Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical questions

[Green Baron]

Yes, it is a slight energetic advantage, but can be an evolutionary disadvantage.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022519303003370

and

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092824076800171

 

 

Back to the point: Humans are the only species who controls fire, but not the only species who differentiates in a prey relation between the own and other species.

Edited September 5, 2018 by Green Baron

[kerbiloid]

14 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

it is a slight energetic advantage,

It is energetic disadvantage (for human species, not for any species).
It can be occasionally useful just as utilization of already hunted specimens of the same species (savage/barbarian feasts after battles),
or can be a part of parasitic lifestyle of a particular person (which in turn almost always caused by its marginality: a fugitive, a weak, and so on),
or can take place in situation of rapid fall of population (so practisized by small part of persons for short time - less than a year).

(I can get only short abstracts from the links, no full version available. Probably they want to cannibalize my money to let reading.)
 

Edited September 5, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Green Baron]

4 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

It is energetic disadvantage (for human species, not for any species).

Nope. There is no such difference.

[kerbiloid]

Just now, Green Baron said:

Nope. There is no such difference.

The difference is that you can eat either the food, or the food's food.

[Green Baron]

16 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

The difference is that you can eat either the food, or the food's food.

Yes, and the "food" has already split up some nutrients to integrate the food's food and spent energy in that process. The predator of the first food saves part of that energy that the food had to bring up to digest the food's food :-)

And it is more complex as other costs (e.g. for procurement) might be involved. But this has all been taken care of and it boils down to the initial statement "energetic advantage/evolutionary disadvantage". May be useful in times of need, but generally not the first choice.

Edited September 5, 2018 by Green Baron

[kerbiloid]

10 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Yes, and the "food" has already split up some nutrients to integrate the food's food and spent energy in that process. The predator of the first food saves part of that energy that the food had to bring up to digest the food's food :-)

Don't forget that a human is a food which creates the food's food. As well as it can create the food's food itself.
And it can store the food, and usually stores more food than consumes.

So, robbery and feudal's (squad? team?) tax collecting are much more effective ways of using other humans for food than cannibalism.
That's why cannibalism is practisized by rare people, usually fugitive marginals, and is strictly prohibited. It decreases the tax base, so 1 gains - 100 loose.

Edited September 5, 2018 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Don't forget that a human is a food which creates the food's food. As well as it can create the food's food itself.
And it can store the food, and usually stores more food than consumes.

So, robbery and feudal's (squad? team?) tax collecting are much more effective ways of using other humans for food than cannibalism.
That's why cannibalism is practisized by rare people, usually fugitive marginals, and is strictly prohibited. It decreases the tax base, so 1 gains - 100 loose.

Also taxing people tend to create less rebellions than eating them. As you say being an cannibal is likely to turn all against you. Making it an bad idea unless all in an area does it.
In a few tribal areas it was not uncommon but they did not try to rule over other people and it was probably more that you had an war and the winner on the battlefield ate the dead. Pions (mad cow disease) is the second problem, pions is rare so you could probably do this for some time before it become an problem. 

[kerbiloid]

The thing even not just in the neighbors resistance,
(I've calculated this after The Road movie or so. There was a gang of cannibals keeping edible prisoners in a dungeon, feeding them also with their neighbors.)

Spoiler

***

Say, there is one stereotypical cannibal, like in Puss in Boots. There is a village near his lair. How many peasants will he need?

Say, the cannibal captures 15 peasants at once and places them in the dungeon.
Given, 1 prisoner = 1 month.
But the cannibal has to feed his prisoners, too. Otherwise they will have nothing to eat.
So for the 1st month he himself eats 1 prisoner. But the prisoners eat one more each. So, during the 1st month they will eat 8 prisoners at all, and just 7 will stay there.
On the 2nd month the cannibal eats 1 more prisoner. And there stay just 3.
On the 3rd month the cannibal eats 1 more prisoner. And there stay just 1.
On the 4th month the cannibal eats the last prisoner.

So, the cannibal had put efforts to capture 15 peasants, but ate only 4 of them.
And the more peasants he captures at once, the less percentage of them he can eat himself. Though his efforts and risks rise exponentially.

This makes such strategy absolutely ineffective. It requires a lot of efforts and drops almost all results and is extremely limited in time. Less than an year - and no village.

***

Ok, say the cannibal captures the same 15 peasants and immediately kills them, so doesn't need to feed them.
He will spend 15 months on the conserved food, but then what? 1-2 years - and the village is empty, the cannibal is starving and has to search another place risking to be killed or not to find it.

So, this strategy also is not good. It requires less efforts, but is also very limited in time. Two years - and no village.

***

Say, the cannibal hunts one peasant per month and hides. He still needs 12 peasants per year.
Say, the village has more or less constant population. So, the yearly growth of its population should be ~12 peasants to stay constant. 
At stereotypical 8 children per woman were born - 2..3 have grown, 2 children per woman to keep zero growth, 2 years between births, this means total population ~12 * 8 * 2 * 2 ~=400 people.

Also only under this condition the villagers can be not aware that there is a cannibal near them, as they will be thinking it's wolves or so.

So, one cannibal requires a village at least about 400 people to co-exist with them for a long time without exhausting his food source.

But where 400 people live and have enough food to not require cannibalism, the 401 could also find his additional <1/400 of territory, or ask everybody to give him <1/400 of food, or rob somebody from time to time.
So, the only reason to be a cannibal — either the person is a fugitive marginal besides his food preferences, or he is a person with low morale too weak to rob and too disgusting to ask.
In any other case he can get some food without killing other villagers and risking his own life.

***

That means that there can be only 1 cannibal per "thousand" of people, and obviously he is not the best guy in the village even close. 
I.e. gallows start wishing him long before he becomes a cannibal.

***

So, any peasant who doesn't like to work or can't get plowland or job to work, will first become either a beggar, or a robber.

Most of them become beggars, ask others for food and usually get some with more or less low risk.
This strategy works until really hungry years, when there is not enough food to share it with beggars.
Then most of beggars die, but strong ones become robbers.

***

Robbers first don't need to eat other villagers or even kill them, or even harm.

In rich years they mostly rob caravans or rich travellers, and not necessary take everything.
So, the villagers don't hate them, but even like because they share the robbed goods with them in the inn. Like Robin Hoods.

Of course they are not cannibals, and even cosplay noblemen.

***

When the location is/gets poor, and nobody rich and alien moves by the road, the robbers rob the local villagers.
Of course, the villagers (even more poor than the robbers) dislike this, so the idyll finishes (if ever was).

Probably the threshold indicator is when robbers stop be richer than peasants.

Robbers began take away their food, while the peasants consider risk of resistance too high, so they share the food with robbers. Robbers still can visit the village safely.
Still nobody eats anybody.

***

But when either the place become even more poor, or the robbers degrade below any bottom, the robbers began take the food necessary for the peasants, so the peasants consider the resistance risk lower than risk of starvation.
They either arm or call a baron. The baron hates the robbers because they rob that what he could rob himself.

The robbers stop visiting the village because it's too dangerous. They begin hiding in a forest and live much worse and suffer from hunger than peasants.
There can be only one robber gang at the location. And this vacancy is already occupied by the baron.
The robbers don't think about a strategy, they just consume everything what they can catch, including humans. So, they become stereotypical cannibal robbers from fairy tales.

So, there can be only a small gang of cannibals per "thousand" of population, and they don't live long because the baron's gang is stronger.

***

So, only the most morally degraded and criminal members of the human society really turn to the cannibalism.
(Or psychomaniacs, but this is another thing, and they are even more rare.)

***

The baron in turn from time to time takes away from peasants even necessary food. So, some peasants die of starvation.
But their bodies as food compared to the taken harvest are negligible, so baron doesn't consider them as food.
And on another hand baron has to terminate most degraded persons, including the cannibal robbers and hungriest peasants ready for cannibalism.

As nobody in village wants to be eaten, there is a social consensus against cannibals formalized as an imperative taboo without rational arguments.

***

So, the human cannibalism is just less effective than food growing and robbering/tax collecting.
The main difference between the human and other animals in this is that the human can create more food than consumes, can store it to be robbed, and can organize hunting packs with clear strategy -  not just intuitively.

A pack of wolves will wait until one of them falls, then eats.
A pack of humans will form a pack from a tribe to rob another pack, but when somebody in that pack dies, and somebody wants to eat him, the robbing pack kills that specimen as unpredictable and dangerous.

***

So, when a whole city is in hunger, and many physically weak and morally degraded persons get ready for cannibalism, the city guards still keep eliminating these persons until the last hour when either a food has appeared, or total chaos gets established.
The latter  though lasts just for days, maybe weeks, so anyway regular cannibalism for humans is less effective than farming and herding.

 

Edited September 5, 2018 by kerbiloid

[p1t1o]

The only reason I can see for a cannibal keeping live prisoners is to convert non-edible things into edible meat. EG: the human body is capable of processing hydrocarbons like gasoline into fats and sugars, but it will still kill you because gasoline is dangerous in other ways. So maybe the meat ends up being tainted (I've no idea what kind of damage a human can sustain and still be edible...) but its meat you didnt have to sacrifice edible resources to generate. Ethanol would be another good example due to its prevalence, feed a prisoner nothing but alcoholic drinks, they get nice and fat. They eventually die in agony, but then thats not a problem in this, slightly dark, context.

[Green Baron]

I feel urge to make a statement:

I named the term "cannibalism" in reaction to @MinimumSky5's assumption that "The fact that we can differentiate between cooked antelope and cooked people is likely a unique trait to humans." to show that this is not the case.

It is simple, preying on the own species is called "cannibalism", and the pros and cons are quite reasonably discussed in science, that's all. Sure, cannibalism has different connotations from people in large bronze cauldrons on engraved pictures of the 18th century ("Would you mind stirring with your feet ? You're about to overcook ...") to rationally supported assessments of its effects on evolutionary fitness and energy balance and shades in between.

Hope that wasn't too impertinent now :-)

Edited September 6, 2018 by Green Baron

[wumpus]

First: Humans aren't the only species with symbionts large enough to eat: ants and aphids come to mind.

There is at least one ecosystem with a single carnivorous animal and plants.  The frogs are carnivorous, the tadpoles eat plants.  This was exploited by science fiction authors Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Steven Barnes in a book called Beowulf's Children.  A new space colony lands on a planet and finds the local predators dangerous to humans and hunts them to [local] extinction.  While doing so much havok to an ecology you don't understand isn't a good idea in general, in this case all it meant was that once the next generation of immature predators reached maturity there was a population boom of said dangerous predators.

[kerbiloid]

Btw humans are the only species which make hundreds of absolutely different species their symbionts. From bees to elephants.
And divide the mass of food produced/gathered by one peasant family by the own mass of that family.
Obviously you should rob them periodically, not eat once.

Now try to rob a wolf. You can, but your gain will be negligible.
But if you are another wolf, you just have no another option than eat it.

Ants are a perfect example of the same. They gain much more food from living aphids, so they don't eat them. Sneaky insects, don't they know they are our friends?

Edited September 7, 2018 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, wumpus said:

First: Humans aren't the only species with symbionts large enough to eat: ants and aphids come to mind.

There is at least one ecosystem with a single carnivorous animal and plants.  The frogs are carnivorous, the tadpoles eat plants.  This was exploited by science fiction authors Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Steven Barnes in a book called Beowulf's Children.  A new space colony lands on a planet and finds the local predators dangerous to humans and hunts them to [local] extinction.  While doing so much havok to an ecology you don't understand isn't a good idea in general, in this case all it meant was that once the next generation of immature predators reached maturity there was a population boom of said dangerous predators.

Yes, without adults you got lots of tadpoles who then became adults. You will run out of ammo. More fun the adults can dump some sort of mono-propellant in their blood so they can sprint fast an long. Its has an follow up book who is also cool. 

Note that real life is even more insane, its an frog living in a desert who have two types of tadpoles, the standard eat plants in the temporary pounds after rainfall. 
Some of the tadpoles however are predators, they feed on the other tadpoles however I assume they will also feed on other stuff if prescient but the much more energy rich diet make them grow up far faster as in before the pound dries up. 
Gaia is the ultimate Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant, stuff like Parasitic wasps who inspired the Alien movie  is pretty cute compare to this. 
No this would not work on Humans or other late maturing species. 

Elephants has never been breed for work, you capture and tame them. Exception is Zoos, not for work and other stuff. 
US south states was the only who manged to breed slaves for export to other states, the ban against slave import from Africa passed as many slave states would benefit of increased slave value. An slave or elephant is obviously way more valuable than food animals who can utilize grassland and other stuff people can not eat and grow up in a year. 

[wumpus]

4 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Some of the tadpoles however are predators, they feed on the other tadpoles however I assume they will also feed on other stuff if prescient but the much more energy rich diet make them grow up far faster as in before the pound dries up. 
Gaia is the ultimate Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant, stuff like Parasitic wasps who inspired the Alien movie  is pretty cute compare to this.

If biologists ever get tired of dealing with creationists, they ought to forget trying to reason with them and agree that God created all living things.  Then work with the Church of Satan to go into great detail about such living things with the tag line "pray to Satan to save you from the Creator".  Myth can fly in the face of infinite numbers of facts, but claiming to be the source of that much nightmare fuel is something else entirely.

[magnemoe]

4 hours ago, wumpus said:

If biologists ever get tired of dealing with creationists, they ought to forget trying to reason with them and agree that God created all living things.  Then work with the Church of Satan to go into great detail about such living things with the tag line "pray to Satan to save you from the Creator".  Myth can fly in the face of infinite numbers of facts, but claiming to be the source of that much nightmare fuel is something else entirely.

Pretty much this, Gaia is not something sweet and cozy, think Kali with an serious sadistic streak and lots of imagination. 
So you should pray that nature is an product of evolution rather than an construct of somebody
 

[DAL59]

How much would it cost to build the tesserakonteres? 

[Green Baron]

It is not a tesserakonteres (which is a catamaran with a platform iirc) and a strong belief would suffice ;-)

Edit: ~a million/meter. Or less. Or more. Or so. Or different. Slaves are expensive these days ... the gold is not the problem

Edited September 23, 2018 by Green Baron

[magnemoe]

6 hours ago, Green Baron said:

It is not a tesserakonteres (which is a catamaran with a platform iirc) and a strong belief would suffice ;-)

Edit: ~a million/meter. Or less. Or more. Or so. Or different. Slaves are expensive these days ... the gold is not the problem

An catamaran would make sense but don't think catamarans was used even in places there it would make sense, Rome also made some unpractical large ships on an lake however for the Romans an catamaran would make some sense as it would be an weapon platform for artillery and an way to board. Romans did not use slaves as rovers on warships, they used soldiers, probably with sailors for control. 

[kerbiloid]

14 hours ago, magnemoe said:

An catamaran would make sense but don't think catamarans was used even in places there it would make sense,

Afair the 40era has been mentioned just once as Ptolly 4.0's one-time ship-measuring perfomance.

Though, what do we know about the ancient aviation, maybe he was wishing a wooden aircraft carrier.

P.S.
If only we had a generator seat for Kerbal, like external command seat, but generating power, then we could be building Kerbal tesserakonteras.

Edited September 24, 2018 by kerbiloid

[wumpus]

12 hours ago, magnemoe said:

An catamaran would make sense but don't think catamarans was used even in places there it would make sense, Rome also made some unpractical large ships on an lake however for the Romans an catamaran would make some sense as it would be an weapon platform for artillery and an way to board. Romans did not use slaves as rovers on warships, they used soldiers, probably with sailors for control. 

A catamaran would only make sense if the mass piled on the deck was low enough to be displaced by the reduced displacement of the catamaran.  The catch is that while this was probably built after Archimedes described how displacement worked, I'm not sure that news had traveled to Egypt and was known by shipbuilders.  Roman shipbuilders would have been more aware of displacement (yes, I know both Archimedes and the Ptolemies were Greek, but Archimedes lived in Syracuse) and would have loved to construct ships based on arches, but I doubt they did it.

Another point is that thing had to have been merely a showpiece.  It would be enough to let the Pharaoh waft down the Nile, with the oars beating for show.  Once he (and his party) were safely off, use not only all the oars, but more oar-efficient "tugboats" to slowly drag the thing upstream for another cruise.

Modern cost?  I imagine it would depend on how much you wanted to refurbish a dying container ship (or simply start from scratch).  Other choices depend on if you want anamatronic rowers or simply long pushrods moving all the (steel core, if not solid steel) oars.  Don't assume that man-powered oars could move the thing, especially since the whole point of the vessel (audacious conspicuous spending) would be blown if you had a man-rowable wooden vessel and a massive modern ship glided by.

[magnemoe]

4 minutes ago, wumpus said:

A catamaran would only make sense if the mass piled on the deck was low enough to be displaced by the reduced displacement of the catamaran.  The catch is that while this was probably built after Archimedes described how displacement worked, I'm not sure that news had traveled to Egypt and was known by shipbuilders.  Roman shipbuilders would have been more aware of displacement (yes, I know both Archimedes and the Ptolemies were Greek, but Archimedes lived in Syracuse) and would have loved to construct ships based on arches, but I doubt they did it.

Another point is that thing had to have been merely a showpiece.  It would be enough to let the Pharaoh waft down the Nile, with the oars beating for show.  Once he (and his party) were safely off, use not only all the oars, but more oar-efficient "tugboats" to slowly drag the thing upstream for another cruise.

Modern cost?  I imagine it would depend on how much you wanted to refurbish a dying container ship (or simply start from scratch).  Other choices depend on if you want anamatronic rowers or simply long pushrods moving all the (steel core, if not solid steel) oars.  Don't assume that man-powered oars could move the thing, especially since the whole point of the vessel (audacious conspicuous spending) would be blown if you had a man-rowable wooden vessel and a massive modern ship glided by.

They knew very well how much load they could put on ships and that is the easy task its harder to connect two ship bodies so its don't break apart. That is less an issue if you only use it in calm water and don't stress it to much like having the rowers on one side rows hard while the other brakes who would be an typical combat move. 
And yes something like an floating palass could easy be an motivation and would probably work well for this. 
That is you could row it at an decent speed for an so heavy ship although far slower than an war galley.

it was an development in roman times that warships got larger and larger, the old triremes was very light build this made them very fast and they was almost entirely used for ramming. 
They also required very well trained and coordinated rowers, they made an reproduction of an trireme I saw it coming up the Themes 30 years ago, yes it make me inspect the beer
The romans used larger ships and focused more on boarding and artillery, one weakness with the trireme was that if you wounded one of the rower so he dropped the oar it would mess up for all the other and you have to slow down to fix this so yes an balista would ruin the day. 
That giant boat might have started out as an warship project but they found it did not work out so they conveted it.  

[KG3]

21 hours ago, DAL59 said:

How much would it cost to build the tesserakonteres? 

It looks similar in size and construction to the "reproduction" of Noah's Ark built in Kentucky at the Ark Encounter theme park. I'm guessing that if you substituted animatronic animals for animatronic galley slaves you might have similar price tag.  I don't know how sea worthy either project might be though!

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ark_Encounter#Design_and_construction

"The partners projected that the fully completed park would cost $150 million...  AiG considered twelve different possible lengths for the biblical cubit, and AiG chose to use a length of 20.1 inches (51 cm); this produced plans for an ark measuring 510 feet (155 m) long, 85 feet (26 m) wide, and 51 feet (16 m) high.[45] The Ark Encounter consists of approximately 3,300,000 board feet (7,800 m3) of wood.[1] The framing of the ark consists mostly of Englemann spruce, while the exterior is made of pine; some of the logs were as long as 50 feet (15 m) long and 36 inches (91 cm) in diameter."

[Green Baron]

It looks so like the typical arc from the 19th century.

I'll eat a broom if either of these actually float and don't break on the first wave or capsize from a heavenly center of gravity :-)

 

A catamaran is more form stable than a monohull, has a better maeuverability and more space on deck but i won't sail one in a storm. And prices for modern day yachts in all sizes including the ones from the rich and super rich are freely available. Without "special equipment" and crew, i you know what i mean ...

[kerbiloid]

The 40_{(tesserakont)}era description lacks details.
Presumably it has a twin hull (though the ancients aren't known as avid catamaraners).
Nobody knows if it has oars sticking only from two external walls, or from all four.

So:

Spoiler

King's palace.
Ptolemeus #4: "Me need a Biggah Ship!" _{(As you can remember, Ptolemeuses weren't Egyptians)}
Chief Engineer: "King! Yes, king!"

Two months later. The capital shipyard.
P4: "Does U make me Biggah Ship?"
ChE: "King! Yes, king!"
(Proudly shows a just built ship twice as big as decere. Aside of it the workers are finishing another one.)

P4: "No, no, no! Me wants Biggah-Biggah Ship! Just do it! U haz 2 weeks!"
ChE. (""...!!!...???...!!!...")  "King! Yes, king!"

An hour later.
ChE: "Poor, poor me! All is lost! How can I build a bigger ship when I even can't get why this one doesn't sink?!...
Biggah-biggah... Biggah-(local idiom)-biggah... Biggah... Biggah... Wait... Wait!!!.. Biggah-biggah! Of course, that's it, biggah-biggah!
Hey you, lazy (local idiom)es, back to your work! We need moar! We need a Biggah-Biggah-Ship!.."

Three days later. Palace, then the capital shipyard.
P4: "Why U here? Me ship is done?"
ChE: "King! Yes, king!"
P4: "Good. Let's see."
...
P4: "Yeah, this is the Supah-Biggah-Biggah-Ship! Me likes it! Oh, yeah... yeah..."
ChE: "King! Yes, king!"

Evening, inn.
Drunken worker: "... And so we put those two bigger ships aside and covered them with a deck. So, instead of two bigger ships, we got one bigger-bigger ship!..  He's so smart guy, our Archie from Syracusae."

P.S.
Also this illustrates that the tesseracontera highly likely had 4 walls with oars.

Edited September 24, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Spaceception]

So, a couple of questions. Either I didn't use the right keywords, overlooked something, or there simply isn't an answer, but could something like the Intrinsic field subtractor (Like the one in Watchmen that gave Dr. Manhattan his powers) be theoretically possible?
And could something like that manipulate an object from a distance without the need for sophisticated machinery around the object?

Edited September 24, 2018 by Spaceception