Orky Know-Wots

[Old_Paladin]

I'll use your pizza example; since I think we have similar thoughts but express them at two opposite extremes.
Orks do have genetic drives and knowledge, but I think its much more general, and you feel its more specific.

But, back to pizzas. Even with the innate ability to make a pizza, there will be some experimentation that will create non-pizzas. If you take the dough and add oil, diced tomato and herbs: you get a brushetta. Use only garlic with/without cheese and cut it into long thin slices you get garlic fingers. Fold the pizza over and seal it before cooking makes a calzone.
Your original gene-code didn't say make pizzas, garlic fingers, calzones, etc; just pizza.
Orks are like this; the gene-code isn't make gargants, trukks, kans, etc. Their genes allow them to make crude engines, hydrolics, combustable chemicals, etc. And they take the general info and make it into something useful. This usually takes the end forms of Gargants for the current generation of orks, but there is no really limit; and the fact that they display learning means they can continue expanding on ideas (like pizza dough to cake batter, opening whole new fields).

[Madness]

Bruschetta. I'm italian man, don't be butcherin'. :P

Yes, I agree that there's no specific goal set for their stuff, but eventually having the same skills, the same goals, and the same underlying culture drives you to the same(ish) result. Specially if we consider that part of the skills/goals/culture were artifically implanted into you (as opposed to naturally evolved).

So yes, you gravitate toward pizza, and end up with many close cousins, but you never end up with a Large Hadron Collider instead of a pizza.

The original question (I think) was "do Ork actually innovate?" to which I respond "no they just rehash the stuff they already knew towards stuff they were supposed to build".

Also, I'm hungry now.

[Melissia]

Orks don't learn.

Allow me to posit some formal logic.

Fact: Experimentation is done in order to learn something (definition of experimentation involves testing and investigating)

Inference: If Orks don't learn, then Mekboyz wouldn't experiment.

Fact: Codex: Orks says Mekboyz experiment.

Conclusion: Ergo, Orks must have the capacity to learn.

[Inquisitor Soren]

I think it boils down to orks being predisposed to build certain things honestly. Orks like fast, so they build something fast. Orks like loud, so they make the fast thing loud. Orks like being jostled around, so they put big wheels and poor suspension on it. Orks like shooty, so they strap a gun on it. Orks like getting to their target alive so they put more armor on it. Orks like smashing things so they find a way to put a giant wrecking ball on it.

Sorry rambling. My belief is that Orks have certain techno-logic know-how encoded in their genome, but the rest of their genome encourages certain designs as well based on their behavior. This is why we such 'standardization' amongst orks, they are all predisposed to like certain things. Orks like loud, fast, red, exploding things, in fact they love them! Some orks may like shooty things more than fast things, some may like red things more than loud things. Each ork probably has his own preference for things and this is why we see orks so spread out in what they do and how they do it.

To say orks don't learn is probably foolish. We can see in the ork codex that our green friends learn new tactics based on what works and what doesn't, they just do so through trial and error rather than through simple logic. Orks may throw themselves over a cliff to get too a foe below, but assuming they survive they will probably develop a way that makes it quicker and safer just so more orks can do it and get there next time!


So my thoughts are, Orks do innovate but they are genetically predisposed to create certain things do to their personalities and genetic design. Also the Waaagh! is almost certainly a form of psychic beacon that draws more and more orks acting like an instinctual form of Astropathy, the bigger and better the fight the more orks will be drawn to it. The penultimate war-machine designed to bring the Necrons down through sheer force of stupidity. ^^ Orsk We Love You.

[Melissia]

You mean sheer awesomeness. Because Orks aren't necessarily stupid, they just have an EXTREMELY divergent cultural viewpoint from our own.

[Madness]

If Orks don't learn, then Mekboyz wouldn't experiment.

Codex: Orks says Mekboyz experiment.

Ergo, Orks must have the capacity to learn.

Experimentation doesn't mean drawing conclusions.One can experiment without learning anything in the process. That's a deductive fallacy.

@Soren: I still think that the "learn" is just apparent, they probably had that tactic in the head all along, they just found out about it.

Cue philosophical debate about whether ideas are discoveries or inventions.

[Inquisitor Soren]

@ Madness: No you could be right, they could be ideas that they just 'remember' but I feel its kinda strange to 'limit' a bioweapon in that way. The race that made the Eldar would probably facepalm if they limited what their penunltimate survivor/weapon in such a way that they only have so many design ideas and could not learn new ones. It seems kinda goofy for such a wise and all-powerful race to do something like that. But it is possible nonetheless, no matter how advanced humanity is I'm sure we will goof so I don't doubt it could have happened.

As for the thought of discoveries or inventions? Eh who knows one could argue either and only waste their time, thought only matters if it leads to action in the end. =p (Does not like philosophical debates despite coming from such a family.)

[Melissia]

Experimentation doesn't mean drawing conclusions.One can experiment without learning anything in the process. That's a deductive fallacy.

The entire purpose behind experimenting is to learn. If they had no capacity to learn they would not likely even attempt to experiment. Also, you're ignoring the current canon which gives specific examples of how Orks learn.

If you're just going to go around ignoring the canon fluff, then it's rather pointless to argue with you. So, do you care about canon, or are you going to argue your point of view instead? I do want to know, because they are mutually exclusive and if you don't care about canon I'll just ignore you in this thread. We've repeated ourselves so many times, and it's getting kinda annoying and boring.

[Old_Paladin]

The original question (I think) was "do Ork actually innovate?" to which I respond "no they just rehash the stuff they already knew towards stuff they were supposed to build".

Maybe innovate is the wrong term, as an ork might not create an original idea out of thin air.
However, they are inovative enough to take alien technologies and include them in their own works to make something new.
This means its a technology they weren't "supposed to build," it's something beyond their 'original' scope.
If they were 'supposed' to build Gargants, they would have done so long before seeing imperial Titans; but they didn't.

Likewise, they new Kil-series Tanks, from forgeworld.
The fluff says that they are a whole new concept of ork craftmanship, never before seen by imperial forces. Made by the infamous Murder-Meks (I forget which planet) using captured forgeworld assembly-lines and reverse engineered technology (the main example being the loading gear for the Kil-Krusha Kannon; orks have never made such a system, until they studied similar imperial systems).

[Inquisitor Soren]

Old Paladin's statement does support what I believe then. The Old One's designed the Orks to cannibalize any tech there is and use it. Which in theory could explain why the Necrons stuff all teleports away, lol, could you imagine that at one point the Orks may have had Necron tech?

The more I think on it the more it makes sense to give the Orks the ability to take any tech and use it for themselves even if they cannot understand how they use it, they just do. That seems more like an approach an all-knowing race would take right? Limiting your bio-weapon only makes sense if you have already won the war and need an 'off switch' for it. And since the Old Ones weren't really winning, more like losing more slowly I would think you would go all out and go for the throat in any weapon you design. If all else fails M.A.D. is the way to go I would say.