Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
Ehh, that's pretty PC -- there are *certainly* inferior genes... for example, those that give you some horrible genetic condition.
Seether
- Thread starter Wulf
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Wulf
Vice Admiral
He was pretty easy to kill. I allowed him to come around and fire on me...but not before I hit afterburn and auto-slided. That way, as we trade salvos, I would have been firing on him before he could do so to me, and I win. It was rather disappointing once I found this out, because it was too easy to kill him that way.
Having high melanin does indeed protect you in stuations where sunlight is strong. A Caucasian who took the levels of sunlight an African does would be at very high risk of melanoma, while Africans in a climate that is very low in sunlight are at risk of viatamin D deficiency and rickets because melanin blocks the sunlight absorbtion needed to make vitamin D. Neither is better or worser, just adaptations to differant envoirnments.
Even genes which cause genetic diseases can be an advantage in some situations. I've already gone over sickle cell trait in post threads where this has come up, and I don't I need to cover that again. Another one that I found recently while doing some background on AIDS was the mutated CD4 molecule (the molecule that is the key to co-ordinating the immune response and is also the target of the HIV virus) possesed by some people who despite repeated exposeure to HIV (eg prostiutes in Kenya) haven'ty developed HIv. The reason is that the mutated protien isn't recognised by the HIV virus as the CD4. The downside though, is that this CD4 variant also has less afinity for the immune cells/molecules it would normally react with, and produces a weaker immune response than normal. Most times that would be a huge disadavantage, but in a high HIV/AIDS envoirnment, a big advantage.
Ther point I'm making here is there is no way to tell what would be usefull in a given situation. To simply look a gene and say it is "superior" or "inferior" from our very limited human perspective is a mistake. Mother Nature has managed the gene pool nicely for thousands of years, and I'd rather not second guess her.
Best, Raptor
Well, okay, let's take those one at time.
Super strength would mean a high degree of muscle mass, which in turn would mean bulk. There are quite a few ways that could be a disadvantage in some situations. For example, there are drugs and toxins that bind preferentially to and accumulate in muscle tissue. (The only one that springs to mind off the top of my head is digitalis, but I distinctly recall my profs in pharmacy school droning about others. I'm too lazy to go dig out my old texts though.) In an envoirnment that had low level contamination of such toxins, maybe in the water supply or food chain, people who were highly muscle bound would be much more likely to build up lethal levels. And if we had engineered our whole population to be that way, we would be in big trouble.
Second, bulk can be a *big* disadvantage in cramped or enclosed spaces. A big guy wouldn't be able to move freely, while a smaller faster opponent could rip him to bits. And again, if we had engineered our population so that everyone looked like Arnold Schwartznegger, we would have big problems coping with situations where speed and agility would be more important than strength.
Third, a person with lots of muscles has a higher metabolic energy burn than a small person, and has much less ability to store energy reserves than a person who is fat. Lean muscle burns energy very efficiently, but it doesn't store it. They would have a much harder time getting through times where the food supply was intermitant or non-existent than other types of people would. And agin, if our population consisted entirely of people like that, we would have problems.
Now, am I saying that being strong and having lots of muscles is a bad thing? Of course not. It's very usefull to have that in our genetic pool, but it is not usefull to tailor our gentic pool to simply that. That's especially true for the situation in WC4, where Tolwyn was proposing to prepare the human race for an interstellar war against unknown enemies and across many planets. To simply assume that all the envoirnments we'll end up in and all the enemies we'll face for the rest of our history will only challenge us in a way that suits the profile of the "ideal human" we've picked out in advance is a little optimistic to say the least.
Okay, let's look at intelligence. I agree that it's pretty hard to think of a drawback for superior intelligence, but I don't agree that you can achieve superior intelligence by genetic manipulation. I've heard people blithely say that genes make a person more intelligent, but I would be very interested to see where they're getting this from. Last I heard, there were no genetic, physical or bio-chemical markers that identify people as being more intelligent than the norm.
The simple fact is that scientists, dispite numerous attempts involving twin studies and so on, have failed to prove a causal link between genetics and intelligence that holds up to serious scrutiny. There are a couple of reasons for that.
First of course, just how do you determine superior intelligence? It's not something like height or weight that can be easily measured. A simple IQ test is invalid for a couple of reasons. First of course is the cultural bias, as people of the same cultural group as the predominant group that designs and adminsters any given test almost invariably outscore those from other cultures. Asian-Americans, for example, generally score several points on average below Caucasians, but tend to do better acedemically. Second, IQ tests only measure general knowledge and problem solving ability in a very limited context. It doesn't measure such things as goal setting, longer term planning, the ability to delay gratification, judgement, common sense and so on that we would associate with intelligence. And of those, it's almost impossible to seperate out what's innate and what's learnt. Because of all those factors that go into determining intelligence, it's just about impossible to make of clear definition of just what constitutes superior intelligence. Any judgment is pretty much arbitrary, and shaped by the judge's own viewpoints.
Then there's the effect of envoirnment, the old nature and nurture question. A massive proportion of our success in life is determined by where we start out and the help we get along the way. Just about anyone who is lucky enough to start out in a first world country will achieve more and be more successfull than a person born in a AIDS infested slum in Southern Africa. That's not any evidence of genetic superiority, just the luck of the draw. And since so much of human behaviour is learnt by imitation and repeation (from such basic things as speech and toilet training to what is socially and culturally acceptable to very unnatural skills like driving a car and flying a plane), how do we determine just what the cause of higher intelligence is? Are we more likely to be intelligent because we're born that way, or is intelligence learnt from the people around us?
To finish off a very long post, it's far from obvious or self explanatory that there are set superior genes. In the end, it comes down to a rather arbitrary judgement of what is superior and inferior. To go back to that AIDS post I made earlier, a gene that codes for a weak CD4 would have been considered inferior if we had found out about before we knew about AIDS, because it creates a weaker immune system than normal. Should we, in all our finite wisdom and lack of knowledge of what the future may bring, be trying to decide what the human race should be like genetically? Once the choice is made, there is no going back, and all the genes that we eliminated will be gone forever.
Best, Raptor
Super strength would mean a high degree of muscle mass, which in turn would mean bulk. There are quite a few ways that could be a disadvantage in some situations. For example, there are drugs and toxins that bind preferentially to and accumulate in muscle tissue. (The only one that springs to mind off the top of my head is digitalis, but I distinctly recall my profs in pharmacy school droning about others. I'm too lazy to go dig out my old texts though.) In an envoirnment that had low level contamination of such toxins, maybe in the water supply or food chain, people who were highly muscle bound would be much more likely to build up lethal levels. And if we had engineered our whole population to be that way, we would be in big trouble.
Second, bulk can be a *big* disadvantage in cramped or enclosed spaces. A big guy wouldn't be able to move freely, while a smaller faster opponent could rip him to bits. And again, if we had engineered our population so that everyone looked like Arnold Schwartznegger, we would have big problems coping with situations where speed and agility would be more important than strength.
Third, a person with lots of muscles has a higher metabolic energy burn than a small person, and has much less ability to store energy reserves than a person who is fat. Lean muscle burns energy very efficiently, but it doesn't store it. They would have a much harder time getting through times where the food supply was intermitant or non-existent than other types of people would. And agin, if our population consisted entirely of people like that, we would have problems.
Now, am I saying that being strong and having lots of muscles is a bad thing? Of course not. It's very usefull to have that in our genetic pool, but it is not usefull to tailor our gentic pool to simply that. That's especially true for the situation in WC4, where Tolwyn was proposing to prepare the human race for an interstellar war against unknown enemies and across many planets. To simply assume that all the envoirnments we'll end up in and all the enemies we'll face for the rest of our history will only challenge us in a way that suits the profile of the "ideal human" we've picked out in advance is a little optimistic to say the least.
Okay, let's look at intelligence. I agree that it's pretty hard to think of a drawback for superior intelligence, but I don't agree that you can achieve superior intelligence by genetic manipulation. I've heard people blithely say that genes make a person more intelligent, but I would be very interested to see where they're getting this from. Last I heard, there were no genetic, physical or bio-chemical markers that identify people as being more intelligent than the norm.
The simple fact is that scientists, dispite numerous attempts involving twin studies and so on, have failed to prove a causal link between genetics and intelligence that holds up to serious scrutiny. There are a couple of reasons for that.
First of course, just how do you determine superior intelligence? It's not something like height or weight that can be easily measured. A simple IQ test is invalid for a couple of reasons. First of course is the cultural bias, as people of the same cultural group as the predominant group that designs and adminsters any given test almost invariably outscore those from other cultures. Asian-Americans, for example, generally score several points on average below Caucasians, but tend to do better acedemically. Second, IQ tests only measure general knowledge and problem solving ability in a very limited context. It doesn't measure such things as goal setting, longer term planning, the ability to delay gratification, judgement, common sense and so on that we would associate with intelligence. And of those, it's almost impossible to seperate out what's innate and what's learnt. Because of all those factors that go into determining intelligence, it's just about impossible to make of clear definition of just what constitutes superior intelligence. Any judgment is pretty much arbitrary, and shaped by the judge's own viewpoints.
Then there's the effect of envoirnment, the old nature and nurture question. A massive proportion of our success in life is determined by where we start out and the help we get along the way. Just about anyone who is lucky enough to start out in a first world country will achieve more and be more successfull than a person born in a AIDS infested slum in Southern Africa. That's not any evidence of genetic superiority, just the luck of the draw. And since so much of human behaviour is learnt by imitation and repeation (from such basic things as speech and toilet training to what is socially and culturally acceptable to very unnatural skills like driving a car and flying a plane), how do we determine just what the cause of higher intelligence is? Are we more likely to be intelligent because we're born that way, or is intelligence learnt from the people around us?
To finish off a very long post, it's far from obvious or self explanatory that there are set superior genes. In the end, it comes down to a rather arbitrary judgement of what is superior and inferior. To go back to that AIDS post I made earlier, a gene that codes for a weak CD4 would have been considered inferior if we had found out about before we knew about AIDS, because it creates a weaker immune system than normal. Should we, in all our finite wisdom and lack of knowledge of what the future may bring, be trying to decide what the human race should be like genetically? Once the choice is made, there is no going back, and all the genes that we eliminated will be gone forever.
Best, Raptor
Wedge009
Rogue Leader
I am very short for my age, while a friend is unusually tall. In high school when we travelled to sport on a rotten old bus, the seats were so close together that he'd always be forced to squash his knees against the seat in front. As much as it was a discomfort for him, it was one of the few consolations to me for being of small stature.
Thymerlord
Rear Admiral
I remember riding with my knees cramped up that way on a bus, I think all the buses in Florida are like that, of course I was also very tall for my age.Anyway I think the only thing that was genetically engineered on Seether was his mouth, he never shut up and he wasn't all that good of a pilot.Though it does say in the TPOF novel that Blair's DNA was used as a template early on.
.....that "would have put the fear of god into the Kilrathi" 
Again good argument Raptor but gaining strength through increased bulk is not the only means. Keeping the same amount of size but making the muscles tighter and strengthening them would have the same results with no size increase. And again super intelligence, reflexes, speed, stamina would still be All round superior traits. * as per the intelligence argument... You merely increase the amount of electrical impulses possible so the person can use most of his brain and possibly even multitask.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
Thats a very, very long way of saying that "we can't have bad genes because we can't define bad".
Here's a better example than muscle mass or whatnot -- and it'll have Frosty in it, and everybody loves him.
*My* equal-but-different-and-don't-say-bad-things-about-them genes prevent my body from producing types of collagen properly -- thus, serious vision and hearing problems. Frosty's genes produce collagen just fine (I assume...) -- in the case of this single gene, Frosty's is *good*, and mine is *bad*.
Here's a better example than muscle mass or whatnot -- and it'll have Frosty in it, and everybody loves him.
*My* equal-but-different-and-don't-say-bad-things-about-them genes prevent my body from producing types of collagen properly -- thus, serious vision and hearing problems. Frosty's genes produce collagen just fine (I assume...) -- in the case of this single gene, Frosty's is *good*, and mine is *bad*.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
A kind of connective tissue.
Battler Hawke
Spaceman
I kind of got the idea from the book that thay use'd some of Blair's dna to make the supermen if so if so seether got some BAD genes from Blair.