(urth) Merger

[James Wynn]

>> > Isn't it just as arguable that Becan was confused about the
>> > reasonableness of reuniting
>> > his family in the animal and the used the animal fighting instincts 
>> as a
>> > tool to protect them?
>>
>> I think so.
>
> I don't.  The alzabo evolved (or was genetically engineered) to eat 
> humans and use their minds.  Humans did not evolve to be eaten by 
> alzabos.  In the absence of strong evidence to the contrary (e.g. 
> evidence that Becan was fighting the alzabo instincts) we should 
> assume that Becan-in-alzabo was operating in the perceived interests 
> of the alzabo.

Your perspective is on rails, I'm afraid. For you, nothing could be seen 
as Becan fighting alzabo instincts--even the alzabo fighting to save 
Becan's family after having recently had two full meals. Your 
understanding of the available options is therefore highly constrained, 
and blinds you to other obvious options:

1) The alzabo might well have been engineered to allow dead humans to 
live on in an animal, and then it went feral.

2) A naturally mutated ability of a True Merge with their prey that 
transformed the alzabo into something new does not necessarily mean the 
New Creature was less robust than alzabos without that ability to merge 
at all.

The "new creature" wants to thrive and survive just as the alzabo and 
its prey wanted to survive and thrive. It's rather crabbed thinking to 
insist that the interests of the New Creature are usually evolutionarily 
subversive to the interests of the alzabo animal -- or to its prey for 
that matter. Look at how it worked with Becan's family.

If you say, "Well, if _I_ were designing an alzabo, I would have the 
non-sentient animal's interests predominate those of it's prey." But 
evolution doesn't work that way. If an animal has an ability that helps 
it survive better in a particular environment it goes with it. And there 
is no book of rules that says Life must work according to Such-and-Such 
order.

u+16b9