TrashMan wrote:Since humantiy produced huders of different cultures and tehy are ian constant state of flux... I really don't see what's preventing Loroi from changing. Change is inevitable.
Okay, I'll try to explain through a metaphor.
There are dozens of separately-evolved forms of eye known to biology. Dozens. There is speculation that there are actually
hundreds. All are based on similar principles and most on similar biochemistry, but are distinct enough that we pretty much know that they came about separately. All biological systems are in a constant state of flux, as a natural result of DNA and RNA being imperfect at replication and expression and maintenance.
There are serious structural and organizational differences between eyes, and different needs that they suit. The chemicals within and most basic principles behind eyes are often similar, but the construction is fairly distinct.
Not only are eyes adapted to different purposes, but some eyes are better and more efficient than others towards the same purpose.
Let's say there's one form of eye that emerged in one species, and a very different form of eye that emerged in another species that fulfills a near-identical evolutionary niche, and let's say this niche is
very strongly vision-dependent. Let's say the eyes of one species are very,
very differently constructed than the other, with key components made and placed in very different ways, and one type is better suited to the same task than the other.
The species with inferior eyes might grow larger eyes, might weed out some inefficiencies in how well they make their form of eye, might even grow more eyes. But they are cosmically unlikely to transition from their form of eyes to that of the other species, because in the steps in between, their eyes would become useless. And then they would die.
Mutations happen all the time and many of the same genes would be present in the first place and evolution is inevitable and the individuals on the road to growing superior vision would
all die because the individual steps that are necessary to take the species from the inferior eye structure to the superior one are individually terribly, terribly maladaptive, and with a large network of genes that would have to be altered rather than one or two alleles to mutate, each individual allele's Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium would not shift in favor of the superior eye within a reasonable timeframe, and by reasonable timeframe I am talking about a reasonable
geological timeframe.
Social structures can be consciously manipulated and evolutionary structures cannot, but, even though we are not talking about a vision-based species going blind for several million years, we are still (in my opinion) talking about retarding research for thousands of years while working out the kinks in the transition states between the one paradigm and the other, during which the species is made much more vulnerable to their natural enemies. If a transition state is sufficiently expensive or sufficiently harmful then a transition will not be made, and so far as I can tell we are in fact talking about a sufficiently painful transition here.
The Loroi have adapted to their research paradigm. As I have said, various ways in which they have adapted, such as eidetic memory and telepathy, become maladaptive baggage if they start to make the transition. They also have few if any adaptations for problems that could arise within the human research paradigm, since theirs is so different and has such different roots.
Change is inevitable. Optimization is natural. And perhaps
in several thousand years, after the Loroi have socially adopted many,
many of humanity's cultural traits--some of which will probably appear to have absolutely
nothing to do with our historical rate of technological development--and the Loroi government, society, and
entire civilization have ceased to bear meaningful similarity to their current form, the intermediate steps between humanity's scientific paradigm and that of the Loroi will be sufficiently painless to allow them to shift to our model. But by then the game will already be over and human civilization will already have won, lost, or left. So it doesn't seem a particularly pertinent point to consider.