On 3/8/24 18:00, Rupert Boleyn - rupert.boleyn at gmail.com (via tml
list) wrote:
>
>
> On 03Aug2024 1905, Jim Vassilakos - jim.vassilakos at gmail.com (via
> tml list) wrote:
>
>> But, of course, there's a deeper level, and it goes back to Jeffrey
>> Schwartz's comparison of the Imperium and Zhodani Consulate to Amway
>> and Herbalife. To put it simply, having psionic abilities is such an
>> advantage that it seemed inevitable that psionic individuals would
>> eventually take over. Of course, by the late fifth century, psionic
>> bloodlines were already ensconced in most of the major power centers
>> (the royalty, the nobility, the megacorps, and the military).
>
> How inheritable is psionics offically these days? AM4 did not
> guarantee nobles a decent psi score at all - they rolled 2d like
> normal, but were guaranteed training. TNE outright stated that psionic
> talent is not inheritable.

GT: Alien Races 1 , "Psionics and Biology", p 135 opens with "No one has
ever firmly pinned down a hereditary genetic basis for psionic power". 
It goes on to say "The possession of a particular power and its strength
appears to be based on a combination of complex recessive genetic
inheritance and a favourable pre-natal and early childhood environment."

Child of two trained psis - "almost certain to have one or more powers
of similar strength to his or her parents"

Mundane father, psi-trained mother - "likely to develop powers of some
sort, often similar to his mother, regardless of who the father is"

Psi-trained father, mundane mother - "has only a somewhat higher than
normal chance of having greater than average potential".

Artifically gestated (not brought to term in the mother's womb) children
are "far less likely to develop powerful abilities even if their parents
had them".

In the Zhodani Consulate, "Prole orphans, adopted into noble and
intendant families at infancy, are much less likely to display a usable
talent than orphans whose parents were psi-trained nobles or intendants."

It concludes with "the only way to reliably produce a competent,
powerful psionic is to have two trained psionic parents produce a
naturally born child, raise that child in a happy family environment
where psi is in daily use, and give that child lots of training from an
early age.  That this is the very system that Zhodani nobility use is no
coincidence at all".

So it seems to be a mix, in GT, of both nature and nurture - not only
the biological parents playing a role via genetics, but the gestational
mother, if any (who actually carries/bears the child), and the early
environment.

For example, it would seem that a clone of a powerful psion has it made
genetically, but that's necessary, not sufficient, for the clone to turn
out as similarly powerful as the original.  The early environment the
clone grows up in will, in this case, be the major determining factor in
whether the the clone develops similarly to the original, plus a helping
of sheer chance.

<snip>

Alex