TL 10 Humans

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Is there any evidence of that? You'd think if it were an issue we'd have documents in which people swore up and down Princes Wossname has had a whole host of diseases, and I don't think we do. To the extent this seems to have been a consideration at all, having had several diseases appears to have been a negative.

We even get a specific adjective - sickly - which we still use and consider a negative despite the fact we now *know* that getting a lot of diseases isn't really a personal trait, but a result of chance.

I remember it from somewhere in one of Crankshaw's histories of the Hapsburgs.

[AlexanderHowl]

The Hapsburgs were afflicted with horrible genetic disorders caused by generations of uncle-niece and cousin-cousin pairings. Charles II of Spain would have been better off if his parents had been brother and sister from a normal family, as they would have been less closely related.

[NineDaysDead]

Originally Posted by Sam Baughn

I don't think the rules in Bio-Tech work quite the way you are interpreting them. When it says 'Nanosymbionts can do the same jobs, but not until at least a TL later...' I believe it means that some of the symbiotic bacteria described on that page do the same thing as nanosymbionts, but are available earlier, not that there is a bacterial version of every nanosymbiont.

Yes, I'm pretty sure Sam Baughn's interpritation is right here.

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by DocRailgun

There are several dangers in society when there are people who live hundreds of years even if the society somehow can support the extra people who aren't dying and aren't reliant on the society for support because they're too old.

One of them is that society becomes more conservative, by which I mean that once people have success or achieve a post without a term limit they will tend to keep that position until they're forced out - few will abandon their routine and comfortable position out of boredom. So, the town librarian or elected city councilperson may well fill those roles for centuries, which means those positions can't be filled by younger people who need those sorts of jobs to grow. This becomes even worse in the military, where people who went to a military academy and learned the doctrine of (an arbitrary date) the year 2200 but are either generals leading militaries or teaching at those same academies in 2500. It's unlikely that there will be a lot of innovation in those three hundred years when the same people are writing the doctrinal manuals. Why fix what's not broken, even if it was something that worked 300 years ago and might not work now? There would have to be a way to get people up and out - not just in the military but in leadership of society in general.

Fair questions, but then you have to get into the economics of the future society. If few people are dying, the economy is expanding somehow, creating new openings, either new towns and cities with new libraries and councils, or expanding the existing ones, meaning more levels of organization and more positions to fill. If the economy isn't expanding, then you will have other changes, quite possibly nasty ones.

And how the economy changes without wealth being inherited and diluted regularly is another complicated question.

The Caliph timeline in Alternate Earths 2 addressed this by having a legal requirement that your heirs inherit a large portion of your assets when you turned 100, and strong social pressure to retire from your regular career and do something else, preferably more religious/contemplative/charitable.

(I sometimes speculate on what would happen in a stable society where technological progress slowed or stopped, so that society has a problem with what to do with all the increase in capital when all the worthwhile improvements have been made. But I digress.)

[AlexanderHowl]

A high progressive income tax that applied equally to capital gains would also discourage excessive accumulation of wealth. If you own a business and every $ you made over $10 million is taxed at 95%, you are better off investing that money in your workers and/or your capital rather than receiving an extra nickel (if not, the government will gladly accept your $0.95). It is one of the uses of tax policy, to encourage or discourage wealth accumulation by changing the amount of money retained by the individual.

[Jack Sawyer]

The funny thing about the height discussion a few pages back is that it reminded me of that science fiction contest the US Marines did a few years back with Science Fiction Futures. One of the stories featured genetically engineered midget supersoldiers:

Shockers were genetically-stunted Chinese spec ops, trained from birth; their growth was inhibited shortly after entering puberty, but their physical strength would continue to develop as normal and was often further enhanced. The result was a slight, limber, and powerful killing machine, highly trained and almost impossible to hit. They were called Shăndiàn Zhànshì, meaning Lightning Warriors, but the Marines just called them Shockers. Small and often covered with acne, they looked awkward and ridiculous. But you only made fun of them once; after that, you were either dead, or filled with a healthy dose of respect and probably a long convalescence. The hover-drone from earlier could belong to them.

This invariably runs contrary to the logic of 'genetically engineered supersoldiers' like in Halo or Warhammer 40,000. Or heck, even Lensman's Valerians. IRL IIRC bigger people often have more health issues and their bodies are under strain because they're taller and more massive (think Andre the Giant.) A smaller soldier genetically engineered has a smaller profile, masses less (and likely requires fewer calories to sustain themselves) and generally will have more advantages than a larger, heavier supersoldier would have. I always thought that was an interesting contrast.

Originally Posted by SimonAce

Combat reflexes could be a tweaked high efficiency adrenal system of the like so that humanity plus always responds in the maximumly efficient manner to risks,

I'm not sure that it would come in useful except for some colonial effort since a mature TL10 society would be essentially perfectly safe with no real risk of disease, injury, crime or the like

Originally Posted by Anthony

The reason we have an adrenal system is so we can turn off combat mode when it's not useful. If being always in combat was useful, the brain would just function in that mode all the time.

Also, to be honest, our adrenal system is designed for TL 0 threats. It's quite possible that turning the adrenal system off would be a net benefit against TL 10 threats.

In addition to what Anthony mentioned, I'm pretty sure 'fight or flight' responses tend to put inordinate stress on the body. Definitely a reason why you want to be able to shut it off.

For that matter, alot of hormones tend to have unpleasant side effects (steroids and corticosteroids come to mind). Heck, any sort of biological/genetic, surgical, or bionic augmentation probably will need some kind of maintenance at some point which leads to questions of how much effort to support the benefit (it could be little to none, or it could be alot, depending on assumptions I'd think.)


And with diseases or bacteria, they can and do evolve and develop resistances so it's possible we will always have a race of measure vs countermeasure.