From what I gather, Arrendis, the Jove did that as part of a period in which they got, ah.
Enthusiastic.
About what they could do.
The impression I got was sort of anarchic. That might be a product of my general suspicion of, well, leaderless, hierarchy-free ways of organizing (or, you know, failing to organize) people.
In other words, the way I’ve looked at it, if they’d been more reliant on authority before the Jovian disease instead of waiting until after, maybe it wouldn’t have happened?
Again, that might be sort of a cultural “trust authority” thing creeping in.
Well, first, it’s highly unlikely it was anarchic or leaderless: it produced one result. If it were chaotic efforts of disassociated groups, you’d expected them to get different products, with varying results.
It was, however, clearly a large-scale effort. And through that whole effort, no matter if there was a central authority, or not, not one of those genetic engineers maintained an archive of past genetic changes. Not one. There are reasons, as I said during the Inquest, that medical research takes so long: you don’t go for wide release without knowing what the effects will be, to a reasonable degree of certainty. They did. They did, and what’s worse, they never bothered to write down how to undo it. Idiocy. Idiocy on a colossal scale. And evidence that the Jove still qualified as ‘human’.
But then, it’s not like the Speck-as-Artificial-Bioweapon isn’t a perfect illustration of all this: an impartial, indiscriminate weapon gets created, and it’s out there before anyone, including the creators, have the means to stop it.
So (1) I don’t think it was an incident so much as a period; given a culture of anarchic experimentation and general genome chaos, the efforts of those who do try to preserve stuff might get trampled more readily.
(2) We don’t really know where the Kyonoke speck came from (Kyonoke~! Only, probably that wasn’t its origin. Or maybe it was, and that place had been a lab before or something). One more legacy of the Ancients, probably, only, that was one terrifying piece of old tech. Nifty toys like shield emitters we barely understand are one thing. The speck was … another. Really.
It all seems to kind of speak to the importance of having capable leaders, and the difficulty of making sure that “capable leaders” are in fact what you’re selecting.
Uhm, but again: Then you wouldn’t have one, consistent product of that time period. There’s just no way a ‘we’ve decided not to breed’ malaise doesn’t self-select for elimination in an anarchic period. The group with that result… loses.
You’re really not helping the case for your ‘no, people aren’t that stupid when it comes to amazingly self-destructive technological proliferation’ position, you know…
There’s maybe a difference between apparently-uncontrolled-by-design and just uncontrolled, Arrendis. Also between what “people” will do and what high-level governing entities will do. There’s some selection of one out of the other, which one would hope would change the composition (and general background stupidity) of the resulting, smaller group a bit.
Besides, I’m way more interested in the truth than in being right.
One is comprised entirely of the other, Aria. Governments aren’t special. They’re just a bunch of people, screwing things up as much as any other group of people would.
And no, the selection process for government does not at all change the relative stupidity level. In many cases, is exacerbates it, because people who are focused on specialized knowledge sets like administration often forget otherwise ‘obvious’ things like ‘make sure you installed the fire alarm’.
And just to be clear: the idea that in an anarchic, competitive environment, one particular product will quickly become ubiquitous without exposure of its faults is… well, naive. If nothing else, the competitors will be looking to expose and highlight any problems, errors, or faults in the system in order to promote their own, rival offering, rather than build on someone else’s without heavy, critical review over a period of years, at least. You need to understand what you’re working with before you can iterate on it, after all.
No, the structure indicated is that even if there were, say, four competing design labs (or maybe more, and some were less legitimate!), the only way the uniformity of adoption is assured (dozens of systems. Hundreds of planets. NOBODY didn’t have this done? I’ve spoken to people who still don’t trust jump drives and stargates!) would have been via a controlling authority. Presumably, a controlling authority that was a smaller, selected subset of the larger scientific community.
And still too stupid to remember basic principles like: Back up everything.
It really doesn’t bode well for regular people having the forethought to really be responsible with cloning technology.
You’re assuming an actually competitive environment, Arrendis, as opposed to “Look at what this does! This is SO COOL!” … and away it goes.
Different systems, or lack of systems, will have different failure points. This one, to me, kind of has more that Origin neo-utopian feel, where careful planning and competitive design has given way to general enthusiasm for all the amazing possibilities just waiting to be explored. I like Saede Riordan, and most of the people who work with her, but … well. I don’t think I’ll be moving in unless one of her experiments (or some, or all) can make it for at least a couple centuries without something totally disastrous and destabilizing happening.
And I might agree, except for the apparent lack of even a single individual in the Jove empire who had a different opinion and didn’t get this done. That’s the problem with ascribing it to a ‘popular’ fad or bandwagoning. Absolutely nobody appears to have not been affected. Otherwise, inside two generations, the problem self-corrects.
Ugh. As if the Empires will EVER take the gloves off us - even if they had the keys to Concord’s kingdom - which I’m not at all sure is true.
The fact is that far too many capsuleers would glass one of their own worlds, just to see what it looks like. The Empires are building their own capsuleer fleets and I’d be amazed if us freelancers would ever be given the time of day, let alone permission to lead a capital fleet to achieve some important objective.
Remember Highlander? I don’t need to ask how many of the Capsuleers that flew on that day have both the Titan kill AND Federal Navy dreadnaught kills on their records. We all know how that went down.
So, making a long tale short, IF the war comes, our ability to join in it will very much be defined by our ability to take on stricter codes of conduct and additional layers of oversight - not fewer. Freepilots won’t have enough muscle to demand concessions and, let’s be honest, who the hell will trust organisations like the Goons with ANYTHING?
A weak weapon is weak. A strong weapon that you can’t reliably aim or fire? That’s worse than weak.
I’d list several, but that’s when you’d start revolving around your axis at near terminal velocities, until language has no meaning beyond whatever the hell you feel like. You shouldn’t be surprised at this sentiment either, given your own organization’s pretentious embrace of the very image in question.
You can’t trust a goon even at gunpoint. Only people in New Eden I can look in the eye and still expect to be stabbed in the back by.
And this is what I love most about you, Miz: the confirmation bias. The facts don’t agree with the narrative that lets you believe what you want? That’s clearly all spin. Some guy on galnet who was nowhere near the planning or execution of what happened? Obviously, he’s got better information than I do.