Mesan super-baby market

We've learned a lot about genetics recently. We should also have the humility to notice that it is much more intricate than we thought.

Now that we can read genomes at a low price, some experimenters have compared the genomes within families. The only two projects I've read about report (for 1) an average of 63 mutations per generation, (2) reported slightly over a hundred. Given what we know about information and the effects of random changes to it, consider how large the original amount of information must have been, and how much backup and resilience must have been built into it, given that we are still here, not having collapsed from accumulated damage.

IIRC, DNA codes for proteins, proteins fold to produce functions, and the functions work together to produce cell operation, including information flow between cells to allow multicelled organisms. We are still learning most of the details.

No wonder the "supermen" types have weaknesses.

DDHvi wrote:We've learned a lot about genetics recently. We should also have the humility to notice that it is much more intricate than we thought.

Now that we can read genomes at a low price, some experimenters have compared the genomes within families. The only two projects I've read about report (for 1) an average of 63 mutations per generation, (2) reported slightly over a hundred. Given what we know about information and the effects of random changes to it, consider how large the original amount of information must have been, and how much backup and resilience must have been built into it, given that we are still here, not having collapsed from accumulated damage.

IIRC, DNA codes for proteins, proteins fold to produce functions, and the functions work together to produce cell operation, including information flow between cells to allow multicelled organisms. We are still learning most of the details.

No wonder the "supermen" types have weaknesses.

I've heard of studies that found between 30 and 60 new mutations per generation - most of which are in non-coding regions of the genome that don't appear to do anything.

As far as actual deleterious mutations, the terms you want to find are "mutational load" and "purifying selection." Purifying selection is a technical way of saying that people with high mutational load tend to die young or tend to not attract mates so they don't breed. To put it another way, it's "survival of the fittest," with "low mutational load" translating to "fitter."

The thing to understand her is that it's RFC's universe, and genetics works the way RFC wants it to work for the story he wants it to tell. Recent discoveries have no effect on the story other than to make the science age quicker. Not that that's going to matter, since most of the "genetics" in the story is ideologically based and has only a superficial similarity to how it would work in the real world.

Not that most people could tell the difference.

Valen123456 wrote:I have pondered that a bit myself. We have seen plenty of cases where both Ordinary humans and Genies have competed and both sides have been superior in the right circumstances i.e. Victor and Anton are both ordinary humans and have outmaneuvered and outperformed the Alignment directly on multiple occasions, while Thandi and Yana are master fighters (with Thandi as the superior due to both genetics and training), yet cannot think quickly when it comes to espionage/intelligence maneuvering.

I have to wonder if any of the Alignments military groups have ever actually trained against or directly fought against other "normal's" as they call them. The MA Navy has trained specifically to use specialist stealth based warships that cannot fight in ordinary battles. There are also several cases of super-enhanced body guards or solider breeds, but we have yet to see them actually compared against other humans, and Cauldron of Ghosts a pair of non-combat specialists took down one of the MA's GAUL's without too much trouble.

I suspect the Alignment will have taken steps to prevent the common early pitfalls that most other so called super-humans have experienced in the past, but I have an inkling that apart from looking much better, and living a lot longer (5 centuries + prolong), they are not actually all that superior. They have probably once again repeated the same mistake the Scrags once made, remember Robert Tye's words to a Scrag in From the Highlands
"Your only a 'superman', Kennesaw, if you compare the average of the Sacred Band to the average of the rest of humanity."

When you get down to it, genetic modifications are of limited utility in modern or future combat.

Take a warship and crew it with Alpha types. If the Mesans have been able to reliably increase intelligence, that will help. Other than that, most of the things they can enhance are of pretty limited direct utility. Better strength and reflexes aren't going to be much use to a ship's crew outside of fairly narrow circumstances (generally if you are in a situation where you need more strength, say, you could use an exoskeleton or other technological assistance).

In general, the same is true in ground combat. Except for a relatively narrow selection of roles, mainly covert ops and such, genetic enhancement will be of limited use; making your soldiers 20% strong doesn't make much difference when both sides have battle armor which increases their strength to 200% of a normal (numbers selected randomly for illustration). Your supersoldiers will die to (or at least will be incapacitated by) an artillery strike almost as easily as normals.

It's actually the non-combat enhancements which might be more important; for example, the Alpha's increased resilience gives them a better chance to be returned to action later and at a quicker rate. But that won't affect the fight itself

Eyal wrote:
When you get down to it, genetic modifications are of limited utility in modern or future combat.

Take a warship and crew it with Alpha types. If the Mesans have been able to reliably increase intelligence, that will help. Other than that, most of the things they can enhance are of pretty limited direct utility. Better strength and reflexes aren't going to be much use to a ship's crew outside of fairly narrow circumstances (generally if you are in a situation where you need more strength, say, you could use an exoskeleton or other technological assistance).

In general, the same is true in ground combat. Except for a relatively narrow selection of roles, mainly covert ops and such, genetic enhancement will be of limited use; making your soldiers 20% strong doesn't make much difference when both sides have battle armor which increases their strength to 200% of a normal (numbers selected randomly for illustration). Your supersoldiers will die to (or at least will be incapacitated by) an artillery strike almost as easily as normals.

It's actually the non-combat enhancements which might be more important; for example, the Alpha's increased resilience gives them a better chance to be returned to action later and at a quicker rate. But that won't affect the fight itself

Well, someone with better kinesthesia will react to controls faster. Someone with higher intelligence will make decisions faster. Sometimes it's those split second motions or decisions (or lack of indecisions and mistakes) which make the difference.

But Valen's end point rings true - the Malign may take and increase their overall population's intelligence and kinesthesia - but a group like the RMN is filtering their natural population for individuals with those same traits, but naturally occurring, and training them specifically for their rolls. So while the average Alpha may be faster off the mark than the average "normal" - the average "normal" isn't going to be chosen to face them.

There is also training and experience. You train the military (and any other set of jobs) to do what they are supposed to do so you build up things like mussle memory, familiarity with a wide range of conditions/circumstances and procedures. That includes decision making under pressure and what are the best pracical reactions.
Then there is actual experiences. Combat veterans are much more likely to react "better" to combat situations than those who have not experienced combat. Better is a relative thing. It would include such wide variations as 1) identifying the present a potential source of harm. 2) doing something RIGHT NOW to protect themselves (and others) from problems/precieved problems they encounter, 3) just kill it now- react with deadly force in a manner most likely to remove someone or something shooting at them. They have been though it and survived...and learned something (a lot of things) usually that panicking or wondering WTF isn't going to help and is probably going to get them killed.
Someone who runs a machineshop and has 10 years practical experience setting up, doing jobs, had to diagnose and fix problems between instructions and the intended results (to give a "small" example) is going to have a different perspective and practical approch to dealing with a problem (or catastrophe) out on the work floor than some guy from either just graduated from a tech training school or newly printed MBA in Productions & Standards of industrial equipment.
A wonderfully trained Alignment Alpha or Beta Trooper Cpl on his 1st operational mission and a RM Marine Cpl with two years of active combat experience are going to react differently, probably, when the fighting starts.

At least in the short run, Manticore, Haven and others are going to have a massive experience advantage to go with the tech support.

Brigade XO wrote:There is also training and experience. You train the military (and any other set of jobs) to do what they are supposed to do so you build up things like mussle memory, familiarity with a wide range of conditions/circumstances and procedures. That includes decision making under pressure and what are the best pracical reactions.
Then there is actual experiences. Combat veterans are much more likely to react "better" to combat situations than those who have not experienced combat. Better is a relative thing. It would include such wide variations as 1) identifying the present a potential source of harm. 2) doing something RIGHT NOW to protect themselves (and others) from problems/precieved problems they encounter, 3) just kill it now- react with deadly force in a manner most likely to remove someone or something shooting at them. They have been though it and survived...and learned something (a lot of things) usually that panicking or wondering WTF isn't going to help and is probably going to get them killed.
Someone who runs a machineshop and has 10 years practical experience setting up, doing jobs, had to diagnose and fix problems between instructions and the intended results (to give a "small" example) is going to have a different perspective and practical approch to dealing with a problem (or catastrophe) out on the work floor than some guy from either just graduated from a tech training school or newly printed MBA in Productions & Standards of industrial equipment.
A wonderfully trained Alignment Alpha or Beta Trooper Cpl on his 1st operational mission and a RM Marine Cpl with two years of active combat experience are going to react differently, probably, when the fighting starts.

At least in the short run, Manticore, Haven and others are going to have a massive experience advantage to go with the tech support.

IIRC, there is a strong tendency for combat newbies to get themselves killed off, while veterans are survivors.

DDHvi wrote:IIRC, there is a strong tendency for combat newbies to get themselves killed off, while veterans are survivors.

It really matters how good your training pipeline is.

Another thing i wonder is exactly how the Mesan Alignment actually regards the reproductive process. For example do any Alpha or Beta lines actually carry children to term naturally or do they use the tubing process as a matter of course? I also wonder if they are capable of actually interbreeding with "normal's", or are they so set on creating their own master race that they have almost literally turned themselves into a new species (ability to interbreed is the primary identifier of speciation after all).

While I doubt they have done so much modification to their Alpha/Beta lines that the DNA codes stop lining up, I wouldn't be surprised if they have inserted kill switches or cut-offs into their genes to make sure that if a child between an Alpha and Normal was conceived, it would not survive to term. This would be unseen so far because it would be avoided by the society and social moires they have established for themselves (i.e. good Alphas do not take Normal mates). One of several reasons Jack MacBride turned on the Alignment was his realization that the Alignment would not allow the Normal humans they planned to subjugate to reproduce normally, in order for them to be eventually replaced by the star lines the Alignment had crafted.

This raises a point on how the Alignment maybe finally defeated. A big part of their Genetic uplift (or any Eugenics program) is strict control of breeding and records of who is what, and who they are breeding with. If they Alignments main gene records (their Predigree for lack of a better term) was lost or corrupted, then any of the seeded gene lines they have established elsewhere in the galaxy would eventually be weeded out by their own distinctions. If they cannot actually reproduce and diversify normally, then once Darius and their main records are seized or taken out, then their own uplifted status will lock them out of the main gene pool. Its like pedigree dogs, without humans constant intervention the breed lines would quickly become meaningless, so the Alignment probably put a few checks in place to make sure it didn't. If these checks or other markers are there, then the gene lines can also be used to identify Alignment peoples by a specific sort of genetic test.

That is mostly supposition on my part but it would be a big irony that the Alignments planted star lines eventually got locked/cut off from mainstream humanity by their own "uplifts".

I think you misunderstand the ability of present humans and the proposed Alpha, Beta and Gamma lines to seperate widely enough from Normals to no longer be able to breed with Normals.

Humans have had a long standing inclination to breed with other humans. Recent reported DNA studies report that quite a few humans are walking around with 3 to 5% of Neanderthal DNA and there is also Denisovian DNA in modern humans. Some of the current theory is that those were only two of the earlier branches of the human tree that more modern/later developed branches encountered when the more "modern" branch(s) of humanity left Africa and, when the later developed humans encountered the Neanderthals in Europe etc, there was interbreeding. One way to look at that is that the majority- perhaps the vast majority- of the differences between, say Neanderthals and "more modern/later arriving" humans are NOT things which would prevent conception and then development and growth to fertile adults in the resulting child. Look different than the parents and have all sorts of little things that you can't see but are different, sure. But not that the combinations of genes are going to default to fatal.

Somehow I don't see the Alignment is going to keep it's Star Lines from having sex with Normals. This is the group that has been breeding Pleasure Lines for sale along with all the rest of it's experiments. Short of surgicaly rendering this people sterile, life will find a way.

What the Alignment would have to do is find and then build in something that would, if not present from both parents (or both sets of DNA), result in a non-viable fetus. It would also have to be something that is connected to one of any number of critical genes which controld development of the embryo. There is a lot of DNA for which we have no idea what it does and which doesn't seem to matter in the development and growth. Wouldn't help to use some of that because it it would scream LOOK AT THIS in Honververse medical testing for DNA. A more probable approch would be to to modify and then LOCK some things similar to what was done to the Meyerdahl modification that Honor has. Of course, withing the Alignment since it would appear that "everybody" who is anybody is already the product of artificual tinkering with the genome, you would automaticly be building in the right pairs of triggers to your new Alignment children.....can you imagine just how many ways that could go wrong? Somehow, taking away the abilit to produce a child though basic human sex and childbirth seem a receipe for disaster.

The trick is to connect it to enough other parts of the DNA programing such that it stops or changes one of the early development sequences in DNA to grow the fertilized egg IF YOU DON"T get some other Alignment code from the other partner. Remember that you get only part of the DNA from each parent and so if you get the 1234 you need from one Alignment breeder parent- on a critical gene from one, you are NOT going to get the same thing from the other. So your trigger- to allow development of the fertilized egg is going to have to require a binary combination. And that other half of the binary has to be located somewhere else in the DNA and also be locked.

Of course, the Alignment is going to be faced with controling the ability of the Normal population to have children outside of the artifical wombs it preferes for it's own children and all of it's experiments and industrial scale production of "workers".

That's about the point this degerneates into all sorts of political and religions and moral discussion that leads to all manner of nasty things about what you can and should or must do to other humans in order to further -pick an agenda, philosophy, etc.

If they care they will choose to push them fully into one category or another instead of anything crazy that requires high-tech medicine to have a viable child.