Videogamer921
oh god it’s him
- Location
- 10th circle of Hell; Ohio
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I always saw pokemon sapience being somewhere around Raven level. They can kinda understand what we're saying, and are definitely intelligent.
Hyphen (Pokemon Emerald)
Years of training and exceptional circumstances (an already brilliant pokemon, at minimum), just one or the other isn't enough. "Communication" ≠ "Civilization". Civilization is a much higher bar; and the overwhelming majority of pokemon probably never make it past "Polly want a cracker!" on the road to even just "communication". Just because a creature can communicate on some level doesn't mean it can function in a society; parrots have figured out how to place orders on an amazon alexa, but they're still a long ways away from, like, gainful employment. My cats can inform me that they're hungry despite not having access to words. And Koko the Gorilla could sign that she was sad her pet cat died, but could not dictate a novel. Meanwhile, Hellen Keller, despite neither being able to hear spoken language nor see written words, had a career as a writer and political activist, because language is so deeply ingrained into human evolution.
(Team Rocket's Meowth actually demonstrates this quite handily, lol. He can "communicate" quite well, but he has not integrated well into society; he is a criminal, and a cartoonishly incompetent one at that!)
Compared to other pokemon, they are. But only a handful of psychic species (and rare ones at that) actually appear to even approach human-level thought. A Swoobat might be brilliant compared to Golbat, but most likely falls far short of the intelligence of even wild Kirlia/Kadabra.
And there would be very good reasons to avoid them, too. See also: Astra's literal first interaction with May. Also, IRL homo sapiens sapiens ultimately drove every other hominid species to extinction, and have exerted such a tremendous evolutionary pressure on every other species that the only places on earth where most animals don't instinctively avoid humans are, like, Antarctica and New Zealand. If human nature is still human nature, then smart non-human people would probably avoid risking it (just like Astra and Echo's villages have).
And remember, psychic types are up there with ghosts and dragons in terms of rarity; of all pokemon, they are going to be among the least understood/most mysterious of them all.
Again, I'm not saying "they think there's no intelligence there at all", I'm saying "they think there's not enough intelligence (and shared concept of morality) to reason with them like a fellow person". If anything, a threat being intelligent only makes it more threatening. And no matter how smart a pokemon is, if it gets captured by a trainer and fails to communicate its personhood to that trainer (for example, because it was already too old to have the neuroplasticity to pick up the language), it's still just gonna get treated like an exceptionally smart pet. I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but IRL humans have a history of denying personhood even to other humans.
The Ancestor was clearly an Alpha Pokemon from the Pokemon Legends era that never got calmed down by the protag of said game, hence her immense power and her immense rage.
Dermonster
The Shittiest Wizard
Small thing: that statement was meant as an 'and/or'. The chances of unique circumstances that allow a pokemon to learn speech without someone intentionally trying to teach them are not 0%.
What those circumstances would actually consist of is an exercise left up to somebody else's imagination.
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All this spaghetti posting is getting irritating. You are supposed to respond to the whole post, not cut it up.
Yes, I am aware. Dermonster is not using in that way. You could see that in the third quote I had referred to. A comment made to reply to the same things that you have brought up. I mentioned that speaking in human languages isn't the same thing as intelligence and that speaking human languages wasn't even a guarantee of being recognized as intelligent! (Hell, or speaking the same language, for that matter)
Generally speaking, Dermonster has correlated intelligence and communication. The Abra of the Granite Caves have their intelligence expanded as their ability to communicate increases. They generally evolve some time after mastering Kadabrish. Part of the Ancestor's task was 'carving' higher thought into who her village's Ralts were. The Kadabra never really managed to do that for their entire population, only their chosen. The Ancestor might have been one of those freaks accidents of nature that Dermonster mentioned (as if the lifespan doesn't hint that!).
Psychic species would not generally have the benefit of access to human evolutionary history. Homo neanderthalis did not yeet itself away from Homo sapiens. If there is a species of pokemon that is as intelligent as humans, that is known to humans, it'd be impossible to miss. Especially because people aren't inclined to spend their entire life hiding their intelligence, which they would need to do if captured.
I would disagree with your assertion that psychic pokemon as a whole are necessarily the most mysterious, and the assertion that entire known species of psychic pokemon could get away with concealing their intelligence. FireRed and LeafGreen (after Ruby&Sapphire, but Gen III) mentions Kantonian Pokemon habitats. Of the urban pokemon 10/37 are psychic-types. 10/39 psychic (non-legendary) psychic pokemon were urban pokemon. That includes the Ralts-line and the Abra-line. It also includes Mr Mime and Jynx. No, these pokemon are not going to be hiding their intelligence right under the nose of humanity. That's Hogan's Heroes, not Hyphen.
Who knows, maybe there is a psychic species of pokemon that hides its intelligence from humanity! But it sure as hell isn't going to be a species like Mr. Mime, the Abra-line, Ralts-line, or whatever. The Granite Cave had thirty intelligent pokemon. Thirty intelligent individuals and a horde of cleverer-than-usual abra a species of intelligent pokemon does not make.
And neither is it something to extrapolate across all of psychic pokemon when we have author statements to the contrary.
It isn't unlikely that there are similar communities similar to the pre-dwindling (and post) Granite Cave across the world. It might even include an entire species for pokemon with smaller populations. But it is incredibly unlikely that there was a project as successful as the Ancestor. Their sapience is most likely individual, not species. They're heroes, great men, not systematic intelligence.
Like, read this post I'm quoting! Read the first one in particular! I've brought up what you've said before! I've mentioned serfdom and all that discrimmination.
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Dermonster
The Shittiest Wizard
I will chime in once more to note that the vibe in here seems to be getting a little heated.
While I love discussion and don't intend to abruptly end the current topic, this is turning into an Argument To Be Won. Do not pursue victory, it will only lead to getting a staff post. I would like to minimize staff posts.
As a secondary note, I sure have made a shitton of WoG's across both here and the SB thread. Maybe I should collect them into a single post sometime. Sort them into categories and such.
On the other hand that's a lot of work, so maybe not. ^^;
While I love discussion and don't intend to abruptly end the current topic, this is turning into an Argument To Be Won. Do not pursue victory, it will only lead to getting a staff post. I would like to minimize staff posts.
As a secondary note, I sure have made a shitton of WoG's across both here and the SB thread. Maybe I should collect them into a single post sometime. Sort them into categories and such.
On the other hand that's a lot of work, so maybe not. ^^;
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My dude, I have read the stuff you've linked when you linked it, but I just don't agree with all of your interpretations. And you're coming across as increasingly aggressive, so I'm just gonna check out of the conversation.
Just a note on that particular case:
It is difficult to completely classify her real ability from what I heard because apparently she may have been taught sign language *wrong* (as in, not as a language in and on itself but as a translation of spoken language), hence the wrong parts (they're all as if she was *speaking* and not using sign language)
Or at least I remember seeing a video of it on a (globally reliable) scientific channel on youtube.
In short, she's not the best example.
More like integrated from what I remember, particularly for Neanderthal.
And even then, I am not sure we are directly responsible for all cases, that seems presumptuous.
I've been thinking about the proposal more and why I dislike it. More than just disagreements over interpretation.
Fundamentally the idea that there are significant communities of intelligent psychic pokemon out there just does not fit the theme of Hyphen. There probably are several individual examples of intelligent pokemon communities across the world, similar to the Granite Caves. They probably suffer from human expansion too. It's vanishingly unlikely, but there might even be a another settlement that is similar to Astra's village.
In real life the systems of slavery and colonialism were not accidents. Africans, Asians, Americans, were not mistakenly identified as unintelligent. That was intentional. Racism was built to justify their subordination to Europeans and even that required and requires constant maintenance. When that belief was broken, you got immense cruelty as the strong tried to reconcile the lies they told themselves with the reality of the world. And there's examples of that beyond just racism, like the German Peasant's Revolt.
Incidents like the Granite Cave can be explained away as individual acts. There wasn't enough interaction between the handful of sapient pokemon and humans for the fault to be placed on the system. Americans knew that Native Americans were people and chose to colonize regardless. The Granite Cave Abra deserve restitution, but it was not systematic malice.
But supposing that Kadabra are intelligent and just don't communicate with humans can't be blamed on individuals. Such intelligence consistently showing would be noticed for the same reason that Chat GPT's lack of intelligence is evident over anything but a few paragraphs. Additionally, those pokemon would resist and Brendan's comment about the violent tendencies of the Granite Caves suggests that is not the case for other Kadabra. There is no reason to assume that pokemon who don't learn to communicate on higher levels but are still intelligent just don't care about their freedom and being treated as chattel. I dismiss any and all arguments that suppose people, no matter how alien, can be content living as animals. Hell, there are Ralts plushies! As Astra said, Ralts are so well known that humans make effigies of them. Supposing that Kirlia that aren't from the village are intelligent also requires that they be complacent with their slavery.
Saying there were species of pokemon the whole time who could think intelligently spread across the whole world, who live with humanity, and that intelligence was just never noticed by humanity muddles the story. Both in and out of the story it has been hammered in how unique Astra's village is. And going 'oh and Kirlia are just as smart as humans they just can't talk' just doesn't fit. How is such a charade managed over centuries and generations? There is also a hint of victim blaming that isn't present when intelligent pokemon are individuals rather than species. It's extremely dichotomous with Astra's village and their desire to be free and her own repugnance towards being captured and capturing people (even the Abra).
Poképartheid is not being carried out in Hyphen.
Fundamentally the idea that there are significant communities of intelligent psychic pokemon out there just does not fit the theme of Hyphen. There probably are several individual examples of intelligent pokemon communities across the world, similar to the Granite Caves. They probably suffer from human expansion too. It's vanishingly unlikely, but there might even be a another settlement that is similar to Astra's village.
In real life the systems of slavery and colonialism were not accidents. Africans, Asians, Americans, were not mistakenly identified as unintelligent. That was intentional. Racism was built to justify their subordination to Europeans and even that required and requires constant maintenance. When that belief was broken, you got immense cruelty as the strong tried to reconcile the lies they told themselves with the reality of the world. And there's examples of that beyond just racism, like the German Peasant's Revolt.
Incidents like the Granite Cave can be explained away as individual acts. There wasn't enough interaction between the handful of sapient pokemon and humans for the fault to be placed on the system. Americans knew that Native Americans were people and chose to colonize regardless. The Granite Cave Abra deserve restitution, but it was not systematic malice.
But supposing that Kadabra are intelligent and just don't communicate with humans can't be blamed on individuals. Such intelligence consistently showing would be noticed for the same reason that Chat GPT's lack of intelligence is evident over anything but a few paragraphs. Additionally, those pokemon would resist and Brendan's comment about the violent tendencies of the Granite Caves suggests that is not the case for other Kadabra. There is no reason to assume that pokemon who don't learn to communicate on higher levels but are still intelligent just don't care about their freedom and being treated as chattel. I dismiss any and all arguments that suppose people, no matter how alien, can be content living as animals. Hell, there are Ralts plushies! As Astra said, Ralts are so well known that humans make effigies of them. Supposing that Kirlia that aren't from the village are intelligent also requires that they be complacent with their slavery.
Saying there were species of pokemon the whole time who could think intelligently spread across the whole world, who live with humanity, and that intelligence was just never noticed by humanity muddles the story. Both in and out of the story it has been hammered in how unique Astra's village is. And going 'oh and Kirlia are just as smart as humans they just can't talk' just doesn't fit. How is such a charade managed over centuries and generations? There is also a hint of victim blaming that isn't present when intelligent pokemon are individuals rather than species. It's extremely dichotomous with Astra's village and their desire to be free and her own repugnance towards being captured and capturing people (even the Abra).
Poképartheid is not being carried out in Hyphen.
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Crusader Jerome
Subsisting on Supplication
- Location
- My home away from Rome
How to prove anything in one step:
1. The proof is left as an exercise for the reader.
Q.E.D.
The big one IMO is that they need a society where enough fully intelligent and educated adults dedicate themselves to raising the younger stages to the point of evolution that every baby gets to evolve.
And that takes a considerable amount of regional resource dominance, for which all the culture helps only to a limited extent. You also need at least one final evolved form on a regular basis, or keeping that dominance is only going to last until that environment changes on you.
And that takes a considerable amount of regional resource dominance, for which all the culture helps only to a limited extent. You also need at least one final evolved form on a regular basis, or keeping that dominance is only going to last until that environment changes on you.
I'm not completely sure what you're saying, but the first paragraphs feels a bit self-evident? Human societies need adults raising and educating the children. I wouldn't tie it to evolution specifically. The biggest problem in my opinion is that the Granite Caves uplift project got cut off in the middle of things. The Kadabra were just an elite cabal that focused on providing utopia. The Ancestor wasn't satisfied with that, as Dermonster mentioned in the below quote. The colony's intelligence wasn't self-sustaining. They'd have been better off with more adults, but it'd be mitigating the keystone problem, not solving it.
I don't think they need a final evolution, or at least the Granite Caves didn't. The Granite Caves have gone through several environmental shifts with only a small cabal of Kadabra. They went through a cold period to a warm period. They relocated from the surface to underneath it when the humans first arrived. The Granite Cave line of Abra was about a thousand years old (or more!). They've gone through environmental changes. It's just that pokeballs were much more disruptive compared to previous ones. I am skeptical whether Alakazam could have saved them.
You might be able to argue that Alakazam could have seen the weakness problem better than Kadabra and pushed the Kadabra to put more effort into uplifting the whole population. But I think even Alakazam would struggle forseeing the advent of the pokeball. Uplifting is a lot of work. And the Kadabra weren't even contributing their intelligence into the next generation of Abra. Who knows how long they would take to notice that, or even if they would be inclined to fix that once they did.
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I think in terms more that:
A) Lowest stages are not up to sustaining a community. Abra can't stay active, Beldum are dumb, Ralts are easily overwhelmed by emotion(and you really don't want ralts distress cascading at each other), Solosis have half a mind, Gothita are tunnel visioned, etc. They can be community members, but doing more than supporting their own upkeep is out of the question.
B) Only the middle stage actually generates more labor than they consume. You need this labor to run community services and specializations. Teacher, tool maker, habitation repair and expansion, food gatherer, settlement defense.
C) Second stages generally consume more food and other resources than first stages. This is fine because they can obtain far more food for the same amount of effort, but that only holds true if the food is available to be extracted. When resources run thin due to environment changes or encroachment of others, services shut down, which slows the development of dependent first stages into productive second stages.
D) Which is where third stages come in. They are needed to expand or otherwise permanently resolve threats and competition. If the environment changes, its usually up to them to ensure that the change is positive or neutral. Without one, you have to compromise and its very easily to compromise in ways that cut off future second stage manpower.
What happened to the Kadabras is basically that. They reacted, made tradeoffs and were worse off each time the burdens didn't lessen while their capacity continues to fall to misadventure.
Even the Ralts community was in that position, theres simply no good counter to Dark types encroaching other than dedicate more Kirlia to keeping them away.
A) Lowest stages are not up to sustaining a community. Abra can't stay active, Beldum are dumb, Ralts are easily overwhelmed by emotion(and you really don't want ralts distress cascading at each other), Solosis have half a mind, Gothita are tunnel visioned, etc. They can be community members, but doing more than supporting their own upkeep is out of the question.
B) Only the middle stage actually generates more labor than they consume. You need this labor to run community services and specializations. Teacher, tool maker, habitation repair and expansion, food gatherer, settlement defense.
C) Second stages generally consume more food and other resources than first stages. This is fine because they can obtain far more food for the same amount of effort, but that only holds true if the food is available to be extracted. When resources run thin due to environment changes or encroachment of others, services shut down, which slows the development of dependent first stages into productive second stages.
D) Which is where third stages come in. They are needed to expand or otherwise permanently resolve threats and competition. If the environment changes, its usually up to them to ensure that the change is positive or neutral. Without one, you have to compromise and its very easily to compromise in ways that cut off future second stage manpower.
What happened to the Kadabras is basically that. They reacted, made tradeoffs and were worse off each time the burdens didn't lessen while their capacity continues to fall to misadventure.
Even the Ralts community was in that position, theres simply no good counter to Dark types encroaching other than dedicate more Kirlia to keeping them away.
I find it rather difficult to argue that pokemon need a third evolution when the Kadabra went without one for over a thousand years. It certainly seems helpful, but a third evolution is not the reason why Astra's village is better off.
The reason Astra's village is better off is that they went through the process necessary to create a community of intelligent pokemon. That process is:
- Teach as many pokemon as possible to have higher thought and to speak
- Those pokemon have children and pass on an increased ability to learn to think to their children
- Teach as many pokemon as possible to have higher thought and to speak
- Those pokemon have children and pass on an increased ability to learn to think to their children, a slightly easier ability to learn to think begins to diffuse amongst the population
- Teach as many pokemon as possible to have higher thought and to speak
- Those pokemon have children and pass on an increased ability to learn to think to their children, a slightly easier ability to learn to think diffuses further amongst the population
- Teach as many pokemon as possible to have higher thought and to speak...
- Take the brightest Abra and teach them to be intelligent and to speak
- Those now-Kadabra then take the brightest Abra of the next generation as their own apprentices and teach them...
The problem is that the Granite Caves Abra-line weren't trying to uplift their entire population. An immortal Alakazam could have driven the Kadabra to dedicate themselves to such an endeavor. But it is not the lack of Alakazam specifically that caused the problems faced by the Granite Caves. Similarly, it's not the lack of Gardevoir that caused the problems faced by Astra's village. It's the lack of the Ancestor. Her disappearance meant that, despite the presence of Gardevoir, there was no one who could maintain the barriers around the village[4]. Astra's parents were not as powerful as she was, or lacked some other quality.
It is not the dearth of third evolutions that is the source of the woes of the known intelligent pokemon communities.
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I really like that! It's quite similar to humans, you can't make a society entirely out of infants and children, it'll fall apart in no time. And even having a stable population of working adults doesn't guarantee success, you need subject matter experts to solve the problems the average person can't if you truly want to thrive instead of just survive. You need doctors, scientists, architects... work that both takes longer to learn than most manual labor (during which time you're still not contributing much if anything to society) and comes up more sporadically (you only need 1 architect for dozens if not hundreds of construction workers).
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Dermonster
The Shittiest Wizard
I think I'm seeing a small misunderstanding of a trivial bit of the discussion, so I will clarify just in case.
The Uplifting of the Abra Colony was going along the same trajectory as the Ralts Village. Abra were getting taught, the Kadabra that resulted were producing their own Abra afterwards, and things were beginning to move the same way.
It was only after their teacher left early that the Kadabra stopped running on the uplift strategy and went into the apprenticeship system. Maybe they didn't really understand the full scope of the plan or how it worked, or perhaps it was never fully explained, but either way they fell off the rails soon after. And as a result, well...
The Uplifting of the Abra Colony was going along the same trajectory as the Ralts Village. Abra were getting taught, the Kadabra that resulted were producing their own Abra afterwards, and things were beginning to move the same way.
It was only after their teacher left early that the Kadabra stopped running on the uplift strategy and went into the apprenticeship system. Maybe they didn't really understand the full scope of the plan or how it worked, or perhaps it was never fully explained, but either way they fell off the rails soon after. And as a result, well...
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The Ancestor's Ageless Wisdom
Videogamer921
oh god it’s him
- Location
- 10th circle of Hell; Ohio
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Tell her to stop staring at me with them big ol eyesIn light of the fact that the Kadabra had been having children with each other until the Ancestor (???) left them, I made this.
I would say I am sorry for inflicting this upon you.
But I'm not.
Charles Dewitt
A Paladin With No Self Confidence
- Location
- Middle of Nowhere Appalachia
Does anyone know where the picture of the ancestor is? I can't seem to find it in media.
Dermonster
The Shittiest Wizard
A lot of them are in the first one under spoilers before I ran into the image cap.
That one in particular is under the Ch. 8 spoiler. And in ch 8 itself as well.
bobbananaville
A giant crab, atop an even gianter crab
- Location
- The Philippines
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Wait so does the Hyphen world run on Lamarckian evolution rather than Darwinist evolution? For Pokemon at least?
Not that there's a problem with that, just want to check that I'm on the right page.
(I might have watched an old philosophytube video recently lol. By 'lamarckian', I mean 'parent gains trait through its life and then gives its children those traits when it reproduces' as opposed to darwin 'there are random mutations and the beneficial/non-harmful ones survive to reproduce')
Not that there's a problem with that, just want to check that I'm on the right page.
(I might have watched an old philosophytube video recently lol. By 'lamarckian', I mean 'parent gains trait through its life and then gives its children those traits when it reproduces' as opposed to darwin 'there are random mutations and the beneficial/non-harmful ones survive to reproduce')
Dermonster
The Shittiest Wizard
From what a brief skim of wikipedia tells me (I had to look it up) the very definition and existance of Egg Moves would say that 'Lamarckian' properties have some sway in Pokemon, even in baseline game canon, I believe.
So Hyphen isn't particularly special in regards to that; I just used an existing mechanic for something it was never intended for.
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- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
In the case of egg moves, that just sounds like neo-darwinian evolution, unless we're talking about the inheritance of regular level-up moves from both parents having them, which would be epigenetic (therefore not neo-darwinian but modern synthesis) because the capacity pre-exists and was merely activated early.
Inheritance of HMs and TMs is different but I'd probably also call that epigenetic?
- Location
- The world inside my head
So, I had an idea as I was reading through this (actually a week or two ago, and I didn't post because I'm a lazy bum, but.)
We know that the Ancestor made changes to the Hoenn/Kirlia Village Ralts-line (whichever you want to use, I'll say Kirlia Village but the canonical Pokémon species changes are by region), based on however actual evolution as opposed to form-changing metamorphosis 'evolution' works in the Poké-world, which are now permanent unless somehow changed back, and which included teaching Ralts full sapience/'civilization skill' before letting them breed. We also know that Kirlia Village considers Kirlia to be 'basically adults' and Ralts to be 'children', and it's implied this is part of whatever changes the Ancestor made.
Does this mean that Kirlia Village Ralts are a baby Pokémon species?
We know that the Ancestor made changes to the Hoenn/Kirlia Village Ralts-line (whichever you want to use, I'll say Kirlia Village but the canonical Pokémon species changes are by region), based on however actual evolution as opposed to form-changing metamorphosis 'evolution' works in the Poké-world, which are now permanent unless somehow changed back, and which included teaching Ralts full sapience/'civilization skill' before letting them breed. We also know that Kirlia Village considers Kirlia to be 'basically adults' and Ralts to be 'children', and it's implied this is part of whatever changes the Ancestor made.
Does this mean that Kirlia Village Ralts are a baby Pokémon species?
Dermonster
The Shittiest Wizard
I'm unsure what I've said on this in the past, but if a Ralts managed to not become a Kirlia for [SUFFICIENT LENGTH OF TIME], they could, in fact, lay an egg or whatnot. Nothing about them really changed biologically, they just got generationally attuned to language and civilization.
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