i can't help but see a few interesting ironies in this post.
the "mutants" in the world of the x-men are people who all have one and only one common "genetic" mutation. and that mutation is the ability to mutate, as you put it, "in one generation". that is itself the essential mutation that is common to all "mutants". the fact that they can move from normal human to super powered mutant in the space of one generation (their own lifetime) is exactly the point.
in other words, "control over lightning" is not the metaphor. shooting laser beams out of the eyes, or teleporting or flying or... whatever, none of those things are the metaphor. the metaphor is the ability to mutate in the space of one lifetime. and the stories they spin from that wellspring often have to do with the fallout, the blessings and curses that come from what the ability to mutate means for any particular individual.
it's a metaphor that works quite well, as long as you don't take it too literally. (pun not intended but i can't help noting it.) everyone wants to be able to adapt to circumstances within the course of their own lifetime in a way that puts them on top of their situation. an entire religion - buddhism - seems to rotate around this central idea. mostly buddhists seem to be saying that only in rare circumstances does one soul "mutate" into a state in which that soul truly achieves enlightenment. most of us have to keep spinning on the great wheel and reincarnating until we get it right. i'm not a buddhist so i may be getting this wrong, at least in terms of emphasis.
for you, your "super power" or "mutation" is your understanding of scientific models or rational ways of thinking. it seems to me that you have achieved quite a bit along these lines. you started thinking about these things at a young age, coincidentally (or not?) about the same time stan lee's mutants discover their powers, as a budding teenager. (hopefully i'm remembering your recent post correctly.) in my sparsely informed viewpoint, entirely based on the posts i've read here, you have been driven by something intrinsic to you to understand the world in just the way you do now. everything led you to the point you are at now. there were things that were obvious to you at a young age that were not, i assure you, obvious to most other people.
you might phrase that very differently, and with much greater precision, and without all the biases and faulty logic that i'm sure infect my own thinking.
if you think about it though, you'll see that in some way you are a kind of mutant. you are the exception, not the rule. you started to think about things, at a young age, in a way that most people never get to. it may be that you come from a long line of such thinkers. the further out i push the metaphor, the shakier it gets. at the end of the day it's about discovering your own inherent powers and using them in a way that is, hopefully, best for you and for the people around you.
Such an ability isn't even that ridiculous with proper grounding. Brain cells seem to use an RNA-like molecule to transfer programming from one neuron to another. Turning that into a way to make genetic changes at the speed of protein brains instead of at the speed of genetic evolution would be a big step, and very unlikely to come about without the assistance of some protein brains guiding the process, but once it was established it would be a large enough advantage that it would likely stick around.
So odds seem high that all the "mutants" are the descendants of some genetic engineering project somewhere.
The preview for the X-Men movie has a voice-over saying: “In every human being . . . there is the genetic code . . . for mutation.” Apparently you can acquire all sorts of neat abilities by mutation. The mutant Storm, for example, has the ability to throw lightning bolts.
I beg you, dear reader, to consider the biological machinery necessary to generate electricity; the biological adaptations necessary to avoid being harmed by electricity; and the cognitive circuitry required for finely tuned control of lightning bolts. If we actually observed any organism acquiring these abilities in one generation, as the result of mutation, it would outright falsify the neo-Darwinian model of natural selection. It would be worse than finding rabbit fossils in the pre-Cambrian. If evolutionary theory could actually stretch to cover Storm, it would be able to explain anything, and we all know what that would imply.
The X-Men comics use terms like “evolution,” “mutation,” and “genetic code,” purely to place themselves in what they conceive to be the literary genre of science. The part that scares me is wondering how many people, especially in the media, understand science only as a literary genre.
I encounter people who very definitely believe in evolution, who sneer at the folly of creationists. And yet they have no idea of what the theory of evolutionary biology permits and prohibits. They’ll talk about “the next step in the evolution of humanity,” as if natural selection got here by following a plan. Or even worse, they’ll talk about something completely outside the domain of evolutionary biology, like an improved design for computer chips, or corporations splitting, or humans uploading themselves into computers, and they’ll call that “evolution.” If evolutionary biology could cover that, it could cover anything.
Probably an actual majority of the people who believe in evolution use the phrase “because of evolution” because they want to be part of the scientific in-crowd—belief as scientific attire, like wearing a lab coat. If the scientific in-crowd instead used the phrase “because of intelligent design,” they would just as cheerfully use that instead—it would make no difference to their anticipation-controllers. Saying “because of evolution” instead of “because of intelligent design” does not, for them, prohibit Storm. Its only purpose, for them, is to identify with a tribe.
I encounter people who are quite willing to entertain the notion of dumber-than-human artificial intelligence, or even mildly smarter-than-human artificial intelligence. Introduce the notion of strongly superhuman artificial intelligence, and they’ll suddenly decide it’s “pseudoscience.” It’s not that they think they have a theory of intelligence which lets them calculate a theoretical upper bound on the power of an optimization process. Rather, they associate strongly superhuman AI to the literary genre of apocalyptic literature; whereas an AI running a small corporation associates to the literary genre of Wired magazine. They aren’t speaking from within a model of cognition. They don’t realize they need a model. They don’t realize that science is about models. Their devastating critiques consist purely of comparisons to apocalyptic literature, rather than, say, known laws which prohibit such an outcome. They understand science only as a literary genre, or in-group to belong to. The attire doesn’t look to them like a lab coat; this isn’t the football team they’re cheering for.
Is there any idea in science that you are proud of believing, though you do not use the belief professionally? You had best ask yourself which future experiences your belief prohibits from happening to you. That is the sum of what you have assimilated and made a true part of yourself. Anything else is probably passwords or attire.