12-03-2017, 01:06 PM | #11 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the week: Bestial
Doesn't have to be complex. It's bartering at all. Usually bestial is simple. It's the difference between a wild animal and a severely mentally handicapped person. It only gets weird when you have a highly intelligent creature, able to communicate that is nonetheless bestial. My go to example for that is my mental image of the western dragon. It can talk. It collects stuff that it likes. It takes whatever it wants and attacks anyone who takes what it has. The only that will stop it from taking another beings stuff is awareness that the other being poses a credible threat. But if it actually likes another being it may give it stuff...particularly if it regards the other being as a potential mate. But you can't convince it to give up a thing it has claimed by offering it other stuff even if the other stuff is "worth" more or is more useful.
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12-03-2017, 03:46 PM | #12 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the week: Bestial
Many animals will trade food, or nest materials for sex, so it can't be literally any bartering.
I suppose this is one of those humans are special, because we say so, and Bestial is whatever you mean when you say not "up to" human level of thinking. "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it." I have loads of trouble with those even when it seems obvious to most others.
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12-03-2017, 03:54 PM | #13 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the week: Bestial
Quote:
Or as S.M. Stirling puts it, a human being may pretend to love you to get you to feed them, but an animal really does love you because you feed it.
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12-03-2017, 04:01 PM | #14 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the week: Bestial
Quote:
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12-03-2017, 04:20 PM | #15 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: U.K.
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the week: Bestial
I think that the concept of "property" here also links to the also-mentioned concept of "morality". A dog may consider this its bone, and growl at you for threatening to take it, but if it finds a bone lying around, it'll pick it up without any concern that any other dog might have a "claim" to it -- because the idea of anyone having an abstract claim to anything, rather than "I am holding this, grr", is beyond its conception. And if it drops the bone for some reason, it won't blame you if you pick it up (though it might try to snatch it back, because tasty bone). To that dog, there's no abstract claims or moral issues in play.
Which raises the question of whether a high-IQ Bestial creature is really possible, though I do like the Western Dragon idea. Because an IQ 10 dog, like an IQ 10 human psychopath, could surely be trained to comprehend the idea of claims and moral issues in theory, even if it could never really respect them. Though I guess, like a human raised by apes in the jungle, it might simply never have had that training.
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12-03-2017, 04:39 PM | #16 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the week: Bestial
No. They won't. What they are doing is not trading. There's no agreement to exchange this commodity for that service. Giving someone a gift in the hopes they'll "like" or "do" you is not a trade.
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12-03-2017, 05:05 PM | #17 | |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the week: Bestial
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12-03-2017, 07:55 PM | #18 |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the week: Bestial
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12-03-2017, 08:09 PM | #19 |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the week: Bestial
Maybe...it should be noted, after all, that Bestial is not a species trait in quite a lot of cases. It's on the Wild Animal metatrait but not the Domestic Animal metatrait.
So really it seems like it means not knowing how to fit into human society - even a pet or livestock. EDIT: And thus while a wild corvid probably would be Bestial, a lab-dwelling corvid could easily have that trait partly or entirely compromised.
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. Last edited by Ulzgoroth; 12-03-2017 at 08:53 PM. |
12-03-2017, 08:54 PM | #20 | |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the week: Bestial
Quote:
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Tags |
bestial, disadvantage of the week |
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