The Tshahark Poll

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How smart do you think Tshaharks really are?

Sloth from The Goonies
2
8%
Joey from Friends
7
28%
Cartman from South Park
6
24%
Thog from OoTS
10
40%
 
Total votes: 25

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per
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The Tshahark Poll

#1 Post by per » Sun Jun 10, 2012 8:58 pm

Hopefully this is useful... somehow.

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Re: The Tshahark Poll

#2 Post by Skragna » Sun Jun 10, 2012 10:10 pm

I am honestly just a little afraid to vote on this, because I don't remember the Goonies, nor Friends... I would probably rate tshaharks as slightly more intelligent than Thog, who seems to have a major problem with grammar structure and just speaking in general, and less intelligent than Cartman, who is capable of masterminding a plot to feed a kid's parents to him.

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Re: The Tshahark Poll

#3 Post by luminier » Sun Jun 10, 2012 10:40 pm

definitely not cartman!

Never heard of thog but a quick wiki search and i think thats probably about how smart they are. Basically I think they are about as smart as an animal could be if it had it's brained mixed equally with a humans.

So... somewhere above mentally challenged by human standards but more instinctual than book smart for sure.
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Re: The Tshahark Poll

#4 Post by Sairina » Sun Jun 10, 2012 11:18 pm

Don't know any of the characters mentioned, so I can't vote on this. I'd probably put it stronger than Luminier, though - by human standards they should be mentally challenged. They were not just mixed with animals, but likely with strong ones rather than smart ones, so they have sub-human intelligence (generally lower than that of a human in the bottom of the spectrum). Their human part adds speech and self-awareness beyond animal abilities, but that should be it, which definitely excludes them from specifically human achievements like reading and writing. I'm sure they could learn crafts pretty well, however. Obviously, even the stupidest animal needs a certain form of instinctual intelligence, they can't be "too dumb to be alive", which some of our TV characters manage to be.

Intelligence aside, I definitely feel that they should be very "alien" in their way of thinking - they are not just stupid humans, and it doesn't do them justice to play them as such.

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Re: The Tshahark Poll

#5 Post by Zehren » Mon Jun 11, 2012 4:27 am

I vouch for almost Thog-y, though that is the middle value of my thinking.

Err...

Thog = average tshahark. Except I suspect they are more in the present when hunting, as opposed to Thog thinking of puppies.

So, uh, average int -4 compared to average human... but no loss of wisdom. Thinking of puppies when killing displays little wisdom.
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Re: The Tshahark Poll

#6 Post by ghalt » Wed Jun 13, 2012 2:35 pm

Thog seems a little too low to me, as that character is basically so stupid that he's only comic relief. He's berserker strong, sure, but he has no understanding of what in the world is going on around him. It seems like tshaharks should be allowed at least a little cunning/craftiness, even if their brains are so broken they can't count past 3 or so.

I suppose the way I think of them is "that person that just doesn't get math" dialed up to 11. There are parts of the world they just cannot get a grip on (and exactly what parts those are may differ from tshahark to tshahark), but they can hopefully come up with better names for people than "talky man." :)

Now, someone may choose to play them as Thog or even Rocky Road Sloth, but I think enforcing that as the upper limit would be too restricting.

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Re: The Tshahark Poll

#7 Post by Skragna » Wed Jun 13, 2012 8:03 pm

I KNOW!!! They're about as smart as Sid! Sid the Sloth, from Ice Age!!!

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Re: The Tshahark Poll

#8 Post by Allurana » Wed Jun 13, 2012 10:23 pm

Regarding the poll, I only recognize Joey. As thus, I'll refrain from voting on it.

I've always likened tshaharks more to animal mentality than human mentality. There's certain situations or routines that animals can adapt to easily (and sometimes quickly), and there's other things they just don't understand.

For an example, when it comes to survival, hunting, or so forth, I think they could adapt quickly. When it comes to education, academics, and the like, I think it mostly goes in one ear and out the other. In other cases, like routines, I think they could be capable of eventually mimicking it, but maybe not always understand the meaning or purpose behind it.

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Re: The Tshahark Poll

#9 Post by Delia » Thu Jun 14, 2012 12:49 am

While individual tshahark should vary greatly I've preferred to see them as deeply conflicted, even tortured by their mental condition where the animal instinctual part is constantly trying to gain dominance. Volatile emotions and unchecked urges, that sort of things. There is intelligence but it is focused towards baser things, generally speaking.
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Re: The Tshahark Poll

#10 Post by luminier » Sat Jun 16, 2012 10:02 am

Just a heads up, I know 2 year olds that can count up to 10.

And strangely I know a lot of children because I teach swimming.

I do like the PoV Delia has though. Seems very childlike which I think is the idea of the tshahark mental state.
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Re: The Tshahark Poll

#11 Post by Allurana » Sat Jun 16, 2012 3:04 pm

I've seen a monkey and a five year old pitted against one another in a visual puzzle. The monkey solved it first. The monkey most probably didn't know how to count, while the toddler very likely could. So the definition of intelligence and stupidity can be relative.

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Re: The Tshahark Poll

#12 Post by luminier » Sat Jun 16, 2012 3:48 pm

it would be interesting to know exactly what the puzzle was and how they were both prompted to do the puzzle. Since you can't talk to a monkey to tell it what to do you would probably need to have to reward it with something to solve the puzzle... say a banana.

You would have to use the same treatment with the child for the test to really mean anything IMO.

It would also be interesting to note the complexity of the puzzle and what is considering doing it "right" or "completing" it. It would be reasonable to believe that a monkey could just randomly move pieces around until a reward was reached because he is interested in food. The child would likely try and sit and think about it with their feeble mind. And since the monkey doesn't know it's "racing" anyone, you couldn't tell the child that either.

In essence I think the child is set up to fail! =D



ANYWAYS, I see your point. People can be good at visual things and bad at other things or good at math and bad at writing stories.

What I meant with that comment about children being 2-3 and being able to count to 10 is how difficult is it really to count? How do you roleplay being able to not count after someone just told you, "1,2,3,4,5,6..."?

I almost agree with Sairina. Children, you can reason with (almost) and can even explain simple concepts such that they understand that it is important, or not.

If a person is mentally challenged, they might even have trouble with understanding why they are being told something or why something is important or blindly take hold of a concept and fight for it... without really knowing why. I've taught some children with mental disabilities and they have rather strange behaviors sometimes. It is reasonable that tshaharks could be likened to mentally challenged humans I think.
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Re: The Tshahark Poll

#13 Post by Allurana » Sat Jun 16, 2012 7:15 pm

luminier wrote:it would be interesting to know exactly what the puzzle was and how they were both prompted to do the puzzle. Since you can't talk to a monkey to tell it what to do you would probably need to have to reward it with something to solve the puzzle... say a banana.

You would have to use the same treatment with the child for the test to really mean anything IMO.

It would also be interesting to note the complexity of the puzzle and what is considering doing it "right" or "completing" it. It would be reasonable to believe that a monkey could just randomly move pieces around until a reward was reached because he is interested in food. The child would likely try and sit and think about it with their feeble mind. And since the monkey doesn't know it's "racing" anyone, you couldn't tell the child that either.

In essence I think the child is set up to fail! =D
I saw it years ago, so my memory of the details is vague, but it was both the monkey and the child being shown a miniature model of a room, and then being shown a miniature soda being hidden in said room (I believe in this case, it was 'hidden' in the fridge. Very sneaky). Each was then led into a replication of the model room. The monkey went straight to the fridge and grabbed the soda. The child didn't know where to look, apparently not drawing a correlation between the miniature room and the room he was now in.

Was the monkey prepped beforehand? Was the experiment a big hoax? I don't remember the commentary or anything, so I can't really say. But I doubt it was set up.
What I meant with that comment about children being 2-3 and being able to count to 10 is how difficult is it really to count? How do you roleplay being able to not count after someone just told you, "1,2,3,4,5,6..."?
For the latter question, I guess it's sort of like when I explain computers to my folks. I get a sort of blank poker face reaction followed by a "wut". In other words, it just completely goes over their heads, despite being elementary for me.

String theory might be simple to quantum scientists, and academics might be simple for a Scribe, but for the common bumpkin, it's a bunch of gobbledygook. In much the same vein, counting might be simple for "softskins", but for a tshahark, it might just be a bunch of nonsense. Much like it'd probably be for an animal.

All in all, it's a foreign concept to us for numbers to be inconceivable, since they play such a large role in our lives and are simple for us to understand personally, but I think there's plenty of examples of different things that some people (or animals) find simple that others just don't get for the life of them.

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Re: The Tshahark Poll

#14 Post by Sairina » Sun Jun 17, 2012 4:29 am

What I meant with that comment about children being 2-3 and being able to count to 10 is how difficult is it really to count? How do you roleplay being able to not count after someone just told you, "1,2,3,4,5,6..."?
Maybe they also just don't get why it would be important. If not only their mental abilities, but also their way of viewing the world is influenced by their half-animal nature, it would make perfect sense for them to consider things as abstract as numbers or written words completely irrelevant. After all, why would they need to distinguish anything beyond "boar" and "more boar"? And there's actually human examples for this, tribes with languages that have no other number words than "one", "two" and "many", and one that has no number words at all, but roughly estimates quantities instead. They are no more stupid than any other humans, yet scientists have often failed at teaching them how to count. They simply don't have a need for it:
"They asked me to give them classes in Brazilian numbers, so for eight months I spent an hour every night trying to teach them how to count. And it never got anywhere, except for a few of the children. Some of the children learned to do reasonably well, but as soon as anybody started to perform well, they were sent away from the classes. It was just a fun time to eat popcorn and watch me write things on the board."
They are, however, much better at estimating than humans who speak other languages. Animals can estimate well, too, even if they can't actually count beyond three or four. Estimating is of course important for an animal - how much larger than me is that animal I want to attack? Which boar is larger, which herd has more prey animals in it? So maybe it would make sense to give tshaharks better appraise skills to make up for their inability to count (if they don't have already)

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Re: The Tshahark Poll

#15 Post by Skragna » Sun Jun 17, 2012 8:08 am

...Sairina, you're a /genius/. That's a perfectly logical explanation. Also, given that they were creatures bred for battle, I think that militaristic logistics, at least for troop numbers, should be easy enough for them to comprehend. IE a battalion is more than a squad, so if they have a squad and we have a battalion, we have them outnumbered.

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Re: The Tshahark Poll

#16 Post by Delia » Sun Jun 17, 2012 12:31 pm

Sairina +1
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Re: The Tshahark Poll

#17 Post by adanath » Mon Dec 10, 2012 10:05 am

I never considered tshaharks to be incredibly stupid, just different in many ways.

Its not as if they don't recognize the count of things, they just don't know numbers.

A fox looks at one mouse or ten I am sure they know the difference (well not sure), but it doesn't mean they count them the way we do, and assign a number to each idea.

Adanath can tell between enormous heaps of meat and small ones too.

Tshaharks just think of things simply, its not that they are total simpletons. they are cunning in battle many times, it is what they were made for, and they tend to protect people, it is an easy concept. Adanath is very big on saying things is more simples, no so complicates people make things complicates

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Re: The Tshahark Poll

#18 Post by Brom » Sat Feb 09, 2013 4:05 am

I think I could appreciate more commenting/voting on this poll from tshahark players and those that interact alot with/have played tshaharks, what I'm seeing IG is not at all transferring to the results/comments that I'm reading here, and it is really bothering me. There seems to be a disconnect from OOC and IC action. Being judge requires tremendous intellect, you have to be able to interpret the law and write new laws! The sense im getting is that a tshahark is NOT capable of doing so THOUGH perhaps that is the point??

A half-animal half-human instinctual creature holding a POLITICAL position? Very difficut to "get" for me.

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Re: The Tshahark Poll

#19 Post by luminier » Sat Feb 09, 2013 4:10 am

Personally I don't think tshaharks should be judges for many of the reasons described in this poll. If they were to hold a position it would likely just to be as a placeholder for someone else to pull the strings behind their back which seems alright I suppose but kind of silly. Should be some sort of Int check to be judge haha :lol:
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Re: The Tshahark Poll

#20 Post by ghalt » Sat Feb 09, 2013 4:18 am

Brom wrote: Being judge requires tremendous intellect, you have to be able to interpret the law and write new laws! The sense im getting is that a tshahark is NOT capable of doing so THOUGH perhaps that is the point??

A half-animal half-human instinctual creature holding a POLITICAL position? Very difficut to "get" for me.
Well, there have been some really, really dumb politicians/judges. Like, "wut" levels of intellect. I don't mean liberal/conservative so conservatives/liberals hate them, i mean objectively bad at the job in every metric.

Judges (though judge in real life politics doesn't really match in game realities) in particular have been known to occasionally be hilariously unqualified for the job. Popularity contests don't always elect the person with the best, or any, competence for the job. ^_^

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