20 KiB
[BST][D][Q] ripping apart and re-world building one part of the Super Mario Brothers Movie. Outside perspective or links to similar stories welcome.
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Author: u/Nighzmarquls *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3kfcr0/bstdq_ripping_apart_and_reworld_building_one_part/
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Score: 4
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Created: 2015-09-10T17:15:59
Post:
I've had a bit of a light itch of an idea the past month or so.
This contains spoilers of the first twenty minutes/premise of a terrible movie.
That a dinosaur descendant 'princess' got left with a bunch of nuns in new york some time in the mid-late seventies and was 'hatched there'.
In the terrible movie the resulting child is indistinguishable from a human being and no one bothers to explore this.
But this got me thinking. What if we actually had something like a real dinosaur tool user of broad comparable ability to human intelligence and vocalization maybe around the size of the medium sized therapods (perhaps with an even better range).
Probably some downy feathers.
And that change to the premise kind of pushed out of the way a lot of the other stuff that happened with the movie and just turned into me musing on just how would any institution or family in new york deal with having an egg comparable to an ostrich hatch on their doorstep and produce an ugly beakless bird.
That naturally imprints on them and later grows up to mimic them socially, learn to speak and generally be a regular 'child' of her completely unknown species.
How would people deal with an animal that doesin't stay cute and 'stupid' but gets smart enough to both sass, ask difficult questions ponder about her own existence and figure out how to resolve any tool/technical challenges posed to it (or at least as good as a curious teenager-yound adult human).
How would the rest of the world deal with this thing?
Especially in the eighties and early nineties?
Comments:
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+6] (48 minutes later)
Distinct but related hypothetical: how would we react to conclusive fossil/archaeological evidence that such a being existed about a hundred million years ago, and formed advanced civilization, before disappearing for unknown reasons?
u/Nighzmarquls [+6] (56 minutes later)
personally I think finding an ancient civilization would make a lot of people go "neat" for a few years and then only a specialist group of geeks and scientists would be disturbed by it.
Mostly because it would give us some very disturbing implications regarding the great filter and fermi's paradox.
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+3] (an hour later)
Yeah, that's pretty much why I find the concept of an intelligent dinosaur interesting.
My best current insight on Fermi's Paradox is that I think people overestimate the likelihood of a species intellectually capable of developing civilization actually developing it. I therefore suspect that the likelihood of "intelligent life" evolving is potentially higher than most people estimate, but there's an additional probability to consider, the probability of intelligent life using its intelligence to form a civilization, which is potentially very low.
I would be surprised, but not that surprised, to learn that at least one animal on the Earth today is intellectually capable of forming civilization but simply has not, and they are impeded by physiological differences - probably either octopi or dolphins, seeing as crows and non-human primates come into contact with humans regularly enough that you'd expect that humans would have rubbed off on them. I think it's worth putting a lot of research money into making absolutely certain that we can't establish a line of conlang-based communication with dolphins, and octopi, too, however crazy that sounds.
I would be legitimately very surprised if I learned humans were the first species in the Earth's history to be intellectually capable of developing civilization.
u/Nighzmarquls [+1] (an hour later)
Well it's tricky to determine how 'smart' something is based on the fossil record.
And it's a bit cliche but eusociality has already been around for I think 100 million years.
Which bares striking resemblance to a civilization.
I think the wierd melange of political arms racing and tool refinement that humans have stumbled into is probably pretty rare.
But for the purpose of this discussion I am posing that it's happened at least once more on the same planet.
That said there is enough room in a technological arms racing civ 100-80 million years ago to completely surpass present capabilities and leave them looking like pondscum.
So that might be the best 'background' explanation for a dinosaur 'princess' egg showing up in new york as any.
u/alexanderwales [+5] Time flies like an arrow (2 hours later)
It depends on how it's presented to the public.
There's a huge difference between "this animal can talk" and "this person looks like an animal". If it's the former, expect it to be treated more or less like an intelligent monkey until the point that it can talk, after which there would be considerable attention (and people might contextualize it as a weird human rather than a true reptile). If it's the latter ... there would be some stories, especially in the tabloids, but a human with an interesting deformity isn't necessarily national news, especially in an age where people are becoming more politically correct.
To some extent, it also depends on how much attention that dinosaur gives to the media. If it stays indoors, eventually the media will stop paying attention. If it goes out a lot, people are going to take note. If it decides to go on talk shows, it would probably be a national sensation, at least for a little bit (as fame is fleeting).
u/Nighzmarquls [+3] (3 hours later)
Hum I was going to aim that it looks a lot more like a bird or fuzzy reptile then a human.
Also at least for the first decade or so of her life this would be BEFORE the idea of dinosaurs as fast moving bird like critters got jammed into public awareness by the release of jurassic park the movie.
u/alexanderwales [+2] Time flies like an arrow (9 hours later)
I suppose my first thought was to imagine how people react to others who are far outside the norm for humans. Like, check this article about sideshow performers, notably Elephant Man and the Lion-Faced Man. If the from is close enough to human, people might just treat the princess like one of those people (which in the 80s and 90s probably doesn't mean sticking her in a sideshow). You can plausibly explain away a whole host of "physical deformities" that just make her "look similar to" a dinosaur.
If the princess is more like a Jurassic Park dinosaur but with feathers and human-level intelligence ... I think the outcome is more likely that you get an animal that's raised like an animal, resulting in a severe level of developmental retardation. Eventually, if it has the ability to speak and learns speech as a human does, that's where things get truly interesting.
u/Nighzmarquls [+2] (9 hours later)
The second is the concept I'm thinking of running with. Which brings me I guess to wondering just who in new york (for arbitrary source material nod and because I like the accent I'm thinking brooklyn) would satisfy the following criteria:
Keep a ostrich sized egg for the few moments before it 'hatches' without freaking out entirely.
Be willing to both keep and potentially compensate the needs of exotic weird bird for a few years?
I'm having trouble conceiving of just who would fullfill the second criteria, which is lending itself to me thinking that maybe our princess gets pawned off to some kind of 'expert' in exotic animals relatively early on but I dunno.
u/TennisMaster2 [+3] (10 hours later)
A starting premise - have her egg found and bought by a rich collector of curios in a shop of miscellany, and placed in his always roaring hearth as a conversation piece. The egg, heated by the hearth, hatches, and the collector treats the hatchling as his most interesting curio to date. He contracts experts etc. who determine she's of comparable intelligence to a human child, and thereafter he comes to view it as his daughter.
u/Nighzmarquls [+2] (11 hours later)
That is actually a really good one, it kind of takes the background to an entirely new place... but it also supplies how she could be a 'princess' too.
Hum I like how it ties up a lot of the loose end of "just where did this absurd egg come from".
It seems a little bit sappy. but that might be what's called for.
u/TennisMaster2 [+2] (a day later)
I think it stretches credibility for the recipient of the egg to have an intense curiosity about the intelligence of the creature it hatches, as least in the above scenario. For a collector to both love curios and discovering the scientific origin of each might work, but you'd have to spend time teaching the reader that is the character of the collector, and you didn't create a fragmentary person for whose sole purpose in life is to care for this egg.
u/Nighzmarquls [+1] (a day later)
That is the problem I think... I was originally imagining some one who would actually have very little understanding of exactly what they got but it strains credibility that they would subsequently KEEP some WIERD ANIMAL at the same time...
honestly on reflection I think it's more important to find some one that would hold onto the animal afterwards without it straining credibility rather then some one who could credibly get a mysterious egg.
Random doohickies can end up almost anywhere...
I was contemplating maybe the egg is actually found in an 'alcove' that was carved/buried in the bedrock of a skyscraper's foundation and some construction worker just nabbed it after the blasting revealed the egg (along with destroying several others presumably).
u/TennisMaster2 [+2] (a day later)
If you go with the every-man approach, make them have a close social group that meets regularly, for D&D, poker, sport, or general gaming. The decision can then become a communal one, and the responsibility shared, so fringe opinions (keeping a weird animal) turn into the only fun and non-evil opinions.
u/Nighzmarquls [+1] (a day later)
I think poker would probably work, and actually yeah having a group dynamic would also make it so that a little bit of scattered knowledge from individuals can aggregate and also the one who finds the egg versus the one who decides to keep it/ends up being imprinted on can be different.
"Well Paula here keeps a parakeet an she's read birds!"
"ya sure it's a bird? looks kinda like a wet rat to me"
"well I'm sure you were just sunshine and roses when you were first born"
"Aw everyone get back! the first thing it see's is gonna think thats its mummy"
u/None [+5] (2 hours later)
If you're gonna rebuild it, I would suggest changing the "evolutionary lines" of some things. For example... Toads, Goombas, and Princess Toadstool? Not supposed to be dinosaurs. Fungus. Dinosaurs didn't evolve from fungus. A devolution gun shouldn't turn them back into dinosaurs because they never were one. And using the devolution gun on Koopas shouldn't turn them into fungus. Because they never were one.
But that's because evolution is sort of my pet thing and I grump when it's misportrayed.
To answer your question of:
What if we actually had something like a real dinosaur tool user of broad comparable ability to human intelligence and vocalization maybe around the size of the medium sized therapods (perhaps with an even better range).
How would people deal with an animal that doesin't stay cute and 'stupid' but gets smart enough to both sass, ask difficult questions ponder about her own existence and figure out how to resolve any tool/technical challenges posed to it (or at least as good as a curious teenager-yound adult human).
How would the rest of the world deal with this thing?
Especially in the eighties and early nineties?
Dissection.
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+5] (2 hours later)
The mere concept of a devolution gun makes me loudly roll my eyes.
u/None [+3] (3 hours later)
But the cross dimensional warp pipe and a magic meteor necklace with a force field that grants both the touch and the power is fine.
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+2] (3 hours later)
Not referring to the context of this franchise specifically, more as a trope in general.
u/None [+5] (3 hours later)
Oh. Well then, imagine two types of gun.
One "simply" activates atavisms in your genome, and "regenerates" your body into taking the new shape coded for, granting you body fur and tail for humans, putting teeth in chickens...
The other does the same kind of genetic revision trick, but it scans the other life on the planet to reconstruct phylogeny so it knows what it should be turning you into.
Sufficiently-advanced-technology level, but not absurd for a civilization of intelligent beings that's been around for 65 million years.
u/MugaSofer [+5] (5 hours later)
Yeah, but why? Why would you build such a thing, if you have the tech to arbitrarily rewrite DNA on the fly?
u/None [+5] (6 hours later)
Why wouldn't you? If your civilization has been around for 65 million years, you've solved all significant problems about resources and production. Everything you do after 1 million years was just for the lulz, really. Over here is the devolution gun, and over here is the gun that fires as projectiles pantsless underage witches with propeller-driven thighhigh stockings. This one retroactively causes you to have never eaten mustard.
u/Nighzmarquls [+1] (3 hours later)
Ya that's the other reason I kind of just stopped trying to actually fit it into Mario canon.
u/Nighzmarquls [+1] (3 hours later)
Really? Cut up and kill the only example of a species? Period. After its already dead sure.
But removing the ability to even properly test the intelligence of an animal like that seems odd. Especially if initially it is comparable to a four year old in trusting adult humans.
u/None [+3] (3 hours later)
You didn't ask what I would do. You asked what the public of the eighties or nineties would do.
u/notmy2ndopinion [+2] Concent of Saunt Edhar (11 hours later)
Now that you phrase it that way, "dissection" is totally the plot of the E.T. movie from the point-of-view of the adult with the jangling keys.
u/Nighzmarquls [+1] (3 hours later)
Hum. I'd have to check but I'm pretty sure a lot of the scientists and practitioners that perform actual disections in that era were past being quite so hung go. Jumping straight to cut it open sounds more like the thirties to fifties.
But I might be expecting too much compassion. My impression is the research that lead to the early 2000''s statement about cuttlefish, some reptiles and birds and all mammals having the physiological basis for internal emotional states was ongoing in the nineties.
u/None [+2] (3 hours later)
Also keep in mind that the public is collectively a single idiot that thinks gods and demons are real.
u/DCarrier [+3] (4 hours later)
I'm reminded of the webcomic Freefall. The main character was a wolf that was genetically modified to be intelligent. These wolves were originally supposed to only exist in the lab. Their designer didn't like that idea, and arranged for them to "accidentally" get sold to people who thought they were regular dogs. The main character's mother said nothing can prepare you for when your puppy is in your lap and then starts talking to you.
u/Nighzmarquls [+1] (11 hours later)
I do like that webcomic! something similar but with less clear 'source'.
u/MugaSofer [+3] (5 hours later)
I feel like something capable of mimicking humans to that extent would have to be quite bright; maybe brighter than us. Certainly brighter than us on average. After all, they'd have none of the requisite instincts, right?
Imagine a high-functioning autistic person, who deduced pitch-perfect social behaviour from extrapolation.
It'd make an interesting excuse for a "rational" protagonist, I must admit, although it would be tough to write in first person. (And very Ex Machina -like if it was in second-person.)
u/Nighzmarquls [+1] (6 hours later)
Hum I was thinking something like imprinting involved. Maybe a more advanced version.
u/MugaSofer [+2] (6 hours later)
Could be both - imprinting gives them the desire to fit in, and basic language skills & posture.
u/notmy2ndopinion [+3] Concent of Saunt Edhar (11 hours later)
I caught the tail-end of a story on Radiolab about a chimp named Lucy that is relevant and interesting.
http://www.radiolab.org/story/91706-lucy/
Imagine a tweenager that can rip your arms off when she gets frustrated with you. and she has the intelligence and emotions of a toddler. Despite trying to raise her in a loving home environment, she grew too strong for her family to care for properly. They ended up locked her up at home and cycled through numerous animal handlers until they found one that would accompany her in a transition back to the wild (but just like how we'd be out of place in the wild, the semi-domesticated chimp also suffers from a severe adjustment disorder.) Ironically, the animal handler locked herself up in a cage while she helped the chimps transition to the wild.
edit: my point is that even with a close genomic relative, we currently struggle with integration for another intelligent species. I'd shudder to think about how we'd raise a DINOSAUR that wouldn't eat us in our sleep.
u/Nighzmarquls [+1] (11 hours later)
Nevermind one that is as smart or smarter then us on average?
Yeah that is actually the point I'm finding most appealing here. I'm also considering taking some cues with how parrots handle being with humans.
u/notmy2ndopinion [+2] Concent of Saunt Edhar (11 hours later)
the other question is whether or not another intelligent species would have enough overlap in language development and capabilities that they would be able to be introspective and philosophical in the way that you suggest re: pondering their existence.
If they lack the language, they'd would be unable to conceptualize advanced concepts. also, being the first of a new species (or isolated), the language they'd need to use would be a human language and their tongue and brain may struggle to articulate and comprehend it properly.
u/Nighzmarquls [+1] (11 hours later)
My current thought is that the individual was very 'late bloomer' if you measured their development on human scales. Not managing to actually speak at all until about five or so years old.
I checked in with a friend who used to do primate and other animal research and they pointed out that syntaxt might be particularly difficult for the dinosaur princess and thus delay recognition of her as something more then an animal.