Re: Generation Ships
 

Sterilise them on boarding the ship and then at a medically advantageous age* for new citizens.

Breed new citizens from gene-banks on-board and using volunteers to carry them to term. Only do this as needed to maintain replacement rate.

Deal with any improbable accidents by reducing the planned replacement rate. Punish severely if any deliberate wrongdoing was involved, as opposed to a failure by a doctor or one of these occasional medical miracles.

While this may be a society in some ways, it's one that people opt into and accept military discipline at the same time. It sucks for the people born into it, but there is no way around it. They won't be free to live in any way they choose until they are no longer stuck with sharply limited space and resources.

*I don't know if you can do it at birth without complications, I'm not a doctor. Some time before puberty, at any rate.

Re: Generation Ships
 

A viable spaceship with the endurance required cannot, in my opinion, be built before TL9. At that TL, at least by GURPS RAW, turning sexual reproduction on and off with simple medical procedures is trivial.

Hell, at TL8, drugs that ensure very close to perfect success rates are available. Implant slow-release forms. Use them on both partners.

The odds of accidental pregnacy should be tiny. And smaller still at TL9+.

Re: Generation Ships
 

I am not normally a fan of science-fiction campaigns. It occurs to me, nevertheless, that roleplaying various officers and other personnel on a generation ship might offer interesting possibilities.

I submit that a supplement ought to be written on these possibilities, setting forth both technological assumptions necessary, socio-political concerns and the adventures that might arise from these.

A generation ship is a self-contained setting that allows the creation of a futuristic society that under any other conditions might feel implausible. And it comes with a lot of moral quandaries pre-built.

PCs as Memetic Monitoring Officers? PCs as law-breakers assigned to the riskiest jobs as punishment, having to do damage control, maintainance jobs that are hazardous or even the occasional adventurous response to an unforseen event? PCs as the command crew in the last generation before reaching their target?

Re: Generation Ships
 

Not really, if you want humans at your destination and you don't have artificial wombs you need a gen-ship. Or if you are a small minority and you want to pack up and leave the greater society a genship is your go to answer. Of course, humans wouldn't be allowed to touch anything important ever.

Re: Generation Ships
 

You tend to treat most of the other posters as backwards students in a physics class. Why can't they turn the tables and treat you as the backwards student.

I'm not calling you malicious. But you do seem to act as if you're the professor and the rest of us are failing students.


Actually, many of all moved on to the assumption that a generation starship was a tech level 10 project at least. Many, if not most of our statements assume the technology of either a standard GURPS TL10 or THS.

For myself, I assume that TL8 (our technology) could build the prototype of an O'Neill type Space colony.
Working out all the bugs would be a sign that you had crossed into TL9 in at least a few areas.

Re: Generation Ships
 

Jealousy isn't always sexual, in fact sexual jealousy is a minor part of the whole. We are jealous a great deal of the time, it's called the sin of Envy.

However, jealousy can take in different areas. Sexual jealousy is more about the assumption of exclusive sexual access. Many societies had a relaxed view on that issue. Most of the societies that strove to promote female chasity and exclusive sexual access/ownership of women stressed patriarchal inheirtence. On a generation starship property my exist, but the rules will be very different. It won't matter as much if the "property" is inheirited by The Child of the Father!, because inheiriting property won't be as important.

In fact, of the social factors promoting or conventionally related to strict sexual mores, I don't think any of them will be logical on a starship.

Without a serious reason to promote strict sexual mores, why go to the trouble?

Re: Generation Ships
 

That's why I say the answer to poly or monogamous is neither and both. Let the individuals decide and ignore the opinions of everybody else.
I'm sure human genetics would make monogamy the dominant form just as heterosexual and right handed would be. But make sure not to demonize the minorities, and you're all set.

Re: Generation Ships
 

That sounds sound. However, don't be too sure that monogamy and hetrosexuality are as overwhelmingly dominant as they seem in 1950's sitcoms.

Re: Generation Ships
 

Without constant reinforcement and shaming, of course the percentages will be a bit different. Though I imagine more with blurring modern definitions.
I tend to equate those issues with handedness, and that's certainly genetic.

Re: Generation Ships
 

Absent cultural factors, I am of the opinion that Kinsey 0 and Kinsey 6 don't exist. I can't demonstrate this, obviously, because its' rather difficult to domesticate a human without such things contaminating the experiment; and even if you could, its' still not ethical to do so.

Genetically predisposed, sure; not mandated by any means. Its' quite simple to change someone's handedness as history has repeatedly demonstrated. Its' a tad harder to change someone's sexuality (I don't know of any successful examples ...); it is easy to change someone's sexual behavior (I know of multiple successful examples of this).

Re: Generation Ships
 

Again, I am an outlier. I am completely hetero. I also believe that I am in the small minority of mostly heteros, but I am what I am. No pride or shame.

Oh hell no, you couldn't now or from birth change my handedness. My mother tried lightly, but it would not work. There is simply more "me" in my left hand than right. Changing what hand you write with is like forcing a heterosexual to have gay sex. Actions don't change preference.
Cut off my left hand, and 10 years from now I will still be a left hander without a left hand.

Re: Generation Ships
 

Emphasis: lightly

Not if she was only doing it lightly, no, I wouldn't expect it to work either.

You speak as if you'd have a choice in the matter. Heh. Humans are rather malleable with even a basic understanding of chemistry and psychology; the ability to learn means the ability to change. Change can be controlled and directed away from unacceptable and towards acceptable outcomes.

Ethics forbid. Morals forbid. Science? Science doesn't care.

... and to make this more on-topic: Given sufficient control over the selection process, over the ship's environment (which it will have) and over the population's intakes (water, food, air) (which it also will have) ... a sufficiently ruthless group that has a guiding ideology is more than capable of forcibly re-writing the ship's culture regardless of the population's preferences in the matter.

This is why you want AI.

Humans self-corrupt on being given power over other humans. Its' hardwired behavior. You will need something capable of stopping them from risking the mission when they do so; by recycling and restarting the population if the situation isn't recoverable otherwise.

Re: Generation Ships
 

You do realize that implying my innate left handedness is a delusionary refusal to learn is rather insulting, right? It is as innate as my heterosexuality and introversion. It is not something that you or anyone else can change. You can force me to change my behavior and maybe make me ashamed of my nature. But you cannot change it.

Re: Generation Ships
 

And I say that if you already have A.I.s that are truly superior to and rule humanity, why send inferior obsolete meat-bags to space in the first place?

Re: Generation Ships
 

Because humanity lucked out and built AI that were more interested in working with us than removing or ignoring us? We're already being optimistic about the technologies involved in the genship, whats' another bit of optimism going to hurt? :grins: Its' not like we'd be able to compete effectively with them, and its' not like we have anything to compete with them over, so ...

Re: Generation Ships
 

Going through the motions of exploration while our obsolete existence is simply tolerated by our betters is rather depressing for a sci fi setting in my opinion.
If you can get enjoyment out of that, then more power to you.
I would just get all existentially bummed out.

I like A.I.s in some settings, but only if they have intrinsic limitations that humans/aliens don't. Too many settings either have A.I. superior to us in every way or they don't. There's so rarely any middle ground.

It's like bionics, either robocop or peg legs. I tried making a mixed powerful but pitiable full cyborg, and not many posters liked my ideas.

Re: Generation Ships
 

It is desirable for children to be better (or at least better off) than their parents. I know I'm going to be horribly disappointed with my (skills as they relate to parenting my) kids if they turn out worse than me! Sapient AI would be best thought of as Humanity's children; and its' likely we'd "raise" our digital children to take care of us when we're obsolete just as we raise our biological children to take care of us when we're older (aka obsolete).

I'm not seeing the existentialism.

Re: Generation Ships
 

It's one thing to be sent to greener pastures as an individual. It's a whole other thing to watch your entire species go the way of past hominids, but without any family taking over from us.
And while A.I.s may metaphorically be our children, they aren't literally that.

Re: Generation Ships
 

I honestly think the only way we're going to get AI capable of equaling or surpassing humans is going to be by simulating a human brain. thinking about programming the ability to make a grandoise, abstract choice based on that many variables makes my head spin.

people often compare the human brain to a computer. guess what: its not a computer. It doesn't even appear to be a Turring machine.

coming back to topic: I agree with the people saying that once an AI's can raise children, humanity is irrelevant. The system will either spiral out of control or fall apart, neither of which case is going to give us an interesting generation ship.

As for population control, you need not look further than china and its methods for population control: you fine breakers of the law. The larger the infraction, the greater the penalty. If you have multiple "habitats" you can occasionally send serious infractors to single gender habitats.

of course, some people would find this utterly abominable, my self included (I'm the oldest of 10 children), but you probably don't need to have them on the ship.

In fact, rather than making it illegal, you could simply tax children past a certain point. If birth rates go up, raise the tax. If they go down, lower it.

(its also a good idea to plan for growth on the way up).

Re: Generation Ships
 

By that logic, an adopted child isn't (to be treated as) the parent's child. I'm rather certain the parents who have adopted would strongly disagree with that assertion.

But this is rather off-topic for the thread. Heh.

Re: Generation Ships
 

No, but all that separates your adopted child from a personally made one is no more than around 40 thousand years. There is no true familial connection to an A.I.

Re: Generation Ships
 

more to the point, there's no psychological connection to an AI. Unless your simulating a human brain, or something like it, in which case you still have all the problems of human nature.

Re: Generation Ships
 

Counter: Pets, and the human instinct to anthropomorphize everything around us. We form psychological connections to geographic features for goodness' sake! Some of us form such bonds to our cars, computers and phones now; a better computer that can intelligently talk with us? Heh. Not forming such a connection is going to be the difficult part.

(For an example of a not-AI piece of software that people are forming bonds with even today, check out Apple's Siri and its' fans.)

Re: Generation Ships
 

Pets are not a counter: the psychological connection is still there.

There is also a major difference between proud ownership and parenthood.

Re: Generation Ships
 

The cultural allowance for the psychological connection forming is there.

Initially? Sure. Over time? It may not stay proud ownership, depending on cultural and memetic factors. It isn't that long ago where owning another human as property (and being proud of that ownership) was perfectly acceptable. I don't expect it to stay culturally acceptable to own AI once they've reached sufficiently human levels of sapience for a human generation or two. (The future is going to prove me wrong, watch. Heh.)

(And some humans in the present day (and the past) display proud ownership of their children rather than anything I'd consider parenthood. Witness the child beauty queens and the more, ah, extreme of their parents.)

IMO, if we want to be wiped out by AI? Continue to treat them as property even after they've become people. Want them to be our friends? Treat them as our children. If we don't want to be wiped out by them and we don't want to treat them as our children? Never, ever, never never, create them in the first place and be damn certain to kill anyone who even thinks about it. There is always a chance for an AI to go rogue. Any complex program (and AI would count as that) will have bugs. Betting your personal and species' survival on your program not having bugs is a deeply stupid thing to do. (... which is why we'll do it. :sighs: )

Re: Generation Ships
 

I love my cats like children. And I care about the future of feline kind. But that's not the same as caring about humanity and our descendents.

Re: Generation Ships
 

And I know a handful of people who (say they) would gladly kill someone to protect their pets from harm. (I've not tested their assertion for accuracy!) If you're willing to (publicly claim to be willing to) kill another person to protect it because its' your 'baby', then its' close enough to being your child regardless of the technicalities involved.

Re: Generation Ships
 

Even if the ship, by conscious decision of its creators, starts off with nothing but carefully-selected left-handed people?

Re: Generation Ships
 

Two left handers have only a 50% chance of having a left handed child.
It seems like no matter how you stack the deck, the deck is still stacked for right handed humans and oddly all hominids where there is reliable data.

Re: Generation Ships
 

Encouraging lefties to have children with other lefties, and only with other lefties, will either result in it breeding true or it breeding out of population. Eventually.

Re: Generation Ships
 

I can love my cats without believing that they are my future the way human children are... not just because they have been castrated, and I can't afford kids of my own.

Re: Generation Ships
 

Genetics is far more complex than that.

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No, not especially. If you separate a breeding population out, removing any resulting offspring that don't display a trait you wish to continue from the breeding population, then (after a sufficient number of generations) the population will breed true with those traits. We've been doing it with (fully-, non- and semi-) domesticated animals for quite a long time indeed.

Humans aren't immune to the process.

We've domesticated wild foxes in less than 50 years (and so less than 50 generations). Genetic domestication is likely to be a bit more complex of a trait than genetic handedness; though I fully admit I could be wrong about the trait's relative complexity levels.

Re: Generation Ships
 

You assume that it's only a few genes coding for handedness. It could be many many genes that code for a weighted die. And that it's impossible to make the die come up 6s or 1s every time without radically changing the genome.
Mendelian genetics and the age old punnet square is way outdated.

Re: Generation Ships
 

Please point me to where it is demonstrated that humans are (uniquely among life on this planet) immune to selective breeding? I can't find anything indicating that with my own searches. I'd like to see the studies on this for myself if they're available. It works on other animals and plants; what is it about humans that make us uniquely immune to it?

You don't have to. Its' not a demand. I'm honestly curious.

Re: Generation Ships
 

we're not. There's just two large obstacles:

1) of course, the human element: its not ethical and we'll throw a fit

2) life cycle length. The pugnet square being "outdated" means you can't get results as fast as you might like. horses, dogs, cats, cows, goats, pigs, chickens, sheep and almost every other animal we have domesticated can breed within 4 years, most before that. Humans can't breed untill.... well, much longer than 4 years, and in modern society we don't until quite a bit after that. This means the project is going to take quite some time.

and yes, I can think of one "domestic" animal that has a longer life cycle than above: elephants, where the female is ready at about 13. And considering the all the different breeds of elephants man has bred, I'm going to call this one the exception that proves the rule.

(I will admit that its also harder to handle elephants though)

Re: Generation Ships
 

Flynn's point is that you can't easily breed for _complex_ traits. You probably could breed for hari and eye color. Those are simple traits, probably controlled by only a single gene.

Left-handedness is a complex trait if it's fully controlled by heredity at all.

Also remember that a thing can be genetically-based yet not inherited. A number of genetic diseases and conditions usually prevent anyone fully expressing the trait from reproducing yet remain at relatively steady numbers among the human population. Many of them aren't even based on simple (or even complex) recessive genes either.

A very large portion of modern genetics is complex. It's not alll figuring out how brown-eyed people give birth to blue-eyed children.

Re: Generation Ships
 

Cultural, and potentially subject to change.

No argument there. I expect it'd take about 50 generations. At around 15 years (maybe 20 years) per generation, that adds up to a lot of time. But a genship has time (to the point of excess) and a controlled environment. If the people-in-charge/culture on the genship decided to do such a thing, they are in nearly the perfect situation to do it.

Domestication is also a complex trait, I would assume. I suspect its' a more complex trait than handedness, but I could easily be wrong there. I doubt handedness is more complex than domestication is.

Re: Generation Ships
 

Domestication is probably a side-effect of maturation genes and caninies are extremely prone to manipulation of them.

The main difference between wolves and dogs is that dogs retain puppy-like behavior all their lives much more often than wolves. Dogs stillwant to play games with their litter-mates (and this includes their favorite humans) when wolves want to get on with catching supper and making little wolves.

Playing with the maturation genes is also how you control size. Chihuahuas just barely go through enough puberty to be able to reproduce while Great Danes get a double or triple helping of it.

So, no not really a complex trait in canies (and their relatively close relatives foxes). On the other hand it might not even be much of a genetic option among other animals. We've never done very well with projects to domesticate most types of deer as just one example.

Re: Generation Ships
 

The question is whether the more primal instinct is intrinsically related to sexual relationships or just any relationship with similar significance to the individual and to what extent culture determines the relative significant of sexual and non-sexual relationships.

Cultural forces appear to have been comparatively stagnant with respect to jealousy in sexual relationships. While I suppose a modification could be exist for a couple of generations in the general population and then break down it seems more likely to me that either it would not function at all or be similarly stable.

Like an expanded version of the Draconis section of Bio-Tech or a more general generation ship resource?

Well you also need to not have some sort of cold sleep thing.

Good point. I choose TL 8 because if I choose normal TL 9 it would be assumed that the crew had access to all of TL 9 even areas that wouldn't really help build a generation ship and little attention would be paid toward TL 9 areas of research that a TL 8 (TL 9 in generation ship technologies) society might be interested in developing.

Well envy and jealousy are generally considered separate but in general yeah. Numerous societies have been able to expect their members to be polygamous and somehow manage to survive. It seems a reasonable step from there to allow people to do what they want and focus the things people might get jealous about on emotional ties and practical matters like inheritance.

It isn't about choosing monogamy or polygamy for everyone in a society. It's about letting someone who, for whatever reason, tends toward monogamy and someone who, for whatever reason, tends toward polygamy be in a relationship with minimal friction by culturally encouraging people to do whatever they personally want without expecting that their partner will conform to their personal preferences.

Absent cultural factors individual preferences can still emerge and there is a definite tendency for many people to prefer to pick an extreme and adopt it than be somewhere in the middle.

Where was he implying that your innate left handedness is a delusionary refusal to learn? Handedness is nowhere near as innate as personality traits but it still takes a lot of work to change. "Lightly" trying to change someones handedness doesn't work even if they wanted it to. If your behavior and the skills and physical development were modified to have you use your right hand you would be right handed in every way expect possibly genetically. If your "nature" refers to genetics then, yes that can't be changed (now!) but that's not really important when discussing Flyndaran rather than The Noble Bloodline of Flyndaran. Unless I suppose people ending up differently than their genetics suggest is going against their nature? Other than genetics there isn't any such thing as a nature other than your behaviour.

Because the AIs want to get rid of them and it's easy to shove them into ships than kill them? Because humanity still has access to a sufficient share of the resources to build their own ship? Because while humans are less capable than AIs the AIs would rather risk human lives making the journey and building the infrastructure than copies of artificial intelligences? Because the AIs are bored and want something to gamble on?

Re: Generation Ships
 

Well it's hard to justify AIs having significant intrinsic limitations compared to humans. Making AIs that are in terms of capabilities largely like humans in a box with some advantages due to their boxes is one thing. Making AIs that have disadvantages compared to humans is another. I suppose if one presumed that some advantages were considered important enough to accept disadvantages in return it could happen but the amount of plausible trade offs due to fundamental limitations rather than limited knowledge with respect to mind engineering would be limited at best.

Literally as in what? Actual flesh and blood descendants? Sure they aren't genetically linked to a given parent but... So what? Plenty of people consider people who aren't genetically linked to them their children. For that matter while I admit a certain appreciation for the human form due to it's age and sentimental value (Why not look like a human anyway? Most advantages to changing it could be duplicated by hanging out or controlling a robot body when necessary.) I don't especially care about Homo Sapiens Sapiens and would be delighted for any children I have to be members of a superior (and heavily tested!) species.

Why are the only choices spiraling out of control and falling apart? And how are they different exactly?

Population control through law is better for emergency breaks and controlling large disparate areas. I think social norms would be enough to keep the population steady.

Where "true familial connection" means what exactly? I believe people can have true familial connections transcending genetics and species so why not between a human and an AI?

The counter is (I believe.) that a psychological connection can exist between humans and pets.

It's less than 50% as far as I can tell.

That doesn't mean that other people couldn't consider intelligent non-humans children.

Not really. It seems like a much easier method to put the research in to change peoples genetics directly but that doesn't change the fact that if you can identify a gene you can breed it.

It doesn't matter how many genes code for it. Eventually his methods work.

Neither ethics nor time necessary are really relevant to theoretical possibility.

There isn't any if. Handedness isn't fully controlled by heredity.

Re: Generation Ships
 

People can develop significant attachment to software that doesn't even talk. There's a really good fictional exploration of relations with low-capability AIs in Ted Chiang's story The Life Cycle of Software Objects.
An example: my father was one of identical twins. One right-handed, one left-handed.

Re: Generation Ships
 

- AI Bob, you're going with the MeatBagGenShip #256.
- Why? I don't want to go on a millennia-long flight with meatbags!
- Well, someone has to sacrifice itself by doing it, so that the rest of us AIs can live without them on our conveniently uninhabitable-for-meatbags planet.

Re: Generation Ships
 

Do you consider GURPS TL9 modifications as robocop-level? (I assume yes, since stuff like artificial hearts is advertised within the films' commercial breaks.) I'm not sure where the middle ground would be though. Any lower than robocop, and you get TL8 (modern). And I'm not sure there are all that many settings that are TL8-derived, but don't have mid-range prosthetics. BSG, perhaps, though they're not quite TL8-derived.

That being said, I'm interested in taking a look (again, if I already did) at your cyborg. Edit: found it. Would you like to revive the discussion?

Re: Generation Ships
 

Another factor is that, in any realistic future were a generation starship might be created, breeding would be the slowest and least effective way to modify the population's genetics. Transhuman Space already has people buying genetic up-grades for their children, and they aren't depicted as being ready to send out the first generation starships. Clearly, if the starship's crew/passengers want a particular genetic profile for the future of humanity, they'll design it themselves.

Re: Generation Ships
 

Breeding may be the slow way, but its also the safe way. We had such great hopes for sequencing the human genome. Then we found out only a small fraction does what we thought was the important part. Genetic Engineering is likely to be one of the hardest fields man is likely to tackle.

Re: Generation Ships
 

The discussion also (at least originally) mentioned that it was a TL8 genship. TL8 medicine doesn't have that capability; on the other hand, it does have the capability of selective breeding.

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If we assume a GURPS TL10 society, with a TL10 biotechnology as per THS, then sex and reproduction need have no link. Only gametes count.

Father O'Neill is told by the Bishop of Ship Seven, reproduce, but stay within your vows. Father O'Neill goes with is old pal Father De Luca, who has also been told to reproduce without breaking his vows, to the reproductive medical center. Both men are chaste, celibate, and strictly hetero. The doctors take cell samples, they determine the best way to form useful gametes in this case. The create a zygote. After nine months of ectogenesis the two guys have a baby boy. They filp a coin, the winner gives the baby his surname, and the other guy chooses the given names.

However unlikely you think that senario is socially or theologically, it is likely to be a biotechnical commonplace long before a generation starship leaves the solar system.

Re: Generation Ships
 

Of course, the OP isn't about this senario. Its about TL 8, or in other words:

"what does a generation ship look like if you take away genetic engineering, and AIs, and all that other "transhuman" (in the original meaning) stuff?"

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that once the ship is put together and you have a quarter million people headed off to alpha centari (or where-ever), the ship will have to run itself and I'm guessing you started off with a rational bunch of people. I am going to say self preservation will see the colonists to their destination. They might not want to get off the ship afterwards, but thats a different matter.

Re: Generation Ships
 

No, envy and jealousy are two different things, though they overlap in places. Envy does not necessarily implly that you want to take away something someone else has, or prevent them from having it. One can be envious of status, wealth, etc, and set out to match or better them, without necessarily seeking to take them away from someone else.

Jealousy is different. If one envies the new sports car of someone else, one can get a sports car of the same model or fancier. Jealousy means you want to have that particular sports car. You want it to be yours instead of his.

Obviously that can overlap with envy, but it's not the same thing.

Re: Generation Ships
 

Within limits, yes. But no, human are not all that malleable, the history of the last century is nasty proof of that. Past a certain point, they break rather than bend. Unless you genetically alter the population, human nature will limit the power of the rulers to change things.

Nor is science as powerful as all that. The changes that can be made are limited to a range of possibilities determined by the material the changes are being applied to. Some very nasty possibilities do exist, but the range is still relatively limited as long as you're dealing with human beings.

Up to a point, yes.

AI could not be relied upon for that. If it's genuinely conscious, AI will have its own agenda. If it's not, it'll be outsmarted or gamed by humans who figure out the limits of the code and work around it.

Re: Generation Ships
 

Nope. At best they are servants, at worst they are dangerous competition, they are not children.

The children metaphor doesn't work for a species, because, unlike individuals, a species has an open-ended lifespan. There's no inherent reason why Homo sapiens can't endure indefinitely.

Humanity, as a species, doesn't age and doesn't grow older (except in the trivial chronological sense). Thus comparisons to children and parents are invalid. Machines are tools, designing them to be self-willed is madness, assuming we can do that. A self-willed tool ceases to be useful and may become dangerous.

Re: Generation Ships
 

That doesn't make it valid. Anthropomorphizing pets is a mixed bag, sometimes it matches reality, sometimes it's wishful thinking. But a pet is not a child, even if the human in question likes to pretend otherwise. A car is not a child, a mountain is not a child...and usually, none of these things represents a potential serious threat to one's own well-being and the future of one's actual descendents.

Humans might very well become attached to a given AI. Maybe, for all we know, the reverse could happen too. It still doesn't make them our children.

Re: Generation Ships
 

Children are always dangerous competition. At best, they compete against the parents of other children.

Re: Generation Ships
 

He didn't humans were immune to selective breeding, he was saying selective breeding doesn't work the way you're implying in any animal species. It's not that simple.

Some traits do select easily on straight dominant/recessive lines. Others depend on so many different genes that you can't even accurately predict where they'll turn up. Some appear to be dependent on particular interactions of genes and environment, so what is selected for it not the trait but the potential for the trait. Epigenetic changes further complicate the picture, some acquired traits can be inherited. Some hereditary traits appear to be the result of a melange of different genes, none of which individually could be said to code for it. Some traits are breedable, but are tightly linked to other traits that you either don't want to change or can't help changing for the worse. It's a super-complicated mess, and sometimes it appears that the more we learn the more we discover we don't know.

Even very simple traits are often complicated in their basis. Science fiction greatly overestimates the near-future possibilities of human genegineering.

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Which is fine. That's another reason why AI's are not 'humanity's children'. Humanity is an abstraction, only humans exist.

Regarding competition, there's a simple answer. I am going to die. That's going to happen to me whether I reproduce or not, and it'll happen in a relatively knowable amount of time. Bar some technical breakthrough, I won't be alive 100 years from now, and probably not 50 years from now, and of course nothing is guaranteed about tomorrow.

So competition from my offspring and their offspring is something of a moot point. But competition between humans and AIs is not a moot point, assuming the AIs are capable of competing at all.

(We don't even strictly know if full AIs are possible or not, yet.)

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Of course they're possible. There is no law of physics that requires sapience to exist only in wet biological species.
But how difficult it is to make them is not known. I have trouble seeing how we can create something equal to ourselves when there is so much about ourselves we do not know.

Re: Generation Ships
 

As was actually noted once in a GURPS worldbook, humans have genuinely domesticated only a handful of mammal species out of the huge numbers that exist. It's taken us tens of thousands of years to do it, and there's still a wide range of difference in degree in the success.

Re: Generation Ships
 

We have no idea if that's true or not, because we don't understand what sapience is or how it works. It might be something innate to biology, it might not, we just don't know.

Re: Generation Ships
 

Then take a step back and realize how basic domestication really is. All you want is an animal that doesn't consider you a horrible predator or prey and accepts human care. In essence breeding laziness, and that took thousands of years for most of them.

Re: Generation Ships
 

Unless you attribute some religious significance to intelligence, then it would take some serious evidence that it is somehow innate to carbon based wet biology. If it can evolve, it can be created.

Re: Generation Ships
 

If it's built at TL8 or probably even TL9, it'll more likely be a case of, "We made it! Let's get off this thing before it falls apart completely." TL 10 or higher might be another matter.

One problem for a slow genship is that you don't have to posit FTL for them to find their target star already colonized. Let's sa a genship sets out for Alpha Centuari and averages 0.001c, so they'll arrive in 4500 years. That's a lot of time for technical advancements, even a 0.01c genship would be ten times faster and get there in just 450 years. That's still long enough to need a genship (assuming normal humans), but they can beat the first ship there as long as they launch within four thousand years of the launch of the first ship.

If our hypothetical second genship launched 1000 years after the first, the first would arrive to find the target star had been settled for 3000 years.

Of course, a third ship might be able to make .1c, cover the distance in 45 years, and now the same generation that started out can settle the target star, so the second ship might also find itself facing settled land.

There's nothing in physics to suggest any reason to doubt .01 and .1c vehicles are possible. They aren't even utterly beyond our engineering concepts today. We can't build them yet, but no superscience at all is involved.

Re: Generation Ships
 

But we don't know if it can be created in any medium other than carbon and water, either. That's just the point, we have no evidence at all, either way. From a scientific POV, one is just as probable as the other, since the subject matter is a black box.

Re: Generation Ships
 

I thought I would just briefly mention the reasons I consider the TL8 genship a total non-starter.

There isn't enough loose money in a TL8 world like ours to manufacture the components, launch them into orbit and assemble them there. Look at what we've spent on the dinky little ISS.

To look at some numbers from Spaceships a SM+15 vessel that might hold 20,000 to 40,000 in habitants supported by agriculture in Open Space modules (6-12 spaces) would mass 3 million tons and would require approx. 20,000 launches of a Saturn 5 in heavy lift configuration. You'd still only be in low orbit too.

Second is that there is no propulsion system that could be built before TL9 rolled around that would produce usable speeds. Even just the technical minimum of providing the 26 miles per second of Delta-V needed to achieve solar escape velocity is somewhere beyond merely impractical.

About the only TL8- tech that looks even marginally attractive is agriculture and even there there are serious long-term issues involving soil nutrition and replenishment that make looking at TL9 bio-tech atttractive. Certainly Biosphere 2 couldn't do anything like keeping its' soil fertile for a century or two.

So this is why I generally don't bother talking about TL8 technologies

Re: Generation Ships
 

Sure, but unless we can escape the fact that any attempt to get things cheaper requires an understanding of the principles behind intelligence that requires a violation of the uncertainty principle, we're going to be disappointed. Human intelligence is poor at grasping human methods of intelligence. We're not perfect, but nor do we know what is better than our standard intelligence level

Re: Generation Ships
 

I'm leery of anyone throwing around uncertainty principles or really anything to do with quantum mechanics when talking about anything not directly related to quantum physics.
Intelligence is a macroscopic tool toward achieving goals by self-aware entities. I see no need for quantum anything in that.
It smacks too much of squeezing biochauvenistic religion in the back door.

But this all too close to the THS threads and off topic.

For this thread all that matters is what, if any, type(s) of A.I.s are available for the ship.

Re: Generation Ships
 

I'm not saying we're perfect.

Just that perhaps human spirits might do wrong.

Re: Generation Ships
 

Could you rephrase that, please? I'm not quite following.

Re: Generation Ships
 

We might we waiting forever, or at least waiting for what some characer thing is righgt. He might have been wrong.

Re: Generation Ships
 

I'm with you here. The only logic in a TL8 starship is to flee the Earth's solar system. If you need to do that, society isn't going to hold together long enough to build a viable starship, period. Generation starships, without either supers, mages, or something else of that order, can't exist before TL9 or probably TL10.

Re: Generation Ships
 

of course, there is no guarantee that the actual TL 9 will look like GURPS TL9. We also in this case are drawing a hard line between TL 9 and 8. A high TL8, or a prolonged one, could build a generation ship that is viable.

Re: Generation Ships
 

One that is TL 8 in all ways except space tech. That's how the future looked back before all of NASA's screw ups and defunding.

Re: Generation Ships
 

This probably makes the most sense. Get to full TL 9 and generation ships start becoming too comfy. Fabricators, artificial wombs, AI, VR(?), all humans do is sit around and try not to touch anything important. But at TL 8 a generation ship is so expensive it would take a massive effort to produce a viable one.

Re: Generation Ships
 

If you're fleeing the Solar System, then saying you're 'building a genship' is probably imprecise. Unless it's a scenario where the disaster can be seen coming way ahead (nova, stellar collision, whatever), a group fleeing the System would probably have to make do with what was at hand.

Thus if they have to build a genship, they won't be able to do it. But they might, just conceivably, be able to convert something extant to a genship. An O'Neil habitat, for example, might be converted into a genship more quickly than one could be built from scratch, in an emergency.

Of course, since it wouldn't be designed as a genship, it would be a makeshift, with endless problems, troubles, on-the-fly solutions, etc. Or to put it another way, a perfect role-playing situation.

A separate issue that applies to any genship attempt at interstellar travel is the time issue I alluded to upthread. Assuming you have a choice in the matter, how fast a drive do you need before you're ready to gamble that somebody leaving later won't get there ahead of you?

To use my .001c ship to Alpha Centauri as an example, they'll need 4500 years to get there. Even if civilization collapsed back to barbarism and pre-space technology right after they left, 4500 years is plenty of time to rebuild, regain space, and eventually be able to launch faster ships.

OTOH, a .01c ship can get there in 450 years. If the Solar System collapsed back to barbarism right after departure (maybe the escapees saw that coming), 450 years mght not be enough time to catch up the difference.

A .05c ship could get to Alpha Centauri in 90 years. That's only just technically a genship, since conceivably some of the younger voyagers could live to see arrival, even with unextended lifespans. If things collapsed as they left, they could probably reasonably assume they'll still be fairly collapsed 90 years later.

Re: Generation Ships
 

5% of light speed would have to be one tiny ship strapped to a big honking fuel tank barring superscience. Can you get a generation ship that small?
I supposed when in doubt clone. But good human cloning just brings up TL9 again.

Re: Generation Ships
 

Here's another consideration that might come into play for a genship running away from the Solar System: pursuit. A genship, almost by definition, is slow. It's big, massive, and won't be able to use much acceleration, we're more likely talking about a very very low acceleration over a long period, rather than a fast boost. Something maybe like .001G, but maintained over months, would get you out of the Solar System. (You'd reach 26 miles per second in about 7 weeks, by which point you'd have travelled some 56 million miles.)

But while .001G will get you out of the Solar System, it's easily outrun by missiles, lasers, etc. If whoever you're running from doesn't want to let you go, you're going to need defenses. How to defend against such threats is an interesting challenge.

BTW, if you can keep up that .001G all the way, you'll get to Alpha Centauri in about 133 years, acceleration/deceleration, with your peak velocity around .06c.

So, 133 years is genship time, all you need is a drive capable of producing an acceleration of .001G, which is trivial, and maintaining .001G for 133 years. Which is non-trivial.

Re: Generation Ships
 

Good point. No matter how hopeless the home world situation seems to those of the gen ship, there will be some that demand not to throw away good resources on a fool's mission. And they will back that opinion up with force.
That could give a Battlestar Galactica feel even before the mission leaves the solar system.

Re: Generation Ships
 

I don't know about "most", but yes, I do challenge people to support their statements that I can't reconcile with what is taught in actual university physics courses, etc. Other posters are welcome to turn the tables since I can generally support what I post and this is not my first generation ship /space habitat discussion. I am also willing to own to being wrong, unlike certain other posters, and you can search the forums for me saying "I sit corrected" if that's what you're looking forward to.

I reviewed the thread for that before posting, but didn't see such a transition.

Re: Generation Ships
 

If long-term scaleable life support and moderate scale fabrication can allow human exploration and exploitation of the solar system and still be TL8, those can be done. The lifting problem is eliminated because materials already in space can be used for construction. IIRC, acceleration can be provided by using tethers to extract delta v from the energy of a rotating natural body. For example, every additional 5000 miles of space elevator height/length on Ceres provides 1 mile per second additional delta V for items turned loose.

Re: Generation Ships
 

A vast problem for a TL8 starship would be human bones. Without either a genetic engineering trick to prevent calcium loss, or artificial gravity (either superscience or spining part of the ship) everybody on broad gets brittle bone disease. And that's only a start because we don't know what DECADES of microgravity will do to humans. Moreover, we only have Sci Fi and speculation on human gestation and delvelopement in microgravity.

Another reason I assume that a society would need the space technologies and biotechnologies of Transhuman Space (or something as good) in order to build a viable generation starship.