Rudeness objection. What makes you think I don’t know what I’m talking about, other than that you can’t seem to get the idea that “thousands of generations” is sufficiently long to drive an allie to extinction. Or to 100% penetration. Take lactase persistence as an example of the latter.

@18 Saul

Good analysis. The thing people are missing is that the technology exists to make precise changes to a person’s genome, which are then inherited. See Grayson as one example, the “Meyerdhal” genome as a second, the Winton genome as a third, and the Mesan change to allow people to even live on the planet (it would be a death world otherwise.) And then add that Honor’s mother is in that business herself.

So we are not talking selection. We are talking genetic engineering. Any group with the technology that Mesa has demonstrated that deliberately doesn’t extirpate known deleterous mutations from the population, and keep them out when the de novo mutations occur, deserves whatever happens to them.

the middleman between Baen and Amazon had a computer problem that caused the delay

Eugenics prior to dna tests would not be the same as after. Your examples reflect the 1920′s and an inability to detect recessive genes. (I know this only applies to some conditions)

If you took a mixed city in America and removed all the non-southeast asians. Then, left them alone for 10 generations. Are you claiming the city would revert to the old mean of a mixed white/black/asian/hispanic population? (barring immigration of course)

Whats more likely is that your controlled population is absolutely packed with sickle cell type mutations. So, while monitored, everyone gets just one copy. This population is all ubermen, with various advantages from their genes. If the monitoring stops, all the kids are struck with multiple genetic illness’s due to bad combinations, or 2 copies of the same gene.
ie, imagine a population where every adult is born with 1 sickle cell gene. (or for mesa, an IQ gene). 1 Generation of free breeding, and 100% of the children would be born with a fatal genetic disease that would kill them in their early 20′s.

I think you’re missing my and Thirdbase’s point. “Something new” isn’t just a new combination of what’s out there. It’s something that really is new: a functional connection between two brain areas that wasn’t there before, or a different metabolic pathway that metabolizes alcohol so it doesn’t create acetalhyde (which is the bigger problem) as the intermediate. Or something. Natural or artificial selection has to work on what’s there, and if what you want isn’t in the gene pool, no amount of selection is going to get it there.

The eugenics experiments might have worked if they were continued for enough generations, because what they were doing was decreasing the fitness of those combinations of alles that produced that collection of phenotypes. Enough generations, though, is probably on the order of thousands.

Frankly, from what I know now, I find the Mesans to be pitifully inept at genetics. But then, the authors can’t be experts at everything, and the series (including the genetic slavery and superman themes) was created around 15 years ago.

As another example, dogs would revert to a relatively look-alike “wild type” form in a short number of generations should people disappear.

Yeah, that’s a consequence of the size of the galaxy. The more people you’ve got, the more likely it is that the most extreme people will be really, really far out on the curve. And if it’s a field where that matters, they’re more likely to rise to prominence. Mesa is a very small proportion of the human population, so if you plotted the curve for humanity as a whole, they’d be a relatively small bump at the far right, but there would still be exceptional individuals to the right of them.

It also means that Mesa hasn’t really discovered anything unique.