94 réponses à ce sujet

[SteelEagleShane]

Krid wrote...

Moogliepie wrote...

I agree. In this context, it isn't far fetched. I also remember reading that in Central Africa, pygmy tribes had more genetic diversity between any two individuals than any other two random individuals from other parts of the world. 

The argument is not that humans are certain to be the least diverse species, but that it's exceedingly unlikely that they would be the MOST diverse.

Krogan, Turian, Asari, Volus, Elcore, Salarian, Quarian, Hannar, Drell, Batarians, and Vorcha.
We can ignore the Rachni, Collectors, Geth, and as-yet-unseen species for obvious reasons, but that's still 11 other species. Keep in mind that Humans are, what is it, 99.95% identical? And have less variation than over 99.99% of known species on earth.

No, it's not impossible, but I'm pretty sure the scale of how unlikely it is is beyond the mind's natural ability to reason.
A demonstration, perhaps? What is the probability of at least 2 people from a group of 23 random people having the same birthday?
You would probably leap for an obvious answer like 10% or so, correct? Well, the actual chance is 50%.

Simply put, humans have low genetic variation due to unlikely events in our history that drastically reduced the size of our gene pool one way or another. We're very much a statistical outlier on our own planet, so being a statistical outlier in the opposite direction compared to other planets is a vanishingly small possibility.

It is also unlikely that every 50,000 years, sentient machines show up and kill all advanced life forms for ****s and giggles. But guess what? In the Mass Effect universe, this is hard fact.
Maybe it is nigh impossible for humans to be more diverse than the rest of the species in Mass Effect. But guess what? It is hard a fact in the games as the Reapers are. 

Modifié par SteelEagleShane, 15 février 2010 - 09:56 .

[Doug84]

SteelEagleShane wrote...

It is also unlikely that every 50,000 years, sentient machines show up and kill all advanced life forms for ****s and giggles. 

You'll regret saying that when they do turn up

Modifié par Doug84, 15 février 2010 - 09:58 .

[SteelEagleShane]

Doug84 wrote...

SteelEagleShane wrote...

It is also unlikely that every 50,000 years, sentient machines show up and kill all advanced life forms for ****s and giggles. 

You'll regret saying that when they do turn up

I know, I'll feel like an ass.

[DuffyMJ]

Talogrungi wrote...

Of course we're more genetically diverse than other races.
We've got TWO genders. TWO.
We're basically the freaks of the universe.

Nope.

There are actually 8 current gender arrangements that do not fall into the classic XX, XY arrangement of male/female,  They area alI different conditions of intersex or hermaphaditism.  I only know this because in modern social science surveys in certain countries, the "gender" box has actually been expanded to 10 options to cover all these arrangements.  

[Doug84]

DuffyMJ wrote...

Talogrungi wrote...

Of course we're more genetically diverse than other races.
We've got TWO genders. TWO.
We're basically the freaks of the universe.

Nope.

There are actually 8 current gender arrangements that do not fall into the classic XX, XY arrangement of male/female,  They area alI different conditions of intersex or hermaphaditism.  I only know this because in modern social science surveys in certain countries, the "gender" box has actually been expanded to 10 options to cover all these arrangements.  

I have to ask...what are these other genders? I know male/female and the few people born with both sex organs. But the rest?

[ZennExile]

DuffyMJ wrote...

Talogrungi wrote...

Of course we're more genetically diverse than other races.
We've got TWO genders. TWO.
We're basically the freaks of the universe.

Nope.

There are actually 8 current gender arrangements that do not fall into the classic XX, XY arrangement of male/female,  They area alI different conditions of intersex or hermaphaditism.  I only know this because in modern social science surveys in certain countries, the "gender" box has actually been expanded to 10 options to cover all these arrangements.  

Because mental illness counts as a gender?

[SteelEagleShane]

So, are we about to hold a gender debate? Because if so, allow me to say that this is officially about to become one of the most insane topics ever to appear in terms of not staying on topic and discussing **** from the game.

[Chrisimo79]

Krid wrote...
Try and see it this way: More than 99.99% of all life on this planet is more genetically diverse than humans, and you're claiming that the 11 other known sentient species in ME are ALL less diverse than that.

I try to see it this way: 99.9999% of all life in the whole galaxy is more genetically diverse than the 12 known sentient species. This doesn't say anything about the relation of the 12 sentient species regarding genetic diversity.

[Doug84]

SteelEagleShane wrote...

So, are we about to hold a
gender debate? Because if so, allow me to say that this is officially
about to become one of the most insane topics ever to appear in terms
of not staying on topic and discussing **** from the game.

Yes, yes we are. And we'll invent up to 6 new genders. The competition to submit names starts now!

Although in all seriousiness, no, lets not have this argument. I was really just curious what the others where because I don't know.

[Dermain]

Paradox 01 wrote...

Then again, think about this.
We don't know what asari looked like thousands of years ago, but given their long lifespans, they couldn't have looked very different at all. Otherwise, they'd evolve within their own lifespans, or at least noticeably within a generation or two.

We don't know what Asari look like period. On Ilium in the bar, there is a human, a salarian, and a turian that comment that the asari look like a blue version of each of their races.

People think way too much...

[SL22]

Mordin meant genetically diverse as in intelligence levels/physical performance and that other species don't have varying peak levels like humans do.

[Giantevilhead]

I don't know about the other races but I think that the Krogans definitely have the least genetic diversity.



They went through two huge bottleneck events, one when they nuked themselves and one when they got Genophaged.



There's also the Krogan way of life. It's very similar to the Mongols and Vikings. There are somewhere around 30 million people today who are descended from Genghis Khan. Presumably, there are Krogan warlords who have led similar lives to Genghis Khan. Each Krogan clan may have descended from just a few Krogans.

[DuffyMJ]

ZennExile wrote...

DuffyMJ wrote...

Talogrungi wrote...

Of course we're more genetically diverse than other races.
We've got TWO genders. TWO.
We're basically the freaks of the universe.

Nope.

There are actually 8 current gender arrangements that do not fall into the classic XX, XY arrangement of male/female,  They area alI different conditions of intersex or hermaphaditism.  I only know this because in modern social science surveys in certain countries, the "gender" box has actually been expanded to 10 options to cover all these arrangements.  

Because mental illness counts as a gender?

That's pretty offensive and ignorant of you to say if I'm interpreting right and you're saying that as a critique of transgendered peoples.

http://en.wikipedia....iki/Intersexual

[fateofman]

he said their genetically diverse because they are NOT krogan....



using them in the intial stages to use as tests then he said they'd move onto native animals then krogan as they go closer to the cure.....



the reason they used humans wasnt cause they were "superior", its because we're different

[Moogliepie]

Krid wrote...

Moogliepie wrote...

I agree. In this context, it isn't far fetched. I also remember reading that in Central Africa, pygmy tribes had more genetic diversity between any two individuals than any other two random individuals from other parts of the world. 

A demonstration, perhaps? What is the probability of at least 2 people from a group of 23 random people having the same birthday?
You would probably leap for an obvious answer like 10% or so, correct? Well, the actual chance is 50%.

No I wouldn't probably leap for an "obvious" answer like that, because like most people posting here, I took high school probability. It is still completely irrelevant to the discussion, since you have no concept of what the genetic diversity of the aliens in ME is like. Being spread out across the galaxy is irrelevant as a factor in genetic distance due to FTL travel. 

[In Exile]

Krid wrote...

The Asari have a rather significant gamut of blue shades, and some even have a bit of purple in there.
The Krogan have a nice variety of ornimental head shapes, colors, and other such things.
The Salarians vary like Skittles.
Humans have one color at different levels of saturation.

I don't really know what you were trying to get at with that, but I don't think it worked.

Those are all phenotypes, though. I think what he was trying to say is that we've adapted to more climates, but that doesn't really make sense, since krogran are way more adapative than we are.

Simply put, humans have low genetic variation due to unlikely events
in our history that drastically reduced the size of our gene pool one
way or another. We're very much a statistical outlier on our own planet,
so being a statistical outlier in the opposite direction compared to
other planets is a vanishingly small possibility.

Unless you posit that our inbred homozygosity is adaptive with respect to the traits it cultiatves, e.g. that the near-extinction event that almost culled us for whatever reason preserved the top 1% of brain volume, which then led us to the stage of development that we did reach, by biasing what traits selection would favour generation over generation.

Put another way, we could say that since all sapient spacefaring species are probably cases of convergent evolution (look at everyone's body plan!) perhaps event extinction events of this sort are shared.

When making a statistical claim beween populations, relevant similarity is important. We're quite unlike other species on our world, but without a firm grasp of what the relationship between that and sapience is, for all we know, mass-culling is as important to being a space-faring species as is bipedalism.

[Lukertin]

Soruyao wrote...
I just want to weigh in on the human height issue. (Where we've been getting taller in the last couple thousand years.) This is likely based on how much nutrition we've been getting in our growth years.

Partially true, but for one, women find tall men more attractive than short men.

[Kerberus88]

Statistics is a tricky subject.
(Beware of my BS 'proof'; I'm making a point)
What are the chances that a planet can support life? 1:500,000.
Chances that planet has sentient creatures. 1:1,000,000
Chances Earth can support life and has sentient creatures. 1:1
Now to have a debate about the ability of Earth being able to do this before it had been done is completely acceptable. Since Earth has already done it there is no debate about the chance.

Mordin says that humans are the most diverse, so a debate is completely moot. If the debate had come along before this fact was heard, then yes it would make sense, but it didn't.

Edit:
P.S. We are also losing our wisdom teeth. Some people just aren't growing them in.

Modifié par Kerberus88, 15 février 2010 - 06:28 .

[Gemini1179]

By assuming that unlikely scenarios are unlikely and predicting future results based on past results?

Again, you simply have facts based on human science. This whole discussion hinges on your belief that the science of ME conforms to your conclusions based on human evolution data.

Try and see it this way: More than 99.99% of all life on this planet is more genetically diverse than humans, and you're claiming that the 11 other known sentient species in ME are ALL less diverse than that.

Once again, you're not comparing apples to apples. You're comaring Humans to the rest of life on our planet, and then comparing that ratio to other fictional sentient life.

I'm calling them out on exceeding the limit for suspension of disbelief - which others have done for the Normandy 2's *bathrooms*.
If you're going to argue against this discussion's value, then I have serious questions about why you're participating in the first place.

Your suspension of disbelief is based on the science of earth. You argue that humans are not genetically diverse compared to other species on our own planet, then you argue that they therefore cannot be more diverse than fictional aliens in the ME universe with no data on species homeworlds, evolution etc. The Salarians are essentially cloned males with few females- how genetically diverse are clones?

Reading comprehension is useful, and in some cases very illuminating.
I said a group of 23 random people. That means that the group contains 23 people, and that those people are picked randomly.

I was pointing out the poor understanding of probabilitys as a lead-in to the human mind lumping all small possibilities in together and treating them like they're all equal.

Your insults aside, you misunderstood what I was saying. I fully understood what you were saying, what I was saying is that it served no purpose in the discussion because you are constantly trying to wrangle in fiction using fact.

Because statistical outliers are rare by definition, and the chance of them all being even more drastic outliers is in the realm of "Technically not zero, but close enough that you can treat it that way".

So you have data on the genetic diversity comparisons for sapient species and the planets they come from to call human genetic diversity a 'statistical outlier' by comparison?

Do you see where I'm going here? Just because the Earth rotates about it's axis every 24 hours, you can't conclude that a 'day' for a Salarian is also 24 hours.

If galactic expansion has only occurred even in the last 4000 years by ME standards, it is highly unlikely there would me great genetic diversity by any spacefaring race during that time.

I'm sorry, but you need to rewrite that. I'm uncertain of what you are attempting to say, and my best attempts to parse it are resulting in gibberish.

Veiled insults aside, I get your point, based on your knowledge of life here on earth and the conclusions you've drawn you find it difficult to believe that other sapient races fall into the same category and are even less genetic diverse than humans- but again, it's all about perspective isn't it? We have no actual data on the sapient races of ME, so isn't the nitpicking unnecessary in the end? I'm not trying to provoke a war here, just input a different perspective.

How do you know that we exist, and all sapient life exists because it is a statistical outlier?

Back to the original topic. If Mordin says that Humans are more genetically diverse, who can really argue? He IS the expert geneticist in the fictional made up universe of Mass Effect.

[Krid]

[quote]SteelEagleShane wrote...

[quote]Krid wrote...

[quote]Moogliepie wrote...

I
agree. In this context, it isn't far fetched. I also remember reading
that in Central Africa, pygmy tribes had more genetic diversity between
any two individuals than any other two random individuals from other
parts of the world. 
[/quote]

The argument is not that humans
are certain to be the least diverse species, but that it's exceedingly
unlikely that they would be the MOST diverse.

Krogan, Turian, Asari, Volus, Elcore, Salarian, Quarian, Hannar, Drell, Batarians, and Vorcha.
We
can ignore the Rachni, Collectors, Geth, and as-yet-unseen species for
obvious reasons, but that's still 11 other species. Keep in mind that
Humans are, what is it, 99.95% identical? And have less variation than
over 99.99% of known species on earth.

No, it's not impossible, but I'm pretty sure the scale of how unlikely it is is beyond the mind's natural ability to reason.
A
demonstration, perhaps? What is the probability of at least 2 people
from a group of 23 random people having the same birthday?
You would probably leap for an obvious answer like 10% or so, correct? Well, the actual chance is 50%.

Simply
put, humans have low genetic variation due to unlikely events in our
history that drastically reduced the size of our gene pool one way or
another. We're very much a statistical outlier on our own planet, so
being a statistical outlier in the opposite direction compared to other
planets is a vanishingly small possibility.
[/quote]
It is also
unlikely that every 50,000 years, sentient machines show up and kill
all advanced life forms for ****s and giggles. But guess what? In the
Mass Effect universe, this is hard fact.[/quote]

You're invoking a logical fallacy in the form of excessive specification.
Five years ago, what were the odds that you would be posting that exact line in this exact forum? Very, very small.
What were the odds that you would have been doing *something*? Very close to 1:1.
"It happened" and "It was certain to happen" are two completely different statements.

Now lets break down your statement.
First, we must assume that FTL travel is possible.
Second, we can toss out the "sentient machines" part since it's functionally irrelevent what kind of creature they are.
So,
tell me, what were the odds of a sentient species evolving millions of
years before humans? Keeping in mind, of course, that there have been a
few mass-extinction events in Earth's history which could have not
happened.
What are the odds that they would discover FTL travel?
What are the odds that they would decide to periodically eradicate all life in the universe which was capable of posing a threat?

Honestly? Not that unlikely!

The
difference here is that while one possibility MUST occur, that does not
mean that all possibilities are *equally likely*. By the same token,
the chance of somebody winning the lottery eventually is essentially
1:1, but the chances of that person being *you* are very small.

[quote]Maybe
it is nigh impossible for humans to be more diverse than the rest of
the species in Mass Effect. But guess what? It is hard a fact in the
games as the Reapers are. [/quote]

It's an absurd claim that
runs directly counter to plausibility, so Bioware basically *needs* to
provide a causative reason why that would be the case.


[quote]Chrisimo79 wrote...



I try to see it this way: 99.9999% of
all life in the whole galaxy is more genetically diverse than the 12
known sentient species. This doesn't say anything about the relation of
the 12 sentient species regarding genetic diversity.[/quote]

That logic would only be valid if genetic similarity and sentience were related. However, no evidence has been discovered to support that claim.
In fact, other sentient terrestrial species, such as dolphins, have very high genetic diversity.


[quote]In Exile wrote...

Those are all phenotypes, though. I think what he was trying to say is that we've adapted to more climates, but that doesn't really make sense, since krogran are way more adapative than we are. [/quote]

The context of those statements was that of disproving a claim of high relative genetic diversity for humans based on skin colors.

[quote][quote]Simply put, humans have low genetic variation due to unlikely events
in our history that drastically reduced the size of our gene pool one
way or another. We're very much a statistical outlier on our own planet,
so being a statistical outlier in the opposite direction compared to
other planets is a vanishingly small possibility.[/quote]

Unless you posit that our inbred homozygosity is adaptive with respect to the traits it cultiatves, e.g. that the near-extinction event that almost culled us for whatever reason preserved the top 1% of brain volume, which then led us to the stage of development that we did reach, by biasing what traits selection would favour generation over generation.[/quote]

...which is the opposite of diversity.

[quote]Put another way, we could say that since all sapient spacefaring species are probably cases of convergent evolution (look at everyone's body plan!)[/quote]

Hanar, Elcor, Rachni, Keepers.

[quote]perhaps event extinction events of this sort are shared.[/quote]

That would be very unlikely unless they were being engineered. Giant space rocks and ice ages aren't exactly reliable occurances.

[quote]
When making a statistical claim beween populations, relevant similarity is important. We're quite unlike other species on our world, but without a firm grasp of what the relationship between that and sapience is, for all we know, mass-culling is as important to being a space-faring species as is bipedalism.
[/quote]

Bipedalism isn't important in the ME universe, simply common.

Modifié par Krid, 16 février 2010 - 12:31 .