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From: cjh@CCA.CCA.COM
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: breeding for "luck"
Message-ID: <450@rutgers.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Tue, 25-Nov-86 17:35:53 EST
Article-I.D.: rutgers.450
Posted: Tue Nov 25 17:35:53 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Nov-86 21:15:16 EST
Sender: daemon@rutgers.RUTGERS.EDU
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
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From: cjh@CCA.CCA.COM (Chip Hitchcock)

   GWS states that luck is sufficiently obvious a survival trait that we
should have it already.
   Perhaps we do---at some unnoticeably low level (or some level sufficiently
even that it's not readily observable). This is true of most survival traits,
since without a reasonable assortment of them a species doesn't survive at all.
If you wish to develop one particular trait in a plant or animal species, you
have to breed for it selectively, which is precisely what the birthright
lotteries did.
   Niven's biology is often questionable (a local fan did a wonderful
demolition of the notion of non-sentient Kzinti females, plus some branches
on how it could happen from a plague rather than evolution), but breeding
for luck seems plausible.