[extropy-chat] Hybrids

[David Lubkin]

t 11:05 PM 1/29/2004 +0100, Anders Sandberg quoted:

>"In contrast, when the mule is producing sperm or egg cells during meiosis,
>each pair of chromosomes (one from Mom and one from Dad) need to pair up
>with each other. Since the mule doesn't have an even number of homologous
>pairs (his parents had different chromosome numbers), meiosis is disrupted
>and viable sperm and eggs are not formed."

There is apparently a long-standing belief among mule aficionados that 
mules are, on rare occasion, fertile. Per the
British Mule Society,

http://freespace.virgin.net/gwyneth.wright/fertile.html

But there's a rebuttal on

http://www.bchorsemen.bc.ca/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=69

that any such reports are unreliable, and usually either a mare that seemed 
to be a hinny (female mule) or a hinny that adopted a foal and was mistaken 
for its mother.

Of course, a single instance of an actual fertile mule would seem to refute 
the Utah article.

>Then again, why is it bad to become a bunch of species? If a society can
>create genetic modifications to create such a situation, then it can also
>be remedied. In a loss of technology scenario where such abilities are
>lost, then the loss of ability is likely a far larger issue than
>reproduction.

In a loss of technology scenario, reproductively incompatible sentient 
species in the same ecological niches will presumably recap 
human-Neanderthal competition. I think a plausible argument can be made 
either way as to whether this is good or not. My guess is that any loss of 
technology scenario would be precarious enough that cross-species 
cooperation could be essential for survival, and interbreeding is the 
historically preferred method for creating and cementing ties.

Robert Bradbury wrote:

>I tend not to follow threads that would appear to have a high 
>debate-to-data content.

One more reason to change subject lines when changing topics.

>If we have the ability to live off-Earth I *really* doubt we would not have
>the ability to construct de-novo genomes.  (The business plan for Robiobotics
>which leads to de-novo genomes is *much* closer to reality than Mars 
>colonization).
>
>Now whether or not one wants to preserve the ability for normo-homo-mating
>would be an interesting question.  One has to argue that this has some
>survival benefit in the situation that technology (and even the knowledge
>of such technology) is somehow driven back to the dark ages or earlier.

I like the idea of off-site backup of critical data. I want biologically 
and culturally isolated copies of our sentience that are self-sufficient in 
a sustainable low-technology environment. Perhaps Amish on terraformed 
Mars. As a baseline we can refer to, and a fail-safe backup for extinction 
events. (The society need not be low-technology now but it needs to not be 
inherently reliant on higher-tech, as a space-based or females-only society 
would probably be.)

Mind you, I'm not saying that *all* of us need to be able to interbreed or 
survive low-tech, just that *some* can.

I'd also be somewhat comfortable with the equivalent of a baby factory in a 
bobble if I were convinced of the long-term reliability of both.


-- David Lubkin.