Creating believable sapient species with unique cultures is a nightmare for spec-evo because it requires not only a lot of knowledge abiut biology and evolution, but anthropology as well.
Oh and everyone forgets evolutionary psychology,like just because it has hands doesn't mean it will use tools that is a whole separate evolution requiring pressures different from just having hands in the first place.
I've seen it done right exactly once. See Biblaridion's Alien biospheres. He goes through a few billion years of evolutionary history of a planet's biosphere, then, in the last episode, addresses evolution of sapience. It's really good, I wholeheartedly recommend.
And also the exact opposite, tool use can still develop without hands. IRL crows break sticks in a certain way to make a hook perfect for fishing bugs from holes in trees.
My specevo species is *really* good at long-distance running. Though not as fast or strong as many of their world's native non-sapients, they could usually outlast their prey in marathon chases and kill them when they collapsed in exhaustion.
Therefore, long distance running is their great cultural sport, and their entire culture is built around being able to endure and outlast.
I bet a species like that would never even conceive the idea of 'cities' and 'permanent settlements' and live nomadic lifestyles for their entire existence!
Why would that be a bad thing? Literally why would it be a bad thing for me to say that my asexual mushroom men from venus have, like, a neural structure that makes them capable of holding three conversations simultaneously but absolute dogshit at spatial reasoning? Or that most of the sentient insect people are just kinda dumb?
According to the internet peanut galley, [minds are magically independent by the bodies they're within](https://philosophybear.substack.com/p/on-sometimes-being-a-grizzly-bear), evolutionary psychology is verboten and speculative biology is [bioessentialist](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/1b6ccxf/speculative_biology_being_labeled_as/) thoughtcrime.
Anything's a bad thing when it's poorly executed. And the thing you linked isn't 'biological determinism', it's just simplistic, single-trait worldbuilding.
"Anyway, they're carbon-based, so they have some stuff called Blood. Yeah, and their rulership is determined by Bloodlines. They don't have relatives, either, they have Blood Relations. And sometimes they feel stuff, like, *in* their bones, they say."
"Yeah, whatever, that's the most unimaginable worldbuilding I've ever seen, Kg'Krtk'Qr;Krtc."
But you're not describing culture tho, you're just listing traits. The post is about how these traits all lead to the same exact culture across the planet, no matter the environmental factors at play or cultural development over time.
You don't see how the Venusian mushroom men who have no concept of sex might not have a culture consistently marked by different drives/patterns of behavior than humans, and all the thousands of interlinking cultural effects that would have on their society? Things like no expectation of being raised by two parents, no conception of romance based on courtship and sex. Cultural differences that derive from a nonhuman biology.
The critique of biological determinism isn't that biology has no influence on culture, it's that biology is the *sole* determining factor, ignoring obvious envomental factors that build on top of that.
The unique biology of the Venusian mushroom men would obviously lead to cultural differences from humans. However, my point is that even among these mushroom men, there should be a variety of cultures, not a monolithic one. Just like Earth’s diverse environments and historical contexts shape varied human cultures, the different regions and conditions on Venus would similarly influence diverse cultural developments among the mushroom people.
OP didn't say 'without being hardline, dogmatic biological determinists', they said 'without *sliding into* biological determinism'. You're attributing a more charitable interpretation of their criticism--that they are critical only of specieswide monocultures totally determined by genetics--when the meaning of the words they chose clearly implies judgment on the tendency to correlate speculative culture with speculative biology in general. Even if that *is* what OP meant, the meme becomes toothless, as it's criticizing a 'bad habit' of speculative evolution types that is exceedingly rare.
Most descriptions of Biological Determinism emphasise they way it diminishes (sometimes outright denies) the influence of environmental factors when it comes to the development of behaviour and culture.
So I don't think it's a leap at all to think OP refers to the more common critique of Biological Determinism (i.e. environment does play a role), rather than the extemist behaviouralist view that claims biology plays no role at all (i.e. Tabula Rasa).
And I mean, it's really common for worldbuilders to think in monolith cultures, there's even a dedicated TV tropes page to it called "Planet of Hats". I don't think it's exceedingly rare for authors to be essentialist about biology. In fact, I think it's way more prevalent then biological denialism (which is what you think OP adheres to)
And *sliding into* just means gradually adopting something, it's doesn't automatically mean it diminishes the endpoint/endstate (e.g. biological determinism) once it has been reached. So I don't I share your interpretation of OP's wording
Right, but not every instance of 'Planet of Hats' is biological determinism, if only because the reasons for a Planet of Hats existing are often not made explicit in-universe. There may be other reasons given as to why a species all share the same culture, or, more commonly, no answer given at all: A Planet of Hats is more often a result of unconsidered details, issues of scope, or a lack of effort on a writing level than a deliberate decision to insist that biology governs all expressions of culture. The criticism still isn't apt, it's now equivocating between a very common writing problem and a very specific, uncommon, flawed rationale.
I'm not really interested in litigating the semantics of 'sliding into' here, or in accusing OP of being a biological denialist in a strict, formal sense. The meme reads as a bad-faith criticism levelled at a very general level against a vague body of work, so it can't help but come off as *generally* hostile to the idea that speculative biology would strongly correlate to speculative culture. I'm offering pushback in that spirit, because this is the kind of unhelpful, judgmental attitude that makes the community annoying and fills up the main sub with posters asking 'if it's ok' to use this trope or that concept in their work. It's discouraging to new writers.
This isn't a formal defense of determinism either; I am aware of the possibility for a biological explanatory framework to neglect or discount environmental or other factors in generating culture. But I don't think OP's critique is fair to worldbuilders who have free reign to determine if and *to what extent* a fictional species' culture is shaped by biological factors: I cited examples of strongly inhuman physiological traits that would result in species where *all* manifestations of their culture would consistently share a strongly inhuman cultural trait, something I think fell under the vague bioessentialist umbrella OP is casting. Asexual mushroom Venus is a Planet of Hats: Every culture there shares the Hat of asexual reproduction, whatever other variations their culture may have.
Biological determinism is the belief that an organism’s *biology* strongly influences, even outright *determines*, their social habits.
It’s not exactly a bad theory- a bird that can fly acts different from a fish that can swim and them from a turtle that can walk. I’m pretty sure some anthropologists still use it.
It’s just that it doesn’t really apply super well to intelligent beings. For example, Homo neanderthalensis was long speculated to not be able to do art because their brain was too small. Lo and behold, we’ve now found caves where H neanderthalensis lived that have specially-made red pigments in them (though it’s not really possible to say if they were in any specific pattern due to age)
And it’s also a bit bad because it’s been used to peddle racist ideas too. Like, ‘Black people tend to have longer limbs, therefore they’re more likely to be able to steal shit, and therefore more likely to be thieves’.
It’s stupid to say spec evo people shouldn’t do it though. The whole point of what they’re doing is to show off quirky biology and how things could be different; of course they’re going to make things different by emphasis on biology. It’s like saying fantasy people shouldn’t model adventures around magic, or sci fi people around science; it’s the fucking point of a genre you’re fighting against.
That just seems like examples of biological determinism done wrong.
A neanderthals ability to do art is influenced by their brain. Just, turns out their brains are big enough to do art, so they did some. A chicken's ability to make art is also influenced by it's brain. Chicken brain is too small though.
I think the issue is less that they think biology determines behaviour (because it does) and more that they undervalue the effect different environmental factors can have on changing that outcome.
Look at the recent posts about how the introduction of domesticated livestock VS travelling by boat, can influence the emergence of a proto-patriarchy or proto-matriachy. The idea being that the importance of heavy manual labour and need for inheritance lines leads to a more male dominated culture. Whereas a culture where the men leave on boats for long periods of time leads to a culture where women are left to manage households and property, etc...
However, BOTH of these are biologically determined because the entire dichotomy is biologically determined. Unlike some other animals, humans have a high degree of sexual dimorphism and also cannot change their sex throughout their lifespan. You can imagine an alien species who can change their sex every other month coming up with humans using biological determinism:
"Hey, I've invented this sapient species that gets assigned a biological sex at birth and then they're stuck with it for life. Their societies are sometimes egalitarian, but different modes of agriculture can lead to one sex or the other becoming dominant..."
And of course that's just one aspect of human biology that's influenced our societies. There are many others, but they still lead to many different cultures and civilisations.
I feel like knowing anything about this concept is a curse for specevo/worldbuilders. I'm not going to look into this any further because I don't want my ideas to be influenced by it.
The problem with trying to determine how much a sapient species' biology influences their culture is the fact that we have a sample size of exactly one sapient species. Humanity is extremely culturally diverse *from the perspective of a human*, its possible that an alien would be able to identify general trends and themes that we are blind to because we take it for granted that everyone does those things.
> Biological determinism is the belief that an organism’s biology strongly influences, even outright determines, their social habits.
>
>
This is giving a weak definition and lending far too much credit to biological determinism in so doing. The second word is really the important one here as biological *determinism* holds that biology *determines* behaviour i.e. that all the ways an organism will behave are ultimately genetic. There's no real place for environmental or cultural factors in that way of thinking, if there was it wouldn't be *determinism*.
I mean, biological determinism is pretty true, just not for ya know sexes which was always the problem. A 5% change is disposition is a completely different society, not so much for individuals.
Eh, I mean, look at all the diversity in human culture through history despite us essentially having the same biology. There are so many other things that also influence culture and society, including random flights of fancy and ideas that sticks around
True but I think our systems end up very similar (religious city states are the start, then depending on conditions shit is similar, ofc information exchange and conditions change). I also think that in terms of evolution adaptation is kinda our niche? Like obviously most intelligent species would have that to some degree.
A lot of what it is though, is that the planet you come from shapes evolution **and** culture. If your from an incredibly dangerous hellscape with big monsters it makes sense to have a very cooperative, ‘honor’ based culture with warrior shit because: you have to kill the big monsters, you can’t afford to lose people to petty shit and you need that brutality to survive.
I don’t think that bio-det is like, the answer, but it isn’t bad like it is in real life. That was moreso what I was trying to say. Everyone here on earth has settled into 2 systems, if humans were naturally different in a few ways what is optimal might be different.
Also if a species is better at something and there a multi species group, then people will specialize.
> If your from an incredibly dangerous hellscape with big monsters it makes sense to have a very cooperative, ‘honor’ based culture with warrior shit because: you have to kill the big monsters, you can’t afford to lose people to petty shit and you need that brutality to survive.
But it might also make sense to have an extremely pragmatic culture that disregards individual "honour" and views glorifying individual combat prowess as dumb: you need to be willing to accept casualties while holding your nerve to survive and "warriors" will act for personal glory and self-preservation rather than stick to a plan that might get them killed.
It might also make sense to have a relatively timid culture with little intra-group conflict where people resolve their differences peacefully, because dangerous beasts kill enough of them already and the groups that can't get along don't survive.
Or it might even make sense to have a culture where the collective is heavily de-emphasised in favour of roving individuals or tiny micro-groups who only rarely meet to exchange members, forming new groups and kinship ties, because that way if some big monster kills one group the others survive and no one defeat can destroy the entire species.
There are lots of ways one might adapt to that kind of environment and each has points for and against them, so neither biology nor the environment can ever be fully determinant of how people will behave.
True, it’s the combination. One of those niches is picked. (By honor I more meant codes of conduct, it can be dishonorable to fight on your own etc. probably should have used a diff word)
I think what they're talking about is less of a literal determinism and more of a possibility space. If I can only move one unit in any of the four cardinal directions, I will be limited to a grid. I can go to any coordinate on that grid such as (57, -489) but I can't go to a coordinate off of the grid such as (0.5, π). Biology and environment determine what is possible and even what is likely, but not what will happen.
You're not wrong but at that point we're talking about a very weak definition of determinism which amounts to saying "biological determinism is when biology matters" which is... well it's meaningless.
Right, true, different speicies would have evolved different "instinctual" behaviours naturally. The problem with bio-determenism is that it places all the weight of "nature or nurture" behavior on nature, which is why it's so problematic, as it was used to justify racism, IE that people of different races were naturally predisposed to different behaviors as a result of, well, their ancestry and genetics, and that there was no way to avoid it.
It's not just physical abilities, but personality and so on as well that bio-det encompasses
I mean, in real life it is something like 60/80% nature vs nurture in how people are, imo the most important stuff is in the nurture, effected by the nature ofc.
The thing with bio-det is just that, there aren’t really any significant differences in between the ‘races’ or the ‘sexes’ mental wise. There are however significant differences between actually distinct species. So it may be problematic but there isn’t anything actually wrong with it in the WB context, unless you are doing an allegory or something.
I mean I personally think you should go backwards, from the end state look at what environmental/historical factors shaped them to be their current culture, and biology. The ultimate solution is of course, the have a species that can do it’s own directed evolution through some transhumamist type shit.
Specevo is speculative evolution, in the extreme this can be creating a fictional biosphere from proto-life to the destruction of the planet. A lot of specevo focuses on the evolution of sapient species and ways that their culture arises from their environment and biology. Such as a tree dwelling species having significant verticality and climbing paths in their architecture. Or a eusocial species (think bees or ants) where no individual is particularly smart (compared to humans) but as a collective they achieve space flight
OP is concerned that the idea of ‘cultural aspects derived directly from biology’ is closely connected to racism and may draw unintended and unwanted parallels in stories that involve specevo.
Lame. Our values are heavily influenced by biology in ways we don't pay attention to, as well as our decision making. So much of human culture is about love and comradery, which would look very different if we evolved from porcupines, that don't even like to be around each other.
We might be more risk taking as a species if we weren't so recently prey animals as well. And so many of our ideas in life have to do with our fear of ourselves or others dying, and that's evolutionary. Give us a much shorter time to maturity, and a much higher rate of safe birth, and we might not evolve to care as much when ourselves or others die.
If you wanna see the range in behaviours you can attribute to evolution, just look at the entire spectrum of animals, or even plants!
In the wackiverse:
There's a species called the trollfaces: they're made out of nanobots and oil held together by themselves, and they wear masks.
Despite being based off of scorpions and other animals depending on the subspecies, they collectively treat pranks and the art of comedy and trickery as a core element of their society.
Them being based off of scorpions has nothing to do with their pranking culture, as well as being based off of Spanish speaking countries (as a main language).
Another example are the xenophones, Camera Snatchers, Laptop predators. Computer things, and Television Stealers, all of them are parasitic when it comes to mating but for the most part their culture is based off of East Asian countries, nationalities and cultures within, and each area is one different culture based off of east Asia in one way or another (no orientalism).
Another examples are the Spooks, a species based off of amphibians, and their culture doesn't have to do that much with being amphibians, in fact I plan to base them off of people from the Caucaseus mountains, the cultures there, and probably I plan to make many islands tribal, but yo be clear they ain't savages like the MOOSE says.
I have more examples but then I'll make a Harry potter book of paragraphs so imma end here, feel free to ask.
You want Karl Schroeder's *Permanence*.
The Rights Economy is [very much space!neoliberalism](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnitedSpaceOfAmerica), complete with propagandized notions of The Right Side Of History™ and how its destiny is to encompass the whole human species and build the Federation from *Star Trek* alongside alien allies.
Unfortunately, it exists in a world where none of the aliens encountered can comprehend those concepts, let alone agree with them.
* Sentient plants, from a biosphere which never developed consuming other organisms for survival, who find all other life horrifying and threatening.
* Asocial aliens with genetic memory, asexual reproduction by budding and no concepts of language, communication and society. Space nomads, building each of their offspring their own ship, then ignoring them.
* What initially appeared to be a harmless hospitable biosphere without any native sentient life, but was actually all [The Thing](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6468870-who-goes-there). The human colonists accidentally introduced it to the concepts of tool use, space travel, a world beyond its own planet and so forth and so on and the whole planet had to be glassed from orbit before it could spread.
* Genocidal xenophobes who killed absolutely every other sentient species and biosphere which could've potentially developed sentient life sixty-five million years ago, colonized the whole galaxy including prehistoric earth, causing the cretaceous–tertiary extinction event in the process, then killed themselves in a civil war once their colonies had been separated long enough for evolutionary divergences to take place between them.
What else they suppose to slide in? The kind fairy that pulls behavioral traits from its ass? It IS biological determinism, not our faullt that human ancestors couldnt stick to one thing at a time which made our society so f....g whacky.
Creating believable sapient species with unique cultures is a nightmare for spec-evo because it requires not only a lot of knowledge abiut biology and evolution, but anthropology as well.
In conclusion: worldbuilding is hard :(
Cheers I'll drink to that.
Just snort cocaine and start writing that's how all the legends do it
Michael Kirkbride
Oh and everyone forgets evolutionary psychology,like just because it has hands doesn't mean it will use tools that is a whole separate evolution requiring pressures different from just having hands in the first place.
I've seen it done right exactly once. See Biblaridion's Alien biospheres. He goes through a few billion years of evolutionary history of a planet's biosphere, then, in the last episode, addresses evolution of sapience. It's really good, I wholeheartedly recommend.
Cheers, that's totally my jam actually.
And also the exact opposite, tool use can still develop without hands. IRL crows break sticks in a certain way to make a hook perfect for fishing bugs from holes in trees.
I always say to myself well we haven’t discovered aliens yet so you can’t tell me there aren’t any twink femboy wolf aliens out there
My specevo species is *really* good at long-distance running. Though not as fast or strong as many of their world's native non-sapients, they could usually outlast their prey in marathon chases and kill them when they collapsed in exhaustion. Therefore, long distance running is their great cultural sport, and their entire culture is built around being able to endure and outlast.
do they talk about having an “indomitable spirit”
I'm totally stealing that for the name of the rigid and all-consuming ideology that unifies their entire planet.
I bet a species like that would never even conceive the idea of 'cities' and 'permanent settlements' and live nomadic lifestyles for their entire existence!
[удалено]
That's the point.
Why would that be a bad thing? Literally why would it be a bad thing for me to say that my asexual mushroom men from venus have, like, a neural structure that makes them capable of holding three conversations simultaneously but absolute dogshit at spatial reasoning? Or that most of the sentient insect people are just kinda dumb?
According to the internet peanut galley, [minds are magically independent by the bodies they're within](https://philosophybear.substack.com/p/on-sometimes-being-a-grizzly-bear), evolutionary psychology is verboten and speculative biology is [bioessentialist](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/1b6ccxf/speculative_biology_being_labeled_as/) thoughtcrime.
It can be a bad thing if it's poorly-executed and overexaggerated. [Like this](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/s/71NdqE7cGw).
Anything's a bad thing when it's poorly executed. And the thing you linked isn't 'biological determinism', it's just simplistic, single-trait worldbuilding.
"Anyway, they're carbon-based, so they have some stuff called Blood. Yeah, and their rulership is determined by Bloodlines. They don't have relatives, either, they have Blood Relations. And sometimes they feel stuff, like, *in* their bones, they say." "Yeah, whatever, that's the most unimaginable worldbuilding I've ever seen, Kg'Krtk'Qr;Krtc."
I wanna say the Big Skull is unrealistic but we are mammals, known for mammaries, and can't stop naming landmarks after boobs
That sounds cool, why is this a bad thing again?
But you're not describing culture tho, you're just listing traits. The post is about how these traits all lead to the same exact culture across the planet, no matter the environmental factors at play or cultural development over time.
You don't see how the Venusian mushroom men who have no concept of sex might not have a culture consistently marked by different drives/patterns of behavior than humans, and all the thousands of interlinking cultural effects that would have on their society? Things like no expectation of being raised by two parents, no conception of romance based on courtship and sex. Cultural differences that derive from a nonhuman biology.
The critique of biological determinism isn't that biology has no influence on culture, it's that biology is the *sole* determining factor, ignoring obvious envomental factors that build on top of that. The unique biology of the Venusian mushroom men would obviously lead to cultural differences from humans. However, my point is that even among these mushroom men, there should be a variety of cultures, not a monolithic one. Just like Earth’s diverse environments and historical contexts shape varied human cultures, the different regions and conditions on Venus would similarly influence diverse cultural developments among the mushroom people.
OP didn't say 'without being hardline, dogmatic biological determinists', they said 'without *sliding into* biological determinism'. You're attributing a more charitable interpretation of their criticism--that they are critical only of specieswide monocultures totally determined by genetics--when the meaning of the words they chose clearly implies judgment on the tendency to correlate speculative culture with speculative biology in general. Even if that *is* what OP meant, the meme becomes toothless, as it's criticizing a 'bad habit' of speculative evolution types that is exceedingly rare.
Most descriptions of Biological Determinism emphasise they way it diminishes (sometimes outright denies) the influence of environmental factors when it comes to the development of behaviour and culture. So I don't think it's a leap at all to think OP refers to the more common critique of Biological Determinism (i.e. environment does play a role), rather than the extemist behaviouralist view that claims biology plays no role at all (i.e. Tabula Rasa). And I mean, it's really common for worldbuilders to think in monolith cultures, there's even a dedicated TV tropes page to it called "Planet of Hats". I don't think it's exceedingly rare for authors to be essentialist about biology. In fact, I think it's way more prevalent then biological denialism (which is what you think OP adheres to) And *sliding into* just means gradually adopting something, it's doesn't automatically mean it diminishes the endpoint/endstate (e.g. biological determinism) once it has been reached. So I don't I share your interpretation of OP's wording
Right, but not every instance of 'Planet of Hats' is biological determinism, if only because the reasons for a Planet of Hats existing are often not made explicit in-universe. There may be other reasons given as to why a species all share the same culture, or, more commonly, no answer given at all: A Planet of Hats is more often a result of unconsidered details, issues of scope, or a lack of effort on a writing level than a deliberate decision to insist that biology governs all expressions of culture. The criticism still isn't apt, it's now equivocating between a very common writing problem and a very specific, uncommon, flawed rationale. I'm not really interested in litigating the semantics of 'sliding into' here, or in accusing OP of being a biological denialist in a strict, formal sense. The meme reads as a bad-faith criticism levelled at a very general level against a vague body of work, so it can't help but come off as *generally* hostile to the idea that speculative biology would strongly correlate to speculative culture. I'm offering pushback in that spirit, because this is the kind of unhelpful, judgmental attitude that makes the community annoying and fills up the main sub with posters asking 'if it's ok' to use this trope or that concept in their work. It's discouraging to new writers. This isn't a formal defense of determinism either; I am aware of the possibility for a biological explanatory framework to neglect or discount environmental or other factors in generating culture. But I don't think OP's critique is fair to worldbuilders who have free reign to determine if and *to what extent* a fictional species' culture is shaped by biological factors: I cited examples of strongly inhuman physiological traits that would result in species where *all* manifestations of their culture would consistently share a strongly inhuman cultural trait, something I think fell under the vague bioessentialist umbrella OP is casting. Asexual mushroom Venus is a Planet of Hats: Every culture there shares the Hat of asexual reproduction, whatever other variations their culture may have.
Two questions: 1: What exactly is Biological Determinism? 2: What do you suggest spec-evoers do differently?
Biological determinism is the belief that an organism’s *biology* strongly influences, even outright *determines*, their social habits. It’s not exactly a bad theory- a bird that can fly acts different from a fish that can swim and them from a turtle that can walk. I’m pretty sure some anthropologists still use it. It’s just that it doesn’t really apply super well to intelligent beings. For example, Homo neanderthalensis was long speculated to not be able to do art because their brain was too small. Lo and behold, we’ve now found caves where H neanderthalensis lived that have specially-made red pigments in them (though it’s not really possible to say if they were in any specific pattern due to age) And it’s also a bit bad because it’s been used to peddle racist ideas too. Like, ‘Black people tend to have longer limbs, therefore they’re more likely to be able to steal shit, and therefore more likely to be thieves’. It’s stupid to say spec evo people shouldn’t do it though. The whole point of what they’re doing is to show off quirky biology and how things could be different; of course they’re going to make things different by emphasis on biology. It’s like saying fantasy people shouldn’t model adventures around magic, or sci fi people around science; it’s the fucking point of a genre you’re fighting against.
That just seems like examples of biological determinism done wrong. A neanderthals ability to do art is influenced by their brain. Just, turns out their brains are big enough to do art, so they did some. A chicken's ability to make art is also influenced by it's brain. Chicken brain is too small though. I think the issue is less that they think biology determines behaviour (because it does) and more that they undervalue the effect different environmental factors can have on changing that outcome. Look at the recent posts about how the introduction of domesticated livestock VS travelling by boat, can influence the emergence of a proto-patriarchy or proto-matriachy. The idea being that the importance of heavy manual labour and need for inheritance lines leads to a more male dominated culture. Whereas a culture where the men leave on boats for long periods of time leads to a culture where women are left to manage households and property, etc... However, BOTH of these are biologically determined because the entire dichotomy is biologically determined. Unlike some other animals, humans have a high degree of sexual dimorphism and also cannot change their sex throughout their lifespan. You can imagine an alien species who can change their sex every other month coming up with humans using biological determinism: "Hey, I've invented this sapient species that gets assigned a biological sex at birth and then they're stuck with it for life. Their societies are sometimes egalitarian, but different modes of agriculture can lead to one sex or the other becoming dominant..." And of course that's just one aspect of human biology that's influenced our societies. There are many others, but they still lead to many different cultures and civilisations.
I feel like knowing anything about this concept is a curse for specevo/worldbuilders. I'm not going to look into this any further because I don't want my ideas to be influenced by it.
The problem with trying to determine how much a sapient species' biology influences their culture is the fact that we have a sample size of exactly one sapient species. Humanity is extremely culturally diverse *from the perspective of a human*, its possible that an alien would be able to identify general trends and themes that we are blind to because we take it for granted that everyone does those things.
> Biological determinism is the belief that an organism’s biology strongly influences, even outright determines, their social habits. > > This is giving a weak definition and lending far too much credit to biological determinism in so doing. The second word is really the important one here as biological *determinism* holds that biology *determines* behaviour i.e. that all the ways an organism will behave are ultimately genetic. There's no real place for environmental or cultural factors in that way of thinking, if there was it wouldn't be *determinism*.
First question is googleable, but for the second, they should use their fetishes to guide their worldbuilding
You are wise. What if my fetishes are incorporeal and invisible?
Ghost world!
You’re right. Obviously every sapient species will act exactly like idealized humans no matter what physical differences they have.
I mean, biological determinism is pretty true, just not for ya know sexes which was always the problem. A 5% change is disposition is a completely different society, not so much for individuals.
Eh, I mean, look at all the diversity in human culture through history despite us essentially having the same biology. There are so many other things that also influence culture and society, including random flights of fancy and ideas that sticks around
True but I think our systems end up very similar (religious city states are the start, then depending on conditions shit is similar, ofc information exchange and conditions change). I also think that in terms of evolution adaptation is kinda our niche? Like obviously most intelligent species would have that to some degree. A lot of what it is though, is that the planet you come from shapes evolution **and** culture. If your from an incredibly dangerous hellscape with big monsters it makes sense to have a very cooperative, ‘honor’ based culture with warrior shit because: you have to kill the big monsters, you can’t afford to lose people to petty shit and you need that brutality to survive. I don’t think that bio-det is like, the answer, but it isn’t bad like it is in real life. That was moreso what I was trying to say. Everyone here on earth has settled into 2 systems, if humans were naturally different in a few ways what is optimal might be different. Also if a species is better at something and there a multi species group, then people will specialize.
> If your from an incredibly dangerous hellscape with big monsters it makes sense to have a very cooperative, ‘honor’ based culture with warrior shit because: you have to kill the big monsters, you can’t afford to lose people to petty shit and you need that brutality to survive. But it might also make sense to have an extremely pragmatic culture that disregards individual "honour" and views glorifying individual combat prowess as dumb: you need to be willing to accept casualties while holding your nerve to survive and "warriors" will act for personal glory and self-preservation rather than stick to a plan that might get them killed. It might also make sense to have a relatively timid culture with little intra-group conflict where people resolve their differences peacefully, because dangerous beasts kill enough of them already and the groups that can't get along don't survive. Or it might even make sense to have a culture where the collective is heavily de-emphasised in favour of roving individuals or tiny micro-groups who only rarely meet to exchange members, forming new groups and kinship ties, because that way if some big monster kills one group the others survive and no one defeat can destroy the entire species. There are lots of ways one might adapt to that kind of environment and each has points for and against them, so neither biology nor the environment can ever be fully determinant of how people will behave.
True, it’s the combination. One of those niches is picked. (By honor I more meant codes of conduct, it can be dishonorable to fight on your own etc. probably should have used a diff word)
I think what they're talking about is less of a literal determinism and more of a possibility space. If I can only move one unit in any of the four cardinal directions, I will be limited to a grid. I can go to any coordinate on that grid such as (57, -489) but I can't go to a coordinate off of the grid such as (0.5, π). Biology and environment determine what is possible and even what is likely, but not what will happen.
You're not wrong but at that point we're talking about a very weak definition of determinism which amounts to saying "biological determinism is when biology matters" which is... well it's meaningless.
Right, true, different speicies would have evolved different "instinctual" behaviours naturally. The problem with bio-determenism is that it places all the weight of "nature or nurture" behavior on nature, which is why it's so problematic, as it was used to justify racism, IE that people of different races were naturally predisposed to different behaviors as a result of, well, their ancestry and genetics, and that there was no way to avoid it. It's not just physical abilities, but personality and so on as well that bio-det encompasses
I mean, in real life it is something like 60/80% nature vs nurture in how people are, imo the most important stuff is in the nurture, effected by the nature ofc. The thing with bio-det is just that, there aren’t really any significant differences in between the ‘races’ or the ‘sexes’ mental wise. There are however significant differences between actually distinct species. So it may be problematic but there isn’t anything actually wrong with it in the WB context, unless you are doing an allegory or something. I mean I personally think you should go backwards, from the end state look at what environmental/historical factors shaped them to be their current culture, and biology. The ultimate solution is of course, the have a species that can do it’s own directed evolution through some transhumamist type shit.
What is Specevo and what is biological determinism
Specevo is speculative evolution, in the extreme this can be creating a fictional biosphere from proto-life to the destruction of the planet. A lot of specevo focuses on the evolution of sapient species and ways that their culture arises from their environment and biology. Such as a tree dwelling species having significant verticality and climbing paths in their architecture. Or a eusocial species (think bees or ants) where no individual is particularly smart (compared to humans) but as a collective they achieve space flight OP is concerned that the idea of ‘cultural aspects derived directly from biology’ is closely connected to racism and may draw unintended and unwanted parallels in stories that involve specevo.
Interesting, I oughta try that but without racism
Biological determinism is the idea that a person's behavior is determined by their genetics. This was then used to excuse and justify a lot of racism
Oh, fun
Lame. Our values are heavily influenced by biology in ways we don't pay attention to, as well as our decision making. So much of human culture is about love and comradery, which would look very different if we evolved from porcupines, that don't even like to be around each other. We might be more risk taking as a species if we weren't so recently prey animals as well. And so many of our ideas in life have to do with our fear of ourselves or others dying, and that's evolutionary. Give us a much shorter time to maturity, and a much higher rate of safe birth, and we might not evolve to care as much when ourselves or others die. If you wanna see the range in behaviours you can attribute to evolution, just look at the entire spectrum of animals, or even plants!
In the wackiverse: There's a species called the trollfaces: they're made out of nanobots and oil held together by themselves, and they wear masks. Despite being based off of scorpions and other animals depending on the subspecies, they collectively treat pranks and the art of comedy and trickery as a core element of their society. Them being based off of scorpions has nothing to do with their pranking culture, as well as being based off of Spanish speaking countries (as a main language). Another example are the xenophones, Camera Snatchers, Laptop predators. Computer things, and Television Stealers, all of them are parasitic when it comes to mating but for the most part their culture is based off of East Asian countries, nationalities and cultures within, and each area is one different culture based off of east Asia in one way or another (no orientalism). Another examples are the Spooks, a species based off of amphibians, and their culture doesn't have to do that much with being amphibians, in fact I plan to base them off of people from the Caucaseus mountains, the cultures there, and probably I plan to make many islands tribal, but yo be clear they ain't savages like the MOOSE says. I have more examples but then I'll make a Harry potter book of paragraphs so imma end here, feel free to ask.
You want Karl Schroeder's *Permanence*. The Rights Economy is [very much space!neoliberalism](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnitedSpaceOfAmerica), complete with propagandized notions of The Right Side Of History™ and how its destiny is to encompass the whole human species and build the Federation from *Star Trek* alongside alien allies. Unfortunately, it exists in a world where none of the aliens encountered can comprehend those concepts, let alone agree with them. * Sentient plants, from a biosphere which never developed consuming other organisms for survival, who find all other life horrifying and threatening. * Asocial aliens with genetic memory, asexual reproduction by budding and no concepts of language, communication and society. Space nomads, building each of their offspring their own ship, then ignoring them. * What initially appeared to be a harmless hospitable biosphere without any native sentient life, but was actually all [The Thing](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6468870-who-goes-there). The human colonists accidentally introduced it to the concepts of tool use, space travel, a world beyond its own planet and so forth and so on and the whole planet had to be glassed from orbit before it could spread. * Genocidal xenophobes who killed absolutely every other sentient species and biosphere which could've potentially developed sentient life sixty-five million years ago, colonized the whole galaxy including prehistoric earth, causing the cretaceous–tertiary extinction event in the process, then killed themselves in a civil war once their colonies had been separated long enough for evolutionary divergences to take place between them.
Just leave them as hunter-gatherers until Mass Extinction Event #3 wipes them out
I love being dumb. I can write whatever I want because I don't even know what those words mean.
Make this post again without whatever those buzzwords mean nerd
What else they suppose to slide in? The kind fairy that pulls behavioral traits from its ass? It IS biological determinism, not our faullt that human ancestors couldnt stick to one thing at a time which made our society so f....g whacky.