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 Da Boss wrote:


I just think the discussion around them and the fiction that GW writes about them shows many misconceptions about evolution.

Like what? What is GW getting wrong?

 Da Boss wrote:
Selective breeding is still a form of natural selection, it is merely that the selective pressure is the traits which are of interest to humans. It is true that it is not what Darwin was envisaging but it works broadly along the same terms and through the same mechanisms.

By that line of thinking, the tyranids perform selecting breeding, and still operate on the premise of natural selection.

Specific biomorphs / adjustments to particular biomorphs specialize in certain warzones. And if they don't, the tyranids quickly develop traits which do. This is evolution in the broad sense of the word (I.E. you can evolve a new strategy), as well as the more puritan "only applying to biology," stance that you're taking. It works both ways, for the Tyranids, in this case.

As an outside observer looking in, it really appears that you're just arguing for the sake of arguing. I can't see a leg you have to stand on.

 Da Boss wrote:
It is pretty funny that you are characterising what I posted as a "rant".

I mean, do you feel that I am saying "Tyranids are stupid" or something? I think the idea behind tyranids is actually pretty interesting and I have a great fondness for them as a faction.

I just think the discussion around them and the fiction that GW writes about them shows many misconceptions about evolution.

I teach middle school science, so I have to deal with kids thinking that evolution works like in Pokemon all the time. So I just made a fairly throwaway comment about it, and you responded with a fairly antagonistic response, characterising what I had said as a rant, and then claiming that I was oblivious and did not understand things.

I have been pretty calm throughout this interaction, and am mostly bemused right now.

I think you are getting sidetracked on this issue of using the word "evolution" and seeing misuse/misunderstanding that isn't there.


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 Da Boss wrote:
What Tyranids do is in any case like a poorly educated laymans understanding of evolution. It is precisely the misconception that most kids have about how evolution works.

They do not undergo evolution by natural selection, what Tyranids do is much more akin to Intelligent Design. Which makes for cooler fiction.

This shows what I am talking about; there is the assumption that "evolution" is being misused, when in fact the writers are simply using one of the other connotations of the word.


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 Andersp90 wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
When we are talking about biological organisms and the changes they undergo in response to their environment, I think it is reasonable to take the biological definition of evolution, personally.

And why would you ever think that in the case of the tyranids?

Your rant still makes absolutely no sense to me.

I think "tangent" was the word you were looking for, instead of "rant".

I really don't want to continue derailing this thread and I apologise for the derailment so far.

When I see the word "evolution" being applied to biological organisms changing their physical characteristics over generations in an environment, I tend to think of the biological definition.

That is, random mutation creates variation within a population and then selective pressure results in a slow shift in the relative frequencies of certain genes within the population over generations.

I am a school teacher, and when I teach this topic, the biggest misconception I have to overcome with students is that organisms respond to a newly challenging environment by mutating or gaining new traits so that they can deal with the new environment. That is, they respond directly to the challenge and become "better". This goes along with an idea of evolution that sees it as a progression from more primative (worse) organisms to more advanced (better) organisms with humans at the top of the evolutionary ladder. That is something that is further solidified by ideas like the tree of life, or the famous illustrations of the apes becoming humans in stages. Or more commonly for me, the idea of Pokemon indivudally "evolving" to become bigger, better versions of themselves with more powers due to experience.

It seems to me that GWs writers perpetuate the erronous view of evolution, that an organism encounters a dangerous situation and then evolves around it. This is more like Lamarckism. Tyranids are a more extreme example of that, having a guiding intelligence and "stealing" genetic traits from organisms they "eat" to speed up their "evolution" (Kroot are likewise). In other places GW don't do this, such as when they talk about the evolution of abhumans and so on. You could make arguments about epigenetics and so on, but I think that stuff tends to be overstated by over excited science journalists in terms of it's real impact.

It is fine as far as it goes, but Tyranids are undergoing intelligent design rather than evolution and I think that is a very interesting concept for a sci fi race. I am not launching a campaign to get GW to change how they write this stuff, since I know about the laymans use of the term evolution and I understand why GW are using it. I just have a professional interest I guess in misconceptions around concepts like that and how they are propagated in popular culture through language.

Tl, dr: I am mostly commenting in a very mild way about misconceptions around how evolution works, and how they annoy me when they occur in fiction because I have to train kids out of thinking like that when teaching them how evolution actually works.

 Da Boss wrote:


Tl, dr: I am mostly commenting in a very mild way about misconceptions around how evolution works, and how they annoy me when they occur in fiction because I have to train kids out of thinking like that when teaching them how evolution actually works.

While fair, I think you're missing the forest through your own self-constructed trees.

As has been noted by multiple people, you are talking about a very specific usage for the term evolution. As has also been noted by multiple people, evolution is a word which can be used accurately in scenarios beyond that hyper specific one.

This results in you being correct about your extremely specific application of the word. But that's not how the word is being used here. So flying into the thread and trying to argue for a specific usage of the word making it unusable in this situation, when it demonstrably is, comes off as bizarre, aggressive, and ranty / single-minded.

We're not children who need to be educated on the text-book usage of the word in your class, and you're not teaching a biology course about Tyranids. When you start using Termagants and Lictors as examples in class room, please feel free to get back to us.

Despite page of arguing over definition of evolution, you all still forget the essential point of Nurgle. It is that the worst diseases that Nugle has is not natural or even physical at all. Some of Nurgle's microorganisms function only partly on physical rules, the other part on supernatural.

For example,the virus which infects Imperial citizens can ''know'' when it is discovered and can accelerate incubation period dramatically.

Organisms functioning as they should, but with only key difference, they are unable to finally die. This creates an ecosystem which keeps rotting and dying, but never actually dying.

Diseases which can be beaten purely by unshakable faith in the Emperor. Or diseases those effectiveness is judged purely by how strong subject's soul is.

You simply can't apply natural phenomena like immune system or evolution and think it can beat something which is inherently supernatural. Nurgle doesn't just create new flu virus every year. Instead he creates disease which literally sucks your soul out from inside and converts you into a literal demon the moment you die. The supernatural have a tendency to act like previously mentioned understanding of pokemon evolution. With demonic/divine, it is first and foremost the matter of faith or warp energy present in an area. If Tyranids are invading Holy Ground, the severity of Nurgle's diseases will grow exponentially. If they are fighting not on a plague world, the severity of warp induced effects will drop severely too and then Tyranids will have a chance to beat Nurgle's troops.


As how Tyranids evolved to fight against Nurgle would look like? Well, it is nothing spectacular really if we would take scientific approach. Tyranids bioforms would decrease both in number and size thus making Tyranid swarm considerably weaker. This is because they will need to supercharge their own immune systems which will consume majority of organism's energy upkeep. In a similar way how our brains take lion's share of oxygen and energy thus reflecting on a design of a whole body, making us physically weaker and more fragile, Tyranids will also have to forgo physical strength for increased immune system. A good practical example from W40k universe are Ogryns. This is what in essence happens when humans evolve to have as powerful bodies as possible without a need of extensive nervous system. Brains get smaller, individual more stupid. Not only that, but concentration of nerves within body also lowers, making precise movement and muscle control more clumsy. Ogryn might be incredibly strong and tough, but they also are clumsy and dumb.

morganfreeman: I made a fairly offhand comment and have since been explaining my POV.

Sorry if it came off as condescending.

 morganfreeman wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:


Tl, dr: I am mostly commenting in a very mild way about misconceptions around how evolution works, and how they annoy me when they occur in fiction because I have to train kids out of thinking like that when teaching them how evolution actually works.

While fair, I think you're missing the forest through your own self-constructed trees.

As has been noted by multiple people, you are talking about a very specific usage for the term evolution. As has also been noted by multiple people, evolution is a word which can be used accurately in scenarios beyond that hyper specific one.

This results in you being correct about your extremely specific application of the word. But that's not how the word is being used here. So flying into the thread and trying to argue for a specific usage of the word making it unusable in this situation, when it demonstrably is, comes off as bizarre, aggressive, and ranty / single-minded.

We're not children who need to be educated on the text-book usage of the word in your class, and you're not teaching a biology course about Tyranids. When you start using Termagants and Lictors as examples in class room, please feel free to get back to us.

Very well-put. Thank you.

 Ernestas wrote:
Despite page of arguing over definition of evolution, you all still forget the essential point of Nurgle. It is that the worst diseases that Nugle has is not natural or even physical at all. Some of Nurgle's microorganisms function only partly on physical rules, the other part on supernatural.

For example,the virus which infects Imperial citizens can ''know'' when it is discovered and can accelerate incubation period dramatically.

Organisms functioning as they should, but with only key difference, they are unable to finally die. This creates an ecosystem which keeps rotting and dying, but never actually dying.

Diseases which can be beaten purely by unshakable faith in the Emperor. Or diseases those effectiveness is judged purely by how strong subject's soul is.

You simply can't apply natural phenomena like immune system or evolution and think it can beat something which is inherently supernatural. Nurgle doesn't just create new flu virus every year. Instead he creates disease which literally sucks your soul out from inside and converts you into a literal demon the moment you die. The supernatural have a tendency to act like previously mentioned understanding of pokemon evolution. With demonic/divine, it is first and foremost the matter of faith or warp energy present in an area. If Tyranids are invading Holy Ground, the severity of Nurgle's diseases will grow exponentially. If they are fighting not on a plague world, the severity of warp induced effects will drop severely too and then Tyranids will have a chance to beat Nurgle's troops.

Most of nurgles diseases (if not all), attack the soul of the victim in some manner or form (as you have pointed out yourself). That won't do much good vs the tyranids.

And as mentioned earlier, there is not much point in discussing whether it is possible or not, since the fluff states that it is.

As how Tyranids evolved to fight against Nurgle would look like? Well, it is nothing spectacular really if we would take scientific approach. Tyranids bioforms would decrease both in number and size thus making Tyranid swarm considerably weaker. This is because they will need to supercharge their own immune systems which will consume majority of organism's energy upkeep. In a similar way how our brains take lion's share of oxygen and energy thus reflecting on a design of a whole body, making us physically weaker and more fragile, Tyranids will also have to forgo physical strength for increased immune system. A good practical example from W40k universe are Ogryns. This is what in essence happens when humans evolve to have as powerful bodies as possible without a need of extensive nervous system. Brains get smaller, individual more stupid. Not only that, but concentration of nerves within body also lowers, making precise movement and muscle control more clumsy. Ogryn might be incredibly strong and tough, but they also are clumsy and dumb.

Non of this makes any sense.

 Da Boss wrote:


I teach middle school science, so I have to deal with kids thinking that evolution works like in Pokemon all the time.

Wait a sec do kids really think that animals evolve by blinding bright light and suddenly make huge leaps of physical body changes?

I mean I guess that one problem is that a lot of traditional evolutionary evolution (apes to men) are often described in pretty big sweeping arcs that leave out all the little stages inbetween. So I mean I guess that I can see how kids could be led to think that it all happens very fast and sudden, but at the same time pokemon?! I'm worried to think what that generation is going to do when they discover Digimon and the idea of evolving backwards and sideways and blendings that Digimon goes for!

In fairness to Da Boss a friend of mine and I back in University had a hilarious time watching an 'educational' program about Permian proto-mammals that intercut unjustified supposition about their behaviour with literal morphs between one species to another. I could see how kids might have gotten the wrong idea about, well, everything watching it.

These days I try to tell my kids about stuff and they're all "Storybots covered this!"

Overread: It is more the idea that evolution happens inside the lifespan of one animal that they are confused about, like the organism changes to respond to it's environment rather than the change having to already be present and be preferentially selected for.

I am gonna leave this thread alone now though because I am pissing people off!

Alright, think like this. When you get sick, how do you feel? You feel weaker, you need sleep, rest, warmth. Your organism can't handle any stress and you certainly can't perform as well physically. Why this is happening? Because your immune system is getting serious about fighting infection. Hence, in order to have very strong immune system, you need a lot of energy to support it.

So, now what big and stompy creatures have in common? It is that they need to eat and rest a lot. Look at body builders. They are very strong, perform a lot of hard physical exercises. Yet, they need far more rest and far more food and your average office worker. Why? Because body needs this energy to be strong and have a lot of energy when it needs to.

In both cases we have two requirements for Tyranid bio-form. It needs to be powerful and yet to have super-powerful immune system. It is only logical that Tyranids who evolve to fight on plague planets would grow smaller, more weaker while immune system inside them would grow vastly more complex and powerful. They would use their energy being healthy while having to constantly fight off never ending infections and microorganisms.

Btw: while those cases needed a soul, there are plenty of other supernatural diseases which Nurgle is brewing. After all, he is brewing his diseases for many of thousands of years. It would be foolish to think that he doesn't have something supernatural which doesn't involve one's soul.

 Ernestas wrote:
Alright, think like this. When you get sick, how do you feel? You feel weaker, you need sleep, rest, warmth. Your organism can't handle any stress and you certainly can't perform as well physically. Why this is happening? Because your immune system is getting serious about fighting infection. Hence, in order to have very strong immune system, you need a lot of energy to support it.

So, now what big and stompy creatures have in common? It is that they need to eat and rest a lot. Look at body builders. They are very strong, perform a lot of hard physical exercises. Yet, they need far more rest and far more food and your average office worker. Why? Because body needs this energy to be strong and have a lot of energy when it needs to.

In both cases we have two requirements for Tyranid bio-form. It needs to be powerful and yet to have super-powerful immune system. It is only logical that Tyranids who evolve to fight on plague planets would grow smaller, more weaker while immune system inside them would grow vastly more complex and powerful. They would use their energy being healthy while having to constantly fight off never ending infections and microorganisms.

Btw: while those cases needed a soul, there are plenty of other supernatural diseases which Nurgle is brewing. After all, he is brewing his diseases for many of thousands of years. It would be foolish to think that he doesn't have something supernatural which doesn't involve one's soul.

Im not going to comment on your pseudoscience, but I can inform you that the following passage can be found in the 6th edition tyranid codex (Fall of shadowbrink):

"As each rancid disease was unleashed by the children of nurgle, so the next brood of tyranids had grown resistant to it."

The 6th and 8th edition codex are clear on the subject. End of discussion.

 Da Boss wrote:
Overread: It is more the idea that evolution happens inside the lifespan of one animal that they are confused about, like the organism changes to respond to it's environment rather than the change having to already be present and be preferentially selected for.

Ahh yeah I can see that, if I recall right that was even one of the original ideas for animal evolution. I think the example I saw as giraffes got taller because they kept stretching their necks to reach higher and higher food; and thus each generation adapted from the first to grow a taller neck. The whole time-scale thing does tip a lot of people up, I think partly because its dealing with values and numbers that are often so big that they are very hard to visualise in a persons mind. I think that's why fruit-flies are so often used not just in studies, but also in examples; because they at least can demonstrate evolution in quite a small window that people can "see" and conceptualise in their mind. Of course then taking that and trying to add thousands upon thousands of years to it can be confusing again.

That is like saying that a human got sick with flu virus and from ever onwards he was immune to it. Yet, somehow he got sick next year with a flu virus. How this could had happened?

Without logic, you can't reason with the information given to you.


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 Overread wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
Overread: It is more the idea that evolution happens inside the lifespan of one animal that they are confused about, like the organism changes to respond to it's environment rather than the change having to already be present and be preferentially selected for.

Ahh yeah I can see that, if I recall right that was even one of the original ideas for animal evolution. I think the example I saw as giraffes got taller because they kept stretching their necks to reach higher and higher food; and thus each generation adapted from the first to grow a taller neck. The whole time-scale thing does tip a lot of people up, I think partly because its dealing with values and numbers that are often so big that they are very hard to visualise in a persons mind. I think that's why fruit-flies are so often used not just in studies, but also in examples; because they at least can demonstrate evolution in quite a small window that people can "see" and conceptualise in their mind. Of course then taking that and trying to add thousands upon thousands of years to it can be confusing again.

Also species can evolve within an individual as our DNA is not static, it is malleable and how we live impact us and our offspring at genetical level. For example, if you are fat and your partner is fat, your children will be fat too. Yet, if you get a hold of yourself and you begin to exercise with your partner and get slim, your children are likely to be born pre-determined to be slim. This is due to activating slumbering genes in our genome to respond to an environment we are in. By activating specific genes, they become expressed and by that, they become dominant. Such genes define you while other genes take backseat and acts as secondary or triatery definers if at all. DNA is wrongly understood as what we are. It is actually the history of what we were.

https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Cult_Tenebrous

A GSC cult fallen to nurgle and spreading his joy.

If anything that alone is te reason i will pick up the GSC codex.

 Ernestas wrote:

Also species can evolve within an individual as our DNA is not static, it is malleable and how we live impact us and our offspring at genetical level. For example, if you are fat and your partner is fat, your children will be fat too. Yet, if you get a hold of yourself and you begin to exercise with your partner and get slim, your children are likely to be born pre-determined to be slim. This is due to activating slumbering genes in our genome to respond to an environment we are in. By activating specific genes, they become expressed and by that, they become dominant. Such genes define you while other genes take backseat and acts as secondary or triatery definers if at all. DNA is wrongly understood as what we are. It is actually the history of what we were.

Epigenetic inheritance is not expressed in such and expreme manner as you are proposing, and the mechanisms behind are poorly understood. We do not even know for sure if it takes place in vertebrates/humans.

 Ernestas wrote:

Without logic, you can't reason with the information given to you.

You are just simply refusing to accept the lore written on the subject. There is a big difference..

Epigenetics is nowhere near as influential as popular science articles make it out to be.

 Da Boss wrote:
Epigenetics is nowhere near as influential as popular science articles make it out to be.

It actually is, just not epigenetic inheritance.

I would argue that it is you who want to make lore that it is not. Especially when waving away scientific concepts with your hand when something does not fit your narrative, hence not accepting how that plague tyranids would not look greenish, glowing and having other cool mutations, but rather unimpressive, weaker and smaller specimens. Like I had said, tyranids getting immune to flu virus is nothing unique. Humans get immunity to flu every year, but we still get sick with flu somehow.