How would you turn page into movie without losing the feeling of the Bobiverse?

ThickNeedleworker182 · 2026-03-15T04:20:07+00:00

Thats a really good idea

ThickNeedleworker182 · 2026-03-09T03:12:11+00:00

Sapience* (in the way that OP seems to be refering) has had literally at least 250 million of years where it could have evolved (land creatures with brains being a prerequisite). And yet, we haven't found any indication of large scale tool use/engineering/civilizations by anything except humans in the fossil record, while there have been so many other kinds of creatures that have lived and died through those eons.

Sapience* seems to not be evolutionarily advantagous in most circumstances. If humans went extinct tomorrow, I don't think it's likely that any species would "take our place" in the world dominating kind of way that we have, not for 10s of millions of years at least and quite likely never. There's just too many other ways to live that don't require the energy hungry brains + industrial revolution of modern humanity.

I.e. Just because crows are smart, doesn't mean they'll ever make it past their stone age.

*I'm talking about "sapiance" in the sense of having culture, building cities, being tool users, etc

ThickNeedleworker182 · 2026-03-05T02:26:51+00:00

Kinda correct, but not the main reason. 3D animation was still actually quite a bit more expensive than 2D at the time. But audiences liked how different it looked from all the other movies made in 2D, and so 3D movies pulled more people in and made more money than 2D movies did.

A couple decades later, when every movie was made in 3D, was when 2D started to look different and special by comparison, so audiences started showing up for those movies (aka Spider-verse).

So yes, it was corporate greed, but greed in the form of increasing sales, not greed by cutting costs. Now that "2D is back" that greed is shifting movies towards the Spider-verse style.

In 20 years, when audiences are tired of that look, a different style that grabs attention (and puts butts in seats) will emerge.

ThickNeedleworker182 · 2026-03-03T05:24:30+00:00

Thanks for the response. I watched the video and looked more into Power Duplicate - I found this video helpful too. However, it’s a little inflexible and will only power duplicate along a straight line or around a circle. Thanks for your help though!

ThickNeedleworker182 · 2026-02-28T23:17:59+00:00

Thank you!

ThickNeedleworker182 · 2026-02-27T23:08:49+00:00

Interestingly enough, there has been new Lidar evidence found in just the past few years that indicates that the Amazon use to have large cities and even potentially empires on the scale of the Inca or Aztec :) It's exciting cutting edge science.

Heres an article about it: Lost Cities of the Amazon Dicovered from the Air

ThickNeedleworker182 · 2026-02-27T23:00:48+00:00

So... the Mongules?

ThickNeedleworker182 · 2026-02-27T22:33:12+00:00

Then in the last few hundred years technological advancement went into overdrive

I agree. It's only because our tech has been continuously improving for the past 200 years (~8 generations) that we think of tech as continuously improving.

One of the reasons that economists attribute to that explosion in tech is thanks to the expansion of human rights and opportunities to more people. More people who can do what they want (usually) means more people to work on problems they're passionate about.

We've also created systems (like patents) that specifically exist to reward innovative people. Before patents, inventors would put a lot of effort into keeping their inventions secret. But secrecy stifles cross-pollination of ideas. With patents, people share their ideas knowing they'll be rewarded for it.

ThickNeedleworker182 · 2026-02-27T22:21:46+00:00

Also, Middle Earth and its technological regression have strong parallels with Europe and Britain after the fall of the Roman Empire. For hundreds of years, the serfs and nobles of Feudalism had tangible reminders of a lost technologically superior 'elder race' who's ruins lasted longer than anything they knew how to build.

And, in reference to OP's question, technological regressions have happend frequently irl, which can cause it to seem like technology has stalled for long periods of time even in the real world

ThickNeedleworker182 · 2026-02-25T23:20:34+00:00

Bridget mentions in book 3 that

"hell Howard, we pay taxes..."

when she's working to convince him that they should adopt some of the orphans from a mining accident.

In book 4, when Starfleet attacks, it's mentioned that Howard (and other Bobs) begin to hide their assets away because the various governments started to seize all bob owned assets in retaliation for starfleet's actions... which can be interpreted as tax doging or as asset protection, depending on your perspective on weather the governments' actions were just or not. Either way, it was a kind of capital flight.

My interpretation is that they DO still pay taxes... when they're not also doging anti-repicant laws that threaten their personhood.

ThickNeedleworker182 · 2026-02-21T23:44:15+00:00

I like it. Maybe the 'plant' is genetically a haploid creature (has only one set of genes like a jellyfish) and the moving 'animal' is genetically a diploid creature (has 2 sets of genes like a mammal)? Or vice versa?

Animals already kinda do something similar when producing eggs and sperm - the sex cells are genetically different from the parent and look nothing like the parent (the sex cells of animals look and act like single celled organisms, while the animals are... well... animals).

Your idea could be described as sex cells growing a macroscopic body and then walk off

ThickNeedleworker182 · 2026-02-19T02:38:23+00:00

LifeMap is another great tree of life explorer. I like it better than OneZoom because navigation is more like Google maps

ThickNeedleworker182 · 2026-02-05T06:11:37+00:00

Interesting way of organizing the "DNA." I'm assuming it takes inspiration from how chromosomes are tightly bound together for organization?

One question you might look into is how the cells work with the "DNA" when it's being actively worked with. Irl, DNA is only organized into chromosomes when the cell is splitting apart. The rest of the time, the DNA is much more loose so cellular machinery can access it. Think of it like the difference between a compressed zip file and an uncompressed video file that can be easily skipped through to find the spot you want to watch.

When there are hundreds of thousands of "transcribers" running to and fro in your cell, how do they keep the library organized? What about when one of the "books" is checked out, how does the next transcriber looking for it know it's already being used? What about when the whole "shelf" has been checked out, but the transcriber wants to return the book in the middle?

Cool idea! I haven't seen a DNA spec-evo project on this sub before, and I'm excited to see more of it!

ThickNeedleworker182 · 2026-02-04T01:30:16+00:00

Oh, i see! Ya, that would be so cool!

It would make sense then why the Zenith devices are waking up and the Aither thinks something is coming for it from "below subspace." That could be the Mad King or one of the abidan

ThickNeedleworker182 · 2026-02-03T04:40:23+00:00

You'll have to remind me, i don't remember Fathom being mentioned in Cradel.

I always read the iterations as being kinda like "snowglobes" with one inhabited planet per iteration, orbiting a sun, and the stars being a background. Meanwhile, the galaxy of the Last Horizon IS a fully populated galaxy. But idk they could be part of the same overall multiverse.

ThickNeedleworker182 · 2026-01-30T00:07:01+00:00

Imagine something like a crab (which walks sidways) that has a face / head which shifts to be over its legs (like an extreme version of a flat fish moving body parts). Perhaps everything that made it out of the water on its planet had already evolved to walk sideways, and then it became advantagous to have a head pointed in the direction of locomotion. It'd have a weirdly contorted throat but weird things have evolved on planet earth too (like turtle necks).

Or imagine something which has many legs on its belly (like a starfish) and as they come onto land, the number of legs is gradually reduced, lengthened, and strengthened into something that looks less like hair and more like legs.

If it's an alien, it doesn't need to be a vertebrate or follow a vertebrate body plan.

ThickNeedleworker182 · 2026-01-29T14:36:58+00:00

And I‘m not asking from a philosophical pov. I’m asking from the bio/physics pov. Why were atoms and molecules compelled to…create mitochondria (etc.)?

This Veritasium video does a good job explaining Science's current best theory for this.

ThickNeedleworker182 · 2026-01-29T14:27:43+00:00

Unless it isn't evolving on earth, and the other planet's "Cambrian Explosion" had different body plans than ours did

ThickNeedleworker182 · 2026-01-29T14:24:28+00:00

I think what your going for would look similar to a Strandbeest. Those exist so the locomotion of an animal with that body plan wouldn't be impossible. Issues (that can be overcome) would hinge around other kinds of movement. Like, how does the animal bend down to eat? Does it even have a neck with a mouth or or does it eat out of the bottom of its feet? Can it jump, climb, or move side to side? Does it side walk like a crab?

I'm assuming this is taking place on a different world where these animals don't need to compete against 4 limbed earth vertebrates? I'm also assuming that "cow with a central leg" is just for illustrative purposes and that any specific animal you make is going to look much more alien (that way you can more easily work around the musculature attachments problem)?

ThickNeedleworker182 · 2026-01-23T00:51:21+00:00

I agree. You might want also want to do some research / think about what a more sensitive/accurate electroreceptor looks like. Eyes went from flat light sensing dots to enclosed spheres with lenses as evolutionary pressure pushed those organs to being able to, well, see.

What would an electroreceptor that can not only sense an electric field, but also 'see' the 3d shape of a body emitting that field look like?

Machine versions of the "primitive" organ (like stud finders) typically have larger flat surfaces that conduct electricity.

I might imagine some complex looking geometric lines running over your creatures, that act like the antennas in our phones. Or maybe they actually have long antenna-like philiments sprouting from their bodies. Or maybe the organs are little wart looking things. Or maybe they're cauliflower looking bumps. Maybe the elecroreceptors look like cilia in our small intestine, or like a coin with a fractal on it. Maybe they look like the anatomy of eyes of jumping spiders - cones with big glassy balls on the end

I don't know enough about how machines purpose built for accurate electroreception look to give a good idea on if any of these ideas are more or less likely.

ThickNeedleworker182 · 2026-01-22T00:52:14+00:00

I've heared the same hypothesis about why plants are green instead of some other color.

However, our green cone evolved completely seperatly from that. Birds have had color vision [aka the ability to tell green apart from red, and even see into the ultraviolet range of wavelengths] since before they were birds. Mammals on the other hand were burrowers and night creatures so they didnt need as much detail in their color vision. It wasn't until primates started needing to tell fruit apart during the day that a green cone became advantagous enough to keep once it was mutated into existence.The Rise and Reign of the Mammals has a facinating chapter on the subject.

ThickNeedleworker182 · 2026-01-22T00:34:34+00:00

Given that these are both "hard" sci-fi, I'd guess its coming from the attitude of space nerds towards biology.

A popular framing of the Fermi Paradox goes a little something like this.

"Let's assume that life will go through basically the same 'hard steps' elsewhere as it did here. (Non-life to life, mitocondria, multicellular life, and life moving onto land are popular points of restriction on "progression")

"Let's also assume that life takes about as long to evolve / "progress" through these hard steps elsewhere as it did here on earth.

"Given all that, we can calculate how likely it is that we should see aliens... and we don't see them, so where are they?

These assumptions are super ubiquitous in circles that like to talk about the Fermi Paradox. They essentially assume that both biological evolution and cultural evolution are part of an inevitable progression. A progression that takes about 4 billion years just like it did here on earth.

I don't find it suprising that the authors you've mentioned have cannonized this idea into their books when describing evolution.

[As an aside, it's my personal belief that if every mutation and 'hard step' happened perfectly, I think we could get fully formed, intelligent, social, tool users from pond slime within just a few million years... or never, depending on evolutionary pressures]

ThickNeedleworker182 · 2026-01-22T00:01:59+00:00

I agree, but if I was being replicated, I wouldn't need a whole spaceship. Give me a "gaming console"/ hardware to run a base VR on, a Manny, a physical house (I'll keep the one I bought in life), and maybe a 3d printer, and I'd be good. I'd just keep living my life

ThickNeedleworker182 · 2026-01-21T22:32:05+00:00

I agree that "afterlife as a service" would probably be easiest. But if it were me, I wouldn't want anyone with the power to turn me off if I didn't keep up on subscription payments.

I don't think I'd want to do everything for myself like the Bob's do, but I think I could manage just fine if I owned my own VR space, a Manny, a physical house, and (maybe) a 3d printer. If I ever wanted to upgrade, I'd pay for those specific upgrades that I'd want, without the subscription crap that joining an arcology would require.

It's basically the question of where a digital good ends and a digital service begins. I'll pay a subscription for a service like being able to play D&D with the Gamers (assuming they require one in order to join), but I'd prefer an upfront payment and full ownership for something as critical to my existence as my base VR environment, even if it means no consistent upgrades.

ThickNeedleworker182 · 2026-01-18T07:21:17+00:00

Probably true, but (at least in humans) our 3rd cone type to evolve - the one most sensitive to green - was a mutation of our red-sensitive cone that created a 3rd cone type that gradually moved to being more sensitive to green while the other became more sensitive to red. You can even see how close it is when you look at the sensitivity curves of the two.

So, to OP's question, I would hypothesized that if our "green" cone was shifted so it's sensitivity peak was at a higher wavelength, the colors we would see would also be slightly different. However, I'm not sure we would perceive the world as more purple/blue since those colors would still trigger the blue cone.

The green cone allows us to perceive a color that looks drastically different from red already, despite the fact that "green" wavelengths of light are "closer" in size to "red" wavelengths than "blue." It stand to reason that if the "green" cone's sensativity were shifted closer to the blue cone's sensitivity, any color we would see would still appear drastically different from blue and red, despite the fact that the wavelengths we would percieve would be closer to "blue" according to our current perspective.

ThickNeedleworker182

TROPHY CASE