Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

And now we can get back to our lives of unquestioning devotion and unreasonable hatred!

Intelligence is not a virtue in the Imperium. Blind faith is. A Legion that tried to have the smartest guys around would probably be the Alpha Legion and look how that turned out.

"Blessed is the mind too small for doubt"

The Alpha Legion weren't really that smart. In the fluff, Alpharius never came up with anything tremendously innovative. In fact, Guilliman put down his tactics as wasteful, which means they were things that Guilliman had already considered, and discarded as inefficient given the mission of the Space Marine Legions.

What the Alpha Legion was, was arrogant. In the original fluff for the Heresy, the Alpha Legion were swayed to Horus's cause because they couldn't think of anything more challenging than fighting other Space Marines.

 Melissia wrote:

reaper with no name wrote:
And yes, "the best" is a very tiny portion of any given planet's population.

IE, they aren't actually the best.

If you took a look at all modern athletes and said "We're recruiting from the best of all athletes, but exclude women, those who are swarthy, people of dark skin color or African descent, non-Christians, those who are not genetically similar enough to me, and those who are older than sixteen", you'd not get a list of "the best".

I used "the best" in quotes for a reason. Specifically, it was to note that "the best" refers to the best in all categories that still meet the necessary requirements.

The point I was trying to get at was, even if, say, 3/4 of the best people within the proper age range are disqualified from being a space marine due to gender or genetics (personality wouldn't matter, as that will be rewritten, and I've seen nothing to suggest skin color is a factor; space marines are white supposedly because the genetic modifications change their skin color), that still leaves 1/4 of the best who are compatible.

And those would be the ones that space marines recruit.

 Melissia wrote:

reaper with no name wrote:
And yes, "the best" is a very tiny portion of any given planet's population.

IE, they aren't actually the best.

If you took a look at all modern athletes and said "We're recruiting from the best of all athletes, but exclude women, those who are swarthy, people of dark skin color or African descent, non-Christians, those who are not genetically similar enough to me, and those who are older than sixteen", you'd not get a list of "the best".

1 Male athletes 9 times out of 10 will outperform their female counter parts + the fact that the geneseed is not compatible with with a female makes the argument of why femals are not counted among the best moot

2 There is an age cut off as to being able to recieve the geneseed.

The best out of the pool of people on a planet actually able to potentially be fitted with the geneseed are chosen.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
In Soul hunter it is mentioned that Talos needed have a certain level of grade point average in school to be considered for the Nightlords.

I

Oh God can we not make this about men vs. women?

Look how the misogyny thread turned out.

And wait, the Night Lords require you to have a passing GPA to join their ranks? That's hilarious.

It's not about gender, I was mentioning the simple facts that Space Marines don't recruit the best simply because they have an EXTREMELY limited recruitment pool. Even them recruiting from a mere 1/4th of the population of a single world per chapter would be a wider pool than they currently recruit from.

Women are too genetically different to be space marines, however, a brother and sister from one family have closer genetics than the brother does with a son of another family. Effectively, the Space Marine recruitment plan (as GW describes it) would only be able to follow specific, rather inbred families. Fun times to be had for all.

If you're wondering what this has to do with the thread, keep in mind, if they don't recruit for genetics first, they'll have fatalities due to genetic mismatch of the implants. So intelligence, when it IS important to specific chapters, is still second to genetic compatibility.

I was actually talking about the guy who responded to you bringing the "Men are stronger and more athletic than women" angle into the thread.

edit: See?

godking wrote:
Male athletes 9 times out of 10 will outperform their female counter parts.

True, as long as the sport requires raw strength or endurance. Once it gets to coordination and hand-eye interaction a female can get even. Right now they're actually better shots than men, and sometimes swim faster as the route increases in length.. Hmm... Helene Mayer also beat the male US fencing champion in 1938, but was disqualified (and female vs male matches banned) because the fencing commission thought "men couldn't go all-out vs women". As if modern fencing was actually a contact sport in the sense that you might injure the other party. Leg injuries from bad moves are the most common injuries there, and those can't really be considered as caused by the other party. ;-)

edit: and ofc, those are sports. Where the best of the best compete. I know several women who could beat me, either through raw endurance/strength (farm girls) or speed (anyone not overweight and out of shape as I am). And a few from martial arts training that can do it through superior technique as I'm not fast or strong enough to counter that advantage. Saw one of those good technique girls stumped too once - a two meter tall 120 kilogram teddybear of a man just picked her up and held her at arm's length, which was considerable. She would have had to break his fingers one by one in order to get anywhere and wisely decided to not cripple a sparring partner in a friendly MA club.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
I was actually talking about the guy who responded to you bringing the "Men are stronger and more athletic than women" angle into the thread.

edit: See?

I know, I was also responding to him.