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[[folder: Fridge Brilliance ]]

* The Puppeteers' intelligence seems like an evolutionary implausibility, as they're derived from herbivores which are generally not very smart (because it's easy to out-think a lettuce). Then we find out that they breed by injecting gametes [[FaceFullOfAlienWingWong into the body of another species]], and their sapience makes more sense: they don't need to outsmart prey to eat, but they ''do'' need to outsmart a host "female" in order to breed.
** Also, as Louis Wu points out, herbivores do need brains to cope with predators. Which the Puppeteers did very efficiently, by exterminating them.
** Intelligence is not, in real life, very closely linked with feeding habits. Out of the most intelligent vertebrate groups on Earth today, only one (toothed cetaceans) is composed entirely of predators; apes are mainly herbivores and insect-eaters (humans and chimps, both predators, are an exception in a group that already developed high intelligence beforehand), corvids are opportunistic omnivores that get most of their meat by scavenging, and elephants and parrots are purely herbivorous. What these creatures do all share is being highly social beings that need to navigate complex group dynamics -- like the Puppeteers, incidentally. Intelligence is also useful for working out how to get past plant defenses -- monkeys and crows are both know to develop complex strategies for getting past the hard shells of edible nuts.
* In "The Warriors", the kzinti are baffled that a human ship has no weapons. The telepath reports "Not even knives," then immediately corrects himself: the humans have ''cooking'' knives, but that's all they're used for. That should have tipped off Captain that when the telepath scanned for "weapons", he was searching for things that the human crew ''thought of'' as weapons (and getting nothing) -- but if he scanned for particular dangerous items that could be ''repurposed'' as weapons (like cooking knives, or humans' primitive [[WeaponizedExhaust reaction drive]]), he might find something worth knowing about.

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[[folder: Fridge Logic ]]

* The notion that all the world's nations would pass laws mandating that criminals, even petty ones, be broken down for spare parts. Not only does this presuppose that humans have perfect faith that their legal system doesn't make mistakes, but it assumes ''everyone'' who voted in support of such a policy considers it more likely that they, ''personally'', will one day require a judicially-obtained organ transplant -- a hypothetical scenario that most wouldn't expect to arise for decades, if ever -- than that they'll ever get busted for traffic violations: something they've probably committed, and been ticketed for, themselves.
** It's more of an examination of HumansAreBastards / DemocracyIsBad; no different from taxation. Lots of people complain about taxes but few want to do without welfare, subsidies, public utilities... Is there really any difference between, "The three of us are poor and Jack is rich: Let's divvy up Jack's wallet" and "The three of us are sick and Jack is healthy: Let's divvy up Jack's organs"? Especially since in Niven's universe, laser-eye surgery was never invented because of ''eye'' transplants. On Plateau, where the ruling Crew class ''lets'' a certain number of Colonist class rebels survive to continuously recruit others, Crew regularly get ''scalp'' and ''teeth'' transplants!
*** Yes.
*** From a philosophical standpoint, the difference is that if Jack is rich, Jack can live without half his money. Taxing him 50% of his money doesn't take away all his life, or even half his life. He's still alive. But Jack can't live without his organs, and if someone takes him apart for donations, he is 100% dead. Furthermore, taxation affects everyone and (various) state programs tend to benefit nearly everyone, rather than creating a sharp line between "those who benefit" and "those who are dead." Even the very rich who are most heavily taxed get some benefits from living in a society where complex infrastructure, education, and legal systems allow them to continue to do business, whereas a man who's been cut up for spare parts no longer benefits from the organ donation system at all.
** Of course, the fact that there ''is'' a difference is part of the point of those stories. Niven is warning us against using criminals as organ stock by showing the potential consequences of jumping off that particular slippery slope.
* Setting aside all the ArtisticLicenseBiology behind the Pak life cycle, one ''huge'' problem with [[Literature/{{Protector}} Protectors]] is that Pak of different bloodlines seem completely oblivious to the possibility that they could form permanent, stable, treachery-free alliances with each other, simply by ''letting their descendants mate with one another''. Pak breeders aren't asexual, and their bloodlines would need to cross periodically to avert inbreeding depletion anyway, so simply interbreeding two rival Protectors' bloodlines could convert them from archenemies to unshakable allies the instant they got a whiff of their first out-crossed infant. No need to wipe out each others' young, just make sure their next generation of protect-ees are ''your'' young also.
** This is addressed in passing in one of the Fleet of Worlds books: Even in the Pak breeder stage, the sense of smell connection is strong enough to be able to tell family from not. It seems unlikely that the breeders could be MADE to interbreed, even if the Protectors tried.
*** Except that we know from Rishathra that Pak descended species ''will'' choose to interbreed if left alone.
*** Those are Pak descendants so mutated from the original that any "baseline" Pak would instantly destroy them as threats to their own offspring. Also, if the two species involved are inter-fertile then sex between them is just plain sex, not Rishathra, strictly speaking.
** None of this is possible, because Protectors, while vastly intelligent and nearly perfectly adaptable and creative, entirely lack free will and are bound by the demands of simple, dumb biology. Building ringworlds out of near-magical materials to give themselves living space and reduce the level of warfare is easy. Short-circuiting their biological drives or thinking outside the box to create solutions that negate the need for living space are no-go.
** The issue is a numbers game. If Bloodlines A and B have 500 breeders at a given time and their Protectors have an arranged marriage of sorts (putting two of their breeders in an enclosure to mate) that produces a child, it does not mean that the protectors of Bloodlines A and B have one individual that they also have the 500 others. If push comes to shove they will sacrifice one child to save hundreds. On the same note said alliances can't be exclusive, or you run into the inbreeding problem down the line. Bloodline A could negotiate an breeding arrangement with Bloodline C, which is hostile to Bloodline B. If the Bloodline A and B alliance gets too strong, it would similarly invite negative attention of groups C, D, E, F and G. Pak Politics would probably involve mating deals as a component to solidify them for a period of time and to get fresh DNA, but while this serves to moderate conflict somewhat it would not eliminate it.
** And if they agree to pair off ''all'' their breeders with each other's descendants? Or if one Protector faction captures some of an enemy faction's descendants alive, and forcibly breeds them with its own? Even if the breeders wouldn't normally mate, a race that's been using biological weapons for millennia could surely whip up a persistent cold-virus to suppress the breeders' sense of smell for long enough to do the job. Hell, they could artificially inseminate an enemy's captured offspring, forcing said enemy into an alliance, without diluting their own existing bloodlines.
** Let's explore this one step farther: Suppose that groups of Pak protectors succeeded in doing this! What would happen next? Pak protectors prioritize their own direct descendants. We know they'll also protect their nieces, nephews, second cousins once removed, and so on. We also know that with rare exceptions, Pak can't transfer their protectiveness to just any random member of their species. There's presumably a cutoff threshold past which an individual Pak is no longer closely related enough a given protector to count as "protectable." Small groups of Pak could form alliances by interbreeding the breeder populations of their "clans," and presumably this would work for a while. But as the group got larger, it would become biologically impossible for every member of the group to be closely related to every other. You'd see infighting start up again.
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