10 KiB
Question about my book, Set in Stone. Uplift or Downlift?
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Author: u/Farmerbob1 Level 1 author*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/5f2av5/question_about_my_book_set_in_stone_uplift_or/
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Score: 14
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Created: 2016-11-26T23:31:17
Post:
Do you consider the book to be human uplift, or human downlift?
Personally, I have always considered the story to be a downlift story, but I realized today in a fridge moment that it could be seen as either uplift or downlift, depending on how you define the terms.
Technology was stripped away, to a preindustrial level, but science, math, and technologies that could be maintained without metal or computing were mostly preserved.
At the same time, human society was nudged and bumped fairly aggressively into a model where primate aggression would be genetically suppressed, partly by an outside force controlling violence laws, and partly by humans themselves as they began to embrace the new societal norms in something like a global Stockholm Syndrome.
For those of you who have read it, what's your take on it? Uplift, or Downlift?
Comments:
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+7] Mouse Army (47 minutes later)
Never thought of it in either of those terms. But... usually breeding docile slave races is a serious sign of downlifting.
u/Farmerbob1 [+3] Level 1 author (an hour later)
Saying a slave race is being bred in the book is a bit of overreach, I think? It is fairly dark if you look at it, but not quite that dark? Is it?
Albert's efforts managed to improve overall mental capability, overall (natural) health, and managed to maintain humanity's ability to be violent in defense if necessary.
The fact that it was a program forced on humanity does hold all sorts of negative connotations, and the initial implementation was pretty horrific for the first few generations.
I'm nearly finished with my current writing project, which will let me start editing Set in Stone again. I'll definitely need to consider addressing some of that darkness a bit more. It is touched on, but it could be touched a bit more directly, in a few more places.
u/traverseda [+5] With dread but cautious optimism (2 hours later)
Albert's efforts managed to improve overall mental capability, overall (natural) health
Did they though? I'm presuming neural implants where a technology that existed, and tools can do a lot to improve mental capability, as can access to books. I'll accept that we've seen an improvement in raw g factor, but I expect there's been some pretty huge decreases in the amount of statistical understanding in the population, or at the very least a decrease in all kinds of research.
Since Albert is burning sanity/stability to pull off miracles, he's not making up for that lack of research.
Also, what other writing project?
u/Farmerbob1 [+5] Level 1 author (3 hours later)
Good stuff here. Insights like this help me understand what others see, and give me the opportunity to address variances in what I was hoping would be seen.
Neural enhancements were not considered in the books, but they were probably around, to some degree. When the human race is released from Albert's project, there is no reason why humans couldn't resume using them.
In fact, nothing that was once known is gone. Albert has stored all human knowledge that he encountered, and not just in his own active memory.
Knowledge-wise, humanity was basically just put in a corner for a five-thousand-year time out. When Albert thinks people are sane enough as a race, they get all their toys back, at a rate far more accelerated than they got them the first time around.
u/traverseda [+5] With dread but cautious optimism (6 hours later)
I've thought about it a bit more.
I'm not entirely convinced that humans aren't in a local-maximum intelligence wise. That is, I have a suspicion that we got close to as smart as we could be via the one particular evolutionary pressure that got us this far. It's not like pigs where there's a lot of low-hanging fruit still available, as far as improving intelligence goes.
That's why I think memes are more important then genes. Cultural teachings and educational traditions are one of the few paths to improvement we have available.
I guess that's why I'm unsympathetic to the argument that Albert improved general intelligence. I think selection pressure can move the average up for a while, but as soon as that pressure goes away it's going to shift back down.
Now if it was a cultural improvement, I'd buy that a bit more. Maybe during editing show the colonists as less competent? It seems like that culture the current generation has is the old culture, with a few changes. If you can show that they've improved...
u/Farmerbob1 [+3] Level 1 author (13 hours later)
The aspect of humanity that Albert was most concerned about was aggressiveness. In animals, what he did would be called domestication. The Russians have shown that with some animals (foxes) it is possible to rapidly domesticate a wild population. (If you have not read about the fox domestication experiment, do so, it's fascinating.) Canines, however, are pack animals that have millions of years of cooperation guiding their social and genetic development. Humans are not. Primates are not as cooperative (EDIT word choice) as canines. Farm animals are also subject to genetic "mean-ness" Temperament is at least partly genetic.
Humanity ended itself in the home system for all intents and purposes shortly after the colony ships left Earth. A single colonist nearly destroyed the population on route to Nirvana.
On the other hand, Nirvanans went nearly a thousand years without a war, in a preindustrial society. I'd call that temperamental improvement. Rational problem solving that avoids violence except when there is no other way to preserve the life of friends and family. Isn't this at least anecdotal evidence of improvement?
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+3] Mouse Army (14 hours later)
Its highly likely not true that we are evolutionary in any stable IQ/g equilibrium. See the case of Ashkenazi Jews. Any selective breeding program for stable (eg. non-autism-correlated) high g would be miles better.
u/traverseda [+2] With dread but cautious optimism (17 hours later)
I'm pretty close to entirely convinced. Although as I understand it there are probably artificial selection pressures in that community that keep things up, and it is a big bundle of memes as well as genes. I don't think that's a very good case.
How do you control for the theory that their culture is just better at instilling intelligence in people?
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+2] Mouse Army (17 hours later)
Without having delved into the studies re: pure g vs culture myself, I vaguely remember discussions back on lesswrong where people who did are convinced that its not just culture.
Then theres also the whole modell of how selective breeding works, and the fact that with any selective breeding program humans so far have run, we have achieved to concentrate natural traits by multiple sigmas in a very short time - you'd need VERY good and VERY costly explanations in terms of bayesian inference why intelligence is the one single trait thats not breedable.
Lastly, an interview podcast by James Miller with Steve Hsu, on of the worlds top geneticists in regards to intelligence. He says, yes, of course we can make humans much more intelligent by flipping a few hundred genes.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/future-strategist/id1090750347?mt=2 Podcast 10, Steve Hsu
u/traverseda [+3] With dread but cautious optimism (a day later)
I'm pretty close to entirely convinced [that intelligence is in large part genetic]
Just to clarify. Not that I don't appreciate the extra sources.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+2] Mouse Army (a day later)
Ah, yes. The podcast was pretty good, I recommend it even if you are convinced.
u/Farmerbob1 [+2] Level 1 author (3 hours later)
Oh, the other project is 'Business as Usual' a fanfic where Vlad Taltos from Stephen Brust's Jhereg series crosses to Wildbow's Worm universe. I am very near completion. The next chapter to be written (hopefully tomorrow) will be the final conflict. Then a epilogue to clean up a few things.
Working 80+ hour weeks for nearly a year doesn't leave much time for writing, and when I do have time to write, a lot of times, I want to do other things.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+2] Mouse Army (14 hours later)
I mostly meant that I hadn't analyzed it under uplift criteria, but docility = slave races is an incredibly established trope. Since the humans also have a great number of restrictions in their personal live due to albert, the novel read to me much more as dealing with "being alberts slave" than as "here is all the interesting stuff that results from being uplifted".
This doesnt even contradict literature precursors; Brins Uplift-Universe has the uplifted species acting as servant race to their uplifters for millions of years before emancipation.
u/ulyssessword [+5] (5 hours later)
I usually use uplift/downlift to refer to plots, not settings. For example, Accelerando by Charles Stross is uplift fiction, but the Culture books aren't.
By that standard, Set in Stone is just barely uplift, but not enough for it to come up in conversation.
u/CarVac [+3] (a day later)
I just finished reading it today, and I would have to say it's really not much of either; no visible change is effected over the course of the story. The setting is sure technologically repressed, but that's prior to the events of the story.
u/Empiricist_or_not [+2] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (20 hours later)
It's an uplift, a cultural one, and just one neither I or Heinlein would would care to live in, but from the natives and Albert's perspective, we are barbarians/undomesticated animals; take from that what you will.
u/None [+2] (3 days later)
I stopped around chapter 10, I think. For me it is hard downlift.