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Honorverse ramblings and musings

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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by lyonheart   » Mon Jul 16, 2018 9:48 pm

lyonheart
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Posts: 4853
Joined: Tue Sep 08, 2009 11:27 pm

Hello Ywing14,

Thanks for the very cogent remark, which shows that I should have taken more time to be more detailed.

You're quite right the Chinese aren't doing these things so much for the benefit of the local Africans, but to expand the influence of their empire by securing rare mineral resources that the now very indebted country will be forced to provide at probably below market prices when the various interest charges and service fees are included.

But the Chinese are also milking their appearance as the only current serious foreign investor, since the cold war's over and Europe has largely exhausted its willingness to invest over seven decades of seeing very little real progress or return for its charity.

Africa should model itself more on the example of the Asian tigers, encouraging internal investment and industry, growing their middle classes, education etc; but who is actually doing that?

Hoping for the best, despite all the present evidence to the contrary.

L


ywing14 wrote:quote="lyonheart"Hi ldwechsler,

Excellent points as usual.

I think the situations are more unlike than like since Manticore is not interested in expanding its responsibilities and commitments further, that is letting its half of Silesia go when they're ready, possibly to be incorporated into the Andermanni as their borders fell pinched by elsewhere by the Talbot Sector, which after a few decades to a century or so, may seek more of a commonwealth status; associated with Manticore, but more independent.

It was the encroaching 'little England' attitude on the part of too many British politicians and Whitehall bureaucrats, many of them Rhodes scholars quite opposed to his vision of the empire and determined to transform or destroy it.

England having bankrupted itself in World War One, then failing to properly invest after the war was unable to financially support the second world war, and the US Congress made sure Lend-Lease compelled the British to sell off remaining assets at fire house prices, putting the empire at the mercy of ignorant or prejudiced American policy makers from FDR on down, who for over 20 years had little interest in understanding its value or preserving it.

Indeed they forced the European empires to plague their colonies by granting 'independence' long before any sane observer would agree they were ready, to prevent soviet liberation wars, but the result despite hundreds of billion$ in foreign aid since has not improved most African etc lives much in almost 70 years.

Few empires have had such friends.

Ironically, it appears the new Chinese empire may change some of that by investing more in local infrastructure and education, though it could take another generation or two to bring Africa to to the level of the Asian 'tigers'...

Despite the cost of the second war with Haven and then the League, its brevity (3 years and about 9 monthes) compared to the decade plus of the first war means far more can be devoted to rebuilding its orbital industry sooner, probably with more foreign investors, while the wormhole traffic continues to grow and the MMM has even larger markets to pay for it; rather unique eternal assets not shared by England, Egypt, or China.

Now RFC has apparently implied someplace a while back that eventually honorverse warships at least will be able to generate their own wormholes, reducing the importance of Manticore's junction etc, but given how many centuries starships last, it may be a millennia or two [given the energy requirements etc] before commerce could ignore it.

Given how plugged into the rest of the honorverse Manticore and Haven are [or will be again in Haven's case], and the effect of the streak drive on transit times (could we see fast freighters and passenger liners with streak drives in 20 years?) means the communications loop will soon shrink by at least 50%, so messages to Talbot may have answers in 3 weeks, and even less as research continues over the decades and centuries.

For decades Manticore has been the true communications and financial heart of the human star civilization, since it hears everything far faster than earth.

The fact the league newsies have largely ignored Manticore and its WHJ, rather than making it their chief news conduit with large permanent staffs, is just one more example of solly folly.

But given the reality of how generous Honor and the GA's terms were, compared the lies of E&I's shills, a far bigger ex-league newsie presence in Manticore and the SEM is quite predictable.

I expect them and the empire's own newsies to seek out and boldly discover all the empire's mistakes and judgement errors, that will largely keep both Haven and Manticore on the more honest and correct path, thanks to their legal protections.

Unless RFC gets bored with Manticore and Haven as the good guys, we should expect them to continue to clobber the MAlign.

Until next time, Manticore...


quote="kzt"China and Egypt changed in government and details of borders over millennia, but were pretty much still China and Egypt the whole time. So the argument that a nation cannot sustain itself for millennia is not as solid as you might think.quote


That gets trickier. The two nations had many governments. Egypt in particular was occupied one way or another for millennia.

China had changes but the 'mandarin' system kept a lot similar. Note also that it was a victim of conquest and imperialism at different times.quote

Given what it is costing African nations to finance those projects I'm not sure how much I agree with you. Many of the nations are taking out massive loans with the Chinese they can't hope to pay back. Additionally, they're shipping in mostly Chinese workers to support the projects so the locals aren't even earning any money.
Any snippet or post from RFC is good if not great!
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by kzt   » Mon Jul 16, 2018 10:04 pm

kzt
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ywing14 wrote:Given what it is costing African nations to finance those projects I'm not sure how much I agree with you. Many of the nations are taking out massive loans with the Chinese they can't hope to pay back. Additionally, they're shipping in mostly Chinese workers to support the projects so the locals aren't even earning any money.

Don't worry, China has a plan for how they can pay the debt off...
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by cthia   » Wed Jul 18, 2018 5:58 pm

cthia
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Posts: 14951
Joined: Thu Jan 23, 2014 1:10 pm

S.O.S.

A couple of questions. Is Alison Harrington a recipient of the Meyerdahl B mods? I know the Harrington Clan is. But Alison is originally a Chou. I would imagine that she is, since her and Alfred has such a special bond, which I always thought was due to their very compatible genetic mods.

Also, has textev stated if Honor's inability to regenerate is inherited from a specific parent? I think I recall it being due to Alfred? Which means Alfred can't regenerate either?

Can anyone recall where the explanation is that explains why the lack of someone to regenerate can't be repaired after the fact? I think it has to be repaired in vitro, like she promised Emily if she decided to have a child. And of course, has any of Honor's offspring inherited the inability is another of those million dollar questions.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by Vince   » Wed Jul 18, 2018 6:29 pm

Vince
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Posts: 1574
Joined: Fri Apr 09, 2010 11:43 pm

cthia wrote:S.O.S.

A couple of questions. Is Alison Harrington a recipient of the Meyerdahl B mods? I know the Harrington Clan is. But Alison is originally a Chou. I would imagine that she is, since her and Alfred has such a special bond, which I always thought was due to their very compatible genetic mods.

Also, has textev stated if Honor's inability to regenerate is inherited from a specific parent? I think I recall it being due to Alfred? Which means Alfred can't regenerate either?

Can anyone recall where the explanation is that explains why the lack of someone to regenerate can't be repaired after the fact? I think it has to be repaired in vitro, like she promised Emily if she decided to have a child. And of course, has any of Honor's offspring inherited the inability is another of those million dollar questions.

Allison has none of the Meyerdahl mods of any kind:
Ashes of Victory, Chapter 17 wrote:"I like to think so." Honor helped herself to another cookie and offered the plate to her mother, but Allison shook her head. Her genes lacked the Meyerdahl modification which produced Honor's accelerated metabolism. There were times, as she watched the gusto with which her daughter and husband shoveled in anything edible that crossed their paths without the least concern about calories, when she rather regretted that. On the other hand, she could go considerably longer between hunger pangs . . . and took a certain pleasure in sweetly reminding them of that point when they woke her up rummaging noisily through cabinets or refrigerators in the middle of the night.
***Snip***
"I do. I started out by looking at precisely what was involved in the Meyerdahl genetic mods. Most people don't realize it, but there were actually four different modification sets within the single project. By this time they've intermingled enough to lose some of their original differentiation, but like a lot of other 'locked' mods, they've managed to stay remarkably stable and dominant over the generations.
"You and your father are direct descendants of the Meyerdahl Beta mod. I won't go into all the specifics, which wouldn't mean a great deal to you, anyway, but most of what it gave you is exactly what all the Meyerdahl recipients got: more efficient muscles, enhanced reaction speed, stronger bones, tougher cardiovascular and respiratory systems, and so on. But the Meyerdahl Betas also got what they used to call an 'IQ enhancer.' We've learned enough more about human intelligence since then that reputable geneticists refuse to tinker with it except under extraordinary conditions. For the most part, you can only enhance one aspect of the entire complex of attributes we think of as 'intelligence' at the expense of other aspects. That isn't an absolute, but it works as a rule of thumb, and it's one reason I never mentioned my research to you or your dad. There was no reason to—and the . . . less successful efforts at engineered intelligence were one reason Old Earth's Final War was as bad as it was. And one reason humanity in general turned so strongly against the entire concept of engineering human genes at all."
"I take it," Honor said very carefully, "that your research didn't indicate that we were one of those 'less successful efforts'?"
"Oh, heavens, no! In fact, the Meyerdahl Betas and the Wintons have quite a lot in common. I don't have as complete a degree of access to the Winton records, of course, but even from the incomplete data in the public files, it's obvious that whoever designed the Winton modification for Roger Winton's parents was remarkably successful. As was the team that put together the Meyerdahl Beta package. I'd like to say they succeeded because they were so good at their jobs, but I rather doubt that was the case, particularly in light of their relatively primitive understanding of just what they were tinkering with. I think that, as we geneticists like to put it when discussing the vast evolutionary sweep of upward human development, they lucked out.
"The really unsuccessful efforts, on the other hand, tended to show very high levels of aggressiveness, like the 'super soldiers' on Old Earth, and weed themselves out of the genotype. As a matter of fact, that aggressiveness was the most common nasty side effect of intelligence modification projects. Some of the recipients verged uncomfortably closely on sociopathic personalities, without the sort of moral governors people need in a healthy society. And when you coupled that with an awareness that they were designed to be (and usually were) quite a lot 'smarter,' at least in certain, specific ways, than the normals around them, they started acting like a pride of hexapumas quarreling over who should boss all those inferior normals about until they got around to picking out lunch."
She shrugged and ran the fingers of both hands through her hair, combing the long strands the sea breeze had begun to whip back from her face.
"Then too, a lot of the IQ enhancements, in particular, simply tended to fade into the general background of the unmodified without showing any special advantages," she went on. "As I said, it usually worked out that the designers wound up enhancing one aspect of intelligence at the expense of one or more others, and what happened most often was that those who succeeded simply learned to use their enhanced abilities to compensate for the areas in which they'd taken a loss in ability.
"In the case of the Meyerdahl Betas, however, the effort actually worked, by and large. One thing you should remember, Honor, is that evolution always wins in the end, but it does it by conserving the designs that happen to be able to survive, not by going out and deliberately creating leaps forward. In fact, I've always disliked using the word 'forward' in terms of evolution at all. We assign an arbitrary valuation to the changes we consider positive and call those 'leaps forward,' but nature doesn't care about that, except in the statistical sense that more individuals with Mutation A survive than those with Mutation B or C. In many circumstances, however, the enhanced aggressiveness we see as a destructive side effect could be a positive survival trait. In a high-tech society, with high-tech weaponry, and surrounded by vast numbers of people who didn't share that aggressiveness—and who were seen as inferior by many who did—it had . . . negative implications, let us say. Under other circumstances, like a colony on a world with serious external threats against which it could be focused, it might mean the difference between survival and extinction.
"But even assuming we can all agree on what does constitute a natural 'leap forward,' those sorts of things happen only very occasionally. And we only know about the instances in which it happened and was conserved . . . which is approximately what happened in the case of your ancestors.
"I ran the Harrington intelligence test results against the base norms for their populations, both here and back on Meyerdahl, and the evidence is very clear. So far, I've found only three Harringtons who placed below the ninety-fifth percentile in general intelligence, and well over eighty-five percent of those I've been able to check placed in the ninety-nine-plus percentile. You tend to be very smart people, and if I hadn't wound up in the same select company according to my own test scores, I'd probably come all over inferior feeling or something of the sort."
Boldface and underlined text is my emphasis.
-------------------------------------------------------------
History does not repeat itself so much as it echoes.
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by ywing14   » Wed Jul 18, 2018 7:23 pm

ywing14
Captain (Junior Grade)

Posts: 388
Joined: Thu Nov 30, 2017 9:40 pm

lyonheart wrote:Hello Ywing14,

Thanks for the very cogent remark, which shows that I should have taken more time to be more detailed.

You're quite right the Chinese aren't doing these things so much for the benefit of the local Africans, but to expand the influence of their empire by securing rare mineral resources that the now very indebted country will be forced to provide at probably below market prices when the various interest charges and service fees are included.

But the Chinese are also milking their appearance as the only current serious foreign investor, since the cold war's over and Europe has largely exhausted its willingness to invest over seven decades of seeing very little real progress or return for its charity.

Africa should model itself more on the example of the Asian tigers, encouraging internal investment and industry, growing their middle classes, education etc; but who is actually doing that?

Hoping for the best, despite all the present evidence to the contrary.

L


ywing14 wrote:quote="lyonheart"Hi ldwechsler,

Excellent points as usual.

I think the situations are more unlike than like since Manticore is not interested in expanding its responsibilities and commitments further, that is letting its half of Silesia go when they're ready, possibly to be incorporated into the Andermanni as their borders fell pinched by elsewhere by the Talbot Sector, which after a few decades to a century or so, may seek more of a commonwealth status; associated with Manticore, but more independent.

It was the encroaching 'little England' attitude on the part of too many British politicians and Whitehall bureaucrats, many of them Rhodes scholars quite opposed to his vision of the empire and determined to transform or destroy it.

England having bankrupted itself in World War One, then failing to properly invest after the war was unable to financially support the second world war, and the US Congress made sure Lend-Lease compelled the British to sell off remaining assets at fire house prices, putting the empire at the mercy of ignorant or prejudiced American policy makers from FDR on down, who for over 20 years had little interest in understanding its value or preserving it.

Indeed they forced the European empires to plague their colonies by granting 'independence' long before any sane observer would agree they were ready, to prevent soviet liberation wars, but the result despite hundreds of billion$ in foreign aid since has not improved most African etc lives much in almost 70 years.

Few empires have had such friends.

Ironically, it appears the new Chinese empire may change some of that by investing more in local infrastructure and education, though it could take another generation or two to bring Africa to to the level of the Asian 'tigers'...

Despite the cost of the second war with Haven and then the League, its brevity (3 years and about 9 monthes) compared to the decade plus of the first war means far more can be devoted to rebuilding its orbital industry sooner, probably with more foreign investors, while the wormhole traffic continues to grow and the MMM has even larger markets to pay for it; rather unique eternal assets not shared by England, Egypt, or China.

Now RFC has apparently implied someplace a while back that eventually honorverse warships at least will be able to generate their own wormholes, reducing the importance of Manticore's junction etc, but given how many centuries starships last, it may be a millennia or two [given the energy requirements etc] before commerce could ignore it.

Given how plugged into the rest of the honorverse Manticore and Haven are [or will be again in Haven's case], and the effect of the streak drive on transit times (could we see fast freighters and passenger liners with streak drives in 20 years?) means the communications loop will soon shrink by at least 50%, so messages to Talbot may have answers in 3 weeks, and even less as research continues over the decades and centuries.

For decades Manticore has been the true communications and financial heart of the human star civilization, since it hears everything far faster than earth.

The fact the league newsies have largely ignored Manticore and its WHJ, rather than making it their chief news conduit with large permanent staffs, is just one more example of solly folly.

But given the reality of how generous Honor and the GA's terms were, compared the lies of E&I's shills, a far bigger ex-league newsie presence in Manticore and the SEM is quite predictable.

I expect them and the empire's own newsies to seek out and boldly discover all the empire's mistakes and judgement errors, that will largely keep both Haven and Manticore on the more honest and correct path, thanks to their legal protections.

Unless RFC gets bored with Manticore and Haven as the good guys, we should expect them to continue to clobber the MAlign.

Until next time, Manticore...


quote="kzt"China and Egypt changed in government and details of borders over millennia, but were pretty much still China and Egypt the whole time. So the argument that a nation cannot sustain itself for millennia is not as solid as you might think.quote


That gets trickier. The two nations had many governments. Egypt in particular was occupied one way or another for millennia.

China had changes but the 'mandarin' system kept a lot similar. Note also that it was a victim of conquest and imperialism at different times.quote

Given what it is costing African nations to finance those projects I'm not sure how much I agree with you. Many of the nations are taking out massive loans with the Chinese they can't hope to pay back. Additionally, they're shipping in mostly Chinese workers to support the projects so the locals aren't even earning any money.


Oh I agree, I think what China is doing is an excellent strategy from their point of view and it's already paid dividends in places Sri Lanka where they've gotten control of the port since they were having loan issues.

As for Africa developing, I'm not sure how much the Tiger model would work. African nations have way to many internal divisions right now. Frankly, I'm not a European and hope not to offend those who are on the board but Europe should be the ones investing there. European nations created most of the internal divisions on the African continent. Morally I think they've got an obligation to assist the nations there.
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by ywing14   » Wed Jul 18, 2018 7:24 pm

ywing14
Captain (Junior Grade)

Posts: 388
Joined: Thu Nov 30, 2017 9:40 pm

kzt wrote:
ywing14 wrote:Given what it is costing African nations to finance those projects I'm not sure how much I agree with you. Many of the nations are taking out massive loans with the Chinese they can't hope to pay back. Additionally, they're shipping in mostly Chinese workers to support the projects so the locals aren't even earning any money.

Don't worry, China has a plan for how they can pay the debt off...


Haha you've got that right and it's already working.
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by cthia   » Wed Jul 18, 2018 7:56 pm

cthia
Fleet Admiral

Posts: 14951
Joined: Thu Jan 23, 2014 1:10 pm

kzt wrote:
ywing14 wrote:Given what it is costing African nations to finance those projects I'm not sure how much I agree with you. Many of the nations are taking out massive loans with the Chinese they can't hope to pay back. Additionally, they're shipping in mostly Chinese workers to support the projects so the locals aren't even earning any money.

Don't worry, China has a plan for how they can pay the debt off...
ywing14 wrote:Haha you've got that right and it's already working.



Same as Japan regarding America. At the end of the war, a Japanese military officer stated "I'm afraid the way to beat America is from within." And they are doing it. Asia is buying up America.

I have a very close friend who owns a floor of the One57 building in NY. He has been approached by a Saudi and several Japanese business men to sell. "When you are offered two to three times your investment, it's hard to say no. Especially considering I bought it for the investment."

Two to three times one of those entire floor lux condos is a lot of dough.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by cthia   » Wed Jul 18, 2018 8:46 pm

cthia
Fleet Admiral

Posts: 14951
Joined: Thu Jan 23, 2014 1:10 pm

Vince wrote:
cthia wrote:S.O.S.

A couple of questions. Is Alison Harrington a recipient of the Meyerdahl B mods? I know the Harrington Clan is. But Alison is originally a Chou. I would imagine that she is, since her and Alfred has such a special bond, which I always thought was due to their very compatible genetic mods.

Also, has textev stated if Honor's inability to regenerate is inherited from a specific parent? I think I recall it being due to Alfred? Which means Alfred can't regenerate either?

Can anyone recall where the explanation is that explains why the lack of someone to regenerate can't be repaired after the fact? I think it has to be repaired in vitro, like she promised Emily if she decided to have a child. And of course, has any of Honor's offspring inherited the inability is another of those million dollar questions.

Allison has none of the Meyerdahl mods of any kind:
Ashes of Victory, Chapter 17 wrote:"I like to think so." Honor helped herself to another cookie and offered the plate to her mother, but Allison shook her head. Her genes lacked the Meyerdahl modification which produced Honor's accelerated metabolism. There were times, as she watched the gusto with which her daughter and husband shoveled in anything edible that crossed their paths without the least concern about calories, when she rather regretted that. On the other hand, she could go considerably longer between hunger pangs . . . and took a certain pleasure in sweetly reminding them of that point when they woke her up rummaging noisily through cabinets or refrigerators in the middle of the night.
***Snip***
"I do. I started out by looking at precisely what was involved in the Meyerdahl genetic mods. Most people don't realize it, but there were actually four different modification sets within the single project. By this time they've intermingled enough to lose some of their original differentiation, but like a lot of other 'locked' mods, they've managed to stay remarkably stable and dominant over the generations.
"You and your father are direct descendants of the Meyerdahl Beta mod. I won't go into all the specifics, which wouldn't mean a great deal to you, anyway, but most of what it gave you is exactly what all the Meyerdahl recipients got: more efficient muscles, enhanced reaction speed, stronger bones, tougher cardiovascular and respiratory systems, and so on. But the Meyerdahl Betas also got what they used to call an 'IQ enhancer.' We've learned enough more about human intelligence since then that reputable geneticists refuse to tinker with it except under extraordinary conditions. For the most part, you can only enhance one aspect of the entire complex of attributes we think of as 'intelligence' at the expense of other aspects. That isn't an absolute, but it works as a rule of thumb, and it's one reason I never mentioned my research to you or your dad. There was no reason to—and the . . . less successful efforts at engineered intelligence were one reason Old Earth's Final War was as bad as it was. And one reason humanity in general turned so strongly against the entire concept of engineering human genes at all."
"I take it," Honor said very carefully, "that your research didn't indicate that we were one of those 'less successful efforts'?"
"Oh, heavens, no! In fact, the Meyerdahl Betas and the Wintons have quite a lot in common. I don't have as complete a degree of access to the Winton records, of course, but even from the incomplete data in the public files, it's obvious that whoever designed the Winton modification for Roger Winton's parents was remarkably successful. As was the team that put together the Meyerdahl Beta package. I'd like to say they succeeded because they were so good at their jobs, but I rather doubt that was the case, particularly in light of their relatively primitive understanding of just what they were tinkering with. I think that, as we geneticists like to put it when discussing the vast evolutionary sweep of upward human development, they lucked out.
"The really unsuccessful efforts, on the other hand, tended to show very high levels of aggressiveness, like the 'super soldiers' on Old Earth, and weed themselves out of the genotype. As a matter of fact, that aggressiveness was the most common nasty side effect of intelligence modification projects. Some of the recipients verged uncomfortably closely on sociopathic personalities, without the sort of moral governors people need in a healthy society. And when you coupled that with an awareness that they were designed to be (and usually were) quite a lot 'smarter,' at least in certain, specific ways, than the normals around them, they started acting like a pride of hexapumas quarreling over who should boss all those inferior normals about until they got around to picking out lunch."
She shrugged and ran the fingers of both hands through her hair, combing the long strands the sea breeze had begun to whip back from her face.
"Then too, a lot of the IQ enhancements, in particular, simply tended to fade into the general background of the unmodified without showing any special advantages," she went on. "As I said, it usually worked out that the designers wound up enhancing one aspect of intelligence at the expense of one or more others, and what happened most often was that those who succeeded simply learned to use their enhanced abilities to compensate for the areas in which they'd taken a loss in ability.
"In the case of the Meyerdahl Betas, however, the effort actually worked, by and large. One thing you should remember, Honor, is that evolution always wins in the end, but it does it by conserving the designs that happen to be able to survive, not by going out and deliberately creating leaps forward. In fact, I've always disliked using the word 'forward' in terms of evolution at all. We assign an arbitrary valuation to the changes we consider positive and call those 'leaps forward,' but nature doesn't care about that, except in the statistical sense that more individuals with Mutation A survive than those with Mutation B or C. In many circumstances, however, the enhanced aggressiveness we see as a destructive side effect could be a positive survival trait. In a high-tech society, with high-tech weaponry, and surrounded by vast numbers of people who didn't share that aggressiveness—and who were seen as inferior by many who did—it had . . . negative implications, let us say. Under other circumstances, like a colony on a world with serious external threats against which it could be focused, it might mean the difference between survival and extinction.
"But even assuming we can all agree on what does constitute a natural 'leap forward,' those sorts of things happen only very occasionally. And we only know about the instances in which it happened and was conserved . . . which is approximately what happened in the case of your ancestors.
"I ran the Harrington intelligence test results against the base norms for their populations, both here and back on Meyerdahl, and the evidence is very clear. So far, I've found only three Harringtons who placed below the ninety-fifth percentile in general intelligence, and well over eighty-five percent of those I've been able to check placed in the ninety-nine-plus percentile. You tend to be very smart people, and if I hadn't wound up in the same select company according to my own test scores, I'd probably come all over inferior feeling or something of the sort."
Boldface and underlined text is my emphasis.


Thanks Vince, I was correct in my first thought that Alison may not be of Meyerdahl stock. I was only interested because she and Alfred are so genetically compatible, as were Albrecht and Evelina. It is logical to wonder what genetic soup is so compatible with Meyerdahl. So much so that Alfred and Alison had formed such a strong "psychic" bond. Funny there's no mention of Albrecht and Evelina having any kind of psychic bond, which I personally would expect, since RFC stated that they were chosen for their genetic compatibility.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by cthia   » Thu Jul 19, 2018 12:07 pm

cthia
Fleet Admiral

Posts: 14951
Joined: Thu Jan 23, 2014 1:10 pm

One can only wonder what abilities Honor's offspring would have developed if she had intensified her genetic soup by marrying another Meyerdahl B mod. Or even followed in father's footsteps and swam in whatever quite compatible genetic soup is represented by Alison.

Instead of Hamish's plain old generic soup. :cry:

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by Dauntless   » Thu Jul 19, 2018 1:33 pm

Dauntless
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Posts: 1070
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2015 12:54 pm
Location: United Kingdom

as the snippets of UH make clear (look up the one of honor and the kids at dinner)

Roul is already very gifted, enough to have his treecat nannies very interested/curious as to how he will develop.
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