Rise of Homo Superior article- slightly bumping Godwin's law

[QwertyYerty]

While it is accurate for the setting, is the first sentence of the Rise of Homo Superior article a good time to bring up eugenics and the Aryan Morningstar League? The first paragraph sets up the rest of the article, so it sounds like its about an attempt to make a Aryan inspired clade, while it really should be just a foot note.

While I know Homo Superior has been on this site since 2000, it may be time to rethink the name. If in real life if someone wanted to name a new designed human species Homo Superior, most people would think he/she was a eugenicist, and they would probably be right. It seems strange to me that it would be politically correct to call these people Superiors only a century or two from now, especially when eugenicists are very actively designing such a clade during that time period.


From the article:

Despite the popularity of eugenist and selective-breeding ideologies that culminated in short-sighted memeticities such as the Aryan Morningstar League and the early 22nd century c.e. Lunar Eugenist Institute, it was actually the transhumanist and libertarian biohackers that gave rise to Homo superior.

http://orionsarm.com/eg-article/47fc2ccba05bf

[QwertyYerty]

Originally they were called "Tweaks" by the general population early in OA history. Is that how most people (not in the clade) refer to this clade in the present?

[QwertyYerty]

Also, why would a genetics company give out "source code" for genetics they designed?

And why would a Terran corporation align themselves with small orbitals and lunar states? That would be like Google praising North Korea and Iran so as not to be dependent on the United States.

Also, how were the Orbital Alliance maintain able to maintain a near-monopoly on interplanetary travel?


From same article:

Even before the spread of the pirate "Gloriously Bright" germline cell patch, GeneTEK had already acquired a favourable reputation among genehacks and neobiopunks for its distribution of open source genomes.

The huge Terran tweak-run corporation GeneTEK aligned itself with some of the small independent and disaffected orbitals and lunar states in order to establish a presence in space not dependent on the Orbital Alliance and their near-monopoly on interplanetary travel.

http://orionsarm.com/eg-article/47fc2ccba05bf

[Drashner1]

Originally they were called "Tweaks" by the general population early in OA history. Is that how most people (not in the clade) refer to this clade in the present?

No, they refer to them as Superiors (or Su for short). Because they are superior (to whatever the baseline or nearbaseline version of the species in question is).

Of course they are as nothing to the transapients who are superior to modosophonts in all things and in all ways.

In Terragen civilization it is an objective fact that some beings are better than others at virtually everything. Because they have made themselves that way. The primitive memetics and propaganda of the Industrial and Information Age around one race or culture or whatever being 'better' isn't really relevant in the eyes of Terragens. They are able to create beings who are literally and objectively smarter/stronger/better performing in virtually every endeavor and facet of existence - those being the transapients.

Superiors are more along the lines of being a more cohesive and refined version (genetically speaking) of the slightly chaotic genetic alterations that the various nearbaseline races and clades have been engaged in for some thousands of years - often driven by fashion or individual cultural preferences. Superiors as a group aim to have more of a plan (at least in a general way - there are still local variations even among them - just not as many as among nebs and tweaks - who are their own distinct class of biological sophont in the setting).

Todd

[Drashner1]

While it is accurate for the setting, is the first sentence of the Rise of Homo Superior article a good time to bring up eugenics and the Aryan Morningstar League? The first paragraph sets up the rest of the article, so it sounds like its about an attempt to make a Aryan inspired clade, while it really should be just a foot note.

While I know Homo Superior has been on this site since 2000, it may be time to rethink the name. If in real life if someone wanted to name a new designed human species Homo Superior, most people would think he/she was a eugenicist, and they would probably be right. It seems strange to me that it would be politically correct to call these people Superiors only a century or two from now, especially when eugenicists are very actively designing such a clade during that time period.


From the article:

Despite the popularity of eugenist and selective-breeding ideologies that culminated in short-sighted memeticities such as the Aryan Morningstar League and the early 22nd century c.e. Lunar Eugenist Institute, it was actually the transhumanist and libertarian biohackers that gave rise to Homo superior.

http://orionsarm.com/eg-article/47fc2ccba05bf

Only if you ignore the word 'Despite' which is the very first word in the sentence.

And no, there's no need to rethink the name.

Todd

[QwertyYerty]

I recognize that. Eugenics still seems to be an odd subject for the first sentence though.

[Drashner1]

Also, why would a genetics company give out "source code" for genetics they designed?

Why does Google (since you mentioned them) design their Android operating system such that users can hack it and customize it to their individual preferences to one degree or another (assuming they have the will and the skill).?

And why would a Terran corporation align themselves with small orbitals and lunar states? That would be like Google praising North Korea and Iran so as not to be dependent on the United States.

This is a flawed analogy. Just because a particular orbital or lunar state might have been small says nothing about what kind of culture it might have had or how it might have treated its citizens or how it might have interacted with other nation-states of the time. North Korea and Iran have bad relations with much of the rest of civilization for various reasons pertaining to the points mentioned above - but they hardly represent the only model for small nation-states to follow. Consider Costa Rica or Switzerland or Monaco.

Beyond that, and to address the other part of your question, why do Google and Apple and Microsoft all allow and encourage individuals or small groups to develop and market apps compatible with their operating systems for use on their products instead of just developing them all internally themselves?

Also, how were the Orbital Alliance maintain able to maintain a near-monopoly on interplanetary travel?

Presumably in much the same fashion that various organizations and groups (commercial or otherwise) have been able to maintain near-monopolies on various things throughout history. There isn't a lot written about the Alliance it appears, but one short article I came across mentions that it was a literal alliance of different groups and organizations rather than a single centrally run government or the like. Think NATO or the WTO or the various other NGOs more than IBM or England. Consider also how some such groups work to try to maintain a monopoly on nuclear weapons or other things.

This is not to say that the article wouldn't benefit from some review and possible polishing/refining. But I don't consider massive rewriting to be a viable option unless a very compelling new narrative is presented. And I consider getting rid of the name 'Superior' - in particular due to RL notions of 'political correctness' to be a total non-starter.

Todd

[Drashner1]

I recognize that. Eugenics still seems to be an odd subject for the first sentence though.

There are various indications or offhand statements in a number of the older EG articles that give an impression that parts of the Interplanetary Age might have been rather...offputting (or even downright unpleasant) by our current standards.

Off the top of my head, these include indications of:

a) Vecs treated as something very much like slaves.

b) Various hu supremicist or other groups running around that seem to fill the role of RL white supremicists or similar groups.

c) Genetic engineering having both bright and dark sides.

d) Indications of extreme poverty in some form or other (see the other thread about proles).

Alan (one of the founding members of the project) often said that he saw OA as a 'brooding noir setting' with a much grittier and dark tone in some spots than what we generally depict. Whether the above points were supposed to help give that impression or whether they represented various elements that were thrown in the mix with an idea to expand on them later (or maybe just to sink or swim on their own merits and the groups interest level) isn't clear at this late date.

Over time we've been tweaking one or another to make them better fit into the conception of OA that we've developed more recently. Although at the same time, I'm not sure that we want to get rid of the idea that the Interplanetary Age had a darker side to it (we aren't trying to create utopias here). But we might want to polish and refine what was originally described, including improving the explanations or history given (a bit, not a huge amount) and presenting a more cohesive vision with fewer apparent contradictions.

I think the first step on that road would be trying to come to a cohesive vision of how we see this period in history, in terms of both positive and negative elements (by our standards anyway).

Todd

[Drashner1]

Hmm. Reading thru The Rise of Homo Superior article more fully, I am seeing a number of issues that are likely to drive at least some rewites and possibly some extensive ones.

Specifically, there is the issue of the article being overtaken by RL history, the dates and timeline in the article not lining up with the revised timeline (we moved a lot of biotechnology further into the future IIRC), contradictory terminology between the article and the rest of the EG (I don't think we use Tweak this way anywhere else in the EG), and some possible issues with concepts in the article. What is a tweak run corporation and how would that happen at this point in the timeline, for example?

Things to discuss, I think.

Todd

[stevebowers]

Tweak is a bit of a loose term. It basically means an organism that retains much of its original genome, but which has been genetically 'tweaked' to achieve certain pre-defined goals; higher intelligence, faster locomotion, greater height or strength. It is also used to describe organisms which are altered to tolerate different environments - different atmospheric compositions, different temperatures or gravity regimes, different sources of nutrition or radiation levels.

This covers a very large range of possibilities, from mildly tweaked people who are not prone to space-sickness, to people who can live on worlds that would instantly kill a non-tweak. If a person is tweaked extensively, that is to say their genetics are significantly altered and replaced with entirely new material, they could be regarded as neogens - organisms with entirely artificial genomes. Some clades I've written about are described as neogen-tweaks; they retain a lot of their ancestral genome, but incorporate a lot of new stuff too. it's a sliding scale.

Tweaks are somewhat different to splices, which are organisms which contain genetic material from two or more sources; but I would expect most splices to be heavily tweaked as well, and probably would contain a significant amount of neogen material too. (Rianths are really a subset of splices, but I'm happy to keep them separate for historical reasons).

According to canon most organisms in the Terragen Sphere are genetically modified in some way, but the dividing lines between splice, tweak, neogen and provolve are going to be fairly arbitrary. But does that mean these categories are redundant? I don't think so; the sophonts themselves would probably have their own opinions on thie genetic status, and many would choose to self identify as tweak, neogen or splice, even if the truth were more complex.