Orky Know-Wots

[Nabterayl]

Okay, trying to make up for my latest contribution to the thread hijacking rate around here:

For those of you just joining the conversation, the question being debated (at least as I understand it) is the nature of orky technical expertise. The three possible positions put forward so far:

1. Orky know-wots are like an STC - orks are programmed with a large number of schematics, which they instinctively (and usually sub-consciously) access in order to build their machines.
2. Orks are not programmed to build specific designs, but are programmed to instinctively improvise only certain types of machines.
3. Orks are not programmed to build machines, but are programmed with an instinctive (and usually sub-conscious) understanding of fundamental principles, allowing individual orks to synthesize almost any kind of machine according to their creativity and imagination.

Madness, as I understand him, is championing position #2. I, and I think Melissia, are championing position #3. Other forum denizens may be championing other things. Still other forum denizens may not care.

One of the pieces of evidence that has been offered is that all orks tend to make the same broad types of machines. For instance, while not all battlewagons are identical (indeed, it is possible that no two battlewagons have ever been identical), orks have a distinct tendency to build their armored fighting vehicles with front-heavy armor, tracks and/or wheels, and loud, smoke-belching engines. It has been suggested that this piece of evidence argues in favor of #2.

I contend that it argues in favor of #3, in two ways. First, while it is certainly true that orks seem to favor, say, tracks and wheels over anti-grav plates and jet engines, the very fact that orks have utilized anti-grav plates and jet engines in their ground vehicles suggests that their programming does not lock them into the tracks-and-wheels paradigm.

Second, I think the presence of certain trends in orky engineering can be more satisfactorily explained as an expression of ork psychology. We certainly know from the shokk attack gun that orky know-wots can build items that orks feel no need to build (e.g., the shokk attack gun proves that orks could build a weapon that teleports a bomb directly into the target ... but they generally don't build such weapons). I suggest that trends such as tracks-and-wheels and loud-and-smoky-engines can be explained by reference to that greatest of orky psychological imperatives: having fun. Assuming for the moment that an ork could build a grav-tank, I contend that he would not find a smooth-riding vehicle powered by efficient jet engines to be any fun, and thus wouldn't do it. On the other hand, from an orky perspective, tracks-and-wheels (particularly when combined with bad suspension) and loud-and-smoky-engines are loads of fun. Since orks do everything they do in order to have fun, it follows that most orks will favor tracks-and-wheels over grav plates, and favor loud-and-smoky-engines over quieter and more efficient jet engines.

Okay, that's my latest contribution. Have at it.

[Kieranator K82]

I find #3 to be a more logical and reasonable explanation for the Orks' 'techspertise.'
The first is highly unlikely, as it would mean that the Ork Meks should all make identical things.
The second is a step in the right direction, although it doesn't account for Orky ingenuity. The likes of the Stompa, Deff Kopta and Tellyporta were pioneered by individual Meks.

[eldargal]

Ditto for three, I think it makes the most sense. The fact that Orky technology has been seen to evolve to me suggests that they are programmed with the principles of technology, and given the right stimuli (ie war) they can come up with new and exciting ways of causing amusing carnage.

[Madness]

Technically it makes no difference if it's 1 or 3, it's like asking "do the orks create noisy engines because they are programmed to like noisy engines or do they like noisy engines because they are programmed to build them that way", chicken and egg kinda dilemma.

We know Orks all share a common Kultur, and a culture is pretty central to all a race/society does, see Eldar for an example, Eldar COULD go and create far different type of technology, but they are culturally traditionalists and stuff like Void Spinners is only used by Biel-Tan because there's a cultural taboo that prevents the others from using such technology even if they have the means to.

My point [URL="http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showpost.php?p=69526&postcount=75"]here[/URL] was to point out how identical is the Ork Kultur all around the universe, and how that is not natural, even Hive Mind structures like Tyranids develop differences when separate strand evolve in separate situations.

Ork Kultur is fairly standard, see on Angelis, hardly anyone survived the crash, and as it is stated, there's no much oral tradition, so the society born on Angelis (aka gorkamorka, by the way) was a almost completely new one, yet, it featured the usual suspects, trukks, trakks, buggies, sluggas, shootas, burnas, and so on.

Relevant quote:

Thus primary technical skills are passed on genetically, rather than learned or taught in the fashion of Humans.

Orks don't learn. Orks don't teach. So how is an evolution possible?

Another quote:

Their scientific knowledge was intuitive and sometimes led them in bizarre and opposite directions. The existence of space itself was openly questioned, and even the true origin of the hulk wreckage and their own past was forgotten.

As you can see there are no solid scientific bases for Ork technology, they just go by their guts, and that's not a symptom of a rational behaviour, that's a symptom of instinctual behaviour.

Now most of you tend to take situations in which Orks appear to have invented, authored, created something unique, something that is the child of their very own personality and creativity (kreativity?), but the fact that even the most complex item (shokk attack gun, gargants, cybork bodies) is eventually repeated in every instance of separate settlements is a symptom that it's not actually a product of that precise Ork, but of the Ork Kulture as a lifestyle.

And I personally have no doubt that Ork Kulture in ALL its aspects (clan, castes, beliefs, superstitions, "science") is a product of the genetic encoding.

All of it, from Waaagh! to ZZap gun.

P.S.: Now, we could be arguing how much of a "wiggle room" there's to it, and that's something quite impossible to measure, but considering how constant are some elements, I think that the wiggle room is not too much. Of course we see how some Ork Clans tend to alter their behaviour when exposed to different cultures (Blood Axes for instance), but I don't have reason to believe that those "mutations" in the behaviour are so influential in the Kultur as a whole (Blood Axes are considered kind of sissies by Ork standards).

I see how hard it is to consider standard something so apparently ramshackle, something so crude and superficially inventive, but it's just a matter of looking past the superficial appearance.

[Nabterayl]

Orks Kultur is fairly standard, see on Angelis, hardly anyone survived the crash, and as it is stated, there's no much oral tradition, so the society born on Angelis (aka gorkamorka, by the way) was a almost completely new one, yet, it featured the usual suspects, trukks, trakks, buggies, sluggas, shootas, burnas, and so on.

Sure, but those are just types of vehicles. You wouldn't say that armor didn't evolve over the 20th century because it featured the usual suspects, tanks.

Orks don't learn. Orks don't teach. So how is an evolution possible?

That quote doesn't say that orks are incapable of learning. It says that an ork acquires his "primary technical skills" by being born with them, but that doesn't mean that they can't be augmented by learning. An ork is also born knowing how to fight, but if he lives long enough, he'll learn from his battlefield experiences and becoming increasingly kunning.

Evolution is possible precisely because it is only an ork's primary technical skills that are inborn. If you're born knowing how to make a trukk, then all you can do is make trukks. If you're born with a working knowledge of various fields of physics and engineering, though, you can make all sorts of different things. That's how the evolution is possible - it's not an evolution of primary technical skills that we're talking about, but an evolution of actual machines-that-have-been-built.

That said, we clearly agree that ork kultur is broadly common across all orks, and that ork kultur has a limiting effect on the breadth of ingenuity. If it were otherwise, orks would be light-years ahead of the Imperium technologically - imagine the engineering that a race could achieve whose engineers were born with all the theory they need to build whatever they can conceive. The very fact that orky technology is as comparatively primitive as it is suggests that orky creativity is highly circumscribed in most areas.

Another quote:


As you can see there are no solid scientific bases for Ork technology, they just go by their guts, and that's not a symptom of a rational behaviour, that's a symptom of instinctual behaviour.

I'd say it's rather a symptom of creative behavior, but ...

Now most of you tend to take situations in which Orks appear to have invented, authored, created something unique, something that is the child of their very own personality and creativity (kreativity?), but the fact that even the most complex item (shokk attack gun, gargants, cybork bodies) is eventually repeated in every instance of separate settlements is a symptom that it's not actually a product of that precise Ork, but of the Ork Kulture as a lifestyle.

It sounds like we have basic agreement here that orky technology is the expression not of inborn schematics but of inborn expertise expressed through a common, and comparatively impoverished, kultur.

And I personally have no doubt that Ork Kulture in ALL its aspects (clan, castes, beliefs, superstitions, "science") is a product of the genetic encoding.

All of it, from Waaagh! to ZZap gun.

I have some doubt. I agree that there's almost undoubtedly culturally encoding as well as technical, but orks do seem to have an actual interstellar culture. Start a good fight in system A and before too long orks from system B will show up, having heard about the fight. I assume the actual information conduit is the Waaagh! manifesting itself as some sort of astrotelepathy, but whatever it is, it's surprisingly fast and reliable, and could be a conduit for the transmission of other culturally information as well. Which brings us to ...

P.S.: Now, we could be arguing how much of a "wiggle room" there's to it, and that's something quite impossible to measure, but considering how constant are some elements, I think that the wiggle room is not too much. Of course we see how some Ork Clans tend to alter their behaviour when exposed to different cultures (Blood Axes for instance), but I don't have reason to believe that those "mutations" in the behaviour are so influential in the Kultur as a whole (Blood Axes are considered kind of sissies by Ork standards).

I see how hard it is to consider standard something so apparently ramshackle, something so crude and superficially inventive, but it's just a matter of looking past the superficial appearance.

I think how "standard" ork technology is depends partially on your point of view. There are certain concepts which just seem to make sense to orks, but those aren't necessarily human concepts. It's like colors - one culture may call a color blue, while another culture calls it green. Similarly, if you have a walker above a certain size threshold but below another size threshold, it seems to just make cultural sense to an ork to call that walker a "stompa." The two walkers could share almost nothing in common design-wise except for having two legs and being within a certain height bracket, and a human might well look at the two and assume they were different classes of walker. But to an ork, they'd both be stompaz.

Similarly, if an ork looked at Predator and a Piranha side by side, he'd probably call them both "wagons" - to him, they're the same class of vehicle. But to many other cultures, a Predator and a Piranha are two different classes of vehicle.

Or to look at it from the other point of view, consider humans looking at an eldar Falcon. We call it a "tank." But it isn't a tank - it doesn't look anything like a tank, it isn't armed anything like a tank, it certainly doesn't move like a tank, and in battle it doesn't behave like a tank. But we humans think of all armored fighting vehicles as belonging to one of a few categories, and tank is the closest fit, so we apply the label "tank" to it. But restricting our vocabulary to utility vehicle, APC, IFV, self-propelled artillery, and tank (to give one example of a human AFV paradigm) isn't evidence for the uniformity of the universe's armor any more than restricting our vocabulary to buggy, trukk, wagon, gunwagon, battlewagon, and battle fortress would be.

[Ferrett]

That said, we clearly agree that ork kultur is broadly common across all orks, and that ork kultur has a limiting effect on the breadth of ingenuity. If it were otherwise, orks would be light-years ahead of the Imperium technologically - imagine the engineering that a race could achieve whose engineers were born with all the theory they need to build whatever they can conceive. The very fact that orky technology is as comparatively primitive as it is suggests that orky creativity is highly circumscribed in most areas.

I agree with Nab, except for the above. Imperial and Ork technology are merely a sidestep to the left. Where as one covers the workings of an engine - the other revels in it to see. Where one sacrifices power for relative quietness, the other will chuck out as much noise as possible. Its about target design.

[gorepants]

There is a significant difference between 1 and 3 - 1 posits that orks have a fixed set of templates to work with and 3 posits that they have primal urges and their technology is an expression of this. 1 (and 2) fit in with some of the sillier fluff about the whole of everything be someone's plot and everyone else just being pawns. 3 is a more naturalstic outlook.

The big problem I have with 1 and 2 is that they say everything about ork tech is like it is because that's what someone said it would be (same for culture, etc). This is a little at odds with how biology works. I'm much more comfortable with the idea ork tech is the some of their attitudes and natural abilities. From this attitude, why is ork tech so similar? Same reason human tech is - they have a narrowlly disributed set of prime drives - aggression, hierarchical society, love of noise and speed. When the odd outlier comes along and adds to this an excellent ability to intuit technology, they will make things that fullfill their primal drives. Further similarity will come from orkoporphism (eg the look of kans, gargants).

Although they can teach and learn to at least a limited degree (cf runtherds, and I'm sure I've read of mekboys passing information to each other), a fragmented society (since they come from spores, orks may appear without a functioning society to grow up in) means that direct transmission of technology across the whole of orkdom is impossible.

That dispirit orks share similar sets of klans fits (perhaps awkwardly) in with a simple evolutionary model - I imagine them being like jocks and nerds. That they are given the same names is simply an imperial construct. Similar for ork totems (look at the homogeneity of human symbology). They also get a lot of design inspiration from peoples they encounter, and since in the fluff, most of them are dealing with imperial humans, and imperial humanity is presented as fairly homogenous, they stuff inspired by that contact will be pretty similar too.

What is more difficult is that similar klans in disprit tribes addopt similar symbols, have the same gods and speek the same language (I think this is true anyway). While the other similaties are analogous to the similarities between disconnected human groups, these are very much not. I think is falacious to say that because they share these things they must be programmed to believe in them.

I may be biased by knowing a little of biology, cog-science and language learning, but I don't see the idea of detailed genetic programming fitting in with the 40K genetic science model. It appears little changed from what we currently understand, exept for additonal properties (eg psykers) and the ability (lost or otherwise) to manipulate it. From this the ability to program an ork to believe in a specific pair of gods called gork and mork is internally inconsitent. Nab's suggestion of the Waagh forming a greater ork zeitgeist fits more readily into the 40K universe. In this way common ork culture can spread across the galaxy. This can also explain the lack of surface divergence in the ork design aethsetic (which is much narrower when compared across human cultures) since when a mek has an idea, he would be sharing a set of aesthetic values subconsiously with all of orkdom.

GW covers the divergence by defining ork stuff as 'being kind of like' whatever they are describing.

Of course the main reason it all looks the same is that GW have a limited number of artists and they are going to draw and sculpt every single different ork thing ever.

[Old_Paladin]

I still don't understand how in one breath people can say that ork kulture/clans are an inborn nature; then in another talk about Feral Orks and the Gorker/Morker division on Angelous.

I see Orks a lot like Kroot; they have a genetic memory.
Orks have a basic understand in their genes, but when something new comes along they tend to copy what they like; after it's done enough it tends to be part of their genetic sub-conscious.

You keep saying over and over, they use wheels/tracks. You know why they do that? IT WORKS! Humans have used the wheel (or axle) for at least 5000 years. It's very simple and very effective.
Orks have anti-grave, but why waste the time and materials when you could build several trukks instead. Plus tires make the vehicle bump around, which orks find fun; and treads make heavy, clunkly, grinding noises which orks like as well.


Gorepants makes a good point about saying some Meks get together to share info; they opposite is true as well; some meks keep other Meks away, so they cannot steal his ideas. If every idea was already genetically encoded, ideas couldn't be stolen.

As for language Orks tend to speak two: orkish (which sounds like grunts to humans) and crude low gothic. Clearly the later must have been learned at some point; they couldn't have been programmed for a language that hadn't been developed yet.

[Madness]

When discussing fictional enviroments I go by 2 principles:
* Occam's Razor: The simplest solution is the most probable
* Conservative deductions: I try not to add stuff that's not explicitly there, because that's not canon, that's wishful thinking (IE. Astropathic Hive Mind)

Further premise:
As far as I know, the only way we are able to judge something is by comparison, if something is taller than us, it's tall, if something is smarter than us, it's smart.

We are obviously comparing human society to ork society and we tend to project similarities because that's what we do, but in order to define Orks we have to focus on what makes them different.

Sure, even humans tend to similar designs due to similar needs and drives, but humans also have an oral tradition and a penchant for archiving and distributing knowledge.

So where does the human model of development diverge from the Orks?
A conservative analysis tells us that:
* Orks don't really keep record of their stuff, the only oral tradition we have track of is about legends (Runtherdz)
* Orks are pretty jealous of their stuff, be it physical or intellectual property (IE. Meks don't share weapon designs)
* Orks aren't too good at replicating previous efforts, sort of forgetting how the did something in the first place (see Doks often botching "serjeries" they already did several times)

All of this and many other points tell me that Orks have no "technology" to speak of, they simply do stuff, most of the times not realizing what they are doing until they are actually done (of course orks being orks they will never admit it and claim it was what they intended to do all along).

This means that every time they do something it's not creation, it's invention, and I can't really understand how a guy that only accidentally manages to create a working gun that doesn't explode when used is able to create a perfectly functioning Mega-Gargant.

Unless there was something else driving his craftmanship. Now, an astropathic link might be an explaination for all of this, but it's a much less conservative interpretation than just reading what the authors wrote. It's in their dna.

Now, let's see if I can give an opinion on singular quotes.

The very fact that orky technology is as comparatively primitive as it is suggests that orky creativity is highly circumscribed in most areas.

That very limit is what I think is the "coding", I don't mean for said "code" to be a series of blueprints, but if I create a race that likes noisy vehicles and embed the knowledge to create an internal combustion engine, the basics for fuels, and transmission, they will eventually create trukks, traks and buggies.
Similarly, if I want to create a Mutant Ninja Turtle that can make pizza, I either put in the recipe for pizza, or give it a craving for pizza and the knowledge necessary to "invent" the pizza recipe.

I'd say it's rather a symptom of creative behavior, but ...

Creativity is an urge, it's not an end or a mean. Creativity gives you the drive, not the tools. Instinct or rationality give you tools.

A and before too long orks from system B will show up, having heard about the fight. I assume the actual information conduit is the Waaagh! manifesting itself as some sort of astrotelepathy, but whatever it is, it's surprisingly fast and reliable, and could be a conduit for the transmission of other culturally information as well.

Yes, we've seen Waaagh! being discussed as a Zeitgeist, but it's something of a visceral and emotional thing, I don't think that it goes as far as transmitting scientific principles or lexicon. (Again it might be possible, but I want to be conservative about it)

3 is a more naturalistic outlook.

Orks are not natural by any means, they were bionegineered and that's pretty established, so what is natural doesn't really apply. And that pretty much invalidated all the other points. If Orks were a race that naturally evolved to that point I would agree with what you said, but there's pretty solid evidence of tampering, so natural evolution doesn't apply as much as "intelligent design" does (in this case, mind you, I'm being tongue in cheek because I find it amusing, I'm not supporting unscientific stuff).

Plus tires make the vehicle bump around, which orks find fun; and treads make heavy, clunkly, grinding noises which orks like as well.

See the TMNT argument.

Gorepants makes a good point about saying some Meks get together to share info; they opposite is true as well; some meks keep other Meks away, so they cannot steal his ideas.

I honestly never read of such things happening, afaik Meks are super jealous, but then again, some Orkish stuff is stuff that can hardly be "invented" in few generation of Meks discussing things. If Orks REALLY had any desire or capacity for independent development they would be aeons ahead of any other race and a complete and utter defeat would be unthinkable.

Which brings me to my last point. Independence.
I know that Orks create stuff. I also know that Brainboyz (I like it better than Old Ones) gave them the means to do it. The question we're actually asking is: "Can Orks create stuff outside of what Brainboyz meant them to?"
In order to do that they need to have 2 things, the ability to do it, and the will to do it.
Finding out if they are actually able to is very hard, so I'll focus on their will to do it.
Basically it's a discussion of free will. Do Orks possess a free will outside of the "destiny" that Brainboyz gave them?

There's a long philosophical discussion about whether real world people have a true free will, and that we do not have the luck of knowing whether or not a race of celestial beings actually engineered us or not.

Therefore I'd say that since we DO know that Orks are nothing but a weapon created by the Old Ones (now I call them Old Ones since they look like bad Lex Luthor-like guys) they do NOT have a free will.

Orks are meant to be warlike and a constant threat, but a threat that is self-regulating none the less. After all, who designs a weapon that they can't control themself?

[ashnaile]

One of the pieces of evidence that has been offered is that all orks tend to make the same broad types of machines. For instance, while not all battlewagons are identical (indeed, it is possible that no two battlewagons have ever been identical), orks have a distinct tendency to build their armored fighting vehicles with front-heavy armor, tracks and/or wheels, and loud, smoke-belching engines. It has been suggested that this piece of evidence argues in favor of #2.





I dont think that supports #2 at all really.

Id say the orks are more like #3, They have an innate understanding of the principles of tech

The reason why they always seem to build the same kinds of stuff? Well every single ork wants pretty much the exact same thing, to fight kill and have ded killy stuff, of course the front armor is the heaviest ... thats where you drive into their tanks ...

Theyre loud and smoke belching because to orks, a thing being fearsome and loud is directly proportional to how deadly it is, how loud a gun is is as important to an ork as how big its bullet is ...