These Yonderfolk can travel only to the galactic rim and then only with heavy radiation screening because the radiation level within any galaxy would kill them. Valland wonders whether they have natural immortality but Argens points out that quantum processes, viruses and chemicals can also mutate cells. Valland's speculation echoes Anderson's story "What Shall It Profit?" in which a man is made immortal by shielding him from all radiation in a very restricted environment deep underground. He is physically immortal but mentally undeveloped, an experimental dead end.
"What Shall It Profit?" is part of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History which presents alternative slants on ideas to be found in Heinlein's or Asimov's future histories:
robots
a predictive science of society
immortality
generation ship
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And the ruthless men who set up that research program for developing longevity deliberately chose victims who were stupid, because they would be easier to keep under control.
Ad astra! Sean
"What Shall it Profit" seems to assume more damage from radiation than there is evidence for.
However, that has been a common belief for decades.
Over the last several years I have been reading evidence that the generally accepted "Linear No Threshold" (LNT) model of radiation damage is actually nonsense.
LNT assumes no repair of radiation damage by an organism & so that it doesn't matter whether a given radiation dose is received over a second or over decades. If it was true we would expect eg: that cancer rates would be higher in regions with relatively high natural background radiation. We don't see that.
I recently read "Why Nuclear Power Has Been A Flop", available for download at https://gordianknotbook.com/
A major part of the reason given is that following LNT for purposes of regulating nuclear power drives the cost up with ZERO benefit to public health.
Chapter 5 of the book goes into detail on the studies of moderate dose *rate* radiation that show LNT is wrong.
The book also goes into the history of how the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1950s pushed it & gives evidence LNT was not just a mistake, but a lie. The motivation for the lie was apparently to raise opposition to nuclear bomb testing. A motivation I can have some sympathy for, but a 'noble lie' will probably end up causing great harm, in this case air pollution, poverty, and global warming.
At this point I'm fairly convinced that LNT is nonsense, but as a proper skeptic I want to know what the'steelman' argument is for LNT.
Kaor, Jim!
And we have been seeing too much of that nonsense lately, partisans falsely claiming scientific evidence backs the policies they prefer. Or suppressing evidence they don't like, as in the case you discussed. Bah!!!
Ad astra! Sean
"partisans falsely claiming scientific evidence backs the policies they prefer"
See this for something that recently came out saying exactly that about partisans for some policies.
I had been a bit dubious about those policies, but didn't know much either way.
https://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/wpath-files
Kaor, Jim!
I am not in the least surprised, given the woke insanity of our decadent times, that "transgender" partisans are ignoring, hushing up, or refusing to give their patients or their parents information showing that "gender changing" treatments and surgeries does incalculable harm.
Bah!!! Sean
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