# Science Fiction Debate: Uplifting Species to Sapience **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 16, 2020, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-uplifting-species-to-sapience/846502 "2020-01-16T12:45:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2020, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-uplifting-species-to-sapience/846502/21 "2020-01-16T23:21:24Z")
> [@Jasmine](#): > > “No one is home” is an arrogant and short-sighted assumption. We are using what must be for any advanced civilization a primitive form of communication. Any race advanced enough to reach the stars is not going to use a form of communication that takes years to travel the necessary distance… Unless we are mistaken regarding the laws of physics, they are going to be using a communication system that takes years to travel. Light speed is a hard limit, and outside of fiction,even the most technologically advanced civilization isn’t going to be able to break it any more than the most advanced mathematician could find the last digit of pi. ---
**Author:** ![Fiendish\_Astronaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiendish_astronaut/32/3295_2.png) [@Fiendish\_Astronaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiendish_Astronaut)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2020, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-uplifting-species-to-sapience/846502/22 "2020-01-17T00:14:51Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Dogs have earned it. Haven’t they suffered enough? Ignorance is bliss. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2020, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-uplifting-species-to-sapience/846502/23 "2020-01-17T16:51:04Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > A hundred thousand years of slavery is absurd and evil. It would be absurd and evil even if the species being “uplifted” had been given a choice. > > I don’t remember the details of the Brin books clearly, but I don’t think he was arguing otherwise – IIRC, I thought the reason he had humans barely escaping the same fate was to make it more likely that readers would understand that it was wrong. As I recall it, it wasn’t “slavery” in the sense of the chattel slavery of the 19th century, but rather more like a species-level indenture. So it’s not like individual members of a patron species would have individual slaves of the client species or anything like that. I viewed it as being more along the lines of owing feudal-style obligations- to go to war at the behest of your patron species, provide a certain number of your people to do certain tasks you’re skilled at, etc… And your species doesn’t sit at the grownup table in galactic society. That’s probably the biggest one- your species is basically spoken for by your patron race. Earth’s status in the books was that we were a “wolfling” race, meaning that we had self-uplifted (which was all but unheard of), and had uplifted chimps and dolphins on our own, which gave us a place at the grownup table without a patron race of our own. ---
**Author:** ![Lightray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightray/32/391_2.png) [@Lightray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightray)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2020, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-uplifting-species-to-sapience/846502/24 "2020-01-17T17:20:17Z")
> [@bump](#): > > … That’s probably the biggest one- your species is basically spoken for by your patron race. The biggest one is that the patron race can continue to keep modding the client race in any way they’d like to, until the period of indenture is over. The books have _multiple_ examples of extremely cruel changes to client species. _Startide Rising_ itself had an example of a species that was so grossly changed that every moment of their existence was agony. It’s given as an example where other races actually forced the indenture to be ended early, but there are many examples of purpose-modded client species in later books that don’t get any reprieve. So, it’s 100,000 years of someone else forcing your children and all their descendants into neverending body horror. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2020, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-uplifting-species-to-sapience/846502/25 "2020-01-17T17:41:57Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > A hundred thousand years of slavery is absurd and evil. It would be absurd and evil even if the species being “uplifted” had been given a choice. > > I don’t remember the details of the Brin books clearly, but I don’t think he was arguing otherwise – IIRC, I thought the reason he had humans barely escaping the same fate was to make it more likely that readers would understand that it was wrong. As I recall it, it wasn’t “slavery” in the sense of the chattel slavery of the 19th century, but rather more like a species-level indenture. So it’s not like individual members of a patron species would have individual slaves of the client species or anything like that. I viewed it as being more along the lines of owing feudal-style obligations- to go to war at the behest of your patron species, provide a certain number of your people to do certain tasks you’re skilled at, etc… And your species doesn’t sit at the grownup table in galactic society. That’s probably the biggest one- your species is basically spoken for by your patron race. Earth’s status in the books was that we were a “wolfling” race, meaning that we had self-uplifted (which was all but unheard of), and had uplifted chimps and dolphins on our own, which gave us a place at the grownup table without a patron race of our own. ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2020, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-uplifting-species-to-sapience/846502/26 "2020-01-17T17:56:26Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > Unless we are mistaken regarding the laws of physics… Why would you assume that we actually understand them completely in the first place? Well over half of all the matter in universe is believed to be “Dark Matter”, and we have absolutely no idea what it is or how it works or how it affects our visible universe. We also do not have a Quantum theory of gravity that connects to Einstein’s theory, so that also is a big gap. Also, the “nothing moves faster than light” statement is not true. If you warp space, the end result is that you are traversing a given distance faster than light. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2020, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-uplifting-species-to-sapience/846502/27 "2020-01-17T18:02:43Z")
> [@Jasmine](#): > > Well over half of all the matter in universe is believed to be “Dark Matter”, and we have absolutely no idea what it is or how it works or how it affects our visible universe. I’m going to leave the rest of the “technology-optimism of the gaps” alone, but “how it affects our visible universe” is how we know Dark Matter exists, so saying we have absolutely no idea is very wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2020, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-uplifting-species-to-sapience/846502/28 "2020-01-17T18:03:43Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#): > > Horses, Dogs, Elephants, Cetaceans, Chimps, Bonobos, Gorillas, Grey Parrots & Ravens/Crows all seem like good choices. Why on earth are horses at the top of your list? They seem dumber than rocks. Substitute octopus for horse, and that’s a pretty good list. I think the octopus and the birds would be the most interesting, because they are the most different from us. Cats are definite no. That’s just too frightening. There no chance whatsoever that they would use their new-found powers for good. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2020, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-uplifting-species-to-sapience/846502/29 "2020-01-17T18:09:13Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > Why on earth are horses at the top of your list? They seem dumber than rocks. > > Substitute octopus for horse, and that’s a pretty good list. I think the octopus and the birds would be the most interesting, because they are the most different from us. > > Cats are definite no. That’s just too frightening. There no chance whatsoever that they would use their new-found powers for good. Horses are smarter than you think, but I didn’t order my list. Just wrote them out. In fact it looks like I started with less intelligent candidates. I would no sooner uplift Octopuses than Cuttlefish. Both are too alien and probably even more dangerous than uplifting cats. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2020, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-uplifting-species-to-sapience/846502/30 "2020-01-17T18:45:50Z")
There are also two excellent sci-fi books about uplift by Adrian Tchaikovsky - _Children of Time_, and _Children of Ruin_. I won’t give away the species involved in each book, but they are unusual. The scientific mechanism is hand-wavy (nanovirus mumble mumble), but what’s superb - especially in the first book - is how imaginatively the story is told from the perspective of the society of animals that are uplifted. It happens accidentally subsequent to a human plan to uplift monkeys as part of a terraforming project, and the process occurs over many generations in the absence of humans. ---
**Author:** ![GargoyleWB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gargoylewb/32/199_2.png) [@GargoyleWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GargoyleWB)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2020, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-uplifting-species-to-sapience/846502/31 "2020-01-17T19:39:31Z")
Huntsman spiders. Hilarity ensues. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2020, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-uplifting-species-to-sapience/846502/32 "2020-01-17T19:44:02Z")
> [@Lightray](#): > > The biggest one is that the patron race can continue to keep modding the client race in any way they’d like to, until the period of indenture is over. The books have _multiple_ examples of extremely cruel changes to client species. _Startide Rising_ itself had an example of a species that was so grossly changed that every moment of their existence was agony. It’s given as an example where other races actually forced the indenture to be ended early, but there are many examples of purpose-modded client species in later books that don’t get any reprieve. > > So, it’s 100,000 years of someone else forcing your children and all their descendants into neverending body horror. There were better and worse patrons for sure; the Tymbrimi and the Thennanin were pretty good, as was EarthClan, but the Tandu were horrific. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2020, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-uplifting-species-to-sapience/846502/33 "2020-01-17T20:10:25Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > I for one welcome our new insect overlords. I’d like to remind them that I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves. You’ve seen _THEM._ ---
**Author:** ![Teuton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/teuton/32/3864_2.png) [@Teuton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Teuton)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2020, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-uplifting-species-to-sapience/846502/34 "2020-01-17T21:18:51Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > There are also two excellent sci-fi books about uplift by Adrian Tchaikovsky - _Children of Time_, and _Children of Ruin_. I read “Children of Time” recently, one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2020, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-uplifting-species-to-sapience/846502/35 "2020-01-18T18:18:45Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#): > > I would no sooner uplift Octopuses than Cuttlefish. Both are too alien If our purpose is to get somebody interesting to talk to, I think more alien is an advantage. We’d need to be prepared to give up dominance of the oceans, though. Which, considering what we’ve been doing to them, would probably be a good idea. ---
**Author:** ![Ignotus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ecc23a/32.png) [@Ignotus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ignotus)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2020, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-uplifting-species-to-sapience/846502/36 "2020-01-18T20:16:38Z")
Strictly ethically; wouldn’t the OP:s proposal be the exact equivalent of implanting the brain of a human fetus or newborn child into the body of a non-human animal? I don’t endorse it. ---
**Author:** ![Ignotus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ecc23a/32.png) [@Ignotus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ignotus)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2020, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-uplifting-species-to-sapience/846502/37 "2020-01-18T20:39:17Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > If our purpose is to get somebody interesting to talk to, I think more alien is an advantage. Seems to me that chances are the discussion won’t be all that interesting. Yeah, yeah, we all agree that 1+1=2. So what about shape-shifting and color change – how do you octopus _do_ it? Pretty much the same way you humans sneeze! ---
**Author:** ![truthseeker3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e68b1a/32.png) [@truthseeker3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/truthseeker3)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2020, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-uplifting-species-to-sapience/846502/38 "2020-01-21T03:02:46Z")
> [@bump](#): > > I’m not sure what that would accomplish other than increase resource competition here on Earth… I’m not sure an intelligent species would necessarily need the same resources we do; and since I don’t see anything restricting which “species” can be uplifted, I’m going to pick _Ficus elastica_. There are already [living bridges](https://www.insider.com/india-living-root-bridges-photos-2019-1); I imagine humans in a symbiotic relationship with living, sentient homes. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2020, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-uplifting-species-to-sapience/846502/39 "2020-01-21T03:31:48Z")
Eh, I don’t give a fig about them. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2020, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-uplifting-species-to-sapience/846502/40 "2020-01-21T08:11:29Z")
Time to step up and be contrarian 🙂 > [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > We’ve searched the heavens in our quest to find other intelligent life…to find other intelligences to talk to and learn from. > > There’s no one home. If there are, there’s no one near enough in space and time to make it practical - or even that we’d know exist. We are, forever, alone. Is this just the premise of this OP, or something that you’re asserting? Because if it’s the latter you’re asserting something we cannot know at this time. > [@](#): > > But do we have to be? There’s plenty of other species RIGHT here and we’re getting decent at genetic manipulation. You, yourself, have come up with a means of altering a species genetics so they begin achieving an intelligence similar to humanities. IMO, no, I don’t see much to gain by making another species humanlike. A different kind of intelligence / superior intelligence? That would be more appealing and is the more likely situation in reality (it’s implausible to think of scenarios where we can engineer exactly human level intelligence, no more no less, and no amount of investigation or research ever changes this). > [@Jasmine](#): > > Basically, we are on a mountain top in the Rockies sending up smoke signals and assuming no one is out there just because we are not getting an answer when, in reality, the environment is teaming with communication that we simply can’t detect. The issue is a bit bigger than that though. Because humans, probably within a millenia or so, will possess the technology required to litter the galaxy with bric-a-brac, even assuming a light speed barrier. If there are lots of technological species out there, it’s strange that the galaxy still looks like a blank slate. We can speculate reasons why that is the case, but we don’t know, and that’s fundamentally the fermi paradox. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-uplifting-species-to-sapience/846502.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-uplifting-species-to-sapience/846502.md?page=3)