The elephant in the room

And yet those suits allow the Volus to have an ammonia based atmosphere and the high pressure needed to allow them to leave their home planet and interact and settle with the larger galactic public. Quarians can create a suit that is capable of adapting to their specific individual body. Allowing them to without suit malfunctions to live and move around with all other races despite their immune system problems that makes going around in no suit even among their own kind some what of a chore.

That is manipulating their environment. Small scale maybe but still manipulating it because they despite being in an area that normally would be inhabitable to them they are capable of living and working in it.

Large scale I seem to remember some codex entries were they were doing a very basic and primitive form of terraforming to make planets more habitable then before.


Behavioral changes aren't evolutionary mutations. Gators don't start to associate humans with food because they are an evolutionary mutation they do it because humans keep feeding them. So their behavior is altered by those events making them less afraid to get near them. Which then leads to issues like the kid being killed at the Disney World resort.


They have even done behavioral studies like this with foxes as stand ins. First generations were everything you would expect a wild fox to be like. The next generation was much more friendly with people and by the 3rd generation they were basically like modern dogs in terms of friendliness. They aren't evolutionary mutations. Heck the cat shelter I some times help out at has a colony of feral cats around it. We regularly leave out food for them and a bowl of water for them to eat and drink. Nearly every single cat in the colony has been born and raised outside completely free of almost all human interaction. Yet there are a few in that group that willingly will let us go up and pet them. One even comes up to my car and starts to meow at me. This isn't a cat who gained some evolutionary mutation compared to all the rest of the feral cats. This is a cat who put 2 and 2 together and realized I'm the who puts the food out. And since I never try to hurt or scare them I'm not a threat and can get close to them.

The only mutation effect is what we have done to dogs though selective breeding. Dogs like the Pug or French Bulldog would never be created by nature. The flat nose means they suffer from heavy breathing problems. And the French Bulldog's head is so large compared to their hips that they are physically incapable of giving live birth. Practically all French Bulldog births are done though surgery. And those breeds were created by humans manipulating the dog's genes though selective heavy inbreeding. Like take every inbreed red neck stereotype in existence and multiply it by a factor of 1,000.


Was the quote that started it. It ignores a lot of not just real world human history but damn near everything in the game. The more advanced a race becomes the less and less the evolution he is talking about has a hold on how they develop.  That is why I brought up how cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and kale are all the exact same plant. Just bred for different effects by humans till it reached the point of looking so different you would think it would be a completely different species. We have been manipulating the genes of agricultural and live stock since we first started farming.

Once you hit ME game level of technology there is no organic evolution along unpredictable paths. They are at the level of technology they can manipulate and violate the very fundamentals of physics in the universe. They can defy time and space with Relays. If there is any evolution it will not be along unpredictable paths. It will be along the path that we deem worth going down.  We have long since out grown evolution.

It's a hormonal difference. Behavior is the result. Not the cause. It's why you could breed dogs to maintain similar responses. Or other animals, for that matter. If you're willing to mechanize the universe - down to defending ideas like Synthesis -- then I'm surprised you give "behavior" some kind of quality in itself (as much as I'd like to believe it is). 

That said, there are more beautiful examples that have nothing to do with behavior. Like bees and flowers being the most well known. Even more amazing is specific bees and specific flowers, who evolved to only target each other. This isn't mere behavior or preference, but crucial to survival. Technology has nothing on this. Technology, as I said, is about control.. and often one sided.

None of these are as radical as simply adapting to an environment. As amazing as they are.

And there's no such thing as genetically perfect, in and of itself.. Which is the most simplistic thing about Synthesis imo. It treats Evolution as some kind of thing unto itself. The environment dictates what is evolutionary perfect. All there is is being the right tool for the job in a particular place and time. A big penis is useful in one place, but not another. Even intelligence is negligible or irrelevant in some conditions. What is perfect is the most adaptive. And granted, technology could adapt, after seeing a problem. I won't deny that.

But if something already thinks it's assumed perfection or an ideal, then it would never adapt. Perfection would see no need to change and die in the process of encountering an unknown. But if it did adapt, then it never was the "pinnacle of evolution" like it claimed beforehand.

There is no such thing as a pinnacle of evolution. Each species is relative to its environment, even humanity with all its intellectual and technical accomplishments. There is no "end" to evolution.

Humans didn't come from apes and that wasn't the argument put forward.  The statement was that there's no such thing as a pinnacle of evolution nor is there an end.  We're still evolving.  Not sure how you interpreted it as we're NOT evolving.  The only "end" for evolution is death of a species.

What? No. Read what I said. Evolution never stops. In other words, we're still evolving.

So you mean there was some sort of apex of development before humanity moved from what is clearly an ape form into what would be closer to our current form?

I refuse to vote unless a "non-canon" option is put in 

This is correct, except for one thing: once we have the technology to guide our own evolution (and overcome notions that we shouldn't do it), evolution will change dramatically. At the moment, our social environment is the most potent driver of evolution, but then, ideas of what's desirable, drawn from our cultures, will replace it, and the human species will eventually diverge. Also in the past, those groups survived who were most efficient at turning resources into offspring, but today resources are less limited than they used to be, and that will no longer be the deciding factor. 
 

I'd say as far as physical evolution goes, there are mutually exclusive paths to go down.

For example, a volus needs a pressurized suit in order to survive in environments suitable for humans and other species.  Now one could theoretically use gene therapies and cybernetics to allow a volus to thrive in such an environment.  But could a volus ever go home again afterwards?  

Similarly, a hanar is far better suited for an aquatic environment than land.  But if they were altered to function better on land, how would they do if they returned to water?

In a way, this also goes back to the whole Synthesis lets them interact with tech.  But which tech?  can a Kindle read an ePub document?  do they Use AMD or NVidia graphic cards?  What operating systems are they compatible with?  How can they reach perfection through technology when different technologies can't even interact with each other?

It would.

And yet those birds are entirely different species. And Ostrich isn't called a Tyrannosaurus Rex for a reason. If if we could prove they are direct decedents they have altered so much they are no longer the same creature.

A post synthesis human would be about as similar as Homo Habilis is to modern day Homo Sapiens.