RE: [VV] Organics and other flavoring - RE: [VV] Vectorverse -- Ok so far?

G'day,

> I think if you have cultures A B C and D in contact with each other
for
> some hundreds of years and E not, then E is unlikely to be in the same
> league with ABCD as far as tech level.  I suppose you could say that E
> started off as relatively high tech and stagnated in isolation while
ABCD
> caught up, if you really wanted to have this situation.

This is not so much pursuing the biotech argument as asking a general
"why?" question. Is there some reason why E has to be worse off than
ABCD (or stagnated)? I can see the whole competition thing happening in
ABCD, but if E has come across a new field of research the others
haven't and happily branched off by themselves for yonks why the
immediate assumption they have to be worse off?

> It's a little implausible to say "they made contact just at the same
time
> that the tech levels got competitive"...

True, but given I was assuming everyone wasn't on the same page and 100%
competitive, but space was big enough that the lead guys didn't want to
conquer it all anyway I was happy to see a wide divergence in tech
levels. I don't know of any  period in history where there was a
universal tech level.

> but someone who's looking for living
> starships isn't likely to be too worried about implausibility....

True again. I'm not keen on the idea of living space ships myself, I do
like the idea of biological components to starships though... And as for
the gentleman concerned with getting a bioship on the wrong day of the
month he should be more concerned if he were the focus of the bioships
aggression on said day, at least if there's no chocolate around ;)

Cheers

Beth