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The minds of enhanced people
#22
(11-15-2016, 12:39 PM)QwertyYerty Wrote: If people who are Homo Superior come into enough people, it would be awkward at first. It would be like the X-men. They would probably live together in a community like a community for Superiors.

This assumes that superiors appear 'fully formed' in terragen society with all the enhanced traits and abilities they are described as having. This isn't likely and it's not how the development of technology or culture works. The early superiors will be barely improved over baselines. The type of modifications they'd get are something that wouldn't be massively obvious at an individual level but would be statistically significant at a population level. For example, let's say the first generation of superiors are 10% more intelligent/capable on average than baselines. In any type of test you do the superiors will score 10% better as a group. That's pretty great for them, in an academic setting that will likely mean superiors get one grade above baselines in most cases (i.e. if the baselines of the class average a B the superiors will average an A).

That matters and it's going to have social consequences, particularly if there is an organisational/cultural movement around the superior project (which unlike neb-tweaking was a coordinated effort from the start to make a unified set of enhancements). But it's not going to make superiors off-the-wall alien super-savants. Human society gets along pretty well with some people being C grade students and some being As. Having a group of people genetically predispositioned to getting in the latter category...well that's not much different to social class IRL but with much harder ability to move up or down.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be topical and there wouldn't be social issues to consider, just that it's a lot more subtle than you propose. At least in the early setting.

(11-15-2016, 01:01 PM)QwertyYerty Wrote: I doubt they would have a lot of social life with baselines and nearbaselines. It would be hard to relate to people who can't understand their own minds. They are both modos, but relating would be like kidergardeners vs. PHD's. They would have nothing to say to each other.

To be frank I'm a PhD and whilst I might admit to being of above average intelligence and knowing many peers for who that is true I disagree that results in a total social incompatibility with children. Not that the children analogy is perfect in any case. I do agree that cultures in OA will tend to form between groups of similar toposophy, but there is overlap in that between homo superior and homo sapiens.

Also it's worth keeping in mind that the large empires in the current setting are meta-cultures containing all manner of groups. Even if a superior was so mentally removed from a baseline that communication was difficult/painful there would likely be a handful of sophonts who overlap with each other linearly that can bridge the gulf between the two.

Think of it like toposophic degrees of separation; it might be extremely hard for you to have a direct relationship with the gelatinous blob you have for a neighbour but you have a couple of friends that lie between you and it on the human-blob spectrum and when you're all together good times happen.

(11-15-2016, 01:01 PM)QwertyYerty Wrote: It is no surprise Superiors rule society. No one else can think like they do. With all of the robots around, I'm surprised the superiors even bother with employing baselines. After 2 centuries, the robots would probably take up most jobs on Earth. I would think the cis lunar volume would locked up too since most humans except the vaccum adapted are pricey to put in space. Even in primitive 2016 robots rule space.

I definitely think people are gonna get their kids upgraded to compete in the job market, buy they are going to have a hard time in the job market with robots and vecs who work for next nothing. I would think that they would upgrade at the same rate, in which case vecs have the edge in development time. Also, AIs have a big advantage over nearbaselines, at least from what I have seen in the timeline.

Superiors don't rule in the current era, the archai do. And in the sephirotics and many other major powers there is a role in society for everyone. If you're talking about the early setting it's still not true because of the fact they weren't that much beyond baselines yet (as discussed earlier) and because there simply weren't that many of them.

Two other points regarding assumptions you seem to be making here:

1) That being a competitive individual in a market economy is important to most current era sophonts. It's not, outside of the NoCoZo markets are not a dominant form of economic organisation. They exist sure, but they're pretty niche. Your average sophont doesn't have to regularly operate within one because they live in a world in which automation and economic science has moved labour and resource circulation as far beyond the principles of market capitalism as market capitalism is beyond Mesopotamian ledger keeping.

2) That in the early era the numbers of the augmented and the sophistication of augments was as significant as in the later era. It wasn't.
OA Wish list:
  1. DNI
  2. Internal medical system
  3. A dormbot, because domestic chores suck!
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Messages In This Thread
The minds of enhanced people - by QwertyYerty - 11-11-2016, 01:43 PM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by QwertyYerty - 11-11-2016, 01:50 PM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by QwertyYerty - 11-11-2016, 01:59 PM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by Drashner1 - 11-11-2016, 02:39 PM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by Rynn - 11-11-2016, 05:26 PM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by stevebowers - 11-11-2016, 09:17 PM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by Bear - 11-12-2016, 06:35 AM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by Drashner1 - 11-13-2016, 01:40 AM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by selden - 11-12-2016, 10:57 PM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by Drashner1 - 11-13-2016, 01:46 AM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by Rynn - 11-13-2016, 04:04 AM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by Drashner1 - 11-13-2016, 08:59 AM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by Rynn - 11-13-2016, 05:56 AM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by Rynn - 11-13-2016, 08:50 AM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by Rynn - 11-13-2016, 09:12 AM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by Drashner1 - 11-14-2016, 01:39 AM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by Avengium - 11-14-2016, 09:48 PM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by Rynn - 11-14-2016, 09:52 PM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by QwertyYerty - 11-15-2016, 12:39 PM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by QwertyYerty - 11-15-2016, 01:01 PM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by Drashner1 - 11-15-2016, 01:18 PM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by Rynn - 11-16-2016, 06:14 PM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by Rynn - 11-15-2016, 10:34 PM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by selden - 11-16-2016, 08:47 AM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by Drashner1 - 11-16-2016, 01:00 PM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by stevebowers - 11-16-2016, 09:10 AM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by Jordanes - 09-21-2019, 08:53 PM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by Drashner1 - 09-23-2019, 11:03 PM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by Bear - 11-17-2016, 06:18 AM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by Bear - 11-17-2016, 06:22 AM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by Drashner1 - 11-17-2016, 01:08 PM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by Bear - 11-17-2016, 01:41 PM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by Rynn - 11-17-2016, 07:33 PM
RE: The minds of enhanced people - by stevebowers - 09-24-2019, 08:44 PM

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