Cupid

cthia wrote:I don't understand your statement at all. We are discussing "lines" in general. And "culled lines" specifically. How am I putting too much emphasis on lines when everything about the MA has always been contained in a line? Lines are almost like the MA's most basic atomic structure.

I think you're still equating the first letter in the slave's marker with full line and I think that's WAY too broad.

Each line is a complete departure from all other lines, for the most part. It is the first of that attempt. The first attempts are always the guinea pigs by nature. If the C-line sex slaves began to show debilitating effects by age 5, or 15, or 21 ... then that entire line might be culled. What if the defect is in her vaginal area that causes them to commit suicide. Or homicide. I am talking about true clinical hysteria! Genetically modified and engendered hysteria!* Then they will be culled.

I'd expect that the C-01a line to have been that prototype, with the issues found and fixed in C-01b, C-02c, etc. until they had a viable product. Once they did, there was no need for culling the entire C-line.

Using your own definitions, if the effects had begun showing at age 5, 15 or 21, the entire C line would have been culled and there would be no C any more. Since we know A, B and C still exist, it would imply that they've never had a debilitating effect in any of those lines because they are the first three letters of the alphabet. I find that hard to believe. However good they are now, they can't have been that good when they started those particular genetic mods.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:A product may become extinct if its market disappears or is replaced by a different, better product (for some definition of "better" - see The Innovator's Dilemma and The Innovator's Solution by Clayton Christensen), but usually not for a flaw found in a current iteration of the problem.

There would be no need for the MA to worry about their market becoming extinct. They have no competition. Their worry would be more along the lines of losing the trust of their buyers if they were to introduce products with serious genetic defects, both physically and emotionally. "This house servant is totally phucking crazy! I am talking a real looney tune!!"

I really recommend those two books. Non-fiction, very business oriented, but very, very good.

In particular, Mr. Christensen introduces the topic on how competition can take an unusual form. Most managers will make the same mistake you did, which is to assume that so long as your direct competitors (if any!) aren't as good as you, your market will exist forever. Instead, your market may shrink not because of your traditional competitors, but because of non-traditional ones or by technology changes. The prototypical example of the innovator's dilemma is when a new company enters the market and provides a simpler, cheaper, and much more limited product, which doesn't compete with yours. This new product starts to enlarge the overall market by being available to customers who couldn't otherwise buy your mainline products. And because of that, you may discontinue your least profitable product lines and thus increase your profit margin.

In Manpower's case, the market may cease to exist not because of another slave-making company, but because the slave itself no longer makes sense. An evolution of technology could make working in radiation-hazardous environments much safer for regular people (better rad suits, better medication, better techniques). Automation and AI, even dumb ones, can remove the need for office workers and bureaucratic slaves. Even the market for sex slaves can shrink because of improving life-like sex dolls -- and this would be exactly the type of disruptive innovation that the Innovator's Dilemma is all about.

And besides, who says there are no other companies? If Manpower can make a profit, so could others. Though there's good evidence that Manpower can't make a profit in the first place, which should have raised all sorts of red flags centuries ago.

Her case is why I posted it. Note, it took six generations before her defect began to manifest itself. Consider that their decision to only prune two generations could prove to be a mistake. By mistake I mean fatal. She was useful, and IIRC, it had been bandied about to cull the entire line!

Another question I've had about the Bardasano gene is that if it took six generations for it to manifest itself, then how did that trait escape being passed up the food chain? She is in the Alpha line.

Most likely because a) it wasn't that severe before, b) they thought it could be remedied in the next iteration, or c) both.

But my point is that they weren't considering killing all Bardasanos and her relatives. At least, that's not what I understand from the passage.

Yet, there were entire lines culled so says textev.

Yes, but you're equating a "line" here to the full letter. There's no evidence that that's the case.

At any rate, make no bones about it. The MA's operation is as callous as an assembly line producing parts. It is a Frankenstein lab on a grand scale containing assembly lines producing a variety of different Frankies and Frankcescas.

However macabre their operation may be, it's hyper-rational. They would not throw away more money than they had to. They would only cull as far back as strictly necessary, and no further. And they would not dispose of a product line just because of some defective items.

Also note that the slave lines seem to be lines within lines. Matryoshka dolls.

THAT is the point.

I wonder if that possibly racist distinction is present within the Alpha Line. IOW, do the Detweilers have modifications pertaining only to them?

Most assuredly. I don't think we have any direct evidence of that in textev, but circumstantial one is all over the place. They want a speciation of humanity and they want to stay on top as gods, directing the rest of humanity. They can only do that if they are better than rest, and they get to define what "better" means.

I doubt they're defining it as "wealthiest."

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I'd expect that the C-01a line to have been that prototype, with the issues found and fixed in C-01b, C-02c, etc. until they had a viable product. Once they did, there was no need for culling the entire C-line.

Using your own definitions, if the effects had begun showing at age 5, 15 or 21, the entire C line would have been culled and there would be no C any more. Since we know A, B and C still exist, it would imply that they've never had a debilitating effect in any of those lines because they are the first three letters of the alphabet. I find that hard to believe. However good they are now, they can't have been that good when they started those particular genetic mods.

I actually think they likely went a step beyond that. Back when they were first starting this up, centuries ago, they probably didn't even designate a letter line to a set of genetic mods until after they'd passed "beta testing" (a couple of generations of internal use industrializing Mesa) -- plus many of the original lines probably didn't have all that much / that risky of genetic mods in them. Manpower needs to get their foot in the door; and can't afford big public failures or embarrassment when first starting out.

Kind of like how with software the company's already decided the new version will be 4.0 -- but will internal build 1, 1345, or 43655 the the one that "goes gold" and becomes the public release 4.0.

And having to cull an entire product line would be a big public black-eye. So avoid that risk and wait until you've got a 'stable' product before announcing it publicly as the C, or D, or F, or whatever line.

And after that, well you might need to cull variations, but you'd always have an older variation of the main line you could revert back to.

Jonathan_S wrote:And having to cull an entire product line would be a big public black-eye. So avoid that risk and wait until you've got a 'stable' product before announcing it publicly as the C, or D, or F, or whatever line.

Which is another reason for not retiring the entire letter, however bad the issue was.

Particularly damaging hurricanes get their names withdrawn from the list (so there's only one Andrew, Harvey, Maria, Katrina, or Sandy) and the same may happen to some commercial products, though I'm hard pressed to think of any. But by the same token, some brands survive disastrously bad PR, like BP with the Deep Horizon well and VW with the dieselgate.

In the case of Manpower, are the customers going to sue?

It is quite possible that somebody from Beowulf would want to look at the records of Manpower (and what might remain of the Alignment information) on Mesa to see what was done and how as far as genetic manipulation and experimentation,
While much of what Manpower did was illegal under the Beowulf Code, it was NOT illegal on Mesa. The records could be fascinating in terms of what did and didn't work for manipulations.
Of possible greater interest is any kind of product tracking and feedback since even Manpower would want to evaluate the effectiveness of differnt modifications. Most important would be who/where the customer were and what might be done in correcting any gross aberrations of surviving individuals. Mostly Manpower might not have cared as long as whatever slaves they sold just did what they were intended to do.
There might be new or novel proceeders for work in gene cleaning or genetic manipulation techniques which could be applied in beneficial manner to help people or eliminate various problems when working with gene manipulation. Just because the companies and their owners we slavers doesn't mean there wasn't any good or beinifical science and techniques that were developed.

Don't we expect that the Mesan Enlightenment will help spread that knowledge and may have been gathering and cataloguing it all this time?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:You've even posted the proof to that in the Bardasano section:

At one point the Mesan Alignment was tempted to cull the line's last several iterations, and restart development from a much earlier genotype.

They would cull several iterations, but restart the "line" from an earlier version that was known to be unaffected by the flaw.

cthia wrote:Her case is why I posted it. Note, it took six generations before her defect began to manifest itself. Consider that their decision to only prune two generations could prove to be a mistake. By mistake I mean fatal. She was useful, and IIRC, it had been bandied about to cull the entire line!

Another question I've had about the Bardasano gene is that if it took six generations for it to manifest itself, then how did that trait escape being passed up the food chain? She is in the Alpha line.

That is not correct, LRPB was making changes to begin each new generation and then testing the results. They did encounter problems and considered dropping back several generations to the point before the change was made that had bad effects (having to do with increased intelligence); but instead just eliminated some individuals and worked on remedial action for her. From Storm from the Shadows, chapter 20:

But some of those "hedonistic sybarites" were anything but useless drones, and Bardasano was a prime example. In fact, she was the prime example. The Bardasano genotype had been notable for at least half a dozen generations for its intelligence and ruthless determination. There'd been a few unfortunate and unintended traits, as well, unhappily, and at one point there'd been serious consideration of simply culling the line's last several iterations and starting over again from a significantly earlier point. The positive traits had been so strong, however, that a remedial program had been instituted, instead, and Isabel was the current example of how successful it had been. It had been necessary to eliminate two of her immediate predecessors when their inherent ruthlessness had made them just a bit too ambitious for anyone else's good, but intelligent ambition, properly tempered, was always a useful thing, as Bardasano herself demonstrated. And if there was still a slight tendency towards sexual disorders and mildly sociopathic behaviors, neither of those posed any serious handicap, especially for someone whose area of expertise was covert operations. Of course, they'd have to be dealt with in the next generation or two if the Bardasano line was going to earn back permanent alpha status within the Alignment, which Isabel understood.
In the meantime, however, she was quite possibly the best covert ops specialist the Alignment had produced in at least the last T-century. It amused Detweiler that those outside the Alignment's innermost circle often cherished doubts about Bardasano's sanity, particularly when it came to her attitude towards him. The fact that it was well known within Mesa's star lines that the Bardasanos had almost been culled meant that her apparent insouciance with him only added to her reputation for . . . oddness, and provided a valuable extra level of protection when he or one of his sons called upon her services. As he gazed at her across the desk, he toyed once more with the notion of telling her that a cross between the Bardasano and Detweiler genotypes was even then being evaluated, but decided against it. For now, at least.

What do you mean by the statement "how did that trait escape being passed up the food chain?", since changes only go into the next generation, not the previous one (in normal parlance that is down, not up)?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:I don't understand your statement at all. We are discussing "lines" in general. And "culled lines" specifically. How am I putting too much emphasis on lines when everything about the MA has always been contained in a line? Lines are almost like the MA's most basic atomic structure.

I think you're still equating the first letter in the slave's marker with full line and I think that's WAY too broad.

I don't think so. Textev adopts the designations on its own. And as I digest it, capital letters ("C"-line) represent entire lines (major lines with significant and specific demarcations in characteristics/ traits) and smaller letters represent variants (minor lines) within that major line.

Unlike, apparently most of you, I tend to think 26 letters of the alphabet are enough letters to label all of the different lines. Considering there are variants within each line.

Alphas, Betas and Gammas which are not within the A-Z alphabet will suffice for the many other needs.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Each line is a complete departure from all other lines, for the most part. It is the first of that attempt. The first attempts are always the guinea pigs by nature. If the C-line sex slaves began to show debilitating effects by age 5, or 15, or 21 ... then that entire line might be culled. What if the defect is in her vaginal area that causes them to commit suicide. Or homicide. I am talking about true clinical hysteria! Genetically modified and engendered hysteria!* Then they will be culled.

I'd expect that the C-01a line to have been that prototype, with the issues found and fixed in C-01b, C-02c, etc. until they had a viable product. Once they did, there was no need for culling the entire C-line.

Using your own definitions, if the effects had begun showing at age 5, 15 or 21, the entire C line would have been culled and there would be no C any more. Since we know A, B and C still exist, it would imply that they've never had a debilitating effect in any of those lines because they are the first three letters of the alphabet. I find that hard to believe. However good they are now, they can't have been that good when they started those particular genetic mods.

Note, I only used the C-line as an example. Not to infer that any of that line had been culled. Although I question the whereabouts of the A or B (major line). There is no A-line or B-line as far as I can tell.

But you keep missing two very important points. As I mentioned upstream, one of those points would hit more closer to your home if indeed you had worked intimately on an assembly line.

1. STOP THE PRESS!
Each MAJOR line has unique characteristics/ traits inherent within that line. Those characteristics permeate all the way down the line. Those would be the traits that make the line what it is. That is why I used the C-line as an example. The C-line has those differences laid out in text. In the case of the C-line the main trait is the increased libido, rigorous training, including forced sex training starting at the age of nine, which was called the "Phenotype developmental process".

And if the very first product coming off the line had shown fatal unsolvable flaws in the major characteristics then the entire line will be culled. Remember, each iteration (variant) is dependent on the iteration before it.

You are not allowing for major unsolvable problems occurring at the beginning of the line. Problems like the kind that would not only STOP THE PRESS, but QUARANTINE the facility!

Also, we do not know what the production tactics and logic were that was utilized by the MA. Everyone seems to be assuming that each variant of a line C-01b, C-01c, etc., will not be produced concurrently with C-01a. I understand why you would assume that, of any normal operation employing human beings with any kind of moral compass. The MA has no moral compass. And there would be no reason not to produce the entire line in one production run. That saves time. You would only need to cull back to the offending traits. But if the offending traits originated at the beginning of the line, and are too severe and irreparable, then that line will be culled

It keeps getting ignored, but textev mentions that entire lines had been culled.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:A product may become extinct if its market disappears or is replaced by a different, better product (for some definition of "better" - see The Innovator's Dilemma and The Innovator's Solution by Clayton Christensen), but usually not for a flaw found in a current iteration of the problem.

cthia wrote:There would be no need for the MA to worry about their market becoming extinct. They have no competition. Their worry would be more along the lines of losing the trust of their buyers if they were to introduce products with serious genetic defects, both physically and emotionally. "This house servant is totally phucking crazy! I am talking a real looney tune!!"

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I really recommend those two books. Non-fiction, very business oriented, but very, very good.

In particular, Mr. Christensen introduces the topic on how competition can take an unusual form. Most managers will make the same mistake you did, which is to assume that so long as your direct competitors (if any!) aren't as good as you, your market will exist forever. Instead, your market may shrink not because of your traditional competitors, but because of non-traditional ones or by technology changes. The prototypical example of the innovator's dilemma is when a new company enters the market and provides a simpler, cheaper, and much more limited product, which doesn't compete with yours. This new product starts to enlarge the overall market by being available to customers who couldn't otherwise buy your mainline products. And because of that, you may discontinue your least profitable product lines and thus increase your profit margin.

In Manpower's case, the market may cease to exist not because of another slave-making company, but because the slave itself no longer makes sense. An evolution of technology could make working in radiation-hazardous environments much safer for regular people (better rad suits, better medication, better techniques). Automation and AI, even dumb ones, can remove the need for office workers and bureaucratic slaves. Even the market for sex slaves can shrink because of improving life-like sex dolls -- and this would be exactly the type of disruptive innovation that the Innovator's Dilemma is all about.

That really does sound not only like a good book, but my kind of reading. But, my inbox of books to devour has become critical. Anyway, history somewhat has many examples of what you are describing with the music industry and vinyl records on thru digital media. And the video industry with the varying formats, etc. But I am not sure that that concept would wholly apply to the MA, because they seem to have built anti-obsolescence into their operation with "variant." Besides, the research is just as important regardless of whether that particular design becomes obsolete.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:And besides, who says there are no other companies? If Manpower can make a profit, so could others. Though there's good evidence that Manpower can't make a profit in the first place, which should have raised all sorts of red flags centuries ago.

How can there be others? Remember, the entire operation is an illegal operation that would be shut down by supporters of the Beowulf Code if deemed dangerous to mankind. Plus, it would require an Einstein in the field. Leonard was such a giant in the field. The man was literally playing with fire. Lava.

And I think everyone is assuming way too much asserting that the MA could not make a profit. In my experience, it is difficult for an average qualified layman to determine the profitability of an operation even WITH all of the data. We have NONE of their data or of their ultimate strategy for their products. Profitability is NOT always based on the almighty dollar.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Her case is why I posted it. Note, it took six generations before her defect began to manifest itself. Consider that their decision to only prune two generations could prove to be a mistake. By mistake I mean fatal. She was useful, and IIRC, it had been bandied about to cull the entire line!

Another question I've had about the Bardasano gene is that if it took six generations for it to manifest itself, then how did that trait escape being passed up the food chain? She is in the Alpha line.

Most likely because a) it wasn't that severe before, b) they thought it could be remedied in the next iteration, or c) both.

But my point is that they weren't considering killing all Bardasanos and her relatives. At least, that's not what I understand from the passage.

I disagree, or rather it is unclear, there seems to be conflicting textev. I think they WERE considering culling the entire line. Tlb just posted the evidence.

And if there was still a slight tendency towards sexual disorders and mildly sociopathic behaviors, neither of those posed any serious handicap, especially for someone whose area of expertise was covert operations. Of course, they'd have to be dealt with in the next generation or two if the Bardasano line was going to earn back permanent alpha status within the Alignment, which Isabel understood.

In the meantime, however, she was quite possibly the best covert ops specialist the Alignment had produced in at least the last T-century. It amused Detweiler that those outside the Alignment's innermost circle often cherished doubts about Bardasano's sanity, particularly when it came to her attitude towards him. The fact that it was well known within Mesa's star lines that the Bardasanos had almost been culled meant that her apparent insouciance with him only added to her reputation for . . . oddness, and provided a valuable extra level of protection when he or one of his sons called upon her services.

BTW, sociopathic behaviours paired with sexual disorders is frightening. It is even frightening to imagine what her sexual disorders are. Necrophilia and bestiality are probably tame compared to her perversions. But again, I am leaning toward the possibility that her line is too useful to cull, and that that decision may bite them in the ass later on. Bardasano's last two relatives were culled. What if Bardasano was simply smarter and is able to take control. Faking it is one of the main qualities of a sociopath.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Yet, there were entire lines culled so says textev.

Yes, but you're equating a "line" here to the full letter. There's no evidence that that's the case.

Again, textev put paid to that. See above.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:At any rate, make no bones about it. The MA's operation is as callous as an assembly line producing parts. It is a Frankenstein lab on a grand scale containing assembly lines producing a variety of different Frankies and Frankcescas.

However macabre their operation may be, it's hyper-rational. They would not throw away more money than they had to. They would only cull as far back as strictly necessary, and no further. And they would not dispose of a product line just because of some defective items.

Of course, I have always agreed with that. My point is that sometimes what is necessary is to cull the entire line. Even if sometimes out of uncertainty.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Also note that the slave lines seem to be lines within lines. Matryoshka dolls.

THAT is the point.

See above. Variant lines (minor lines) are a factor of and dependent upon its parent (major line).

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:I wonder if that possibly racist distinction is present within the Alpha Line. IOW, do the Detweilers have modifications pertaining only to them?

Most assuredly. I don't think we have any direct evidence of that in textev, but circumstantial one is all over the place. They want a speciation of humanity and they want to stay on top as gods, directing the rest of humanity. They can only do that if they are better than rest, and they get to define what "better" means.

I doubt they're defining it as "wealthiest."

Indeed, proof of that (at least in some capacity) is also contained in the last text supplied by tlb. The Detweilers are considering crossing the psychopathic sexual disordered Bardasano line with their own. Possibly calling into question their own mental capacity and perversions. At any rate, every trait is filtered before adoption by the Detweilers.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:And having to cull an entire product line would be a big public black-eye. So avoid that risk and wait until you've got a 'stable' product before announcing it publicly as the C, or D, or F, or whatever line.

Which is another reason for not retiring the entire letter, however bad the issue was.

Noooo! You MUST retire the letter! We are not talking about automobiles or any other product that does not have the potential to disastrously affect ALL of mankind. Before production began, all of the particulars and nomenclatures had been established, and the tree structure of how they all relate. There are classified manuals distributed all over the MA in various departments. You never replace a new product with the namesake of a failed product. That could confuse the hell out of R&D, etc. And in this business, confusion is NOT an option.

If the problem is fixed, fine. But if the line is culled, the letter MUST be retired.

cthia wrote:Indeed, proof of that (at least in some capacity) is also contained in the last text supplied by tlb. The Detweilers are considering crossing the psychopathic sexual disordered Bardasano line with their own. Possibly calling into question their own mental capacity and perversions. At any rate, every trait is filtered before adoption by the Detweilers.

You must have skipped over the following piece of the quote:

And if there was still a slight tendency towards sexual disorders and mildly sociopathic behaviors, neither of those posed any serious handicap, especially for someone whose area of expertise was covert operations. Of course, they'd have to be dealt with in the next generation or two if the Bardasano line was going to earn back permanent alpha status within the Alignment, which Isabel understood.

What happed to the Cupid Topic?

I vote for Abigale and Indy since they were getting friendly in my last read.