[Dragaera] Thoughts on age and experience on Dragaera

[Alexx Kay]

> Yes, Alexx, I agree there's plenty of textev to that effect.
>
> But it stops my suspension of disbelief for three reasons:
>
> 1) I can't see the need for such a slowed learning ability

I can, or at least, one possible motive.  I can use one seeming paradox to
help explain another.  The slowed learning is part of what is necessary to
keep Dragaeran culture as inexplicably stable as it is.  (Or was up until
the Interregnum, anyway.)  Whether this stability was initially
desired/engineered by the Jenoine, the gods, or some yet unknown parties,
has not yet been revealed.

> 2) I can't see a rational possibility of it -- does it mean, for example,
> that you'd have to repeat something 20 times more to get a Dragaeran child
> to learn it, than to get a human child?  How would you construct such a
> poor
> brain?

Yes, you'd have to repeat stuff more.  Yes, that is, from some
perspectives, a very poor design.  But it depends what you're trying to
achieve.  What the Jenoine were trying to achieve remains conspicuously
undefined.

> 3) I can't see it as a reasonable side-effect of genetic manipulation for
> longer life

I agree that that isn't very plausible.  Which is why I think it was
deliberate, not a side-effect.

> But if as you say this is just how it is on Dragaera, then I'm surprised
> Vlad (and all the other Easterners) aren't constantly thinking rings
> around
> the Empire.  Not because they're smarter, but because they don't need to
> be
> instructed 20 times to get it.
>
> :)

Well, Vlad arguably *is* doing so, very noticeably in the latest book.  As
far back as _Jhereg_, Kragar says (talking about Mellar's speedy rise to
power) "I've never heard of anyone except you moving that quickly, and you
have the excuse of being an Easterner."

Hrm.  We actually have some (admittedly weak) textev that the speed of
development is cultural, not genetic.  Morrolan, raised as an Easterner,
picks up sorcery with speed that astonishes other Dragaerans.

Alexx

"It was mentioned on CNN that the new prime number discovered
 recently is four times bigger then the previous record."
     -- John Blasik