(urth) Merger

[Gerry Quinn]

From: "James Wynn" <crushtv at gmail.com>
>
>>> > 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:

Spare us the psychoanalysis.  If you can show Becan fighting alzabo 
instincts, I am prepared to be convinced.  The fact that I do not agree with 
your conclusions does not in itself demonstrate the limitations of my 
mentality.

1. Severian attacked, thinking he could scare away the zoanthropes; the 
alzabo might reasonably have drawn the same conclusion.  Severian and alzabo 
are approximately equal in fighting terms. It was not a suicide mission. 
Alzabos probably have a big appetite.

2. Severian killed four zoanthropes. The alzabo killed three zoanthropes, 
and Casdoe.  So Becan-in-alzabo was still working to kill and eat his 
family, not to save their lives.

If you think Becan was fighting the alzabo, the only grounds you seem to 
have for arguing this are that he made the alzabo attack rashly when it 
would have been better advised to slink away.  But the purpose of 
Becan-in-alzabo was still to eat his family, not save their lives.  That's 
not much in the way of fighting alzabo instincts.  Why would he fight some 
instincts, and not others?


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

Right... and instead of making a pretty creature with hands, for example, 
the engineers made a ravening monster seemingly designed to slaughter 
humans.  Why would they do that, given that the prey of your hypothethical 
creature would presumably have gone to it willingly?


> 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.

If I understand you correctly, you are speaking of something like a wolf 
that suddenly finds the minds of its human prey merge with its own.  But why 
would such a creature have the urge to eat other humans?  Surely its first 
thought would be to protect them by eating animals instead!


> 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.

You're not really making sense to me here.  Certainly the alzabo wants to 
survive and thrive.  It does this by killing its prey, as it killed Becan's 
family.  What's unusual about this?   A wolf would have done the same.


> 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.

Ummm... the very basis of evolution is survival of the fittest.  Fit alzabos 
are alzabos that eat well and mate with lots of lady alzabos.  Alzabos whose 
instincts in this regard tend to be subverted by the minds of their prey are 
unfit alzabos, who leave fewer progeny.  Over time, the alzabo population 
may be expected to become very good at preventing the instincts of its prey 
from interfering with its own, even as it benefits from their minds.  And 
indeed, this prediction of Darwinian theory is confirmed - Becan's intellect 
is seemingly unimpaired, yet he concurs wholeheartedly with the alzabo's 
instinct to kill and eat his family.

- Gerry Quinn