SeN: "Hope for immortality" is a Useful Salve for Childhood "rape and strangulation."

[mentalgymnast]

If you were God, what improvements would you make that would make us uniquely different than what we are as a race, that would improve on the 1.0 model that we see in this world?

Well dealing with one of the obvious flaws in the human body listed in my post would be a start. Wasn't that pretty freaking obvious? Not to MG, it appears?

Flaws are part and parcel of natural evolution. Those flaws don't make us what we are as a human race. It's the human psychology and cognitive abilities that differentiate us as special and unique.

Maybe I'm being opaque in my question to you?

Either that or you are purposefully avoiding it knowing that any reply you give is going to be secularist crap and mumbo jumbo.

Regards,
MG

[Lem]

QED.

[Chap]

Are you suggesting that if he makes intelligent creatures in a particular way in one place, all the others in the rest of the huge and infinitely varied cosmos have to be the same design?

Sure. Why not? Would you suggest a bigger head? Bigger ears? Three eyes? An extra brain stem? Turn the feet around 180 degrees?

If you were God, what improvements would you make that would make us uniquely different than what we are as a race, that would improve on the 1.0 model that we see in this world?

Well dealing with one of the obvious flaws in the human body listed in my post would be a start. Wasn't that pretty freaking obvious? Not to MG, it appears?

Flaws are part and parcel of natural evolution. Those flaws don't make us what we are as a human race. It's the human psychology and cognitive abilities that differentiate us as special and unique.

Maybe I'm being opaque in my question to you?

Either that or you are purposefully avoiding it knowing that any reply you give is going to be secularist crap and mumbo jumbo.

Regards,
MG

Let's try to sort out this ... well, let us say mental gymnastics.

First I ask mentalgymnast whether he thinks that all intelligent creatures in the universe are made the same way, meaning of course the same way physically (see the context of the post: viewtopic.php?p=4285#p4285. We were in effect talking about the First Vision and what it tells us about God looking like us, etc.). mentalgymnast says sure, why not - would I prefer <series of ludicrous physical modifications>. Basically he says that the creator must have got the design right with us, so why would he change it?

I point out the undoubted fact that the human body is not by any means an example of perfect design.

At this, mentalgymnast pivots to saying it is not our bodies that are perfect, but our ' human psychology and cognitive abilities'. Then he does a bit of pre-emptive abuse, 'cos that what he does when he is stuck up a gum-tree.

Have I got this wrong, dear readers?

[Physics Guy]

I am very slowly working on a far-future sci-fi novel with a female protagonist. I thought about what changes to human biology might have been made by the far future and what occurred to me first was, let's get rid of menstruation. As a male author it was something I didn't want to have to think about for my main characters but it also seemed like something that we should definitely be able to eliminate somehow within the next thousand years or so, so why not?

The awkward inefficiency of most biology is one of the main pieces of evidence for evolution. Things just don't work as well as they should if they had been competently designed.

[Lem]

I am very slowly working on a far-future sci-fi novel with a female protagonist. I thought about what changes to human biology might have been made by the far future and what occurred to me first was, let's get rid of menstruation. As a male author it was something I didn't want to have to think about for my main characters but it also seemed like something that we should definitely be able to eliminate somehow within the next thousand years or so, so why not?

Already done, at least hormonally. Maybe your story can evolve from there.
https://www.fsrh.org/news/fsrh-release- ... raception/

[Morley]

Flaws are part and parcel of natural evolution.

They are, indeed. But you're not talking about natural evolution, M. Gymnast. When you mention God's hand in the process, you're writing about intelligent design.

[Morley]

Flaws are part and parcel of natural evolution. Those flaws don't make us what we are as a human race.

Sure, they're part of what makes us human. How aren't they?

It's the human psychology and cognitive abilities that differentiate us as special and unique.

Nope, it isn't. For argument's sake, let's say it is, though. Since you read Chap's post you know the flaws in "human psychology and cognitive abilities" that were listed, too. What's your reply to those?



edit as tone down attempt

[Physics Guy]

Already done, at least hormonally.

Yes, actually I heard this conclusion years ago from a friend who worked for a big drug company selling contraceptive pills. There's no real reason to keep bleeding each month; you can just stay on the pill and it doesn't cause any problems. In fact what I remember the friend saying was that a study comparing women who regularly used the pill to skip periods with nuns who never missed periods was that skipping periods seem to lower your risk of breast cancer. So there was even some benefit. I still don't know why this isn't the standard practice.

That's probably where I got this idea for my story but the story is about other things. This one detail is there because I think it's realistic—humanity is not going to put up with menstruation forever, sheesh—and because it's supposed to indicate that these women aren't exactly the same as women today, biologically, so if anybody thinks they're not behaving as real women would then maybe their generally altered biology is why. A lot of my favourite authors are women with important male characters, and they get away with it all right, but sometimes I do feel that their men and boys are kind of weird. It's hard to believe, for example, that Harry Potter never takes any romantic interest in Hermione. If even really good authors have this kind of trouble writing opposite-sex characters then it will probably be good for me to have the built-in excuse that my characters are all genetically re-engineered humans.

[Lem]

That's probably where I got this idea for my story but the story is about other things. This one detail is there because I think it's realistic—humanity is not going to put up with menstruation forever, sheesh—and because it's supposed to indicate that these women aren't exactly the same as women today, biologically, so if anybody thinks they're not behaving as real women would then maybe their generally altered biology is why. A lot of my favourite authors are women with important male characters, and they get away with it all right, but sometimes I do feel that their men and boys are kind of weird. It's hard to believe, for example, that Harry Potter never takes any romantic interest in Hermione. If even really good authors have this kind of trouble writing opposite-sex characters then it will probably be good for me to have the built-in excuse that my characters are all genetically re-engineered humans.

Interesting. In the category of authors who are women with strong male characters , I have a few favorites that I definitely think get it right, but I would be interested in your opinion.
Elizabeth George, inspector Lynley
P.D. James, Adam Dalgliesh
Martha Grimes, Richard Jury

And of course, the very first author that set me on this path,
Agatha Christie, Hercules Poirot. (a little flamboyant of a portrayal, I know, but she was absolutely consistent with him.)

Speaking of P. D. James, I think I recall you talking about reading sci fi, have you read or seen the movie of her book, The Children of Men? Her portrayals of both men and women there were stunning.

Back to your far future idea with a female protagonist, James Tiptree, Jr. (a.k.a. Alice Sheldon) is really the standard there, for me. For a more philosophical bent on males and females, etc. in the far future, Ursula LeGuin can't be beat. And as for a YA author who gets men and boys right, at least in my opinion, Madeleine L'engle's Austin family and O'Keefe family series are impeccable.

[Physics Guy]

I've only read one or two Elizabeth George and don't remember them well. I agree about Adam Dalgliesh as a believable man. I was never sure how seriously to take him as a poet, but I reckoned that was okay, since his poetry was supposed to be an oddball sideline for a police officer that no-one knew how to take. In particular I found him believable as a senior officer; he didn't make a big deal of authority, being accustomed to it, but the stories seemed to position him as someone who was part of the establishment and didn't need to grind any axes. I think I might have read a Martha Grimes at some point but have no recollection.

Hercule Poirot is a fine character but he sort of doesn't count as a test of being a believable male character because he's supposed to be a pretty unusual kind of guy, with few ordinary relationships and an obsession with grooming. I could always believe there could be men like that, just not very many. A great character for the hoodunnit genre, which of course Christie largely invented. I wonder now which came first: Poirot or the genre?

While we're on mysteries I was also a big fan of Dorothy L. Sayers. Peter Wimsey seemed believable enough for a fantasy figure, at least in the major stories. Harriet Vane was incontrovertible, being a sort of self-caricature of Sayers herself.

I'm sure I must have read The Children of Men because I was a James fan but I have little recollection of it, so perhaps I didn't after all. I might have been disappointed that it didn't feature her usual characters or I might just have forgotten it. I'm an impatient reader who tends to skim everything quickly and then re-read if I like the book, discovering things I missed. Books that didn't make that cut, for whatever reason, often leave little impression.

I read the Wrinkle in Time series long ago and liked it, but I remember thinking even then that the mother's great science was rather notional. It happened offstage and I had a hard time accepting that; it would be like having a novel with Abraham Lincoln in which the Civil War was a background detail.

A female science fiction author whose long-term protagonist is male is Lois McMaster Bujold. Her male characters seem believable; it's her female characters who are few and rather faint, and often more said-to-be than shown-to-be. She cheated in a way that probably inspired my own hedging, by making her protagonist so physically handicapped that nobody could expect him to be a completely typical male. I also used to really like C.J. Cherryh, though she was never all that good at plotting. Her endings always seemed to come abruptly with no obvious reason why they couldn't have happened two hundred pages sooner. She had a pattern of books with young naïve male viewpoint characters interacting with old mysterious powerful female figures. Once you notice the pattern it's a little weird how persistent it is.

For highbrow fiction, hmm. Anna Karenina made less impression on me than the main male characters did, despite grabbing the title, but that might just have been the age at which I read her story.