higher degree of precision is needed to make tools: While their small size will help them achieve such precision, it won’t help the availible materials hold that precision. They will need to find materials that hold much more detail than the woods and rocks we use

  • They will be much weaker and slower, at least in absolute terms. This means that they will be much worse at exploring to find new materials, and to bring these materials back in bulk

  • Some devices cannot be scaled down with their smaller size: For example, a computer’s size is based on the size of its transistors, which is hard to reduce. Forges, also, would be much less efficient if shrunk down

On the other hand, they have many advantages over larger species:

  • They require much less food compared to what the environment can provide. This could allow them to rely more on foraging and simple food collection, or perhaps allow for the development of supercities using minimal farmland

  • Their relative strength is much greater, which will help them in many areas of society where engines are unavailible

Overall, I’d say that small species could overcome their obstacles and develop technologically. There are many ways for them to make tools, from using shells and jaws from similarly sized species to carving tools from fine materials such as something like ivory, or perhaps porcelain. These tools will be stronger than similar tools at regular sizes, due to the square cube law

It seems that simple electrics are relatively easy to scale down, so an electric industrial revolution seems plausible enough. Fires and forges, while they can’t be shrunk, seem achievable by large cities with access to strong defensive materials. The main sticking point is getting to space: It seems like even the smallest rockets would be too large for such a small species to bother with. However, it’s not entirely impossible (especially with a player directing it) that a small rocket could be made in a truly massive city, which would allow for a start to the space stage

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to deal with the being too small for computer/forges problem the player could have a caste system that allows a biostructure like the Ants Man that i made in the one sentence story game to exist but far more optimized

Microcivilizations Topic

I believe there is already an ongoing discussion of such an idea at this link. Just thought I’d make everyone aware

That is here, though!

I’m fairly certain that that section of posts got moved here from a different thread by a moderator, hence the link