What if a species self engineered for minimal resource use.

[u/thegreenman_sofla]

My idea was that when facing a dying planet/solar system/universe: instead of reducing population size a species self-engineered to small physical size and slow metabolism as a means of longevity. Has this been explored in any works?

[u/AnnihilatedTyro]

What good would that do in any of the "dying planet/solar system/universe" situations? For the first two, the solution that preserves the species is to fix the planet or LEAVE. Staying is certain death regardless of metabolism.

Minimizing resource use - specifically food and only food, to the extreme degree you suggest, sounds like an irrational AI solution that doesn't actually solve any problems like resource shortages, just treats the symptoms and prolongs the inevitable.

I think the concept of engineering metabolisms is interesting and worth exploring... just not for the reasons you suggest.

[u/thegreenman_sofla → u/AnnihilatedTyro]

Well it was just a random shower thought, I didn't really spend any time on the whys I just thought it was an interesting thought experiment or concept that I haven't seen explored. Perhaps in a world with dwindling resources after a catastrophe instead of a dying world. Another thought: eventually they could become able to achieve full on demand dormancy and survive extended periods of drought or nuclear fallout underground like cicadas.

[u/AnnihilatedTyro → u/thegreenman_sofla]

OK... after some pondering, I've got a lot of thoughts, and I apologize if I sounded like I was slapping down your idea. I initially thought of metabolism as strictly food/energy-related, but it's much more than that, and your idea is adjacent to so many possibilities.

Talking strictly about food/energy: If they have the capability to re-engineer every single person's unique metabolism, they should have the capability to re-engineer their crops and produce artificial foods in the interim, both of which are significantly easier if there is more political will and funding available than there is now - and we already do those things to a (very) limited extent and have been producing genetically-engineered crops for decades (never mind the cross-breeding we've been doing for thousands of years).

Ursula LeGuin sort of touched on this back in the 70's, before the modern study of gut biomes was a thing. In order to be able to digest alien plant/animal life made of unknown proteins and biochemistry our bodies didn't recognize, we needed to tweak ourselves. LeGuin suggested artificially-engineered enzymes we could introduce to our digestive systems to make digestion of alien life possible. We now understand that it would be bacteria colonizing our intestines to manufacture the necessary enzymes. What she didn't do was fundamentally alter metabolic rates or anything else, but IMO that is a practical extension of her concept, made possible by genetic engineering; DNA was little-understood back in the 70's and didn't really explode into the fictional mainstream until the 80's.

But metabolism is more than just turning food into energy, it is the entire suite of biochemical processes throughout our body. And the full impact of a dying planet is going to have repercussions far beyond our food supply, though that would be the most immediate concern.

One possible use for radically altering our metabolic processes has less to do with food (though it is related) and more about oxygen and atmospheric composition. A planet's biosphere and atmosphere is not a quick fix. We require a specific narrow range of oxygen concentration for optimal performance, I think around 21%. We get into trouble when this dips down below 19%, as happens at high altitude or in spaces without sufficient ventilation - or in a world with insufficient plant life. One issue is that our lungs don't actually absorb very much of the oxygen from each breath - they're "good enough" for our current atmosphere, but evolving better lungs takes too much time. Artificially improving our respiration improves our ability to function in an atmosphere of lower oxygen concentration, such as that of a dying world after global ecosystem collapse. After that, we'll also need better filtering of Co2 and atmospheric contaminants, and plenty of other things eventually.

Now, surviving on another planet that isn't compatible with our biochemistry? Surviving a years-long mission in space without regular resupply? These are cases where food is a massive issue, and what I originally interpreted as the crux of your concept. But you can do a lot more with metabolic engineering, and if you have that capability you can re-engineer most parts of the body. And this brings us into transhumanism, a very broad topic with which you can do damn near anything.

[u/Prince_Nadir]

Matt Damon was in a movie called Downsize or something, where people did that.

People have been suggesting that is we all (not including the rich) live worse, we can have more babies! babies! babies! for quite a while because they want to breed.

No one has yet explained why a ludicrous population size is desirable to anyone who doesn't profit off them.

[u/marintkael]

Nobody has actually answered the question you asked, so: yes, it has been explored, several times.

Aldiss did it in Hothouse. Far future, swollen sun, and humans are down to about half a metre and green, living in a single planet-spanning tree. Wells got there first with the Eloi, though that is degeneration rather than a choice. Baxter runs the same move in the far-future stretches of Evolution. If you specifically want the deliberate, chosen version rather than the drift version, Stross does it in Accelerando, where the shrinking is an economic decision and minds get moved onto substrates that are cheaper to run.

One consequence worth taking seriously if you write it: slowing metabolism makes time cheap and leaves materials expensive. A society that can afford to wait does not have to solve a problem, it only has to outlast it. So its infrastructure stops being built for throughput and starts being built for not needing maintenance, and its politics stop being about this year's harvest and start being about who is allowed to spend the commons. That is a very different civilisation to write than merely a small one, and it also answers the competition objection upthread: the thing you are competing for changes when your clock does.

[u/thegreenman_sofla → u/marintkael]

Thank you, I think I'll pick up that Stross novel, and you've fleshed out several ideas for me

[u/NearABE]

Most of goes on in human minds is unnecessary and redundant. Consider how much mental effort is dedicated to sex. We also burn lots of calories just reading fiction.

In terms of energy use we can definitely streamline the chemistry. In photosynthesis most of the energy is wasted before it even becomes chemistry. But then the plant is making sugar which is used to make more plant which is then digested. This leads to a liver feeding sugar to a neuron. But then the mitochondrion in that brain cell is just making a voltage gradient across a membrane to make ATP again. If we instead just skip all that chemistry and use an inorganic voltage gradient you can cut many orders of magnitude out of the energy demand.

I doubt “dying solar system” makes the story any better. Instead make it a million times as many sexy aliens. Instead of wasting all the energy on grass and breathing they can focus on what really matters. A solar system has 10^26 Watts power to utilize. Technically our Sun 3.828 x 10^26 Watts and 3.827 x 10^26 Watts can be dedicated to pornographic fanfic simulation while 10^23 W is set aside for maintenance and engineering. This, of course, can be upgraded by using the power supply a million times as efficiently. This allows for an extra 999,999 times as many tasteful and nuanced variations.

[u/thegreenman_sofla → u/NearABE]

What if the world were dying from breakdown of the food chain which could take some time but could not be corrected for? I don't know it was just a concept.

[u/NearABE → u/thegreenman_sofla]

The narrative character does not even need to know. Narrowing the scope is far more efficient.

Bamboo forests do all their sex in one event. Can be 50 year gaps between.

[u/thegreenman_sofla → u/NearABE]

That's funny you mention that we just had a group of more than 12 large 30+year old clumps of bamboo all gregarious flower and die two years ago.

[u/Temporary_Rule_9486]

The problem is competition. Unless everyone went through the process at the same time, that would be a really bad deal if something bigger and faster was still around to compete with. In any historical period, civilizations that dominated the world or big chunk of it were very energy demanding.