Joe Hale wrote: > > I don't know if this is covered in the series, but once you start > uplifting species where do you stop? If you uplift dogs, why not cats? > Why not squids? (They're smarter than you think). In fact, why not > uplift cock roaches? Of course you'd have to make them bigger so their > head could hold a bigger brain. But once they achieved intelligence and > we could reason with them, maybe humans would get over being disgusted > by them. (Or not.) >
The rule of thumb is that a species has to have potential in order to be chosen for uplift. Earth has a large number of species which would be said to have potential, including most of the ones you mentioned (roaches have a long way to go before having potential, and might impossible to uplift within the standard timeframe of 100,000 years). My take on it is that potential has a personality component as well as intelligence and (somewhat) physical components, which is why dogs apparently have problems with Earthclan's style of uplift. That, and humans are strictly forbidden from uplifting any more species from the richly endowed planet we happen to be living on, and that we have to ensure that further environmental damage is prevented if we are to keep our lease on Earth. At least, this is how a galactic would describe it. - Matt _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
