The curse(?) of small universe syndrome

[Christopher]

So we still need Canon Sources to make a hard statement of definitive fact on Human Born ESPer capabilities.

The idea of "fact" in a work of fiction is nonsensical. There are no facts here, just ideas that are part of the stories. Fictional universes change their in-story "facts" all the time -- for instance, it was originally a "fact" that the Fantastic Four launched their rocket to beat the Soviets into space, but that "fact" was changed in later tellings of the story because it had become anachronistic. It used to be a "fact" in Star Trek that DY-100 sleeper ships were used for interplanetary travel until 2018 when they were replaced by faster ships, but that is no longer presumed to be the case. There is no such thing as a "definitive" fact when it's all imaginary and can be reinvented at will.

 

[fireproof78]

why haven't they shown Human ESPers being naturally born in all this time?

Not relevant to the story.

 

[Nerys Myk]

So we still need Canon Sources to make a hard statement of definitive fact on Human Born ESPer capabilities.

Provided in my previous posts. But here is more

MIRANDA: I see in your mind that you are tempted to take my place.
SPOCK: Not correct, Doctor, although I am aware of your mind attempting to contact mine. Were you born a telepath?
MIRANDA: Yes. That is why I had to study on Vulcan.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Provided in my previous posts. But here is more

So 1 person is supposedly a "Natural Born" Human Telepath out of countless Billions that have come & gone who were not.

It wouldn't be the first time in Recorded Human History that you have somebody with a special Genetic Factor that others don't have.

Doctors recently discovered a Women to have her own Unique Blood Type.
She is the first one discovered and is 1 of 1 so far.
Her Blood Type is called 'Gwada-Negative'.
Her Blood Type is the 48th discovered.

So Weird Exceptions can happen.

Imagine being the only known person on Earth with your own Unique Blood Type.
That's got to be amazing & scary all at the same time.

 

[Nerys Myk]

So 1 person is supposedly a "Natural Born" Human Telepath out of countless Billions that have come & gone who were not.

There is no supposition or need for quotes. It's right there in the dialog. For a guy who is all about the "facts" you're rather quick to dismiss any that run counter to your opinions.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

There is no supposition or need for quotes. It's right there in the dialog. For a guy who is all about the "facts" you're rather quick to dismiss any that run counter to your opinions.

She claim's she is naturally born with said abilities. A lot of people claim things.
We had 1 episode with her in it where she claims she's a natural born Telepath.
It's not like the show delved into her background and confirmed she always had said powers since birth.
We're inclined to believe it because she's one of the important guest characters on the show.

But when the rest of Humanity hasn't shown the same thing, especially in show, it's hard to believe that there are weird exceptional cases.
You would think that more Humans would be born with Telepathy at this point in Trek History then.
Even in TNG episode 'Unnatural Selection', the kids were genetically engineered to have powers.
But that's backstory for another show & episode.

If she's 1 of 1, so be it.
She's the 1 exception to the rest of Humanity.

 

[fireproof78]

So 1 person is supposedly a "Natural Born" Human Telepath out of countless Billions that have come & gone who were not.

It wouldn't be the first time in Recorded Human History that you have somebody with a special Genetic Factor that others don't have.

Doctors recently discovered a Women to have her own Unique Blood Type.
She is the first one discovered and is 1 of 1 so far.
Her Blood Type is called 'Gwada-Negative'.
Her Blood Type is the 48th discovered.

So Weird Exceptions can happen.

Imagine being the only known person on Earth with your own Unique Blood Type.
That's got to be amazing & scary all at the same time.

Except, ESP is known and a part of Starfleet Medical knowledge do it isn't one person. It simply is low or irrelevant to stories told.

Augments were not mentioned much, save for occasional research. Then in DEEP SPACE NINE it's illegal, making Darwin Station rather odd given the laws.

It comes down to the story first. At best dialog indicates ESP is known enough to warrant scores, and assessment.

 

[Christopher]

So 1 person is supposedly a "Natural Born" Human Telepath out of countless Billions that have come & gone who were not.

No; again, "Where No Man..." established that many humans had low-level esper abilities and that there was a standardized test for determining an individual's "esper rating."

KIRK: And you, are you feeling all right?
DEHNER: Yes. Mitchell, too, except for his eyes. We're trying to find a reason for that now, and why, out of our whole crew, only certain people were affected.
SPOCK: I think we've found that answer, Doctor.
KIRK: You mentioned that tests show you have a high degree of extrasensory perception. So do the records of the others. Gary Mitchell has the highest esper rating of all.

"The others" in that passage are the nine crewmembers who were killed by the barrier passage. That means that eleven members of the Enterprise crew had some esper ability, with only Mitchell and Dehner being strong enough espers to survive the barrier. That's eleven out of a few hundred, maybe 1 in 40 if we assume the crew complement is closer to the series's 430, 1 in 20 if it's the same crew size as "The Cage." That adds up to hundreds of millions if the crew is a statistically representative sample. (Which didn't fit my theory in The Higher Frontier, so I had to handwave it that the Duke-Heidelburg [sic] esper rating test gave a lot of false positives.)

Of course, that was only asserted in that single episode, and Miranda was the only other human telepath we ever saw. But if you're determined to insist that canonical information is "fact" rather than just mutable storytelling, it's self-contradictory to ignore the information presented in the second pilot.

It's also absurd to believe that only one human out of countless billions would have telepathy. It's enormously more probable that if Miranda Jones has such strong telepathy (even surpassing Spock's), then other humans would have the potential to a lesser degree. After all, no potential comes out of nowhere. It has to arise from existing evolutionary foundations. The rare blood type you mention is a poor analogy, because it's just a slight variation in the proteins and sugars coating red blood cells. It's not a unique sense or ability that nobody else has, just a unique configuration (as far as we know) of molecules that are part of everybody's blood cells. Mutations are like that. They don't manifest entire new superpowers out of nowhere like in comic books; they're just slight tweaks on our existing genetics. It takes quite a few generations of successive slight tweaks for a major change to occur.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

We also have other species within the Star Trek Universe who are Natural Telepaths of sorts.

Betazoids are Natural Traditional Telepaths.
Vulcans are Natural Touch Telepaths.

Both species could've contributed to the creation of the ESPer Standardized Tests to validate ESPer Ratings / Capability within Humanity.

It's also absurd to believe that only one human out of countless billions would have telepathy. It's enormously more probable that if Miranda Jones has such strong telepathy (even surpassing Spock's), then other humans would have the potential to a lesser degree. After all, no potential comes out of nowhere. It has to arise from existing evolutionary foundations. The rare blood type you mention is a poor analogy, because it's just a slight variation in the proteins and sugars coating red blood cells. It's not a unique sense or ability that nobody else has, just a unique configuration (as far as we know) of molecules that are part of everybody's blood cells. Mutations are like that. They don't manifest entire new superpowers out of nowhere like in comic books; they're just slight tweaks on our existing genetics. It takes quite a few generations of successive slight tweaks for a major change to occur.

And Miranda might've been that special 1 of 1 through sucessive generations of genetic tweaks.
The Show hasn't shown any other Natural Born Telepaths out of the 1 of 1 so far.

While others had higher than average ESPer ratings, they didn't have the ESPer powers until exposure to "Strange Energies".

But that's the rub, you can easily manufacture ESPers via intentionally exposing them to "Strange Energies" and have them breed with the rest of humanity to pass on the Modified Genetics to create more "Natural Born ESPers" within Humanity down the line.

That could make many fun scenarios in future stories.

A secret society of "Super Powered ESPers" hiding in plain sight, not using their powers because it might scare others.

 

[knightgrace]

It is my understanding that 'Project Star Gate'(real world) of CIA back in 1980s determined that all humans are psychic. Just not good enough.

Then again I could mention Bester, a P12 in Babylon 5. But, with the understanding that a P1 just has a than chance of "guessing " what you are thinking.

Important philosophical question: do humans think?

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

If you want to talk about rarity, Golden Blood AKA RH-null is another example of "Ultra Rare" Blood type.
43 People have been known to have RH-null Blood Type.
Talk about being unique & super rare.
43 out of the entire population of the World so far.

 

[Christopher]

And Miranda might've been that special 1 of 1 through sucessive generations of genetic tweaks.

Way to completely miss my point and twist it into the exact opposite of what I'm saying.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Way to completely miss my point and twist it into the exact opposite of what I'm saying.

Do you really believe that there would be that large of a subset of Natural Telepaths within Humanity then?

 

[kkt]

I'm not a fan of the assumption that "godlike powers" would evolve at all, since that's not how evolution works. It's not an "upward" drive like many people assume, just a statistical process wherein traits that improve reproductive success in a given environment are therefore reproduced more successfully. "Ascending" to an incorporeal state isn't something that evolution would ever select for, since how do you reproduce without a body? (Although I did my best to handwave an explanation for that when I wrote TNG: The Buried Age two decades ago.)

Still, if I grit my teeth and stipulate to the fictional conceit of superpowered beings existing, it is true that traits that grant a survival advantage should be favored by evolution. Though that doesn't always mean greater power or strength, since different environments and survival strategies select for different kinds of advantage. Sometimes being small and weak is a survival advantage; look at mass extinctions on land, where it's always the biggest, most dominant species like non-avian dinosaurs that die out first, while the smaller species like birds, insects, and early mammals survive because they need less food and can procreate faster (so they evolve faster).

I've always been annoyed by sci-fi/fantasy stories that postulate that a tiny minority of humans has always had psychic abilities, or magical abilities or shapeshifting or whatever. Evolutionarily speaking, if such abilities existed, they would have granted such a survival advantage that they would have long ago become dominant traits, and now everyone would have them.

Of course evolution is not always upwards and there can be mutations passed down which simply do no harm or very little harm. But godlike powers would be such a huge advantage, anyone with them would almost certainly be able to reproduce (unless he pissed off Kirk).

We say they're godike but plenty of naturally-evolved animals on earth have powers that are godlike to anyone who doesn't have them. Birds who live almost their entire lives in the air, migrating from arctic to antarctic and back every year. Several animals with excellent memories and reasoning powers and language.

How do they reproduce without a body? Well the Q reproduce... we saw a child of two Q who mated in human form and the child developed Q powers in adolescence. Not that it seems very likely, but...

So why haven't they shown Human ESPers being naturally born in all this time?
There's been plenty of episodes since the very first one.
The subject matter hasn't bothered to come up again.

So we're supposed to treat TOS as non-canonical now? Wow.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

So we're supposed to treat TOS as non-canonical now? Wow.

I never said that. You're jumping to your own conclusions.

 

[Christopher]

How do they reproduce without a body? Well the Q reproduce... we saw a child of two Q who mated in human form and the child developed Q powers in adolescence. Not that it seems very likely, but...

But that's putting the effect before the cause. It just doesn't work. There's no way an incorporeal form of reproduction could be produced by the natural evolutionary process, because that process is shaped entirely by what propagates genes, and an incorporeal, non-biological organism wouldn't have genes and would be based on something entirely different.

 

[Set Harth]

SPOCK: Are there not also those who seem to see through solid objects, cause fires to start spontaneously?
DEHNER: There's nothing about it that could possibly make a person dangerous.

Kind of a weird exchange. Wouldn't causing fires to start spontaneously make a person dangerous?

 

[Nerys Myk]

She claim's she is naturally born with said abilities. A lot of people claim things.
We had 1 episode with her in it where she claims she's a natural born Telepath.
It's not like the show delved into her background and confirmed she always had said powers since birth.
We're inclined to believe it because she's one of the important guest characters on the show.

But when the rest of Humanity hasn't shown the same thing, especially in show, it's hard to believe that there are weird exceptional cases.
You would think that more Humans would be born with Telepathy at this point in Trek History then.
Even in TNG episode 'Unnatural Selection', the kids were genetically engineered to have powers.
But that's backstory for another show & episode.

If she's 1 of 1, so be it.
She's the 1 exception to the rest of Humanity.

We've no idea what the rest of Humanity has shown. We've seen a few hundred humans in Star Trek, so that's billions unaccounted for.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

We've no idea what the rest of Humanity has shown. We've seen a few hundred humans in Star Trek, so that's billions unaccounted for.

True, but if those kinds of abilities were more common or even natural, you would think it would at least be spoken about or referenced given how unique those powers are amongst our species.

Given how IRL humanity is, I wouldn't be surprised if any ESPer powers would require outside factors to make it happen, then you can pass on the genes once you have said powers.

 

[Nerys Myk]

True, but if those kinds of abilities were more common or even natural, you would think it would at least be spoken about or referenced given how unique those powers are amongst our species.

Given how IRL humanity is, I wouldn't be surprised if any ESPer powers would require outside factors to make it happen, then you can pass on the genes once you have said powers.

Billions of humans. Billions of conversations being had. We're only privy to a couple of hundred.