11-17-2016, 01:08 PM
Hm. Various thoughts here. In no particular order...
a) You mentioned not having empathy as a child/young person. Yet our culture as a whole often talks about how cruel children and young people can be. Also, I've heard various things of late about how studies have indicates that humans may not fully develop the part of their brain until they are in their mid-20s or so.
Is it possible that at least some of what you describe on this matter was at least somewhat 'normal' (e.g., children/young people don't have a lot of empathy and may have a lot of 'rage'), although perhaps amplified due to higher intelligence? Or perhaps just that its impact was magnified due to higher intelligence?
b) How much of a role could nature vs nurture play in this kind of thing? Had you (and by extension hypothetical future proto-superiors) been surrounded by lots of people at your own level and/or 'average' people making an effort to provide you with an engaging environment would that have improved things?
c) Speaking in terms of OA, it should be noted that many Su (and neb) abilities aren't really connected to generalized intelligence per se and that it's not clear which abilities the ancestors of 'modern day' Su were initially gengineered with. Certainly they were not as capable as the Y11K versions. So their transition to higher level intelligence may have taken a number of generations. At the same time, DNI interfaces and various cybernetic augments would also be amplifying the abilities of even 'mere' baseline and near-baseline humans. Meaning that Su wouldn't necessarily be as isolated as is being discussed here so far.
d) I would suspect that the presence of the transapients also has a mitigating impact on things. As smart as Superiors may be, they are little more than clever pets compared to even an S1. Beyond that, one of the things the transapients and archai spend a good part of their time doing is creating and managing the ontologies and societies of their Sephirotic empires, including their many quadrillions of incredibly diverse inhabitants who live together in peace and some degree of harmony.
e) Finally, and kind of on the flip side of © - although we don't really discuss it much (since the focus of the setting is on Y11k, not so much the very earliest parts of OA history), it is virtually certain that the actual development of the nebs and su was a slow and sometimes painful process and there were definite setbacks. For one thing, the many different abilities that each group has would presumably have to be not only engineered, but engineered in such a way as to not conflict with the other traits and abilities that might have already been put in place.
There is almost certainly a lot of history behind the highly refined Superiors that we see in Y11k.
Just some thoughts,
Todd
a) You mentioned not having empathy as a child/young person. Yet our culture as a whole often talks about how cruel children and young people can be. Also, I've heard various things of late about how studies have indicates that humans may not fully develop the part of their brain until they are in their mid-20s or so.
Is it possible that at least some of what you describe on this matter was at least somewhat 'normal' (e.g., children/young people don't have a lot of empathy and may have a lot of 'rage'), although perhaps amplified due to higher intelligence? Or perhaps just that its impact was magnified due to higher intelligence?
b) How much of a role could nature vs nurture play in this kind of thing? Had you (and by extension hypothetical future proto-superiors) been surrounded by lots of people at your own level and/or 'average' people making an effort to provide you with an engaging environment would that have improved things?
c) Speaking in terms of OA, it should be noted that many Su (and neb) abilities aren't really connected to generalized intelligence per se and that it's not clear which abilities the ancestors of 'modern day' Su were initially gengineered with. Certainly they were not as capable as the Y11K versions. So their transition to higher level intelligence may have taken a number of generations. At the same time, DNI interfaces and various cybernetic augments would also be amplifying the abilities of even 'mere' baseline and near-baseline humans. Meaning that Su wouldn't necessarily be as isolated as is being discussed here so far.
d) I would suspect that the presence of the transapients also has a mitigating impact on things. As smart as Superiors may be, they are little more than clever pets compared to even an S1. Beyond that, one of the things the transapients and archai spend a good part of their time doing is creating and managing the ontologies and societies of their Sephirotic empires, including their many quadrillions of incredibly diverse inhabitants who live together in peace and some degree of harmony.
e) Finally, and kind of on the flip side of © - although we don't really discuss it much (since the focus of the setting is on Y11k, not so much the very earliest parts of OA history), it is virtually certain that the actual development of the nebs and su was a slow and sometimes painful process and there were definite setbacks. For one thing, the many different abilities that each group has would presumably have to be not only engineered, but engineered in such a way as to not conflict with the other traits and abilities that might have already been put in place.
There is almost certainly a lot of history behind the highly refined Superiors that we see in Y11k.
Just some thoughts,
Todd