Honorverse Top Ten Tacticians, Strategists

tlb wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:So his original vision appears to have already been going off the rails during his lifetime. He wasn't able to prevent the “indentured servant” test subjects from becoming permanent 2nd class Seccies residents (not even citizens). And after his death, and with Beowulf's horrified reaction to that widespread experimentation on the “indentured servants”/"genetic slaves", his successors just became more extreme and paranoid.

The transition from indentured worker to genetic slave did not occur in Leonard's lifetime. Check the passage in chapter 10 of Storm from the Shadows, pointing to when the Detweilers went underground

Ah, that's on me. I seem to have accidently edited out the specific nuance I was aiming for; during one of my revisions of that post.

The system that existed during Leonard's time definitely wasn't what genetic slavery evolved into. That transition was later; after he was gone. That's something my post did almost somewhat alluded to; when I mentioned that it was his successors that started selling them outside of Mesa.

However the part I lost was the distinction between when Beowulf started calling it genetic slavery and when Mesa did.
Oops.
My reading of RFC's old post is that Beowulf started calling it genetic slavery even in its early, softer, form; so during Leonard's lifetime.
At one point I'd had something along the lines that even while Leonard viewed them as indentured, and required the Mesan constitution contain clauses to free them, Beowulf had started calling them genetic slaves. And I'd had that somewhere before my line "Beowulf's horrified reaction to that widespread experimentation on the “indentured servants”/"genetic slaves"" (Hence why I included both phrases that still existing statement. Unfortunately, by losing that setup, what's left now failed to present that distinction.

Sorry about that

tlb wrote:I think that you are quibbling over semantics; the "vision" was a "plan" that involved using indentured servants as a test bed for the uplift of the species. The quote from Storm from the Shadows makes it clear that he was not as vilified as the Mesan Board became after the assassination of his descendant and it was only with the ascendance of that board that his vision was finally subverted long after his death.

Indeed I am, but this is a thread about strategists and Leonard Detweiler was nominated. He wasn't a strategist because he didn't lay out the steps necessary to achieve the goal / vision. Like the Underpants Gnomes, his "plan" was stuck at the "???" stage after creating Manpower, Inc.

Or, to borrow again from South Park, he defended his plan by using the Chewbacca Defence.

tlb wrote:I think that you are quibbling over semantics; the "vision" was a "plan" that involved using indentured servants as a test bed for the uplift of the species. The quote from Storm from the Shadows makes it clear that he was not as vilified as the Mesan Board became after the assassination of his descendant and it was only with the ascendance of that board that his vision was finally subverted long after his death.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Indeed I am, but this is a thread about strategists and Leonard Detweiler was nominated. He wasn't a strategist because he didn't lay out the steps necessary to achieve the goal / vision. Like the Underpants Gnomes, his "plan" was stuck at the "???" stage after creating Manpower, Inc.

It is true that he did not have a "plan" for galactic domination, instead he had a plan to improve the human baseline using the results of the improvements tested on the indentured servants. So he had implemented the only step that his plan needed. The subversion was to not improve humans in general, but to instead to greatly improve certain genetic lines to serve as rulers for humans in general.

So if your claim is that he was not one of the top 10 Tacticians / Strategists, then I will not argue with you; but I will insist that he had a plan and took steps to implement it (creating Mesa and Manpower Inc). A plan that was not buried, but is being continued by the Mesan Enlightenment.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

tlb wrote:I think that you are quibbling over semantics; the "vision" was a "plan" that involved using indentured servants as a test bed for the uplift of the species. The quote from Storm from the Shadows makes it clear that he was not as vilified as the Mesan Board became after the assassination of his descendant and it was only with the ascendance of that board that his vision was finally subverted long after his death.

Indeed I am, but this is a thread about strategists and Leonard Detweiler was nominated. He wasn't a strategist because he didn't lay out the steps necessary to achieve the goal / vision. Like the Underpants Gnomes, his "plan" was stuck at the "???" stage after creating Manpower, Inc.

Or, to borrow again from South Park, he defended his plan by using the Chewbacca Defence.

Then what exactly is the Enlightenment "continuing" on with?

I just cannot agree with you. I think you are a victim of tunnel vision, and you are too married to and blinded by the aggressive plans inserted into his vision later.

Let's highlight parts of RFC's post provided by Jonathan ...

runsforcelery wrote:Detweiler never envisioned the horrendous dehumanization of genetic slaves. In fact, he never specifically referred to them as “slaves” at all. Don’t get me wrong — for his time, and considering the culture from which he sprang, he was an incredibly ruthless bastard, perfectly prepared to create thousands or even millions of human beings who would be second-class citizens. He had, however, almost a patriarchal perspective on the genetic “indentured servants” he created, and the Mesa constitution’s provision for manumission of genetic slaves was inserted at his insistence. Moreover, he regarded the creation of the “indentured servants” as a priceless opportunity to incorporate superior characteristics into them and (through them, in the fullness of time) into all the rest of the human race. They were to be his laboratory, in which individually valuable genetic traits would be developed, enhanced, and conserved in the process of solving individual specific needs.
[snip]
Detweiler was creating a far larger experimental population with a view towards eventually combining all of those individually engineered traits into a single genetically superior species. As part of his mindset, emancipated “indentured servants” were never supposed to become Seccies. Once they were emancipated, they were supposed to have the vote, to see their children fully integrated into Mesan society, etc. To be honest, that was probably the least realistic of his several unrealistic assumptions of what was possible, but it was fundamental to his own thinking and the moral system which justified everything else he was prepared to do.

Bold and underline mine and not the author's.

All of that would take centuries. Leonard definitely would have had to lay down a genetic plan for uplifting the human race. Strategies consumed by the MA are not limited to naval strategies but genetic strategies as well.

My point is that Leonard Detweiler had an overarching genetic vision. And he surely had a plan to engage and bring that vision to its fruition. Genetic manipulation involves a lot of hits and misses. And Leonard definitely had to have had a strategy to achieve his successes. And the tactics he was willing to use is what would have concerned Beowulf. It remains to be discovered if whether the more aggressive genetic tactics employed by the MA (killing babies and entire lines) was something that was employed by Leonard.

What I always assumed had happened is that Leonard might not have had an acceptable plan in the eyes of the "Evil Alignment" to merge his successes into the galaxy. Leonard's plan has always been to stick a finger in Beowulf's eye and prove them wrong. But that cannot be done without serving his accomplishments cold. IOW, at some point someone would have had to announce all of those accomplishments to the galaxy, if Beowulf was going to be proven wrong.

That would involve a total disclosure and a peer review of methods, tactics, practices, pitfalls, gotchas and failures. Beowulf would certainly want to know if mankind's genetic pool would be threatened in any way.

That could be problematical to do. If indeed total disclosure is given, and if Leonard himself embraced and accepted some of the more appalling atrocities that went on in the labs, then the galaxy itself, much less Beowulf, would have a huge problem with it. And therein may lie what motivated Leonard's heirs to develop a more aggressive plan to merge with the Galaxy.

What exactly is the Enlightenment continuing on with? It has stated to be the true followers of Leonard's vision. What are they following? And, how did their benign vision come to adopt naval strategies?

cthia wrote:If indeed total disclosure is given, and if Leonard himself embraced and accepted some of the more appalling atrocities that went on in the labs, then the galaxy itself, much less Beowulf, would have a huge problem with it. And therein may lie what motivated Leonard's heirs to develop a more aggressive plan to merge with the Galaxy.

What exactly is the Enlightenment continuing on with? It has stated to be the true followers of Leonard's vision. What are they following? And, how did their benign vision come to adopt naval strategies?

What appalling atrocities do you imagine went on in the labs in Leonard's time? Why do you think the Enlightenment had to adopt naval strategies and how could they when they were a dissident group within Mesa?

I believe the rupture was that the board decided that instead of raising all mankind, they would raise a superior group to rule mankind.

cthia wrote:Then what exactly is the Enlightenment "continuing" on with?

The vision.

All of that would take centuries. Leonard definitely would have had to lay down a genetic plan for uplifting the human race. Strategies consumed by the MA are not limited to naval strategies but genetic strategies as well.

My point is that Leonard Detweiler had an overarching genetic vision. And he surely had a plan to engage and bring that vision to its fruition. Genetic manipulation involves a lot of hits and misses. And Leonard definitely had to have had a strategy to achieve his successes. And the tactics he was willing to use is what would have concerned Beowulf. It remains to be discovered if whether the more aggressive genetic tactics employed by the MA (killing babies and entire lines) was something that was employed by Leonard.

Not necessarily. He did take the first steps towards his vision, but there's no evidence that he knew what needed to be done after those first few steps. Those first few steps were already what the Beowulf medical community objected to, at least at the time. They also feared the stratification that RFC told us about and that the Inner Onion embraced, but this doesn't appear to have been part of Leonard's vision. It was something that was ascribed to him.

What I always assumed had happened is that Leonard might not have had an acceptable plan in the eyes of the "Evil Alignment" to merge his successes into the galaxy.

There's no evidence that he had a plan to merge his successes into the galaxy at all, evil or not. There's no evidence that he knew how to convince people. In fact, there's evidence he was pretty lousy at it, because he got blamed for trying to force humanity into different classes, when that was not his objective at all. RFC was clear that he wanted to get the entire humanity uplifted.

It's entirely possible he relied on either someone else coming up with good, convincing arguments, or simply that the results would speak for themselves. We may call "hire someone to come up with a plan" a plan, but it's a lousy plan if so. And he'd have to be incredibly naive to assume that the results would speak for themselves in face of all the evidence to the contrary, that people were rejecting his methods and objectives.

His being naive to those issues may be in fact why others took matters into their own hands and set him aside. Leonard Detweiler may have been a genius at genetics, but ignorant in other matters. We have a word for this: a savant. I don't particularly think this is the case, but it's also a spectrum.

Leonard's plan has always been to stick a finger in Beowulf's eye and prove them wrong. But that cannot be done without serving his accomplishments cold. IOW, at some point someone would have had to announce all of those accomplishments to the galaxy, if Beowulf was going to be proven wrong.

Proving Beowulf wrong, sure. He was effectively exiled from the planet, even if it was of his own volition. But I don't get the part about cold. Why couldn't he keep on publishing papers for the next 60 T-years, showcasing the results that he was obtaining with Manpower's labs?

That would involve a total disclosure and a peer review of methods, tactics, practices, pitfalls, gotchas and failures. Beowulf would certainly want to know if mankind's genetic pool would be threatened in any way.

That could be problematical to do. If indeed total disclosure is given, and if Leonard himself embraced and accepted some of the more appalling atrocities that went on in the labs, then the galaxy itself, much less Beowulf, would have a huge problem with it. And therein may lie what motivated Leonard's heirs to develop a more aggressive plan to merge with the Galaxy.

He clearly embraced some means that Beowulf opposed. That's why he left in the first place. He thought the end justified some means. But how much that is, we don't know. How much was happening in Manpower's labs during his tenure, or even how much he may have known about it, is unknown.

We do know that the Alignment radicalised after his death, so it's entirely possible and even likely that genetic experiments got worse after his death too.

What exactly is the Enlightenment continuing on with? It has stated to be the true followers of Leonard's vision. What are they following? And, how did their benign vision come to adopt naval strategies?

Vision, not plan.

In fact, nowhere in TEiF do they talk about following a set of steps laid out by someone. There was no sequence of actions that needed to be taken to achieve that particular objective. So as I said, even if Leonard Detweiler had a plan, this plan was buried and erased from history.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:In fact, nowhere in TEiF do they talk about following a set of steps laid out by someone. There was no sequence of actions that needed to be taken to achieve that particular objective. So as I said, even if Leonard Detweiler had a plan, this plan was buried and erased from history.

Dr. Carl Sagan wrote:Absence of Evidence does not mean Evidence of Absence

Just because the author did not satisfy your threshold for proof of a plan, does not mean that in his mind there is no plan. Do you have any positive proof that either there was no plan or alternatively "this plan was buried and erased from history"; other than a lack of discussion in the books? In other words, does the author specifically say anywhere that Leonard Detweiler had a "vision, but not a plan"? TEiF had enough other things going on and the author is much less likely these days to include data dumps. If fact, considering the amount of work that Eric Flint put into this book, I worry that it will be much harder to produce the next full length novel.

I will not claim that Leonard Detweiler should be included in any list of top strategists and tacticians. However I think your rigid distinction between vision and plan suffers from the "Sorites Paradox".

tlb wrote:Just because the author did not satisfy your threshold for proof of a plan, does not mean that in his mind there is no plan. Do you have any positive proof that either there was no plan or alternatively "this plan was buried and erased from history"; other than a lack of discussion in the books? In other words, does the author specifically say anywhere that Leonard Detweiler had a "vision, but not a plan"? TEiF had enough other things going on and the author is much less likely these days to include data dumps. If fact, considering the amount of work that Eric Flint put into this book, I worry that it will be much harder to produce the next full length novel.

I will not claim that Leonard Detweiler should be included in any list of top strategists and tacticians. However I think your rigid distinction between vision and plan suffers from the "Sorites Paradox".

I'm not disputing that it could have existed. I'm simply saying that it's unlikely, that all evidence points to it either not existing or having been thoroughly erased and buried, which is effectively the same. Given who he was, the importance of his work for the Alignment/Enlightenment, and how much he was despised by the Beowulf establishment, if there had been plans, I'd expect it to have been mentioned.

It wasn't.

For the purposes of discussing whether he was a good strategist... well, he wasn't. It doesn't matter if he was actually brilliant at strategy if his plan was never followed. He wasn't a successful strategist.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Then what exactly is the Enlightenment "continuing" on with?

The vision.

Only half right. The Enlightenment is continuing on with his vision, and the fruits of his labor.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:All of that would take centuries. Leonard definitely would have had to lay down a genetic plan for uplifting the human race. Strategies consumed by the MA are not limited to naval strategies but genetic strategies as well.

My point is that Leonard Detweiler had an overarching genetic vision. And he surely had a plan to engage and bring that vision to its fruition. Genetic manipulation involves a lot of hits and misses. And Leonard definitely had to have had a strategy to achieve his successes. And the tactics he was willing to use is what would have concerned Beowulf. It remains to be discovered if whether the more aggressive genetic tactics employed by the MA (killing babies and entire lines) was something that was employed by Leonard.

Not necessarily.

Yes, necessarily! You are not taking into account the fire that Leonard was playing with. Genetic manipulation is like playing with fire. If you do not know what you are doing, at some point, you are going to get burned. Playing with this very same fire is what led to the Final Wars, they all got burned.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:He did take the first steps towards his vision, but there's no evidence that he knew what needed to be done after those first few steps. Those first few steps were already what the Beowulf medical community objected to, at least at the time. They also feared the stratification that RFC told us about and that the Inner Onion embraced, but this doesn't appear to have been part of Leonard's vision. It was something that was ascribed to him.

Who else would have known how to achieve what he envisioned? Leonard was the brilliant geneticist who disagreed and parted with the Beowulf medical establishment taking his knowledge with him. Anyone else would have been a novice in the field, considering what Leonard envisioned. It is like saying any run-of-the-mill physicist could have developed the A-bomb.

My sister works in Research Triangle Park (RTP) as I mentioned quite some time ago. She studies gene sequences and who knows what other stuff. When my niece argued with the college students about Leonard's inclusion, she included a somewhat detailed description of the exacting methods of working with genes. Gene splicing, gene therapy, etc.

Leonard had to have had a pretty thorough enough plan to get there. He founded Manpower for his particular needs, but without his know-how Manpower would have been dead in the water, and sooner or later someone would have stepped on a genetic land mine. At some point, Manpower may have become knowledgeable enough as apprentices and proceeded without Leonard, venturing on in areas that were not laid out by Leonard himself. But Leonard's Master plan would have been consulted from time to time if only for hints to get over hurdles. A medical establishment cannot safely travel down a road without being aware of the existence of the road obtained from trade secrets. Blind experimentation would have led to a Final-Final War.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:What I always assumed had happened is that Leonard might not have had an acceptable plan in the eyes of the "Evil Alignment" to merge his successes into the galaxy.

There's no evidence that he had a plan to merge his successes into the galaxy at all, evil or not. There's no evidence that he knew how to convince people. In fact, there's evidence he was pretty lousy at it, because he got blamed for trying to force humanity into different classes, when that was not his objective at all. RFC was clear that he wanted to get the entire humanity uplifted.

Agreed. I made that point myself, but I allowed room for the possibility that he did have some sort of clue. But that kind of thing isn't uncommon. Having the expertise in one field doesn't mean he had any expertise in naval strategy, or even what would be necessary to incorporate his successes into the Galaxy in the end game. Leonard may have been naive in the ways of the racist galaxy. But he wasn't naive in his genetic knowledge and what it took to get where he wanted to go. Anyone else who was not associated with the BME were simply kids playing in a grown-up game.

Obviously, even if you are someone from the Beowulfan community, that didn't mean you had what it took to achieve Leonard's vision. Or it would have been a moot point that Leonard could "prove Beowulf wrong."

Some things are clearly implied.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:It's entirely possible he relied on either someone else coming up with good, convincing arguments, or simply that the results would speak for themselves. We may call "hire someone to come up with a plan" a plan, but it's a lousy plan if so. And he'd have to be incredibly naive to assume that the results would speak for themselves in face of all the evidence to the contrary, that people were rejecting his methods and objectives.

Unlikely. That is like saying Einstein hired someone to come up with how to build an A-bomb. He could hire assistants to follow his lead. But if he is the theoretical expert, who can he call for that kind of assistance? Ghostbusters?

He may have had to hire someone to deal with the red tape of setting up a lab, etc., etc. And he may have had to hire people to handle illegal operations that needed tending. The "don't ask, don't tell," part of the operation. Like bribing officials and greasing palms.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:His being naive to those issues may be in fact why others took matters into their own hands and set him aside. Leonard Detweiler may have been a genius at genetics, but ignorant in other matters. We have a word for this: a savant. I don't particularly think this is the case, but it's also a spectrum.

Exactly, you just restated what I said upstream regarding my assumptions about what had happened ...

"Not only is the galaxy going to shun our work, they are going to be livid that we are working on the wrong side of the 'do not cross' line established by the Beowulf Code."

cthia wrote:Leonard's plan has always been to stick a finger in Beowulf's eye and prove them wrong. But that cannot be done without serving his accomplishments cold. IOW, at some point someone would have had to announce all of those accomplishments to the galaxy, if Beowulf was going to be proven wrong.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Proving Beowulf wrong, sure. He was effectively exiled from the planet, even if it was of his own volition. But I don't get the part about cold. Why couldn't he keep on publishing papers for the next 60 T-years, showcasing the results that he was obtaining with Manpower's labs?

For the very same reason that he fled. It was illegal to dabble on the wrong side of the Beowulf Code. Fear of another Final War caused by even worse "Frankensteinian atrocities" would have shut his lab down faster than he could light a Bunsen burner.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:That would involve a total disclosure and a peer review of methods, tactics, practices, pitfalls, gotchas and failures. Beowulf would certainly want to know if mankind's genetic pool would be threatened in any way.

That could be problematical to do. If indeed total disclosure is given, and if Leonard himself embraced and accepted some of the more appalling atrocities that went on in the labs, then the galaxy itself, much less Beowulf, would have a huge problem with it. And therein may lie what motivated Leonard's heirs to develop a more aggressive plan to merge with the Galaxy.

He clearly embraced some means that Beowulf opposed. That's why he left in the first place. He thought the end justified some means. But how much that is, we don't know. How much was happening in Manpower's labs during his tenure, or even how much he may have known about it, is unknown.

Logic dictates that it had to be enough to get them over the hump. His travel directions had to be clearer than what you would get from a random stranger in a town.

"Excuse me sir, I am lost. Can you tell me how to get to "Genetic Uplift for Mankind?"

"I am not from that area, but I do know that if you take a wrong turn you are going to end up in the "Hood" and you will undoubtedly start a war that you can't win."

In fact, simply asking the wrong people for directions or help might get you arrested, or worse.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:We do know that the Alignment radicalised after his death, so it's entirely possible and even likely that genetic experiments got worse after his death too.

Agreed. But only after Leonard led them out of the cramped small town of Nowheresville and included enough landmarks to follow in order to keep them from getting lost, and to keep them out of real danger. A road map. A Master plan.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:What exactly is the Enlightenment continuing on with? It has stated to be the true followers of Leonard's vision. What are they following? And, how did their benign vision come to adopt naval strategies?

Vision, not plan.

In fact, nowhere in TEiF do they talk about following a set of steps laid out by someone. There was no sequence of actions that needed to be taken to achieve that particular objective. So as I said, even if Leonard Detweiler had a plan, this plan was buried and erased from history.

Without a genetic plan laid out by Leonard, their work probably would have led to the very same atrocities Beowulf is worried about.

cthia wrote:That would involve a total disclosure and a peer review of methods, tactics, practices, pitfalls, gotchas and failures. Beowulf would certainly want to know if mankind's genetic pool would be threatened in any way.

That could be problematical to do. If indeed total disclosure is given, and if Leonard himself embraced and accepted some of the more appalling atrocities that went on in the labs, then the galaxy itself, much less Beowulf, would have a huge problem with it. And therein may lie what motivated Leonard's heirs to develop a more aggressive plan to merge with the Galaxy.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:He clearly embraced some means that Beowulf opposed. That's why he left in the first place. He thought the end justified some means. But how much that is, we don't know. How much was happening in Manpower's labs during his tenure, or even how much he may have known about it, is unknown.

We do know that the Alignment radicalised after his death, so it's entirely possible and even likely that genetic experiments got worse after his death too.

Beowulf would have been horrified that he intended to churn out humans, built to some industrial specifications, in pre-ordered lots. That alone would be sufficient to poke Beowulf in the eye.

However, in thinking about it, I do not understand how that business plan could work. Suppose someone came to Manpower Inc with a request for ten thousand left-handed men capable of working unaided in a low oxygen environment. The salesperson says we have Sherpa DNA and the gene for left-handedness, so standard rates apply. The customer says that this is a rush job and the salesperson says that for a premium we can have them ready for you in 18 years instead of the normal 21. The customer says but I need them next year and the salesperson replies that the best we can do in that time-frame is ten thousand of our standard worker line equipped with oxygen masks and some will be right-handed.

So the problem is that there can be generic workers that are immediately available, who are somewhat improved over what you might find at a labor exchange and who come indentured for a fixed period of time; but any human built to specification would not be available for another 15 years or more. The only alternative is create some specialized worker lines in the hope that such a need will arise, but if does not then Manpower itself will have to put them to work in their area of specialization.

This process is worse in a pre-prolong society, where the people requesting the design might not be around when the first lot is available.