A theory on why the Vulcans we all see are curiously alike

[Broomstick]

Like, if a human were to go through life with actual blinders on from birth, it is pretty likely though not certain, that by the time that person is an adult the neurons that would normally process visual information will be used for something else and the person would be visually impaired. Not because there is anything wrong with their eyes, but because their brain has forgotten how to see.

Not speculation - there are actual cases of people blinded at or shortly after birth who later had sight restored (Oliver Sachs wrote about one such person in the essay "To See and Not See"). The brain loses the capacity to interpret visual impulses if it goes without long enough, especially if the blindness starts before puberty.

Likewise, if the brain is deafened early in life then restoring hearing later is of limited use due to the neurons being reassigned different duties.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Like, if a human were to go through life with actual blinders on from birth, it is pretty likely though not certain, that by the time that person is an adult the neurons that would normally process visual information will be used for something else and the person would be visually impaired. Not because there is anything wrong with their eyes, but because their brain has forgotten how to see.

Not speculation - there are actual cases of people blinded at or shortly after birth who later had sight restored (Oliver Sachs wrote about one such person in the essay "To See and Not See"). The brain loses the capacity to interpret visual impulses if it goes without long enough, especially if the blindness starts before puberty.

Likewise, if the brain is deafened early in life then restoring hearing later is of limited use due to the neurons being reassigned different duties.

On a side note, allow me to say "well fuck." So much for hoping the docs might fix my eye and optic nerves one day then, since I've always had this condition it won't do my any damn good. Fuck. Now I need a drink.

[Broomstick]

SOME improvement is possible. The adult brain can learn to make some use of the input even if normal levels of function aren't achievable. There is also a major difference between "only light perception" (if that) and "some vision". If your brain has been utilizing vision to some extent - colors, shapes, movements, some level of vision - then the vision circuits have not been re-assigned, at least not most of them. They don't function as well, but they do function.

More information on restoring/improving a sense is known from the deaf due to cochlear implants. People with no usable hearing given a cochlear implant can perceive sound but can make little sense of it. There are some circumstances where that is still useful - for people blind and deaf even imperfect and minimally useful hearing can still make a significant difference in their lives by, for example, allowing them to perceive alarms and other environmental cues that don't require a lot of interpretation.

However, if the person had at least some hearing, such that they're perceiving sounds regularly through a normal day even if they can't make a lot of sense of them, when given a cochlear implant their brain can adapt and make use of the improved input. They still aren't likely to make as much use of it as someone who went deaf in adulthood then received an implant, but such people often can utilize a phone (where many non-sound cues to meaning are absent) where before they could not. Just one example.

So, a lot depends on how much vision you have had up until now. If it's been enough to preserve the visual circuits then the optical equivalent of a cochlear implant likely would improve your sense of sight.

One downside to restoring/improving sight is that using the improved sense can be mentally exhausting in a way that improved hearing doesn't seem to be. People born with congenital cataracts later fixed in adulthood report a great deal of fatigue with their "new" sense. It improves with time, along with their ability to use the information (up to a point) but using their vision requires effort.

I experience a shadow of that when I watch 3D movies. Due to my visual problems not being addressed until I was 10 or 11 while my vision can be corrected to where I can read the 20/20 line on an eyechart it's still not entirely normal. One of the on-going problems is that I have very poor stereoscopic vision. My mind learned to compensate for that a long time ago, such that in normal life (or even flying airplanes) I am not impaired but those "magic eye" pictures will simply never work for me and if you test me appropriately you'd be able to detect that my binocular depth perception is shit. But modern movie 3D can work for me. It's very odd, in that when I watch a 3D movie I actually have a form of depth perception I don't have in regular life. The first couple of times it was just amazing - and flat out exhausting. It's not so bad now, but while I can binge-watch regular TV or movies for 6-8 hours (or more) after sitting through a 2 hour movie with 3D I am too tired to want to watch another one. Like any visually intensive task it's fatiguing. What most people do effortlessly doesn't happen quite that easily for me.

So... if medical science gives you an improvement you may well experience better vision, but perhaps you would not have the same visual endurance as folks without your problem.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Alryium explained much the same over PM, so I feel considerably better about it now, thanks.

[Alyrium Denryle]

But yes. Romulans probably can, when children, perform mind melds etc. However, the neural pathways that let them do it have probably been reassigned by the time they reach adulthood.

[NecronLord]

The Romulans as far as I know have the same above human strength as the Vulcans but do not have any telepathy. Presumably they don't have telepathy because the Vulcan's overt telepathy is the result of centuries of embracing logic and focusing their minds. Though I'm not sure on that considering the katra stuff was around during Surak's time so maybe Romulan's have the ability to be psychic too but have suppressed it because telepathy scares the bowl cut out of the paranoid and private Romulans.

It is the latter. The Vulcan/Romulan species are capable of telepathy, most are touch telepaths though some (Notably Spock and Tuvok) are able to project and read thoughts at range as well as implant suggestions and compulsions (the most powerful Vulcan telepaths would probably rate P5-P6 on B5 teep scale) and this requires a great deal of practice. The Romulans are not "emotional" the way the Vulcans used to be. They just use a different philosophy to inform their mesiofrontal cortex in how to regulate their emotions. This philosophy seems to require the rejection of the use of telepathy, which, if Vulcans undergo adolescent neural pruning the way people do, would mean that by the time a Romulan is an adult, they are unlikely to be capable of telepathy. Use it or lose it.

For what it's worth, some of the non-canon books support this, Diane Duane's Romulans largely have atrophied telepathic ability (though they have projects to re-start that ability) and do indeed have a different regulating philosophy (Mnhei'sahe, the Ruling Passion).

However, Remans are capable of some of the most advanced telepathy - certainly longest range - among Star Trek 'involved' races (IE no gods); there is the squicky scene where the Reman Viceroy used his telepathy to let Shinzon violate Troi from another ship. Presumably as slaves they had a distinct need to communicate on the QT.

[Lord Revan]

QT?

Yeah Remans have powerful telepathic abilities and possibly telekinetic as well (there's an option for remans to have "telekinetic" talent in STO but I dunno if that's based on canon though).

[NecronLord]

'On the QT' is british slang for 'quietly.'

[Alyrium Denryle]

The Romulans as far as I know have the same above human strength as the Vulcans but do not have any telepathy. Presumably they don't have telepathy because the Vulcan's overt telepathy is the result of centuries of embracing logic and focusing their minds. Though I'm not sure on that considering the katra stuff was around during Surak's time so maybe Romulan's have the ability to be psychic too but have suppressed it because telepathy scares the bowl cut out of the paranoid and private Romulans.

It is the latter. The Vulcan/Romulan species are capable of telepathy, most are touch telepaths though some (Notably Spock and Tuvok) are able to project and read thoughts at range as well as implant suggestions and compulsions (the most powerful Vulcan telepaths would probably rate P5-P6 on B5 teep scale) and this requires a great deal of practice. The Romulans are not "emotional" the way the Vulcans used to be. They just use a different philosophy to inform their mesiofrontal cortex in how to regulate their emotions. This philosophy seems to require the rejection of the use of telepathy, which, if Vulcans undergo adolescent neural pruning the way people do, would mean that by the time a Romulan is an adult, they are unlikely to be capable of telepathy. Use it or lose it.

For what it's worth, some of the non-canon books support this, Diane Duane's Romulans largely have atrophied telepathic ability (though they have projects to re-start that ability) and do indeed have a different regulating philosophy (Mnhei'sahe, the Ruling Passion).

However, Remans are capable of some of the most advanced telepathy - certainly longest range - among Star Trek 'involved' races (IE no gods); there is the squicky scene where the Reman Viceroy used his telepathy to let Shinzon violate Troi from another ship. Presumably as slaves they had a distinct need to communicate on the QT.

That is where I was getting a good chunk of that yes--simply preferring to reference logical deductions from real life + canon sources.

Remans are also a different species entirely, being the original indigenous population of that region of space, if I recall properly. And the thing with telepathy is, unless you are using telepathy to detect telepathy, it is hard to stamp out in a population unless you can convince that population do self-restrict.

[NecronLord]

I always thought they'd been genetically adapted to be miners but were originally Romulans. I don't think it's stated in canon, apart from that they have their own pictographic scripts, but then there's a few vulcan scripts.

[Lord Revan]

'On the QT' is british slang for 'quietly.'

Yeah then that certainly made sense, I'm just not that familiar with british slang, but then you're probably not that familiar with finnish slang.

[NecronLord]

I wouldn't use slang if I didn't want to confuse people now and then.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I always thought they'd been genetically adapted to be miners but were originally Romulans. I don't think it's stated in canon, apart from that they have their own pictographic scripts, but then there's a few vulcan scripts.

You might be right. I might be mis-remembering it, though I really would prefer not to rewatch Nemesis...

[Lord Revan]

I always thought they'd been genetically adapted to be miners but were originally Romulans. I don't think it's stated in canon, apart from that they have their own pictographic scripts, but then there's a few vulcan scripts.

You might be right. I might be mis-remembering it, though I really would prefer not to rewatch Nemesis...

Never stated either way in Nemesis or the novelization (I have the movie on DvD and own the Novelization), what's stated about remans essentially boils down to "romulans use them as slave labor and cannon fodder" just not in those exact words.

[Elheru Aran]

I always thought they'd been genetically adapted to be miners but were originally Romulans. I don't think it's stated in canon, apart from that they have their own pictographic scripts, but then there's a few vulcan scripts.

You might be right. I might be mis-remembering it, though I really would prefer not to rewatch Nemesis...

Never stated either way in Nemesis or the novelization (I have the movie on DvD and own the Novelization), what's stated about remans essentially boils down to "romulans use them as slave labor and cannon fodder" just not in those exact words.

So it could go either way, then.

They do *look* as though they could be a mutated/genetically manipulated version of the original Romulan race, but I'm OK with them being a separate race which the Romulans enslaved.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

If they were a group of "Romulans" who crashlanded/otherwise colonized Remus, and geographic isolation happened because of the Roms not having space travel for a goodly length of time after colonizing Romulus, for all intents and purposes, the Remans are a separate race.

[Lord Revan]

If they were a group of "Romulans" who crashlanded/otherwise colonized Remus, and geographic isolation happened because of the Roms not having space travel for a goodly length of time after colonizing Romulus, for all intents and purposes, the Remans are a separate race.

well there's the problem of why would the Romulans loose their ability for space travel they're a vulcan sub-species after all, not something that evolved on Romulus and Remus is in the same star system as Romulus.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Depends on how much effort the Vulcan offshoots had to put into building their colony on Romulus/Remus, and the talent pool they had to work with, both when forming the original band of colonists, and upon arrival on Romulus.

[Elheru Aran]

Depends on how much effort the Vulcan offshoots had to put into building their colony on Romulus/Remus, and the talent pool they had to work with, both when forming the original band of colonists, and upon arrival on Romulus.

Yeah. There wasn't apparently a *huge* amount of space travel in the pre-Enterprise period, which would have been roughly when the Romulan colonizers emigrated from Vulcan. It's possible they only had a few ships, and if one happened to crash on Remus, they might have felt it more important to focus on building up the more habitable world of Romulus and if the population on Remus survives, more power to them, if not, meh, they weren't worthy of being Romulans anyway. Something like that.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Depends on how much effort the Vulcan offshoots had to put into building their colony on Romulus/Remus, and the talent pool they had to work with, both when forming the original band of colonists, and upon arrival on Romulus.

Yeah. There wasn't apparently a *huge* amount of space travel in the pre-Enterprise period, which would have been roughly when the Romulan colonizers emigrated from Vulcan. It's possible they only had a few ships, and if one happened to crash on Remus, they might have felt it more important to focus on building up the more habitable world of Romulus and if the population on Remus survives, more power to them, if not, meh, they weren't worthy of being Romulans anyway. Something like that.

Well, The Sundering was, IIRC in the [earth]4th century, while Warp Drive was not invented until the 19th. Early Vulcan space travel was STL, on generation ships. They had to build up Romulus from nothing, and even getting from Romulus to Remus and back would not have been easy without a well developed space travel infrastructure, which they would not have had in the early days.

[Broomstick]

Getting back to the original topic... another reason "the Vulcans we all see are curiously alike" are the nasty wars they fought prior to Surak's teachings coming to dominate society. One gets the impression they killed a high proportion of the Vulcan species which would lead to a genetic bottleneck. Depending on who and how many survived it may have also been a cultural bottleneck, and probably was. If the Romulan ancestors initially colonized with STL ships that would have also acted as a bottleneck for them. Under the circumstances there could have been both more cultural differentiation and genetic differentiation than would normally occur in a few thousand years. Not enough to result in completely different species, but possibly significantly different sub-species.

Nothing much is ever said about the differences between Tuvok and most other Vulcans, but it may be that the Sarak-Spock-Soval-T'Pol-T'Pau-etc. group are descended from the largest group of survivors from the Vulcan world war(s) but Tuvok represents a smaller group of survivors. There may well be other small groups that we simply haven't seen because there are so few of them.

(Of course, the meta-reason is that most actors hired to portray Vulcans have been Caucasian, but Tim Russ is black.)

[FaxModem1]

Would a similar comparison be like the Aenar, an offshoot of the Andorians? They've been separate from the Andorians for so long that they all have paler skin, have use of telepathy, and are prone to blindness. They're still Andorians, but seen as a subculture of them.

[Elheru Aran]

Would a similar comparison be like the Aenar, an offshoot of the Andorians? They've been separate from the Andorians for so long that they all have paler skin, have use of telepathy, and are prone to blindness. They're still Andorians, but seen as a subculture of them.

Possibly, though I don't know how the hell the Aenar worked. Apparently they had their own little city under the ice-cap of Andoria or something like that. Not sure how they wouldn't have interbred the hell out of each other.

The Remans are more physically distinct from the Romulans, I think... but if theoretically they were isolated for a far longer time, it's possible, especially if you throw genetic engineering into the mix.

[Simon_Jester]

Or the Remans could be natives to the planet/system/whatever while the Romulans are immigrants...

[Alyrium Denryle]

Or the Remans could be natives to the planet/system/whatever while the Romulans are immigrants...

On further evaluation it is...unlikely. They are non-canon, but the various TOS novels negate that particular idea.