cthia wrote:If "only the strong survive" then, unlike the Scrags, what about "the strong and truly highly intelligent?"
tlb wrote:Seems to me that the "Ukrainian super soldier" was given an intelligence boost, but as pointed out in the books a boost in intelligence often results in a boost in aggression. The problem with the "Scrags" is not that they were unintelligent, but that they were convinced of their superiority and so "too cool for school". Even otherwise intelligent people can be victims of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Those that emigrate to Torch will be forced to learn some humility and will end up applying their advantages.
cthia wrote:Can you put your finger on the appropriate textev? I think I accurately recall them portrayed - at the very least - as not being the sharpest styli in the box.
At any rate they do NOT approach being anywhere near "highly intelligent" like Alphas are.
Aside:
Every time I hear that "highly intelligent" people have "a boost in aggression" I think of Honor Harrington and my niece. Neither of which suffer fools. I think that a lot of highly intelligent people simply lack patience; they don't understand your disconnect.
When playing against my niece in chess, I oftentimes get, "Oh please, are you going to use THAT opening, again?"
But THAT opening is my favorite and strongest, against any other opponent. It is nothing but swiss cheese when facing her. But her attitude gets on my nerves sometimes. The little snot!
I think Sonja Hemphill suffers from the same defect. Beth definitely does too.
At any rate, I think your point about humility is spot on. I think the MA probably could apply a modification toward more humility, but I tend to think they would think that humility would be a liability.
From chapter 17 of
Ashes of Victory:
"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."
Perhaps your thinking came from this quote (or another like it) from the short sory "From the Highlands":
"Good for you, lad," chuckled Usher. "Okay, Victor. Forget everything you may have heard. The fundamental thing you've got to understand about the Scrags is that they're a bunch of clowns." He waved a hand. "Oh, yeah, sure. Murderous clowns. Perfect physical specimens, bred and trained to be supreme warriors. Eat nails, can walk through walls, blah blah blah. The problem is, the morons believe it too. Which means they're as careless as five year olds, and never think to plan for the inevitable screw-ups. Which there always are, in any plan—much less one as elaborate as this scheme of Durkheim's. So they're going to foul up, somewhere along the line, and Durkheim's going to be scrambling to patch the holes. The problem is, since he organized this entire thing outside of SS channels, he doesn't have a back-up team in place and ready to go. He'll have to jury-rig one. Which is something you never want to do in a situation as"—another dry chuckle—"as 'fraught with danger,' as they say, as this one."
Which is not really saying the they are unintelligent, only careless because of their conceited belief in their own superiority.
