Merger

Gerry Quinn · 31 Jan 2011, 01:46 · from 2011-January.txt.gz
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From: gerryq at indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2011 01:46:41 -0000
Subject: (urth) Merger
References: <SNT123-W54E2E4EC28C4EC761AD733CFE10 at phx.gbl><3D2B306110704F0BAD418CB8AF9CF699@jill>	<4D4339B6.3070900 at gmail.com><2668E921DE7341169AEB4CB42DAB370C@jill>
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Message-ID: <905B777CD89B47D49DE9C4BDF325CC27@jill>


From: "James Wynn" <crushtv at gmail.com>
>> Gerry-
>> 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.
>
> Why should I show anything? Does Severian's analysis of why Becan Alzabo 
> fought not impress you at all? He describes an equal merging of the 
> desires between Becan and the animal. But you say it's just the animal 
> after all? I'm merely just adopting the actual explanation expressed in 
> the text after all.

"When the alzabo rushed at the zoanthrops, its instinct commanded it to
preserve its prey from others; when Becan did so, his instinct, I
believe, was to preserve his wife and child."

The instinct to 'preserve' (i.e.stop others getting) his wife and child is 
no problem for the alzabo, so naturally there is no need for it to be 
obliterated, any more than there is need to stop him talking.  The instinct 
to actually *protect* his wife and child is completely nullified (in fact, 
he kills his wife).  But there's no need at all to remove his feelings of 
ownership - they are in line with the instincts of the creature.  Only the 
feelings and instincts of Becan that are useful to the alzabo are retained. 
He's a tool.

Severian does not suggest that Becan was fighting the alzabo.  He says their 
instincts were aligned.  If your mind is being used by an alzabo, that's 
what happens - your instincts fit in with those of the alzabo, or they stop 
existing. Becan's hopes regarding the future lives of his children, for 
example... gone completely.

That's how things go
When you're in an alzabo


>> 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?
>
> The stated purpose of the Becan Alzabo was to reunify Becan's family. He 
> even devoured his wife as he was dying. Last meal? What was the survival 
> benefit of this?

Why not?  A dying dog might gnaw a bone.  The instincts of Becan that are 
useful to the alzabo are still present, like the instinct of a dog to chew 
bones.  But how is he fighting the alzabo?  The alzabo doesn't mind eating 
Casdoe at all.


>>> 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?
>
> ???
> Why would you assume the engineers had full freedom to create an animal in 
> any form they wanted? On the other hand, why would the resurrected humans 
> not prefer to be in an alzabo rather than a pomeranian?

The point is, there must be a reason why the creature is a huge carnivore, 
perfectly suited to prey on unwilling humans and creatures similar to humans 
(such as Severian has noted live on myriad worlds). If it evolved this way, 
no problem. That it was designed this way for the benefit of humans is 
somewhat hard to swallow!


>>> 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!
>
> No. You don't understand what I'm saying. An animal alzabos presumably eat 
> anything. If alzabos' natural prey is a social animal, then the new 
> creature would naturally seek to unify others of his prey's kind.

It's not seeking to unify anyone.  It's seeking fresh meat, and lots of it. 
Its prey is a social animal, so it uses the social skills of its prey's mind 
to lure others of its kind.  When you think about it, that is the natural 
prey of such a creature!  After all, suppose an alzabo ate a fox.  It would 
use the mind of the fox to catch rabbits.  Then it would eat the rabbits. 
And then all it would know to do would be to eat grass, and as a carnivore, 
it would starve.  Thus it is to be expected that the strains of alzabo that 
survive and prosper are those attracted to social animals, which can deliver 
a consistent food supply!


>>> 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.
>
> AS DESCRIBED BY SEVERIAN the Becan alzabo behaves as an animal alzabo, but 
> it's interests are different. But the apparent motivation is radically 
> different from the actual motivation, and the motivation is what is really 
> interesting to Wolfe. The discussion about why the burning tent ascended 
> is a more emphatic example of this, but he often does the same thing more 
> subtly without overtly explaining it.

Severian's philosophising is often questionable.  What I say in no way 
contradictsSeverian's observations with regard to fact, nor even his 
observations with respect to the alzabo-useful instincts. There's no "actual 
motivation" and "apparent motivation" - just two motivations for the same 
act.  But these motivations are not contradictory.  Becan is not fighting 
the alzabo.


>>> 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.
>
> No. It is natural selection, and that is not remotely the same thing.

They are synonymous, at least in this context.  As Charles Darwin put it: 
"This preservation, during the battle for life, of varieties which possess 
any advantage in structure, constitution, or instinct, I have called Natural 
Selection; and Mr. Herbert Spencer has well expressed the same idea by the 
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.
>
> There's absolutely NO reason to assume this and we no nothing about alzabo 
> reproduction. The variations even among mammals are far more broad than 
> you seem to believe.

The details of alzabo reproduction are not relevant; my example was merely 
illustrative.  Indeed, the alzabo in question might have been a female for 
all we know.  The point is that if we assume alzabos have conditions of life 
and a mode of reproduction such that ordinary evolutionary principles apply, 
we will expect its nature to be in accordance with such principles.  In the 
same way, we would be surprised to find a breed of fox which tended to act 
against its own interests, and in the interest of rabbits.


>> 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.
>
> Once again. You seem to believe that evolution works with some sort of 
> plan in mind. If a merger works, there is no pressure for the alzabo 
> biology to change. That would be like saying that over time crocodiles 
> should have evolved the ability to run like gazelles.

Evolution doesn't have a plan, but it provides solutions that work.  Alzabos 
that act in the interests of their prey don;t work, any more than crocodiles 
that act in the interest of gazelles.  A crocodile might catch a gazelle by 
running, or by hiding in the water, or in some other fashion - but when the 
crocodile succeeds the gazelle fails, and vice versa.  Crocodile evolution 
works on crocodiles, not on gazelles.


>> 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.
>
> Why his family? Why a house with multiple people in it protected by a man 
> with a sword? Why not someone walking alone in the woods? Why not a 
> zoanthrop?

Because this is precisely the sort of workable evolved solution we might 
expect!  The alzabo preys on social animals and utilises parts of their 
minds to catch social animals acquainted with the ones it has eaten.  It can 
use their voice and knowledge to lure their loved ones into the same trap. 
That's the alzabo's way of hunting and its natural instinct.  Presumably if 
it has no human mind to work with, or the human mind has no further prey of 
the most suitable kind nearby, it roams further afield, perhaps directed by 
its victims to human habitation, perhaps at random.

We have no reason to suppose it would not devour somebody walking alone in 
the woods.  Indeed, I believe it mentions that it intends to devour Severian 
as well as Becan's family.

Zoanthropes would be relatively useless to it, though, as they no longer 
have human minds.  Probably this is how they survive so well in a region 
infested with alzabos - the alzabos leave them alone unless they are 
starving.

- Gerry Quinn
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