Zhodani without Psi

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Hans Rancke-Madsen

It depends on what the buyer believes he is buying. Lotteries are poor investments, but may be cheap purchases of exitement.


Hans

The post I referenced said buying lottery tickets hoping to get rich, not a momentary thrill via pretending.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Anthony

It's not necessarily all that bizarre; Traveller biotech is pretty bad. It probably just means some combination of environmental (rather than genetic) causes, and the genetic influences being extremely complex.

Epigenetics is wonky enough for all sorts of strange effects.
Imagine if only Zho or even other humaniti raised on Zho homeworlds develop mind magic, and it isn't truly genetic at all.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Epigenetics is wonky enough for all sorts of strange effects.

There are all kinds of mental effects that probably have genetic components but those components are unknown and probably a bear to identify. Most components of intelligence are that way (intelligence also has political factors that make people reluctant to state genetic influences, and similar effects could easily apply to psi talent).

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

Originally Posted by DocGrognard

FWIW, according to Mega Traveller, and possibly the Zho module for classic, there is explicitly no hereditary component that has ever been identified. *

I've always had a hard time accepting that. A psonic power level of 5 is enough to give a person useful psionic skills. I can't see any population where more than three fourth are capable of being trained in psi really becoming as paranoid about it as the Imperium is supposed to be. But even if they were, the Zhodani society where, what is it, everyone with a psionic power of 9 or more, become elevated to the gentry or the nobility, would be amazingly top-heavy. Especially if the children of nobles remained nobles even if they had no psionic power to speak of themselves.

So what I do in my own TU is giving people a psionic potential, which is hereditary. If you don't have potential, you don't have psionic powers. If you do have potential, you have the canonical roll for power that may land you with a power of no more than 2[*] or as much as 12. The percentage of people without potential I then put high enough to make psionics as rare as the canonical setting implies. The genes for psionic potential are recessive, of course.

All player characters automatically have psionic potential. NPCs roll for it depending on their parents' potential.

[*] I assume that testing people before the first tern (i.e. at 14) avoids any minus to the die roll).

Hans

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

The post I referenced said buying lottery tickets hoping to get rich, not a momentary thrill via pretending.

The post I responded to (yours) mentioned lotteries as an undifferentiated phenomenon.


Hans

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Hans Rancke-Madsen

The post I responded to (yours) mentioned lotteries as an undifferentiated phenomenon.


Hans

Okay. I gotcha' now. I was over generalizing the specific.
But I wonder how many players really don't delude themselves into thinking they have a realistic chance at winning. Just because they say they don't is like how most people say they don't believe in ghosts. But simple practical jokes prove them wrong so easily and quickly.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Anthony

There are all kinds of mental effects that probably have genetic components but those components are unknown and probably a bear to identify. Most components of intelligence are that way (intelligence also has political factors that make people reluctant to state genetic influences, and similar effects could easily apply to psi talent).

In the real world everything has a genetic component that is effected by the environment. But we are discussing a different universe with radically different laws of physics, so why not biology as well?
Intelligence needs to be defined first, then sensibly measured long before its genetic components can be properly studied, in my opinion.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

It would surprise me though if there was no hereditary component to psionic aptitude, so that would be kind of like getting rich by winning the lottery.

I got the impression that the Zho in canon did have something of the kind.

Even if there is no such thing, children with psi capacity could be identifyied and fostered in a different home, much like the Dalai Lamas.

Once they actually know themselves to have enough psi social mobility they of course will use it. As with whatever commodity counts for power in whatever culture.

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by Anthony

It's not necessarily all that bizarre; Traveller biotech is pretty bad. It probably just means some combination of environmental (rather than genetic) causes, and the genetic influences being extremely complex.

My impression from reading between the lines in the relevant GURPS book, is that nobles' children are more likely to develop psi because they live in a "noisy" psionic environment, while prole children live in a relatively "quiet" psionic environment. Without much stimulus the sense does not develop.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I can't see how one could really read minds with realistic technology. Stream of consciousness even when fully subvocalized is near gibberish to anyone else.

I did some thinking, more than a decade ago, about various forms of machine aided pseudo-psi (eventually, with great skill, doable even without machines), using subliminal communications and so forth. One of the ideas I had was that you'd "test" someone who exposing him or her to a subliminal stimuli, and noting the reaction (physiology and so forth). In theory, it'd be possible to "interrogate" someone that way, by showing them things that they are expected to react to in one particular fashion if they are good citizens, and so if they fail to react correctly in several cases, you know you've caught a thought-criminal.

If you can also measure brain wave patterns, when you do this kind of interrogation, then it becomes at least less implausible. It also helps if you can put the "subliminal" stimuli directly into the brain, instead of having to place it internally and then rely upon the senses to pick it up and subsequently on the subconscious mind to notice it.