How human are humans?

[Nyotarules]

This is why Star Trek's hostility to genetic engineering is so incongruous. In most respects, ST has always been a franchise that's optimistic about the potential of technological progress, rather than giving into kneejerk Luddite fears. Okay, TOS had the same kneejerk paranoia toward artificial intelligence, but TNG corrected that. And really, DS9 critiqued the fear of genetic engineering even while it established it, because Bashir proved that the fears were unfounded.

Also the hostility to genetic engineering is based on what happened to humans on Earth in the past yet the restriction seems to apply to all Federation species. Talk about taking a hammer to crack a nut and I doubt other species will allow human policies to dictate what happens to their race. Makes the franchise even more Terrancentric than it needs to be for suspension of belief in this fictional society.

 

[Doom Shepherd]

I'm not a fan of GMO in food, either. It's not a coincidence that so many of the health issues have become so prevalent in recent years... lactose intolerance, allergies to EVERYTHING, cancer in pretty much every family.

Utter and complete nonsense. We only get these things because so much of everything ELSE that kills us has been removed. Nobody dies of smallpox anymore, or polio, or tuberculosis. barely anyone even dies of diabetes any more. Now, we live long enough for cancer or heard disease to kill us instead.

Lactose intolerance isn't NEW, the normal state of humanity is to be lactose intolerant. Lactose tolerance as a trait only evolved a few thousand years ago.

GMOs are FAR superior to conventional breeding practices. Conventional hybridization = mashing two sets of genes together at random and HOPING you get something beneficial with no downside.
GMO= intentionally and carefully selecting the best possible genes to create the desired trait AND leave out any undesirable qualities.

In gun terms, hybridization = "spray and pray," while GMO= "being a sniper."

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Utter and complete nonsense. We only get these things because so much of everything ELSE that kills us has been removed. Nobody dies of smallpox anymore, or polio, or tuberculosis. barely anyone even dies of diabetes any more. Now, we live long enough for cancer or heard disease to kill us instead.

Lactose intolerance isn't NEW, the normal state of humanity is to be lactose intolerant. Lactose tolerance as a trait only evolved a few thousand years ago.

GMOs are FAR superior to conventional breeding practices. Conventional hybridization = mashing two sets of genes together at random and HOPING you get something beneficial with no downside.
GMO= intentionally and carefully selecting the best possible genes to create the desired trait AND leave out any undesirable qualities.

In gun terms, hybridization = "spray and pray," while GMO= "being a sniper."

Yeah, GMO certainly isn’t responsible for the health scare trend of the week, but GMO is being used to create food that’s more profitable, not more healthy. We don’t fully understand all the chemical cofactors that help your body absorb and utilize vitamins the right way. Changing the chemical composition to make it a more packable shape or look prettier on the shelf or make animal meat more tender could be stripping those subtle chemical combinations that make vitamins effective, the same way fortified white bread isn’t as healthy as whole grain just because it has all the marquee vitamins added back in.

 

[Christopher]

Of course any technology needs to be used carefully and responsibly, and its abuses need to be addressed. But it is the height of irrationality to confuse that with the entire technology being fundamentally evil. The good the technology can do when used responsibly usually outweighs the harm it can do -- which is why we've gone on using fire for half a million years despite all the lives and property it's destroyed.

That's why DS9's assertion of an absolute Federation-wide ban on genetic engineering was such a terrible idea. It just doesn't make sense. It's irrationally technophobic, and that's not the way the Federation usually operates. And it's utterly implausible that the policy would be based on the fear of something that happened 400 years earlier, long before the lifetime of anyone making the laws. (Although the Augment Crisis of the 22nd century makes that a little more plausible. I think I explained in one of my Rise of the Federation novels that the early Federation adopted the ban to appease the Klingons, since they might go to war with the UFP if they thought we were working to create Augment soldiers.)

 

[Farscape One]

I look at technology as being ultimately untrustworthy because of one simple truth. It is created by humans, and humans have proven, on the whole, to be untrustworthy. It is far too tempting and easy to abuse advances.

If we were so responsible and trustworthy, why do we have stockpiles of diseases and plagues created by us in labs? Why do we have bombs that are weaponized versions of nuclear energy?

For all the good we may have done, we also have just created easier ways to kill many, many more people much more quickly.

 

[Kor]

The humans we see in Trek are not just polymaths, able to read alien control panels, undertake complex warp theory calculations etc but also beat the tar out of a Klingon in physical combat.
Do we just put it down to most characters being in Starfleet, the best of the best, with access to a fine education, good diet, exercise and artificial gravity? Or is there something else going on?

ALL Trek humans' ancestors survived World War III, the Eugenic Wars and Col. Green exterminating the radiation sick. Therefore the humans of the Trek universe are actually descended from eugenically selected, genetically enhanced ubermensch and should be a lot more chill to Bashir.
Was this ever addressed?

Humans in the future must have higher average intelligence than the current population.

Kor

 

[Christopher]

Humans in the future must have higher average intelligence than the current population.

There's no reason to think that. After all, the humans we see in Star Trek aren't a statistically average sample; they're almost all members of Starfleet, and thus are among the smartest, most capable members of humanity.

Not to mention that there's a difference between potential and realization. There are a lot of people who have the potential for intelligence but don't get to develop it fully because of inadequate schooling, poverty, discrimination, inadequate nutrition and health care, etc. None of those conditions would still apply in the Federation, so a much higher percentage of the population would be able to develop their full potential.

 

[rahullak]

Humans in the future must have higher average intelligence than the current population.

Kor

Is that necessarily so though? After all, by taking over from biological evolution through Universal Human Rights and having everyone procreate and live happy healthy lives, have we not removed the possibility of natural selection improving average intelligences? Sure those genetic characteristics that cause birth problems would be weeded out, but not those characteristics that allow average or below average intelligence as such.

 

[Farscape One]

Humans in the future must have higher average intelligence than the current population.

Kor

Given the people I usually encounter don't seem to have a lick of sense, that's setting the bar low.

 

[Christopher]

Is that necessarily so though? After all, by taking over from biological evolution through Universal Human Rights and having everyone procreate and live happy healthy lives, have we not removed the possibility of natural selection improving average intelligences? Sure those genetic characteristics that cause birth problems would be weeded out, but not those characteristics that allow average or below average intelligence as such.

As I just said, it's simplistic to treat genetics as the sole determinant of intelligence. Heck, it's increasingly clear these days that it's simplistic to treat genetics as the sole determinant of any trait, because we're discovering how important epigenetic and developmental factors are. And frankly, equating intelligence with superior genes is the rhetoric of racists.

Brains are like muscles. Your genes may affect how much potential you start out with, but how much you develop that potential is a function of how much you nourish and use your brain (or muscles) during childhood and adulthood. That variation in use and development can cancel out much or all of the variation in genetic potential.

Also, natural selection would only improve intelligence in a situation where improving intelligence increased reproductive rates. Natural selection is not some magic hand pushing life forms "upward," it's just a stochastic result of statistics -- those traits that increase reproductive success get reproduced more successfully. There's no reason to think that intellectual capacity alone would make humans more likely to reproduce. Not to mention that it would take tens of millennia for any noticeable change to manifest, so it's nonsense to talk about evolution as a relevant factor on the time scale of Star Trek.

 

[Doom Shepherd]

Yeah, GMO certainly isn’t responsible for the health scare trend of the week, but GMO is being used to create food that’s more profitable, not more healthy. We don’t fully understand all the chemical cofactors that help your body absorb and utilize vitamins the right way. Changing the chemical composition to make it a more packable shape or look prettier on the shelf or make animal meat more tender could be stripping those subtle chemical combinations that make vitamins effective, the same way fortified white bread isn’t as healthy as whole grain just because it has all the marquee vitamins added back in.

So much wrong in so few sentences.
GMO is being used to breed crops that are resistant to viruses, like the cassava, which is a staple plant in Africa, but much of the crop is lost each year due to two viruses which are hard to defeat.
GMO is being used to breed crops that are resistant to pests, like the corn borer worm. Reducing food waste.
GMO is being used to breed crops that take a longer time to go bad, or (in the case of non-browning apples, take a longer time to LOOK like they’re going bad), reducing food waste.
GMO is being used to breed crops that will grow where the “pure” crop could not, thereby allowing poorer nations to have food security rather than relying on white people’s leftovers.
GMO is being used to add vitamins to crops (see “Golden rice”)

There remains precisely zero evidence that any GMO food is “less healthy” than its more expensive “organic” alternative. Additionally, there are no regulations requiring the testing of new crop strains produced by non-GM means, such as cross-breeding or induced mutation; thus, non-GM varieties are not tested at all. Historically, this has resulted in the disastrous release into the marketplace of the Lenape potato, among other mistakes.

 

[1001001]

While it's understandable that a thread topic like this would veer off into more general subjects (like IQ, racism, genetics, GMO's) I'm afraid the discussion is getting pretty far away from Star Trek. This forum is specifically for topics related to Trek, and should be kept as such.

A more general topic about evolution, intelligence, and genetics would be better served in Miscellaneous.

Everyone please stay within the boundaries of this forum from now on.

Thanks

 

[dswynne1]

Yeah, GMO certainly isn’t responsible for the health scare trend of the week, but GMO is being used to create food that’s more profitable, not more healthy. We don’t fully understand all the chemical cofactors that help your body absorb and utilize vitamins the right way. Changing the chemical composition to make it a more packable shape or look prettier on the shelf or make animal meat more tender could be stripping those subtle chemical combinations that make vitamins effective, the same way fortified white bread isn’t as healthy as whole grain just because it has all the marquee vitamins added back in.

What should be more of a concern is how hormones and pesticides were used over the past 50 years, and how those practices may or may not have had an effect human development. Example: females and males maturing physically at a faster rate than a previous generation. Another example: rates of obesity sky-rocketing. If anything, GMOs should be seen as the least concern, but not for the health aspect; GMOs should be of concern because of how these things are patented to the point where corporations can arm-strong the family farm.

 

[Christopher]

If anything, GMOs should be seen as the least concern, but not for the health aspect; GMOs should be of concern because of how these things are patented to the point where corporations can arm-strong the family farm.

I'd say, rather, that corporations are the things we should be concerned about.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I sense a last call coming to spin this off into "The GMOs Thread" in Miscellaneous...might as well be the one to deliver it.

 

[Timo]

...So, instead of in-before-lock, I'd like to ponder on an on-topic aspect, even if tangential.

Why should we object to the UFP being irrational on a single issue (in this case, the Augments and the technologies that led to them)? Isn't it the very essence of verisimilitude that real civilizations always have their blind spots and their obsessions?

Rationality has little to do with the cultural hang-ups of Starfleet, say: they don't seem to like biological warfare much, say, even though going for it would be the rational, non-technophobic thing in the Star Trek environment where alien cultures don't have such hang-ups. But feeling irrationally uncomfortable about biological weapons (while being fine with photon torpedoes and General Orders 24) is one of those things that makes the heroes human. Or at least a bit more human.

Surely the civilian side of the UFP is entitled to similar religious-traditional hang-ups, too?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mojochi]

The humans we see in Trek are not just polymaths, able to read alien control panels, undertake complex warp theory calculations etc but also beat the tar out of a Klingon in physical combat.
Do we just put it down to most characters being in Starfleet, the best of the best, with access to a fine education, good diet, exercise and artificial gravity? Or is there something else going on?

ALL Trek humans' ancestors survived World War III, the Eugenic Wars and Col. Green exterminating the radiation sick. Therefore the humans of the Trek universe are actually descended from eugenically selected, genetically enhanced ubermensch and should be a lot more chill to Bashir.
Was this ever addressed?

Meh, I don't look at Trek like that. I'm in general much better off than someone from 300 years ago. I have access to a vaster supply of resources and knowledge, from which to improve my existence than they did. As a result, I exist in a much improved condition as them, and maybe from their perspective, I'd look like ubermensche

But the truth is, we are no more or less human than them, nor our future progeny than us. There's just been a steady incline in how good humans become at human-ing

 

[Christopher]

I read a fascinating article recently suggesting that the only thing keeping elephants, cetaceans, and other highly intelligent animals from expressing the same level of intelligence that humans do might be that they don't yet have the means to preserve their thoughts and knowledge in written form -- and thus, implicitly, that the invention of language, writing, and other symbols that we could use to share knowledge with the rest of our society and pass it down to our descendants played a key role in creating what we see as human intelligence. Individually, our ancestors could've had the same mental potential that we do, but not been able to develop it to the same degree until they were able to share knowledge with others, develop concepts and social structures over generations, etc. So it isn't just genes that have shaped our intelligence, it's social evolution and invention as well -- the invention of conceptual tools and systems that let us enhance and combine our mental potential in the same way that physical tools and mechanisms can amplify our physical potential.

Indeed, the article says that some people are even working with elephants to try to help them invent some kind of symbol system akin to written language, something they could potentially use to pass along their thoughts to one another and develop a richer culture. Fiction has usually assumed we'd need to genetically engineer other species to uplift them to a humanlike level, but it's intriguing to think some may already be intelligent enough but just don't have the means to develop the full potential of that intelligence.

 

[marlboro]

This is going to sound like a weird question but what form do your thoughts take?

Almost everthing I think takes the form of an imaginary conversation. Even when I am doing math the thoughts form as me telling someone "2+ 2= 4"

I have no idea if that is the way everone else's brain works. If so, I wonder how an animal without language thinks? For that matter, how would a deaf mute organize their thoughts?

 

[Christopher]

This is going to sound like a weird question but what form do your thoughts take?

Almost everthing I think takes the form of an imaginary conversation. Even when I am doing math the thoughts form as me telling someone "2+ 2= 4"

I have no idea if that is the way everone else's brain works.

It's pretty much that way for me too, at least to an extent. I tend to think (and talk) to myself as if I were practicing a conversation with someone else. When I was a kid, I liked to imagine I was a TV host narrating my life to my audience.

A few years back, I read about a theory that consciousness is an "attention schema," a simulation the brain creates of its own activity in order to monitor where its attention is focused and change that focus as needed. Which suggests to me that that sensation of someone listening to our thoughts is real -- it's a manifestation of our brains monitoring themselves.

In college, I had a religious friend who couldn't understand my lack of religious belief, because to her, God was a constant, tangible presence in her thoughts, always watching over her. She was surprised to realize I didn't sense any such presence in my own thoughts. Once I read about the attention schema theory many years later, I realized that maybe I did sense the same thing she did, but whereas she was raised to interpret it as God, I just thought it was my imaginary conceit of an audience or a hypothetical conversation partner. Maybe that subliminal awareness of our thoughts being monitored by a more fundamental level of our own brains is the origin of belief in God, the perception of some ubiquitous higher presence watching everything we do and think. Of course, I'm sure my friend wouldn't appreciate that interpretation.