Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: The Moat around God's Eye
From: mzener@eagle.wesleyan.edu
Date: 23 Jul 92 16:51:14 EDT
Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.science
 <714@tdat.teradata.COM> <1992Jul23.060316.14661@ee.eng.ohio-state.edu>
Organization: Wesleyan University

rob@watney.eng.ohio-state.edu (Rob Carriere) writes:
> For the rec.arts.sf.science people who don't read .written:
>    We have been discussing Niven and Pournelle's _The Mote in God's Eye_ and
>    this particular thread is on the possibilty, or lack thereof, of the Moties
>    evolving in the form presented in the book.  This discussion was originally
>    motivated by the fact that the entire moral dilemma of tMiGE depends
>    critically on whether or not an intelligent species that can out-breed
>    anybody and cannot stop itself from doing so is possible.
> 
> Glossary (taken from the post by Stanley Friesen quoted below):
>    [T]he terms [...] are standard population biology terms:
>    r-strategy refers to a reproductive strategy that optimizes for lots
>    of really cheap offspring and relatively long range dispersal ('weeds');
> 
>    K-strategy refers to a reproductive strategy that optimizes for raising
>    a few maximally fit, healthy offspring, often with considerable parental
>    input in each one ('dominants').

>    Examples of K-strategists include humans, albatross, sugar maples, beeches.
> 
>    Example of r-strategists include most garden weeds, as well as most
>    cultivated plants (which is why cultivated fields are so prone to weeds,
>    to get the cultivars to grow we must establish conditions beneficial to
>    r-strategists), also most insects, particularly mayflies.

   Better put, K-strategists have very few offspring, which are very
intelligent and easily taught, then train them to survive in the outside world,
protecting them ferociously until that point.
   r-strategists have hordes of small offspring, and pay them no attention. 
These babies presumably know everything they need to by instinct, and not
learning.  They die by the boat-load, but enough live to reproduce next year. 
In fact, most species have evolutionarily altered their reproduction rate so
that there are two left alive after each season -- thus maintaining a more or
less constant population.

   What does this have to do with anything?  Well, it demonstrates that a
space-faring race is not, cannot be, an r-strategist.  If intelligence is going
to work AT ALL, it keeps creatures alive.  If two individuals give birth to ten
thousand babies, all with the brains to learn and survive, the species will die
out in no time at all -- certainly long before they develop space travel.
   Thus Moties clearly were ONCE k-strategists.
   So how did they change?  I suppose anything is possible.  If they were a
well established species, then an increased rate of mutation (the star going
red giant) causes a change in a few women such that they mass-produce eggs, and
babies, then assuming the species resorted to cannibalism in hard times (which
it would HAVE to do), then I suppose they might make it as space-travelers. 
Especially if the mutation happened after space travel started.
   It's still bloody unlikely.  I prefer to chalk this nevertheless marvelous
book up to a minor scientific flaw.  It's ahppened before.

Max Zener