Has anyone else noticed that most fantasy races are literally retarded?

First of all, this shit's folded, computational strength relies on area and not on volume.

Second of all, you can compute shit in different ways. Maybe this thing has pattern recognition centres packed all over the body (makes sence if you spend half your life underwater) and head-brain is only for higher cognition, i.e. finding patterns among in pattern recognition. Maybe it has symbiotic spirits of nature inside its cranium who do cloud-computation and uplifted lizardfolk for their respect of Mother Gaea.

Maybe its less-than-hair-thin neurons are outside of its body and fold in case of danger, which makes them dumber in battle. Lizardfolk are very insecure abour personal space because you are literally invading their thoughts.

I don't know, man, it's fantasy, be creative.

Yeah, it's weird how things that were created by magic don't seem to have evolved naturally.

Not in real life either. Thank goodness the rest of this thread exists, op is a faggot.

THIS

>smaller brain which means less mental capacity
It is after all a well known fact that Sperm Wales, with their 18 lb brains, are precisely 6 times as smart as us humans, who only have 3 lb brains.

The only retard here is you, OP.

To be fair, that's a stupid arguement - whale brain needs to go through much more sensory input and send commands to much more musculature.

i mean... they are

>He thinks brain capacity is synonymous with intelligence

xenology.info/Xeno/14.1.2.htm
>It is not unreasonable to suppose that alien evolutionary patterns may also include some form of neural chassis with plug-in components. Certainly this is an adaptive course of development that encourages survival. But it is asking too much of evolutionary convergence to expect that natural selection on other planets will produce exactly the same neural chassis structural overlays as our own. ETs might have only two higher brain systems, or four, instead of our basic three. And the distribution of behavioral functions and memory subsystems will likely be vastly different.

bbc.com/future/story/20141216-can-you-live-with-half-a-brain
>Earlier this year, a case was reported of a woman who is missing her cerebellum, a distinct structure found at the back of the brain. By some estimates the human cerebellum contains half the brain cells you have. This isn't just brain damage – the whole structure is absent. Yet this woman lives a normal life; she graduated from school, got married and had a kid following an uneventful pregnancy and birth. A pretty standard biography for a 24-year-old.

xenology.info/Xeno/16.1.1.htm
>In a series of experiments, Dr. Allen L. Jacobson of the University of California showed that RNA functions as a carrier of memory in the mammalian brain... If these results can be confirmed, the implications of such "memory molecules" are staggering. Injected directly into the bloodstream, synthetic viruses consisting of nothing more than a central core of nucleic acid (commonly RNA) surrounded by a sheath of protein could be used to "infect" a brain with knowledge.

xenology.info/Xeno/12.4.htm
>One last important issue must now be addressed: Are interspecies sexual relations possible?

reminder that there is zero correlation between brain size and brain power

all these refutations brain size equaling brain power equaling intelligence makes me happy. Means there's hope for my beloved kobolds. Shine on you brilliant little bastards.

>Are interspecies sexual relations possible?
Yes.

It doesn't have to be consensual.

>One last important issue must now be addressed: Are interspecies sexual relations possible?
That's the only thing that matters in my book.

I knew Veeky Forums would appreciate that part more than anything else.

what the fuck am i looking at

why do you have this

what's WRONG with you

You know, a ganglionic PC race could have some pretty interesting stuff going on. We forget sometimes that the centralized nervous system in vertebrates isn't the norm.

So,why even bother with the brain?And,if the brain is unnnecessary,why not the rest of the flesh?Why don't souls just get in hunks of hard stone?
2 retards who don't know what encefalization quotient is.
You should learn brainlet.Ants and shrews have brain/body mass ratios superior to humans,but are much dumber.

Ravens are smarter than Whales. Who cares what the shape of fantasy race heads are?

>So,why even bother with the brain?And,if the brain is unnnecessary,why not the rest of the flesh?Why don't souls just get in hunks of hard stone?
Because that's the way the relevant gods wanted it and set it up, I assume.
Or perhaps souls put into a body tend to turn that body into something apparently biological. For example, in the Bible, Adam was formed from clay and then God breathed a soul into him. Perhaps in a fantasy world dwarves or similar hardy creatures were in fact made of hunks of stone.

...

>xenology.info/Xeno/16.1.1.htm
>>In a series of experiments, Dr. Allen L. Jacobson of the University of California showed that RNA functions as a carrier of memory in the mammalian brain... If these results can be confirmed, the implications of such "memory molecules" are staggering. Injected directly into the bloodstream, synthetic viruses consisting of nothing more than a central core of nucleic acid (commonly RNA) surrounded by a sheath of protein could be used to "infect" a brain with knowledge
this one seems fishy; it doesn't really say how much easier the rats were to train

Why do you think most of them are semi-savage beasts good only for fighting? They're basically animals that can stab you, and that's scary yo.

>>In a series of experiments, Dr. Allen L. Jacobson of the University of California showed that RNA functions as a carrier of memory in the mammalian brain... If these results can be confirmed, the implications of such "memory molecules" are staggering. Injected directly into the bloodstream, synthetic viruses consisting of nothing more than a central core of nucleic acid (commonly RNA) surrounded by a sheath of protein could be used to "infect" a brain with knowledge.

You wacky humand and your "brains go in the head" madness. it's no wonder your inefficent humanoid robots are so easy to disable.

Brain power mostly derives from shape and design not size, plus lizardman there would likely be much larger than a human, so im sure he is fine

>Why don't souls just get in hunks of hard stone?

Repeat after me. FANTASY.

>what is encephalization?
>I'm arguing biology but I have no idea what 'real' actually is!

>Such findings led to conjecture that memory was in some way recorded in the base sequences of DNA, RNA, and protein, just as hereditary information is coded in genes. Spectacular reports in high-profile journals of success in transferring memory between animals by injections of RNA or protein extracted from the brains of trained animals into naive animals buoyed the belief in a molecular memory trace (Babich and others 1965; Rosenblatt and others 1966; Ungar and Oceguera-Navarro 1965; Reiniš and Koloušek 1968). These studies were subsequently discredited (Luttges and others 1966; Byrne and others 1966), but the dispute continued into the 1970s with positive results reported in leading journals (Golub and others 1970).

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3163891/

So what you're saying is Frank Herbert was right all along?

It's quite likely that we'll be able to find a way to inject memories. Which is neat.

On the RNA side, certain species of Mollusk (VERY SPECIFIC SPECIES, and i'm drunk so research is out of the question) can actually edit their RNA on the fly. As in, can this base code to develop something new.

This was at the cost of expedient evolution, and is probably why octopi and the like haven't developed past wild animal.

Neat eh?

>On the RNA side, certain species of Mollusk (VERY SPECIFIC SPECIES, and i'm drunk so research is out of the question) can actually edit their RNA on the fly. As in, can this base code to develop something new.

According to the clickbait-articles, yes. The study says no such thing.

>cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30344-6

>Unlike other taxa, cephalopods diversify their proteomes extensively by RNA editing
>Extensive recoding is specific to the behaviorally complex coleiods
>Unlike mammals, cephalopod recoding is evolutionarily conserved and often adaptive
>Transcriptome diversification comes at the expense of slowed-down genome evolution

I'm sorry, waa?

(should have said decoding, not editing, my b)

I sobered up 4 u

Sorry, should have checked that. "Xenology" was written in the 70s, it's bound to have some things discredited since then.

Here, a compensation:

sciencemag.org/news/2012/11/bdelloids-surviving-borrowed-dna
>A new genetic analysis shows that roughly 10% of the bdelloids' active genes were pilfered from other species, such as fungi, bacteria, and plants.

Nature is a weird and manic force. If you think about it, it boils down to 'can something use this to move?' Then it figures out a way to what do.

'Life finds a way' ya know?

in a universe where magic exists, you're stuck on hominid brain composition/size

maybe it was you who was "literally retarded" all along

First off you don't seem to understand how brains fit in different organisms, you're probably just thinking of how human brains are and trying to squeeze it into a different shape but that's not how it works and how a head looks doesn't even give a perfect idea of skull shape.
Anyway, intelligence seems correlated more with the amount of folds than the size of the brain so your whole premise is flawed on multiple levels.

I guess once again the literally retarded one was op.

>lose your leg
>lose ability to walk and automatically recognize light and shade

>encefalization quotient
>blatantly says the relative brain mass between organisms is not completely reliable as the brain mass between mammals, birds and the like are not comparable, and only really works as a measure with other primates
Try again

They have another brain in their back. Like diplodocus.

user, Godzilla was just a movie

Not just playing a cephalid.

I'm not a biologist, so I probably don't know what I'm talking about, but it seems to me like the size of the brain likely has less to do with intelligence than the complexity of the brain. I mean, Whales have huge brains compared to humans, but while they're pretty smart as far as animals go, they have nowhere near a human level of intelligence.

can you link to some of the "two-brain" species living today?

Brain size matters.Corvids have impressive brains,but because of their size they're much dumber than us.

It certainly doesnt accept weakness.

Clever solutions however are welcome, as long as they serve a purpose. Rube Goldberg need not apply

>Isn't the norm
Literally what. If you hadn't put "for vertebrates" I wouldn't have said anything, but I'm pretty sure you have no forehead with a comment like that.

A crocodile's skull is 90% skull. Sure the head is enormous, but it's so thick there's relatively little room for a brain. Because their survival strategy doesn't rely on it.

I think people really don't understand how smart people are and how much energy goes into developing and maintaining our brains. Our nails are thinner, our muscles are smaller, our skills are thinner, all so that more energy goes into our frontal cortex. Nothing on earth can conceive of greater existence except for humans. Nothing has created anything close to what humans have created. Our intelligence is incomprehensible relative to the rest of nature.

Intelligence is determined by surface area of the brain not volume.

So a wrinkled brain the size of a apple, will be smarter than a smooth brain the size of a melon.

Look at avian brains. Corvids are easily on par with some great apes and their brains are tiny.

>res cogitans
>having physical properties

>Starting Strength.jpg

Our endurance and dexterity are legendary though. We can outpace any land based animals and our opposable thumbs gave us more finesse than other animals.

We also have incredible strength for our size, we just "limit" our latent strength in order to have better finesse and control over our body. In flight or fight situation and once our adrenaline starts pumping I'm sure we can rip a dog's mouth in two with our bare hands.

And we're incredibly adaptable. Unlike other animals we can survive the most extreme temperatures and climates. We're also very robust for our size and frame, surviving injuries that would kill other animals even before the advent of medicine.

Really, we have won the superpower lottery.

Brain size is not actually all that strongly corrilated with intelligence. Human brain sizes have actually decreased over the years but it's doubtful if humans are less intelligent than they were previously. Intelligence is at least in terrestrial species, more predicated on architecture and access to fuel/nutrients (larger diameter holes leading into the brain in human ancestors seem to corrilate with a rise in intelligent behavior. )

I'm pretty sure that the skull is 100% skull user...

Brain size/volume to body size ratio is actually correlated to intelligence in an animal. However there's a ton of caveats to that. Brain structure (i.e. what parts of the brain are enlarged) and complexity have a lot to do with it. Humans as they are now are basically on the bleeding edge of head size as it is. Any larger and we wouldn't have survived birth in large enough numbers. However our brains have been getting smaller, but have actually gained surface area due to gaining extra folds. We've reached peak size for our niche and the only positive evolutionary change we can make is to make the existing brain more efficient.

Endurance is mainly due to having an adaptive cooling system (sweating) and a very energy efficient gait for a two legged land animal. Our endurance isn't really all that great all things considered.

Secondly our strength is absolutely not incredible for our size. Most of our hominid cousins are much stronger than us pound per pound because our muscles evolved to be better for fine motor control but worse in terms of strength. Regardless of what you think humans can do with adrenaline.

Thirdly human physiology is not particularly adaptable, we do well because of our technological adaptations not because of our physiology. The same is true of our 'robustness' as humans are actually fairly fragile, especially because of our large and easily damaged heads/brains.

>Brain size/volume to body size ratio is actually correlated to intelligence in an animal.
I recall seeing a meta analysis that contested that finding and found that for the most part the strong correlation and linear relationship between volume and perceived intelligent behavior was at best weakly correlated and at worst not correlated but I am having trouble finding it right now. I'll keep looking but for now I may have to cede the point.

>However our brains have been getting smaller, but have actually gained surface area due to gaining extra folds.
Do you have a source on that? To my knowledge we don't really have good records on very soft tissues like brains so I am wondering how that claim is justified.

brehs...

It sickens me that someone, somewhere has fapped to this.

Your first sentence is so idiotic it hurts. You describe part of the reason why our endurance is good, acknowledging what user said (Which has been extensively tested), yet then dismiss all of that to claim our endurance isn't good because potato.

Do you think this is a fucking RPG system where we have mono-natured 'stats' we've invested in?

>starting strength
>with just a tiny box of milk
GOMAD or go home

I can continue to go on of course. Your second point is not incorrect, but it fails to take into account that other hominids are already more powerful than is normal for a mammal, pound for pound. We don't look so pitiful under that light.

For your third point, it's widely believed that human environmental adaptability and generalist feeding habits contributed strongly to or were direct products of the development of our brains. While tools obviously contributed to this, you have the twin issues here of the process starting well before advanced tool use, and that the idea that human technology is somehow an unnatural development in a world where we increasingly study tool development in the other relatively intelligent animals. This idea of humanity being an adaptable species because of the environment we evolved in necessitating it is a frequent lynchpin in the discussion of human evolution.

not him but
>the [decentralised nervous system in vertebrates] isn't the norm (among animals)

The point was that we do not have any innate differences in physiology that actually mean we have more innate endurance. We don't have some endurance "superpower" because at some fundamental level we are better at it, indeed in an some situations other organisms may have us outmatched, instead we have adaptations which give us an advantage at the very end of the energy calculations which make us more efficient but not necessarily better at enduring.

You're rules lawyering and trying to push for an alternative or over-strict definition of endurance to try and push a narrative of humans sucking. Don't post at me whining about the other user treating it like a stat or perk when you yourself have done so by trying to treat endurance as such.

And to be specific, it's not even an just 'advantage at the very end', which is against so anti-human self-loathing nonsense. You should look into how long most animals can maintain top speed. Hint: It's measures in seconds to minutes.

I mean hell, this whole 'innate endurance' concept of yours is gamey as fuck. Performance is all that matters here, not some RPG stat like you think.

It's vertebrates that have the centralized nervous system.

>Nothing on earth can conceive of greater existence except for humans.

Wrong. Every living thing is both sapient and sentient. They may not be able to communicate this, or they may lack the intelligence to go to any real lengths with it, but to say no animal has ever philosophized on Earth is special pleading.

>Second point
That is all well and good, but you seem to have forgotten I was responding to the point about our adaptability allowing us to "survive the most extreme temperatures and climates" something which did not happen until well after tool use became common place. Until then humans may have been fairly adaptable, but not to any extreme. We were more or less suited for the environment we evolved in and were able to spread to similar ones not unlike many other species.

It's not over strict, it's pretty fundamental to the point. Humans are are more or less like most other mammals except with a few after market modifications that make them more efficient. If you are going to go claiming humans have some superpower of endurance it better actually be about endurance and not efficiency or having a better cooling system than most.

>You should look into how long most animals can maintain top speed
Humans can't maintain top speed for very long ether mate. Not sure what you are trying to prove with this.

>Arguing with anthropocentrists
user, what do you hope to achieve? You should know by now that most of these people won't consider alternate positions.

>Every living thing is sapient
Crazy ass PETA vegan. Sapience involves not only self-awareness, but the ability of abstract thought. Most animals certainly do not have that.

[citation needed]

>Most animals certainly do not have that.
Can you prove that?

>Adaptability
You are very particular about language, so I'm being particular about your statements too. You claimed humans are not particularly adaptable. This is a false statement, at least by the prevailing understanding of human evolution and capability. You are not wrong in saying that humans couldn't handle the most extreme temperatures without tool usage, but that isn't how you replied. You unilaterally declared humans to be poorly adaptive.

>It's not over strict, it's pretty fundamental to the point.
No, it markets endurance as some sort of physical resistance stat, and completely ignores the nuances of the word, such as the other definitions it holds.

Are there other words user could have used? Yes, Stamina is good one for what humans have as an example, but he isn't WRONG for calling it Endurance, and you are still guilty of understating human ability. This is why you seem to hold contempt for your species, which I see is a charge you refuse to deny.

>Humans can't maintain top speed for very long either.
Which is meaningless when the primary hunting strategy was to rely on stamina. Most animals don't have the presence of mind to trot just fast enough to stay in front of a human that could have chased it all day, and couldn't maintain a higher speed without exhausting itself and being beaten to death. The humans would never be using their top speed except in a panic situation. In addition, any animal theoretically capable of the above presence of mind could be felled by throwing weapons, which have been a thing for so long that our shoulder girdles have evolved to accommodate it.

Can you prove it? And before you try to pull the burden of proof blame game with me, notice the following;
>All creatures on earth evolved from the same self-replicating protein chains
>All animals (with a nervous system) use almost exactly the same neurotransmitters as humans do
>Many animals (dolphins, corvids, monkeys) have similar IQ to low intelligence or young humans, who are perfectly capable of abstract thought and "self awareness" as if that phrase fucking means anything

Please prove how these animals, despite sharing almost all the brain chemistry with humans, having a similar level of IQ to some humans, cannot do any abstract thought. Please cite your sources.

You don't have an answer, because you are special pleading. Muh human brain is special. Why? Just accept my argument without thinking, wahh!

Your buzzwords are meaningless. You have no argument.

Fuck off.

This is what the various neurological and behavioral studies we do on animals are attempting to determine. An animal failing the mirror test, for example, likely indicates that it doesn't possess an abstract conception of self (Though most animals going through this test definitely DO have a regular conception of selfhood.)

See above.

Also, your argument is one that posits that if something is THEORETICALLY possible, then it must be so. It also supposes that similar building blocks have similar results. This is obviously not the case. Look at carbon. It's the main element of life. It's what coal is made of, and diamonds, and graphene, and carbon nano-tubes. All of these things are vastly different in spite of it, and do not possess the same properties or, for lack of a better word, abilities.

Also, I not say that ALL humans are unilaterally sapient. All normal adult humans are, but the mentally retarded can stay in an infantile state of mind for their entire lives, and other than our tests determining a child younger than five years is only equivalent in intelligence to a great ape of the age, we also know that very young children fail the mirror tests and other tests we've developed to try and determine intelligence level or sapience in animals.

>humans don't have better endurance than other animals, they just have these things that give them better endurance

Are you autistic?

>You unilaterally declared humans to be poorly adaptive.
From what I know of many species our adaptability is middling to high middling if we discount the bonuses we get from our intelligence and look only at physiology. Hence the "not particularly adaptable" because well, we aren't particularly so.

>Are there other words user could have used? Yes, Stamina is good one for what humans have as an example, but he isn't WRONG
If you wish to call it efficiency or even stamina or something I won't argue, but I stick by my own argument using my strict definition of the word rather than other colloquial meanings which have entered the lexicon.

>Which is meaningless when the primary hunting strategy was to rely on stamina.
Then it's meaningless to bring up top speed in the first place if it isn't useful for comparison.

>In addition, any animal theoretically capable of the above presence of mind could be felled by throwing weapons
Yes but again, tool use is enabled by our intellect, something which we have already established and is not an area of contention when it comes to human abilities.

>you seem to hold contempt for your species, which I see is a charge you refuse to deny.
Guilty as charged, however that is not what this particular argument is about. The reason I am arguing these points is simply because I dislike HFY type posters who exaggerate everything about human abilities at every chance they get because pretending we have superpowers is fun. I have little problem giving credit where credit is due to humans. I will readily admit that we are one of the most successful species in natural history, and that we do owe it to a trait - our intellect - in which, to the best of our knowledge, we are peerless. I however refuse to play ball with these semantic games of framing humans as walking gods with hyperbole and poetic license. If one is to appreciate humans (or any life form for that matter) it should be for what they are, not some fiction.

>From what I know of many species
If you bring up other species, you will need to name them.

>I stick by my own argument using my strict definition
You can try and define a word only in the strict sense, but nobody is obligated to abide by it. It's dishonest to intentionally misunderstand someone's argument because you want to use your own definition of a commonly understood word.

>Then it's meaningless to bring up top speed.
It was relevant to the off-hand comment you made about humans only being efficient in extreme energy calculations, and was part of my argument refuting the idea that human stamina is only relevant in theoretical scenarios, as you implied.

>Tool use
This is another tangent. It's not exactly related to the main point of the utilization of human stamina, it's just a supposition I inserted to full vent my own thoughts.

>Guilty as charged.
Then some level of bias in your argument has to be acknowledged, even if you don't think it's your main motivator.

>I dislike HFY type posters.
Then limit your refutations to specific facts and exaggerations, which you have shown yourself to be capable of when pressed, rather than aping his own mistake and making vast, unilateral, exaggerated statements in the opposite direction. That's the core cause of my argument with you, that in trying to dispel what he said, you jumped over fact and into fiction.

By your logic, races like the Luxodon would be the smartest in any setting.

Regardless, playing the 'dumb races' is often pretty fun.

Being a lovable idiot Poisondusk Lizardfolk character is great.

endurance
[en-doo r-uh ns, -dyoo r-]

2.
the ability or strength to continue or last, especially despite fatigue, stress, or other adverse conditions; stamina

2
: the ability to withstand hardship or adversity; especially : the ability to sustain a prolonged stressful effort or activity

Endurance (also related to sufferance, resilience, constitution, fortitude, and hardiness) is the ability of an organism to exert itself and remain active for a long period of time, as well as its ability to resist, withstand, recover from, and have immunity to trauma, wounds, or fatigue. It is usually used in aerobic or anaerobic exercise.

>desperately trying to defend your autistic argument of humans aren't the best at endurance, they just have things that make them better at endurance

>If you bring up other species, you will need to name them.
That's a real pain in the ass since I don't have any comprehensive list in my head, so instead I'll just retrace my steps. I think the argument so far is as follows 'humans are a fairly adaptable species and were so without use of technology.' Fair enough? If so then my counter argument is that this cannot be established as long before humans migrated out of Africa around 50,000 years ago (as far as I know this is still the leading theory) humans were already using tools and technology. Before then to my knowledge human and human ancestor habitats were relatively constrained. Therefore I don't think it's quite fair to claim that once we discount technological assistance humans are particularly adaptable to their environment.

> It's dishonest to intentionally misunderstand
I wasn't doing it to be dishonest, the original poster only posted one line clarifying his use of the word so I filled in the rest with my subjective take, and I thought I gave enough context to understand my use of it.

>It was relevant to the off-hand comment you made about humans only being efficient in extreme energy calculations,
Ah sorry it seems I was not clear, with that comment I was not saying that it was only theoretical, rather that human endurance was not something uniquely innate to humans. To use an earlier example, unlike strength that differs in humans and other hominids because of molecular differences, human 'endurance' is due to factors that are at the "end" of the process. That is to say not baked in to the very core of our makeup. Apologies for the unclear language.

>You must acknowledge some possible bias
I like to think I can separate my feelings, but perhaps you are right.

>That's the core cause of my argument with you, that in trying to dispel what he said, you jumped over fact and into fiction.
Fair enough, I suppose I do owe you an apology for that as well.

It was based off of a theory back in the 1800s that dinosaurs had a 2nd brain at the arse end of the spine because they had a hollow space back there.

It was largely discredited when it was pointed out that most birds have a similar structure and no second brain.

>Poison Dusk Lizardfolk
Enjoy burning in silver flames.

>An animal failing the mirror test, for example,

Opinion
fucking
discarded

This is the point where you say:

>The mirror test is useless!
In which case, no matter what you say, the onus is on you to prove that.

or

>It's not authoritative, more tests should be done!
In which case I agree, I simply provided it as an example.

or

>Scientists are evil lying agents of Satan!
In which case I'll have a good laugh.

>encefalization quotient

Try convincing any serious professor about that. I had a lecture a couple of weeks ago where we went over this specifically.

Shrews have a higher encefalization quotient then humans. They also have a higher encefalization quotient then ravens.

Shrews are dumb as shit, so please stop with your meme-science.

He means the head space.

The area taking up the head would either be a thick skull with little brains or thin skull with larger brains.

The conversation is weird because the anons are assuming that all brains are relative in nature and by that logic assume that a t-rex doesn't have a brain the size of a peanut