If you created the world (realistic or not)

I would Mirror the current earth firstly, as a starting point. but I might reduce the effect of gravity a bit to make more seemingly impossible things possible to more people. and make fascinations like volcanic eruptions even more spectacular. as far as Mega fauna, maybe make then a bit more reasonably sized. imagine African elephants the size of Dairy cattle, Much shorter Giraffe's, well seeing rino's, and other strangeness' sort of leveled out a bit. and smaller mammals, maybe make them a bit larger to compensate the bio-balance.. like Rabbits as large as a Medium to large size dog.
mice as large as jackrabbits. it would be a Very Different world, yet strangely the same.
 
Bigpaws_Bear said:
I would Mirror the current earth firstly, as a starting point. but I might reduce the effect of gravity a bit to make more seemingly impossible things possible to more people. and make fascinations like volcanic eruptions even more spectacular. as far as Mega fauna, maybe make then a bit more reasonably sized. imagine African elephants the size of Dairy cattle, Much shorter Giraffe's, well seeing rino's, and other strangeness' sort of leveled out a bit. and smaller mammals, maybe make them a bit larger to compensate the bio-balance.. like Rabbits as large as a Medium to large size dog.
mice as large as jackrabbits. it would be a Very Different world, yet strangely the same.
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I get what you mean that does sound amazing. Sounds like that 1 movie i forgot.
 
I would have little slappy things which spring from the ground like in the new hitchhiker's guide movie on Vogsphere.

Except mine would slap you not when you think, but when you didn't think.
 
The current world is mostly fine, and full of interesting things. I think the humans in it could use some tweaking though.

1. I think we'd benefit from rolling back out tribalism instinct by like 90%, which would eliminate the vast majority of our issues (war, partisan politics, racism, genocide, etc.) You sports fans would probably be like me at that point, and not understand the fascination with spectator sports. haha

2. Our bodies could use some ergonomical tweaks. Our spines are a poorly designed mess. Our ladies' hips are BARELY big enough to accomodate birthing babies. Our joints wear out way before we're done with them, same with the hearts (the car guy in me just wants to put a zerk fitting in so I can grease them occasionally. Not into this 'greased for life' nonsense.) It would be nice to be a bit more naturally physically gifted like many animals. Like, why do I have to bust my ass to be moderately muscular when the gorilla at the zoo just sits on its ass all day eating lettuce, and he could throw around my 1 rep max weights like playthings?

3. Our software could use some tweaks. I'd like to see the average human be more logical, more curious and open to learning, less prone to panic, less selfish, less superstitious, less stuborn, and more far-sighted in the pursuit of pleasures and happiness.
 
I would: make no humans! Only a vessel for my physical pleasure.

My world would be full of mythical creatures.
Centuars, pegusus, chimira, Cerberus etc.

I would have no warmongers! Other than the weasel family haha.

The animals would also have control over their heat/birth cycle.

They would all be able to communicate with all other species land and sea.

And it would be my perfect little place in the ever expanding cosmos.

That.. Unforchunetly nobody but my zoo group would get to see.
 
If I created the world... well, we all know that's impossible. Shit, if I were actually god, fuck hiding behind a book full of mindfuckery, I'd straight up say - look, you can do whatever you want, but for every fucked up thing you do, expect it to come back to you.

Basically, we'd live in a world where karma is a real thing, instead of something imagined.
 
I want a world after a certain cap the population stops growing. Also. Livable beautiful hybrids to exist and meat fruits (so carns dont have to kill). Better yet the animals would be feral (4 legged)/word speech capable with great intelligence.
 
Bloodwolf said:
I’d reduce the human population to a permanent number of 2 billion and rid the world of cities and large parkways .
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Reducing the population sounds great, unless you're the population being reduced. I am worried that earth will be like the planet coruscant one day. All city and no nature.
 
Stoli said:
Reducing the population sounds great, unless you're the population being reduced. I am worried that earth will be like the planet coruscant one day. All city and no nature.
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Don’t mean you can’t spread 2 billion evenly between the races.
 
Stoli said:
Reducing the population sounds great, unless you're the population being reduced. I am worried that earth will be like the planet coruscant one day. All city and no nature.
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If you limit the number of births for a while, then not a single person is harmed.

Except idiots who would never have children but suddenly feel a great loss of this option to have 14 children. These of course sprain their brain on that one.
 
KNOTTYBOYZ said:
I would leave everything as is as far as earths problems goes (war, poverty, suffering, ect.) and change only one thing. Add anthro wolf people! Reason why I dont want suffering to disappear is because, while I dont like experienceing it personally, its what gives sentient beings driven purpose and dynamic experiences. Add wolf people into the mix not only do you got a new sentient species trying to coexist with humans (imagine the war and specieism!) but the (and here's my naughty reason for all this ;P) interspecies sexual exploration and overcoming the taboo of it being acceptable in society.
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You would have to make people except the fact that anthro people. There would be a problem with alienating them just for being way to different.
 
Reconscope said:
What would it consist of? I wanna know your great ideas.
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As someone who is into world building I could run you over with ideas...

But first I'd have to ask, du you mean from scratch? Also do you mean just a planetary body with "the world" or the surrounding universe as well? Could be fun to mess with physical constants for a newly created universe...
 
CritterFunatic said:
As someone who is into world building I could run you over with ideas...

But first I'd have to ask, du you mean from scratch? Also do you mean just a planetary body with "the world" or the surrounding universe as well? Could be fun to mess with physical constants for a newly created universe...
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Anything you want no rules unless you wanna put physic laws or whatever.
 
if i created it, idk, ive never been good at creating stuff from scratch.

If i could change the current world, first of all, thanos snap. Make sure that all the people who hate for irrational reasons get removed. Next, make people more accepting, and more understanding. Mainly, make it so people dont shame others for different relationships (not just zoophile relationships, but anything really. As long as both parties are consenting that is.) Finally, some small tweaks to the current systems of government. I like trump, dont get me wrong, but an orange doing all these changes to the government, well, idk how I feel about that. More checks and balances should be included, and if I could remodel the world that would be an important factor in not just the US, but worldwide. A worldwide democracy, so to speak. And not the bullshit democracy in America, an actual democracy.

But, I am not perfect, nothing is, my plan does have flaws. I accept that.
 
Just make sure I got land to Hunt and water to fish in. 50 miles of land around me with no people would be great
 
LOL, I feel so selfish reading all these ideas. My first and only thought was "public sex/sexuality okay". Love the idea of less people and less tribalism mentality though.
 
Reconscope said:
Anything you want no rules unless you wanna put physic laws or whatever.
Click to expand...
Well, in this case I could have my fun with very exotic worlds of my own...
I could certainly describe them, but that would totally end up as an essay in fiction or general world building brainstorming and might not be, what you had in mind. Should it be just that, what you were after, let me know and I might share a few of my insane ideas.

But for now I guess I try the same the other people here try to achieve: "Fixing" our world...

And the thing about that is: The first step in solving a problem is to recognize that it does exist.

We have to ask ourselves, if we see a problem we want to tackle. Then we have to look for the root cause. And then fix it.

And since we already have somebody unwilling to end suffering, because it creates drama, I'll hop in right there. This is a thought experiment after all, we might play god in our mind. And although I hate to bring popcultural references into a mind experiment like this, I'd like to say "With great power comes great responsibility". To say to keep suffering because it creates "driven purpose" or "dynamic experiences" is the worst excuse to be lazy on that part. Many people say "If there is a god, ask him for me, why he let [insert family member name here] suffer from [insert cause] here." It's cruel. It's especially cruel if you could do something about it and refuse to do so. Imagine all people were that indifferent, we wouldn't have doctors and many people alive right now were already dead, sometimes from minor causes.

So I think this is as good of a place as many to do something about that. If we play god, we shouldn't stir up senseless drama so our world would be interesting to a reader of pulp fiction. We should do what we can to help our creation, as that is what a responsible creator should do. I see the creator as a parent and his or her creations as their children. We don't allow harmful things to happen to our kids to "build character", do we? Well, maybe neglectful parents do, but most, good parents won't. And that's what we should be.

So, let's see. Some kind of suffering stems from sickness. They don't always be of viral or bacterial causes, but also might be caused by parasites. So step one here would be to remove parasitic organisms. But wait. Those might, further down the line, cause a disruption of the established food-chain in the fragile eco-system. If we don't want to re-invent everything, we have to be careful what we remove. Maybe removal might be the wrong idea. Maybe some other solution might prove to be better.

How about turning parasites into symbiotes? That way they could continue to exist, furthermore keep part of their lifestyle but instead of making the life of the host a living hell, they might do something good for the host. Instead of harming the host, they might provide nutrients, helpful chemicals (as some sort of organic medicine) or different things the host could need. Also their lifestyle shouldn't harm the host.

So goodbye creepy, pulsating worms that live in the eyestalks of snails to attract birds to attack the snails and rip off their eyestalks and eat them, so the worms can lay eggs in the stomach of the bird which can be pooped out again by the bird far away, so the hatching parasites there could infect new snails. Even if snakes can regrow their eyestalks, that's just nasty. So how about the parasite becoming a symbiote and get busy to work for the snail instead? It might help snails to detect poisonous food or hazardous environment or might help breaking down poisons or provide them with something useful and in return could produce pulsating egg stalks to grow out of the snail instead. So a bird would eat those instead and still be able to crap those eggs out in far away locations. Win/win(/win) for all three species here.

The same would have to apply to any parasite. They would become more useful and less harmful for their host and might have a great future in the eco system there. The next step would be pseudoparasites. Organisms that are temporary parasites. Like some fungi that grow in ants and flies and break through there carapace, making them grotesque looking mushroom-zombies. The spores should instead affect dead insects, helping breaking them down, that would be less horrible than infecting living organisms. Or how about insects laying their eggs in a host organism to have it devoured from the inside by the hatching brood? That's horrible. Those insects might keep the eggs inside their own body until shortly before hatching. Then they could kill a potential host and lay the eggs inside the host. Now you might ask: "What difference does that make to the host? It's dead anyway?" Well. I think it's a big difference being eaten alive from the inside or being quickly killed and then eaten from the inside.

But of course, what applies to multicellular organisms should as well apply to single celled organisms like bakteria or those things existing in a gray area between "being alive" and "not being alive" as viruses are. There are many species of beneficial bacteria and many species of harmful bakteria. The change here would be to make all of them beneficial to their intended host. Of course bakteria reproduce fast and mutate quickly, you can see evolution happening in them rather fast. Here I would suggest to hardwire certain functions into their DNA to ensure they wouldn't lose the beneficial traits by random chance and might turn harmful. As for viruses... I don't really know how they could be made beneficial, as they require the cells of a host to reproduce and might harm the host in that process. I guess I have to look more into the origin of viruses to think about a useful solution to them, until I find one I might opt for removing them entirely until I have a satisfying solution. Maybe they might become harmless, self-reproducing things that block certain molecular receptors from potentially turned harmful microorganisms, therefore protecting their hosts from becoming infected by other intruders, helping to immunize their host. That's certainly a world for itself.

As for other kinds of suffering through war (for example), let's start quite early here as well. Make animals less territorial. Let them share ressources, rather than become selfish and hogging ressources. That way ressources could be spread evenly between different species and make them less harmful towards others. I consider to remove predators entirely, well, not to remove them, but turning them more into scavenging omnivores. They wouldn't need to hunt, would get their meat-fix through found deceased animals and would otherwise eat whatever edible item is around them. Without the need to quickly strenghten their numbers, prey animals, who should also become scavenging omnivores, might adobt different breeding tactics. Instead of having large litters just to ensure, that two or three of their offspring survive, they might have smaller litters and care more for their offspring, making sure they safely reach adulthood. In this case needless suffering by young animals would be minimized. That also applies for animals with brood parasite background, as in quite some birds who lay their eggs into the nest of other birds. I'd change it so that all animals care for their own offspring (although they might adopt other young animals in cases where they might need protection). I also would link reproductive instincts with the availability of ressources and migratory patterns. Are ressources low? Then there is a severly reduced reproductive drive. If the reproductive drive has been low during multiple mating seasons then the individual in question might feel the need to migrate to more fertile grounds with more ressources (food) which would also raise his or her reproductive drive again. This would safeguard that species wouldn't overpopulate certain areas or would be forced to eat their own offspring (filial cannibalism).

That system might be a bit more complicated for recreational reproductive activities. I could simply erase them, as they just waste bodily ressources, but... Here I have to say... As a human, I'm biased. I know many other species might be biased as well. Sex is fun. So, yeah. I'll keep it. Non-reproductive sexual activity can stay, although, it might still suffer from lower reproductive drive in cases of scarcity. Here we would have to find a compromise. Either sexual appetite might overrule low libido because of scarcity, which might lead to breaking the system altogether and might lead to overpopulation of species... Or sexual appetite remaining connected to level of libido based on available ressources. I'd go for the later. Better not being in the right mood if certain conditions aren't favorable, than always being in the right mood and creating way to much offspring in the end.

And since we already talk about biases: Spiders. I'm arachnophobic. I should be neutral when it comes to my world, but, heck, it's my world... Spiders wouldn't exist... Well... Just change them all to scorpions. They could continue to exist as their close cousins. Since I kinda removed predatory species and also limited the reproductive rate of all creatures including insects, there wouldn't be a need for them. Nature also already has enough insectivores (even if I changed them all to scavenging omnivores) and doesn't really need cobwebs in every available corner.

I just... Really can't stand them and couldn't resist getting rid of them. But since it's not their own fault I can't stand them, they could continue their existence as something else.

Changes like this would just be the tip of the iceberg. Since we play god here, I'd give that world a test run, see how it turns out, how civilisations develop and then make further alterations, if necessary. Since we can always go back to square one, we might be able to experiment with ideas to see which ones would work best overall to limit unnecessary suffering and tension in the world. Those changes would also influence the societies that might be established on this world. We would see if territorialism and wars would still be a problem in a world where most if not all species are non-aggressive. Of course, humans might want to keep certain areas for agricultural reasons, they might also be interested in mineral ressources. But I wonder how they might share agricultural areas with other species and how they would share mineral wealth with each other. There still might be many sources of conflict because of cultural backgrounds, but we should cross that bridge when we come to it.

Before we iron out further cultural problems we have still much to do to ensure that stability is secured and that our world might survive natural disasters as well as conflicts of interests between our (former) human selves (as we are gods in this scenario now) and our intended neutrality. Fairness should be a decisive factor. Make the world more fair, less crappy. But also make it more fair for all lifeforms, not just the ones we prefer. As I said, we could give that world a spin and see how it turns out so far. Then, after knowing the results of that test run, we could go back to bugfix it, to iron out emergent problems and to find alternative solutions for every problem we might run in. If we remain determined and patient we might get a world that might be rich in biodiversity, ressources and living quality for the largest possible number of species. I guess that might be the most important goal to aim for. Any personal alterations that mirror our own desires might happen in the end, after we cared about everything else.
 
CritterFunatic said:
Well, in this case I could have my fun with very exotic worlds of my own...
I could certainly describe them, but that would totally end up as an essay in fiction or general world building brainstorming and might not be, what you had in mind. Should it be just that, what you were after, let me know and I might share a few of my insane ideas.

But for now I guess I try the same the other people here try to achieve: "Fixing" our world...

And the thing about that is: The first step in solving a problem is to recognize that it does exist.

We have to ask ourselves, if we see a problem we want to tackle. Then we have to look for the root cause. And then fix it.

And since we already have somebody unwilling to end suffering, because it creates drama, I'll hop in right there. This is a thought experiment after all, we might play god in our mind. And although I hate to bring popcultural references into a mind experiment like this, I'd like to say "With great power comes great responsibility". To say to keep suffering because it creates "driven purpose" or "dynamic experiences" is the worst excuse to be lazy on that part. Many people say "If there is a god, ask him for me, why he let [insert family member name here] suffer from [insert cause] here." It's cruel. It's especially cruel if you could do something about it and refuse to do so. Imagine all people were that indifferent, we wouldn't have doctors and many people alive right now were already dead, sometimes from minor causes.

So I think this is as good of a place as many to do something about that. If we play god, we shouldn't stir up senseless drama so our world would be interesting to a reader of pulp fiction. We should do what we can to help our creation, as that is what a responsible creator should do. I see the creator as a parent and his or her creations as their children. We don't allow harmful things to happen to our kids to "build character", do we? Well, maybe neglectful parents do, but most, good parents won't. And that's what we should be.

So, let's see. Some kind of suffering stems from sickness. They don't always be of viral or bacterial causes, but also might be caused by parasites. So step one here would be to remove parasitic organisms. But wait. Those might, further down the line, cause a disruption of the established food-chain in the fragile eco-system. If we don't want to re-invent everything, we have to be careful what we remove. Maybe removal might be the wrong idea. Maybe some other solution might prove to be better.

How about turning parasites into symbiotes? That way they could continue to exist, furthermore keep part of their lifestyle but instead of making the life of the host a living hell, they might do something good for the host. Instead of harming the host, they might provide nutrients, helpful chemicals (as some sort of organic medicine) or different things the host could need. Also their lifestyle shouldn't harm the host.

So goodbye creepy, pulsating worms that live in the eyestalks of snails to attract birds to attack the snails and rip off their eyestalks and eat them, so the worms can lay eggs in the stomach of the bird which can be pooped out again by the bird far away, so the hatching parasites there could infect new snails. Even if snakes can regrow their eyestalks, that's just nasty. So how about the parasite becoming a symbiote and get busy to work for the snail instead? It might help snails to detect poisonous food or hazardous environment or might help breaking down poisons or provide them with something useful and in return could produce pulsating egg stalks to grow out of the snail instead. So a bird would eat those instead and still be able to crap those eggs out in far away locations. Win/win(/win) for all three species here.

The same would have to apply to any parasite. They would become more useful and less harmful for their host and might have a great future in the eco system there. The next step would be pseudoparasites. Organisms that are temporary parasites. Like some fungi that grow in ants and flies and break through there carapace, making them grotesque looking mushroom-zombies. The spores should instead affect dead insects, helping breaking them down, that would be less horrible than infecting living organisms. Or how about insects laying their eggs in a host organism to have it devoured from the inside by the hatching brood? That's horrible. Those insects might keep the eggs inside their own body until shortly before hatching. Then they could kill a potential host and lay the eggs inside the host. Now you might ask: "What difference does that make to the host? It's dead anyway?" Well. I think it's a big difference being eaten alive from the inside or being quickly killed and then eaten from the inside.

But of course, what applies to multicellular organisms should as well apply to single celled organisms like bakteria or those things existing in a gray area between "being alive" and "not being alive" as viruses are. There are many species of beneficial bacteria and many species of harmful bakteria. The change here would be to make all of them beneficial to their intended host. Of course bakteria reproduce fast and mutate quickly, you can see evolution happening in them rather fast. Here I would suggest to hardwire certain functions into their DNA to ensure they wouldn't lose the beneficial traits by random chance and might turn harmful. As for viruses... I don't really know how they could be made beneficial, as they require the cells of a host to reproduce and might harm the host in that process. I guess I have to look more into the origin of viruses to think about a useful solution to them, until I find one I might opt for removing them entirely until I have a satisfying solution. Maybe they might become harmless, self-reproducing things that block certain molecular receptors from potentially turned harmful microorganisms, therefore protecting their hosts from becoming infected by other intruders, helping to immunize their host. That's certainly a world for itself.

As for other kinds of suffering through war (for example), let's start quite early here as well. Make animals less territorial. Let them share ressources, rather than become selfish and hogging ressources. That way ressources could be spread evenly between different species and make them less harmful towards others. I consider to remove predators entirely, well, not to remove them, but turning them more into scavenging omnivores. They wouldn't need to hunt, would get their meat-fix through found deceased animals and would otherwise eat whatever edible item is around them. Without the need to quickly strenghten their numbers, prey animals, who should also become scavenging omnivores, might adobt different breeding tactics. Instead of having large litters just to ensure, that two or three of their offspring survive, they might have smaller litters and care more for their offspring, making sure they safely reach adulthood. In this case needless suffering by young animals would be minimized. That also applies for animals with brood parasite background, as in quite some birds who lay their eggs into the nest of other birds. I'd change it so that all animals care for their own offspring (although they might adopt other young animals in cases where they might need protection). I also would link reproductive instincts with the availability of ressources and migratory patterns. Are ressources low? Then there is a severly reduced reproductive drive. If the reproductive drive has been low during multiple mating seasons then the individual in question might feel the need to migrate to more fertile grounds with more ressources (food) which would also raise his or her reproductive drive again. This would safeguard that species wouldn't overpopulate certain areas or would be forced to eat their own offspring (filial cannibalism).

That system might be a bit more complicated for recreational reproductive activities. I could simply erase them, as they just waste bodily ressources, but... Here I have to say... As a human, I'm biased. I know many other species might be biased as well. Sex is fun. So, yeah. I'll keep it. Non-reproductive sexual activity can stay, although, it might still suffer from lower reproductive drive in cases of scarcity. Here we would have to find a compromise. Either sexual appetite might overrule low libido because of scarcity, which might lead to breaking the system altogether and might lead to overpopulation of species... Or sexual appetite remaining connected to level of libido based on available ressources. I'd go for the later. Better not being in the right mood if certain conditions aren't favorable, than always being in the right mood and creating way to much offspring in the end.

And since we already talk about biases: Spiders. I'm arachnophobic. I should be neutral when it comes to my world, but, heck, it's my world... Spiders wouldn't exist... Well... Just change them all to scorpions. They could continue to exist as their close cousins. Since I kinda removed predatory species and also limited the reproductive rate of all creatures including insects, there wouldn't be a need for them. Nature also already has enough insectivores (even if I changed them all to scavenging omnivores) and doesn't really need cobwebs in every available corner.

I just... Really can't stand them and couldn't resist getting rid of them. But since it's not their own fault I can't stand them, they could continue their existence as something else.

Changes like this would just be the tip of the iceberg. Since we play god here, I'd give that world a test run, see how it turns out, how civilisations develop and then make further alterations, if necessary. Since we can always go back to square one, we might be able to experiment with ideas to see which ones would work best overall to limit unnecessary suffering and tension in the world. Those changes would also influence the societies that might be established on this world. We would see if territorialism and wars would still be a problem in a world where most if not all species are non-aggressive. Of course, humans might want to keep certain areas for agricultural reasons, they might also be interested in mineral ressources. But I wonder how they might share agricultural areas with other species and how they would share mineral wealth with each other. There still might be many sources of conflict because of cultural backgrounds, but we should cross that bridge when we come to it.

Before we iron out further cultural problems we have still much to do to ensure that stability is secured and that our world might survive natural disasters as well as conflicts of interests between our (former) human selves (as we are gods in this scenario now) and our intended neutrality. Fairness should be a decisive factor. Make the world more fair, less crappy. But also make it more fair for all lifeforms, not just the ones we prefer. As I said, we could give that world a spin and see how it turns out so far. Then, after knowing the results of that test run, we could go back to bugfix it, to iron out emergent problems and to find alternative solutions for every problem we might run in. If we remain determined and patient we might get a world that might be rich in biodiversity, ressources and living quality for the largest possible number of species. I guess that might be the most important goal to aim for. Any personal alterations that mirror our own desires might happen in the end, after we cared about everything else.
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I read that whole thing. I was playing a classical violin solo in my head.
 
No humans, we fuck everything up. I’d leave everything else as it is.
 
Pillar said:
Does that mean we fucked it up or just made it better? 😂
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Definitely fucked it up in the process of making things better for humans xD Not to mention what would happen to every living thing if all man made nukes went off 🤭
 
The most obvious thing to do would be to create a new planet with simple lifeforms and do nothing afterwards.

I'm too lazy to rule an entire world...
 
Taopony said:
The most obvious thing to do would be to create a new planet with simple lifeforms and do nothing afterwards.

I'm too lazy to rule an entire world...
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Just as the god of all the major religions did. Leaving no evidence of his existence, leaving just a few devouted followers behind, letting people figure everything else out on their own... What could possibly go wrong?



Let's give it a highly speculative shot...
This might get a bit lengthy... If you wanna read my thoughts on this, click here:
If you don't want to read them, then at this point you're done!


I guess the most perfect world imaginable for all organic beings with biological needs as we know them would probably be a world full of symbiotic organisms. The obvious downside would be, that the whole ecosystem is heavily dependend on other species in it in order to survive or at least work properly. But the upside is, that there would be less unnecessary suffering or cruelty for all species involved. An objective oriented species capable of planing and conscious thought with a speciality to extract a certain ressource from its environment would only reproduce as far as the ressources it needs are spread. Then it would only reproduce to maintain its numbers, to replace the dead. In turn other species might adapt in numbers to interact with the first species, extract nutrients from them while providing them with something else beneficial. Their number however would depend on the exchange numbers. Further species would depend in numbers on the former species numbers.

A world where predatory organisms never developed due to the early rise of symbiotic instead of parasitic organisms might not need the typical predator/prey scheme for organisms to control their population. Ressource availability would dictate mating habits, maybe even fertility. In such a world natural cruelty might be at the lowest possible point and fairness in questions of survivability would be at the highest possible point. If such an ecosystem stabilizes itself, it might be possible to sustain itself indefinitely from ressources other species produce and extract those in an unintrusive way while providing other beneficial ressources in return.

I guess a highly speculative world like this would look quite different from Earth. Here we have microorganisms, some beneficial, some harmful, some harmless, fungi, plants and animals who are either predators, scavengers or prey, while prey itself is a predator for plant life. In a world with only symbiotic lifeforms there might probably not many macroscopic species and if there were, they most likely would resemble fungi or plants, not animals, as the ability to move around on ones own might burn more calories as they could peacefully extract from the environment. So, I guess a hypothetical world like this would be covered entirely by plantlife and extensive, interconnected root systems of various species that exchange ressources.

Given enough time species like these might accidentally develop sapience, but I guess it would be more of a hive-mind quality, as a single sapient mind would both require challenges that would test it and require it to adapt, as well as it would burn valuable ressources. No need to do so when you're part of an interconnected web or ressource sharing organisms. It might however be able to develop senses to perceive its environment and might be able to chemically communicate, sharing information about perceived environmental desasters, which might threaten certain ressource availability.

Depending on how complex this chemical communication works, a species that might perceive their number falling due to a desaster might produce a chemical compound that would render other, connected species temporarily infertile, so that their numbers wouldn't grow, while the own numbers decline. In a world with predatory and "selfish" organisms, such a communication and control might be fatal for other species, as a single species could hog all the ressources while driving the competition to extinction. In a world with more benefitial and "selfless" organisms this might be a system many species developed to help sustain the other species they're connected to in order to secure the others survival as well as their own survival by extention.

So, many of those species might actively or passively help to regulate the number and growth of other interconnected species to sustain a stabilized flow of ressources. I could even imagine that some species might end up turn into highly specialized organisms not unsimilar like the siphonophores on Earth. Siphonophores like the Portuguese man-o'-war for example are quite special. They're composed of different species that have grown together and act as one organism. They're highly specialized in different tasks, providing buoyancy, producing venom, capturing prey, digesting prey and the likes. This makes them different from jellyfish, as a jellyfish is a single species, while a siphonophore acts as a single species while being composed out of many different ones.

I picture a world like this being as perfect as a world with biological life on it could strive for. Of course no system is perfect, though. Death still would occur and a deceased lifeform would still enrich its environment with ressources and nutrients. Some species might be highly qualified to break down deceased lifeforms, maybe even from the inside. In the event that some lifeform mutates to become hostile to other lifeforms, like a virus or a cancer cell, microbes might be able to cut off a deceased organism from the network to prevent infection of others and might break down the lifeform before it even would be able to starve. Without a central nervous system there would be no trauma, no stress, no panic, no suffering. The released ressources and nutrients might be re-absorbed by surrounding lifeforms after having been cleansed by the microbes. They might as well get re-absorbed themselves and might hybernate until needed once more. It's possible that they would only be triggered by contaminants or specific chemical triggers.

Also natural desasters or invasive species (probably from other worlds) could interrupt a carefully balanced network like this, no system is beyond getting destabilized or corrupted. But it might be the best system for having a vibrant ecosystem with the least amount of suffering possible.

It certainly would lack attractive animals though. I have not forgotten what forum I am in. So, I know that a world as this wouldn't tickle everybodys fancy here. Still, it might have a breathable atmosphere and might make for a peaceful vacation spot for you and your lover. Just best not to litter, one world as a global garbage dump is enough. And best not to eat anything, no matter how delicious it looks. Biochemistry might be way different here, something that looks and smells like delicious fruit or berries might exist, but might be rather poisonous due to its chemical makeup.
 
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