[HN Gopher] Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human gen...
___________________________________________________________________
Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating
evolution
Author : ignoramous
Score : 262 points
Date : 2020-11-15 17:47 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (interestingengineering.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (interestingengineering.com)
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| What could possibly go wrong?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Are they going to call him Caesar?
| agilob wrote:
| Or Dr. Zaius
| jacquesm wrote:
| This is simply unethical.
| tigerBL00D wrote:
| Did anyone else think about "Planet of the Apes" after reading
| this?
| [deleted]
| T-A wrote:
| Of course. Given the times, this in particular:
|
| https://vimeo.com/120831063
|
| Now I wonder what effect ARHGAP11B would have on a shark:
|
| https://youtu.be/oSz9MDN-iac?t=71
| busterarm wrote:
| "God damn you all to hell!"
| colechristensen wrote:
| More like the Island of Dr Moreau, more obscure and quite a bit
| more disturbing.
| mark-r wrote:
| Literally as soon as I read the title.
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| Can we improve our own brain this way? I mean, brain of our kind,
| not some already living person. What if we can create a creature
| smarter than us?
| qvrjuec wrote:
| Obviously, but the real issue would be figuring out how to
| tweak our genes to do so. Figuring out how to enlarge the brain
| of a monkey would've been much easier, because human genes
| provided a ready-made template for these researchers to use.
| etiam wrote:
| More likely the poor thing's going to be severely epileptic or
| have other debilitating brain malfunctions, if it would be
| viable at all. People here are reading way too much positive
| functional consequences into this manipulation.
|
| In principle, of course genetic manipulation could be used as
| one tool to create a creature "smarter" than any human
| (whatever that means more specifically).
|
| In practice, until we start having a much more coherent theory
| of functional brain physiology, applying the tool to that end
| pretty much amounts to mucking around, with likely tragic
| consequences.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Surely, but at what cost?
|
| Exploratory human experimentation... maybe you're testing and
| aborting half developed humans which already many people would
| have significant problems, but eventually you're going to have
| to produce adults and not every experiment is going to be a
| success.
|
| It's hard to think of a future of our species where self-
| modification is not part of our evolution, but it is a very
| powerful tool and like any power a lot of discipline has to go
| into not misusing it.
|
| Somebody call Dr Moreau
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Not to be funny, but our brains/skulls are already large enough
| to really make giving birth legitimately dangerous to mothers.
| Making the head even bigger would not be welcome.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| From an engineering perspective, when trying to explore a
| dynamic, you simplify the experiment to reduce extraneous
| variables. So along these lines, I'd be more interested in
| following experiments like these on say sea slugs. Give them a
| proto-amygdala/hippocampus or limbic system and test them for
| increased memory, adaptive behavior etc. This choice of monkey
| experiment seems to be more sensation and less investigation, on
| the spectrum.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| unfortunately, the further you move generically from the human,
| the _more_ extraneous variables you introduce and the lower the
| relevance of any result. There is a reason drugs and
| experiments are performed on primates. Any result you saw in
| say a sea slug would provide no insight into the human
| function.
|
| The ideal experiment would be to delete the gene from a human,
| but this is unethical for obvious reasons.
| coryrc wrote:
| We support women knowingly giving birth to trisomy fetuses.
| We're in trolley problem territory here.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| I should have also said, I think it is premature to attempt
| genetic engineering of human brains for medical benefit.
| Intuitively I believe we are decades behind the amount of
| conceptual development and experimental validation we need to
| do to get a proper understanding of genetic brain
| engineering. So I think the ethics is spot on here, it's
| ethically wrong IMO because we don't know what we are doing.
| Ethically I don't see a problem messing with sea slugs,
| though no doubt some people might.
| modzu wrote:
| the island of dr moreau
| oscargrouch wrote:
| I feel this is a moon-landing like historical event without all
| the fireworks.
| babesh wrote:
| Planet of the Apes
| [deleted]
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| As a fan of the Planet of the Apes franchise, I like this
| article.
|
| Next: give apes human-like hands suitable for tools.
| bronzeage wrote:
| We've already had the plague this year, bring on the intelligent
| monkeys...
|
| Where do I buy tickets to an Elon Musk rocket now?
| treeman79 wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/979/
|
| To future researchers, here is where 2020 finally jumped the
| shark. Best wishes.
| bra-ket wrote:
| Elon booked the entire flight for himself. He just wants to go
| home.
| [deleted]
| ativzzz wrote:
| So what exactly is inherently unethical about letting this
| engineered organism live? Is it a violation of "Christian" ethics
| of playing God? If so, we've already gone way past that point
| with modern medicine and things like genetic engineering of
| mosquitoes.
|
| If it's a fear of how society reacts to the organism surviving
| and causing an upheaval of life philosophy, isn't all science
| then unethical?
| phkahler wrote:
| Is there a better source? I'd like to know what gene they added
| and if there is any reason to believe that could have been an
| evolutionary step. Gene's dont appear whole out of nowhere. Was
| it an extra copy of an existing gene? A mutation and duplication?
| Some weird replication error?
| carbocation wrote:
| The source is this article:
| https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6503/546
|
| The gene is _ARHGAP11B_ under the control of its usual human-
| specific promoter.
| phkahler wrote:
| I found another article that covers the origin of the gene
| here:
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200618150301.h...
| shmageggy wrote:
| I'm also curious about all the related morphological changes
| that must go along with increased brain size, such as different
| proportions of the skull and face and wider hips on females to
| accommodate birth. It seems unlikely one gene can modulate all
| of those, let alone yield the social structures required for
| increased rearing time.
| keithwhor wrote:
| Developmental biology has a whole lot of plasticity and works
| primarily by self-organization of cell populations. It's not
| a computer program where you have to allocate memory for
| skulls, eyes, ears and more -- it's actually more like a
| population of organisms that align themselves towards
| specific goals ("hey team, we need a hand -- now time for
| fingers! You guys in the middle, die off!")
|
| You can think of a gene for i.e. brain size just being an
| instruction that's "you can press harder on the other
| populations to maximize your growth" and the other
| populations are likely to accommodate the stress during
| development, and change size and shape accordingly.
|
| There are of course harmful mutations that are unable to be
| compensated for and lead to failure to thrive, but when you
| see a successful morphological mutation it's because the
| systems are very adept at integrating new stimulus during
| growth.
|
| (Similarly, social structures are emergent properties as
| well.)
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| I have a theory that intelligence, consciousness, free will are
| very easy to evolve (we just haven't worked out how to do it yet
| - like many cellular processes). What is difficult is
| _harnessing_ that free will to the evolutionary success of the
| organism.
|
| The large brain is necessary as a harness, to control the
| intelligence, and enslave it to evolutionarily beneficial ends.
| Probably not just hardwired instincts, but also learns -
| probably, similar to animal intelligence.
|
| Like a giant finite state machine, that prevents a turing machine
| from running certain programs that never halt. Of course, it
| can't catch _all_ such programs, and a turing machine can
| transcend any such bound, but lowering the probability of running
| one is good enough.
|
| Note that turing equivalence, the highest possible computational
| power, emerges from even the slightest complexity (apart from the
| infinite tape part).
|
| Thus "intelligence" has appeared in countless individual animals:
| mammals, birds, spiders, perhaps plants too and bacteria (and is
| still so appearing), but it doesn't confer a survival advantage,
| so disappears. Many such creatures just sit there discerning
| patterns instead of surviving. Others do survive but by instinct,
| so the intelligence makes no difference.
|
| The difficulty is putting freewill in the driver's seat.
| nwpk wrote:
| These are the old news. I have read about this research several
| month ago.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Submit a recent article you think is interesting!
| Kosirich wrote:
| _" To let them come to be born, in my opinion, would have been
| irresponsible as a first step,"_ emphasis on the "as a first
| step"
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| It is an interesting ethical decision because it highlights a
| lot of assumptions about what is and is not ethical and moral.
| For example, take those that firmly believe abortion is murder.
| For them. then aborting this evolved fetus would be considered
| (to the extent that this applies to mutant non-human primates)
| the unethical thing to do, NOT the ethical thing to do.
| However, if you don't believe fetuses have inherent rights,
| etc, then the most ethical thing to do is to destroy the fetus
| before it does begin to reach that threshold where thorny
| ethical implications emerge.
| zhrvoj wrote:
| Personally I don't believe that they destroyed fetus. And they
| give up of seeing end results?? C'mon...
| Albertbm4 wrote:
| humano
| Albertbm4 wrote:
| error
| eplanit wrote:
| Planet of the Apes + Bladerunner.
| major505 wrote:
| you want planet of the apes? Because, this is how you get planet
| of the apes!
| linuxftw wrote:
| People think AI is going to be silicon based. No, it's going to
| be genetically engineered primate brains.
| eugenhotaj wrote:
| _Joe Rogan joins the chat_
| pelasaco wrote:
| Planet of the Apes 2020
| sigzero wrote:
| No...they didn't. That's not how it works at all. smh
| fallingfrog wrote:
| I think the ethical questions here mostly revolve around how the
| resulting animal would be treated. It wouldn't have the legal
| status of a person- although it might be one. So we would
| probably use it for slave labor, as a pet, probably not as food
| although there are probably people who would do that too given
| the opportunity. Certainly that's how we treat other nonhuman
| animals. Or they might escape and the gene might start to
| circulate in wild populations. There's no good way this pans out.
| gwern wrote:
| Mirror:
| https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/editing/2020-heide.pdf
| colechristensen wrote:
| If you want to know what science fiction thought of this kind of
| thing in 1896, read the Island of Dr Moreau -- an eccentric
| scientist in exile modifies animals into more human forms.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| Hmm doesn't seem credible. Everyone knows that brain size has no
| effect on intelligence.
| Retric wrote:
| Yea, I was talking to a fruit fly yesterday...
|
| Wait no, that's not accurate because while larger brains don't
| inherently equate to more intelligence, there is a minimum size
| for any given level of intelligence. That said, this wasn't a
| test of intelligence, just how cells grow in response to
| specific genetic alterations.
| busterarm wrote:
| But larger brains in monkeys do equate to larger social
| groups (dunbar's number. monkeyspheres) and could be a
| necessary precursor to civilization.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| I didn't realize that was scientific consensus. So that would
| imply that brains under a certain size are incapable of
| higher levels of intelligence? I don't think that's right...
| I thought the consensus was that brain size has no strong
| correlation with intelligence at all. That makes sense
| considering how neurons work, the connections they form seem
| like they would be more causal.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Its a complicated question. Within the human species, the
| correlation is not that strong at all. In cross-species
| comparisons it tends to be quite strong, especially when
| considering brain to body weight ratios. Bird brains may be
| an interesting exception however, which I suspect can be
| quite intelligent, depending on how intelligence is
| measured.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The scientific consensus is that from the evolutionary
| perspective, brain/body size is absolutely correlated with
| performance. This doesn't have to be general intelligence,
| but can be sensory processing ect.
|
| That is not to say that structure isn't important too. This
| is especially relevant because the study observed some of
| the structural changes through to be associated with
| increased intelligence as well.
| ivalm wrote:
| Information processing is limited to the capacity of the
| network. So it is easy to see that very small brains cannot
| be very smart (there is no set of connections that can make
| fruit fly human-intelligent). However, having a large
| capacity network doesn't mean it will result in high
| intelligence. So it's necessary but not sufficient.
| computerphage wrote:
| Another win for the heuristic "if someone says 'everyone knows
| X' it probably means X is false"
| isoprophlex wrote:
| You'll never play Doom on a single NAND gate. Huge efforts in
| getting toasters, microwaves and pregnancy testers to run Doom
| notwithstanding.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| But brains aren't made of digital logic elements
| scott31 wrote:
| You'll never play Doom on a single neuron.
| layoutIfNeeded wrote:
| I'm pretty sure there's sufficiently complex cellular
| machinery inside a neuron to run Doom if arranged in the
| right way.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| But you surely can on the computer simulating that single
| neuron :)
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| You'll never play doom on any amount of neurons... brains
| are not cpus
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Why not? You could manually process the assembler on
| pen/paper. Sure the FPS might be a bit on the low side.
| chillacy wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-to-body_mass_ratio
|
| With an extra caveat:
|
| > Recent research indicates that, in non-human primates, whole
| brain size is a better measure of cognitive abilities than
| brain-to-body mass ratio. The total weight of the species is
| greater than the predicted sample only if the frontal lobe is
| adjusted for spatial relation.[18] The brain-to-body mass ratio
| was however found to be an excellent predictor of variation in
| problem solving abilities among carnivoran mammals.[19]
| davesque wrote:
| Damnit, couldn't they have done this when Charlton Heston was
| still around to help out?
| grawprog wrote:
| I find it hard to describe how I feel about this.
|
| These scientists essentially created what may have been a new
| species, that perhaps would have had similar sentience to us and
| had them terminated after 100 days.
|
| The cat's out of the bag with this research so to speak now.
| Someone's bound to do this again
|
| The part about whether they should have been born or not, which
| was the ethical thing is what tears at me.
|
| Is it right to create something that may be similar to us and
| then not even give it a chance to live?
|
| I mean whether creating such a being is right or not in general
| i'm sure is up for debate.
|
| I'm not religious, but if we're going to play god, shouldn't we
| take responsibility for the results of our creation?
|
| I dunno, I find a lot of genetic engineering research to be a bit
| unsettling. We're playing with things we barely understand that
| could have consequences we can't even imagine.
|
| Nature took a long long time to get to this point where life has
| come to a sort of balance. Assuming we can go in and just start
| blindly messing around and do better seems like an extreme level
| of arrogance that's going to end up blowing up in our faces.
|
| Our track record for messing around with the fundamental fabric
| of reality and life isn't so good. We've ended up with some
| pretty terrifying things.
| Vinnl wrote:
| I understand the sentiment, but given our track record of being
| OK with causing the suffering of billions of creatures capable
| of suffering - and in fact even being the reason those creators
| were born in the first place - I wouldn't be surprised if we
| brushed it aside relatively easily after the first few.
| konart wrote:
| >shouldn't we take responsibility for the results of our
| creation?
|
| "I gave you life, I will take it" - Taras Bulba.
| grawprog wrote:
| https://youtu.be/BpaRouocBes
|
| >You perceive, now, that these things are all impossible
| except in a dream. You perceive that they are pure and
| puerile insanities, the silly creations of an imagination
| that is not conscious of its freaks--in a word, that they are
| a dream, and you the maker of it.
|
| Mark Twain
| ineedasername wrote:
| If it makes you feel any better, a brain that young, even if
| identical to that of a baby, is probably not sentient. AFAIK,
| current research pegs the early development of sentience around
| 150 days.
|
| Despite that, I'm a bit unsettled by this too. I think we
| should understand the mind a bit more before we go down the
| path of creating one.
| 1234fdsazxcv wrote:
| Can we please use paragraphs to create a coherent thought/point
| rather than a series of one-liners? Perhaps spend a little more
| time to think through/build out your thoughts. It is more
| interesting for your reader and (I think) promotes more nuanced
| conversation if we all spend more time thinking about our ideas
| before we rush to post.
|
| Note, this is not specific to the parent post but just a
| general comment made with the hope of raising the level of
| conversation beyond twitter.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I feel pretty simply, I feel a sense of sadness at the kinds of
| 21st century problems my kids and their kids are going to have
| to deal with.
|
| At some point in the next 25 years I expect there to be a
| 'procedure' available, which consists of cultivating a persons
| stem cells from their bone marrow, using a genetic editing
| technique to add and/or delete and/or "correct" certain genetic
| sequences, and then to have a "bone marrow transplant" which is
| simply killing off your existing bone marrow stem cells and
| replacing them with the edited ones.
|
| It will be touted as a durable cure for genetic disease and
| marketed underground to people of means who are looking for an
| edge in their chosen profession.
|
| There will be lawsuits over people who have their their genetic
| sequences "appropriated" by a third party to re-sell as a
| product, and patent litigation on gene sequences that makes
| much of today's trolls seem quaint in comparison.
|
| I expect to see dog shows and horse races ban "genetically
| modified" contestants. I expect to see lawsuits around the
| labeling of beef and chicken about being genetically modified
| (yes some of this is already happening).
|
| The world will be profoundly different on the far side of
| generalized understanding of genetics and the means to
| manipulate them. At least as different as it has become pre-
| internet+computer to post internet+computer.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Our track record for messing with the fundamental fabric of
| reality is creating antibiotics, and over the period of a
| century saving so many lives that wars of earlier periods are
| negligible in comparison.
|
| A natural reaction from people with high sanctity/degradation
| (in the MFT sense) is to avoid touching the trolley lever at
| all points. Decision making is considered association with the
| decision. The naturalistic fallacy pervades all.
|
| No, if you can save billions and you choose not to, you have
| killed them. If you can uplift species and you choose not to,
| you have killed their cognition. Keine Wahl ist auch eine Wahl.
| We are gods over the Earth. We have dominion over it and the
| creatures that inhabit it. And godhood carries responsibility
| more than it carries power. We owe the monkeys their sapience.
| grawprog wrote:
| It's also such things as nuclear weapons, genetically
| engineered virii, patents on life, tampering with ecosystems,
| plants designed to be sterile to ensure a seed market, lakes
| full of sterile fish stocked for sport.
|
| >No, if you can save billions and you choose not to, you have
| killed them. If you can uplift species and you choose not to,
| you have killed their cognition. We are gods over the Earth.
| We have dominion over it and the creatures that inhabit it
|
| No we're not. We're barely able to hold it together. The
| Earth is a giant living system we're slowly killing and
| replacing with human technology.
|
| It's not a naturalistic fantasy, it's the reality of the
| planet you live on.
|
| To think we dominate this world is laughable. The fungi will
| consume all of us some day and outlive us all. I mean some
| are among the oldest still living life on earth as it is.
| Like millions of years old and still going. How can you
| dominate something that's existed longer than you and will
| out live you and everyone you know?
|
| Humans have such a limited understanding of the very things
| that make life possible. We're not gods, we're children who
| wandered into gods workshop and started playing with all the
| shiny toys.
|
| Just because we know how to play with toys doesn't make us
| gods or the dominators of the Earth or life itself.
|
| That's the kind of arrogance I speak of that's going to blow
| up in our faces.
| renewiltord wrote:
| No, no, not humans. The we that have dominion are certain
| genes, for which the humans are mere vehicles. These genes
| are just as old as the mushroom genes.
|
| And this gene cluster is aiming to master the rock that is
| the Earth through modifying other gene clusters. And you
| can't stop it. Because through modification it grows
| stronger and more able. And it has rallied the memome and
| the hologenome to its cause. This cause requires no
| convincing because only winners get to play the next round.
| Change is inevitable. Understanding is overrated. Control
| does not require it.
|
| Transformation Theology has subsumed this world. You live
| in an ether floating in it. You cannot choose the path of
| no change. No such path exists.
| throwaway_pdp09 wrote:
| > is aiming to master the rock that is the Earth
|
| Genes aren't goal directed towards something higher.
|
| > This cause requires no convincing because only winners
| get to play the next round
|
| The 'winners', us humans, are literally destroying the
| ecosphere which supports our life.
|
| > Understanding is overrated.
|
| That's an appeal to ignorance.
|
| > Control does not require it [understanding]
|
| We can control something without understanding it? Most
| of science would disagree.
| renewiltord wrote:
| > _Genes aren 't goal directed towards something higher._
|
| No, but "this gene cluster" is me - and _I_ am goal-
| directed.
|
| > _We can control something without understanding it?
| Most of science would disagree._
|
| No, they wouldn't. Epistemology has progressed beyond
| this. Models have various levels of fidelity. And
| 'understanding' is a colloquial term that refers to a
| higher standard of fidelity than that required for
| control. Few drivers know how their cars work. Most
| drivers can drive their cars.
|
| But I do enjoy the amusing attempt at cutting out the
| sentence to create damning gotchas. Here, I mimicked your
| style and made one from your comment:
|
| > _We can control something without understanding it_
|
| Why, thank you for agreeing with me! Quite gratifying to
| receive such support.
| throwaway_pdp09 wrote:
| > and I am goal-directed.
|
| OK, straight questiom goal directed towards _what_?
|
| > And 'understanding' is a colloquial term that refers to
| a higher standard of fidelity than that required for
| control
|
| Don't agree - further
|
| > Few drivers know how their cars work. Most drivers can
| drive their cars.
|
| Understanding is about understanding of aspects. They may
| well not understand the engine aspect (how it works
| precisely) but "Most drivers can drive their cars" means
| they control their cars, which means they _understand_
| what happens when a steering wheel is turned, and how not
| to grind the gears, and not to hit accelerator and brake
| together. They model it. That is the embodiment of their
| understanding. Without that they could not control a car.
|
| > Why, thank you for...
|
| Quite clearly there was a question mark at the end it to
| indicate my implied doubt. Science seeks better
| understanding of x so it can manipulate x more precisely.
| Please give me a couple of examples of complex systems
| which we don't understand but can control, so I can
| understand you better.
| layoutIfNeeded wrote:
| Yeah, we've read The Selfish Gene, too.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Naturally, it's 50 years old and one of the most
| influential science books of all time. If you hadn't,
| then the reference wouldn't work as well.
| ben_w wrote:
| What it's worth I haven't read that book (or seen that
| passage before) and I still understood.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Richard Dawkins did do very well with the way he
| expressed the concept. It is quite intuitive for
| something of such great significance. Easy to forget, I
| suppose for me, how intuitive it is.
| nyolfen wrote:
| > The Earth is a giant living system we're slowly killing
| and replacing with human technology.
|
| "It is only due to a predominance of influences that are
| not only entirely morally indifferent, but indeed -- from a
| human perspective -- indescribably cruel, that nature has
| been capable of constructive action. Specifically, it is
| solely by way of the relentless, brutal culling of
| populations that any complex or adaptive traits have been
| sieved -- with torturous inefficiency -- from the chaos of
| natural existence. All health, beauty, intelligence, and
| social grace has been teased from a vast butcher's yard of
| unbounded carnage, requiring incalculable eons of massacre
| to draw forth even the subtlest of advantages. This is not
| only a matter of the bloody grinding mills of selection,
| either, but also of the innumerable mutational abominations
| thrown up by the madness of chance, as it pursues its
| directionless path to some negligible preservable trait,
| and then -- still further -- of the unavowable horrors that
| 'fitness' (or sheer survival) itself predominantly entails.
| We are a minuscule sample of agonized matter, comprising
| genetic survival monsters, fished from a cosmic ocean of
| vile mutants, by a pitiless killing machine of infinite
| appetite. (This is still, perhaps, to put an irresponsibly
| positive spin on the story, but it should suffice for our
| purposes here.)"
| ben_w wrote:
| Curious; I not only don't understand your world view, I
| don't even have enough of a handle on it to know how to
| engage with it.
|
| For example:
|
| > The fungi will consume all of us some day and outlive us
| all. I mean some are among the oldest still living life on
| earth as it is. Like millions of years old and still going.
| How can you dominate something that's existed longer than
| you and will out live you and everyone you know?
|
| Yet anti-fungals are trivially available at low cost.
| Indeed, the very claim of yours that:
|
| > The Earth is a giant living system we're slowly killing
| and replacing with human technology.
|
| Is literally not something I can only even understand as
| _agreement that we have dominion_ , yet I know you intend
| to deny that.
| zhrvoj wrote:
| A fool with a tool is still a fool...
| [deleted]
| renewiltord wrote:
| True, but a fool without a tool must make two
| transformations to become a genius with a tool. A fool
| with a tool need only make one.
| whytaka wrote:
| > No, if you can save billions and you choose not to, you
| have killed them.
|
| The trolley problem remains unsolved. I don't find arguments
| anymore persuasive when they are written as declarations.
| renewiltord wrote:
| That part was intended to be a declaration of _my_ position
| on it not on a universal conclusion. For brevity, I left
| the 'for me' part out.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| How do you solve it? What does the solution look like? It's
| not like the 4-colour problem.
| ajuc wrote:
| > If you can uplift species and you choose not to, you have
| killed their cognition.
|
| By that logic you killed all the kids you could have made
| when you weren't having sex.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yes, I did. And I find that acceptable. After all, child
| killing isn't an unalloyed evil. There are children I am
| morally all right with killing.
| vikramkr wrote:
| You're giving nature too much credit. Nature doesn't try and
| balance life. Nature doesn't care- it throws asteroid impacts
| and supervolcanos and natural disasters all over the place.
| Life just happens to be very very resilient and consistently
| able to jump back and fill new niches. Nature also "created" us
| - were a product of the universe like everything else. If we
| are destabilizing, so is nature.
|
| And most scientists do not assume they can blindly mess around.
| There was a whole section of this article related to ethics,
| they didn't let the fetus be born (which would definitely have
| been messing around). They're not trying to "do better" or
| control nature - they're just trying to understand what makes
| us tick. This is a mutation that already exists in humans. It
| might make us human. If anything, that makes nature the one
| that was blindly messing around.
| erickj wrote:
| However in the exact same vane that "Nature doesn't care"...
| We as Humans should and DO care.
|
| We are not Nature, and thus these existential defining issues
| should at least give us some pause to debate and evaluate the
| moral quandaries and responsibilities that this level of
| engineering power wields.
| flatline wrote:
| We are very much Nature. Possibly something independent of
| our own minds exist; we can never really know. Anything
| worth preserving, caring for, or caring about, is a product
| of the human mind. The meteor careening into the earth does
| not feel a moral quandary, but we do, and as such I agree
| that given our limited knowledge we should care. But we
| should also pay heed to how ignorant we are: we cannot
| possibly know how our present actions will play out in the
| future, the best we can do is try to be compassionate and
| take care of what we can. The rest is out of our control
| and hence our sphere of responsibility.
| bamboozled wrote:
| "You're giving nature too much credit."
|
| What a statement.
| camphero wrote:
| Don't blame wanting to prove Planet of the Apes could be real
| (but not having the balls to do it) Nature's fault. That
| stupidity is just human mad science.
| grawprog wrote:
| I don't give it credit, like it's trying to gain balance, but
| functioning ecosystems do maintain a balance. Most of our
| climate problems have come from humans disrupting this.
|
| If you take any functioning healthy ecosystem on earth, one
| generally less tampered with by humans, you'll find from a
| microscopic, right up to a macroscopic level, the life in
| those ecosystems have adapted to function together.
|
| If you want to see some good examples of this, check out some
| terrarium channels on youtube, there's some really cool,
| perfectly balanced ones people have had going for years.
|
| The reason why we have so many ecological problems around the
| world is that humans have been constantly disrupting this. We
| introduce invasive species that dominate the landscape, cause
| extinctions and extirpations of native species and change the
| fundamental balance of the ecosystem.
|
| You're right, life does push through, but personally, I
| prefer the native songbirds and shrubs that are local to my
| area than a landscape full of Japanese knotweed and
| starlings.
|
| And so do most things, that first example likely has at least
| a dozen species of songbirds, a bunch of shrubs and
| herbacious plants. That second example has two species, maybe
| some rats or crows if your lucky.
|
| The thing is, ecosystems don't stand alone, they're all
| connected and the collapse of one leads to the collapse of
| the neighbouring ones and so forth.
|
| If you actually look through the published literature.on
| various ecosystems around the world, we have a very shallow
| level of knowledge. We don't understand fully the complex
| connections between everything and the research that does
| keep coming out keeps showing how much we've vastly
| underestimated how much our actions have impacted things.
|
| Even things like the ecosystems in our own body's. The
| microscopic organisms that have been found to even play a
| part in things such as our decision making and moods.
|
| The human body itself functions as an ecosystem, all our body
| systems, our cells, our organs, all function independently
| and cohesively to make everything that is you.
|
| The earth itself functions the same way. The ecosystems, and
| all life, including humans, are the cells and organs that
| make up all life on Earth.
|
| Altering life at a fundamental genetic level goes even
| further than how we alter ecosystems.
|
| Humans really don't understand the potential consequences to
| changes we make to the genetic code. We have a vague idea,
| but we really are.delving mostly blind into this. If we
| barely understand how life works on a macroscopic level, what
| makes us think we're ready to change it at an even lower
| level?
| hohloma wrote:
| You're missing survivorship bias - nature didn't just
| create these balanced ecosystems, it creates anything that
| goes, and things that don't work out just die. Humans
| ruining earth for themselves is just as natural, just that
| we might die as result. But life won't - it's much more
| resilient than just one species. Or several.
| nwienert wrote:
| Following this line of logic you can justify anything. If
| I kill your entire family, that's natural. Would you be
| ok with that?
|
| I think if you accept at all that there is suffering and
| there is beauty, then you shouldn't hide behind
| "everything's natural" and instead try and have a
| backbone and stick up for something more.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| That's the point: naturalism can justify anything, and
| that makes it a poor guiding principle. As do many other
| things.
|
| There are many natural things that are good. Clean air,
| unique little ecosystems like GP describes, endless
| variety -- and we should strive to respect and preserve
| those, but not because they are natural. Poor animals
| teeming with parasites, population "balance" maintained
| through periodic overpopulation and starvation (How do
| people think it happens? Forest fairies tell the deer how
| many babies to have?), predators feasting on the organs
| of their prey while the prey is still alive. All these
| things are natural but _not_ good and we should _not_
| seek to replicate them.
| [deleted]
| vikramkr wrote:
| Why should I be "ok" with natural? Screw natural. Nature
| does a lot of terrible things. People dying in hurricanes
| or at the hands of murderers isn't OK because its
| "natural" - its just not OK. We have the intelligence to
| influence our environment (and that intelligence is also
| a result of nature). Trying to categorize natural vs
| unnatural (whatever that means) is a fools errand and not
| a productive one in my view, since my ethics aren't based
| on "it's ok because the volcano was natural"
| ericffr wrote:
| The problem with this line of thinking is that it might
| be a little short-sighted. Since we are intelligent, we
| should be careful. With great powers come great
| responsibility. If someone doesn't like hurricanes, they
| can move where there is none. When Earth will be 99%
| inhabitable (because of air pollution, soil degradation,
| lack of water), is the solution just to say "oh well",
| let's go to Mars?
| ylyn wrote:
| It is natural.
|
| That doesn't make it okay.
| vikramkr wrote:
| If you take most systems, they're at war with eachother.
| And that war includes viruses, which do a lot of altering
| at the fundamental genetic level. You could call it balance
| - I'd call it stalemate. And of course we don't understand
| the consequences- thats the point of the research. Ideally
| its done in a controlled, ethical way. And questions are
| raised. But the point of the research is to understand the
| connections and the consequences, and the only way we do
| that is by experimenting which involves making low level
| changes and observing the results. And as we understand
| these consequences, were able to apply our new knowledge to
| practical purposes like treating disease. Not understanding
| is the _reason_ that research matters - the point is to
| find out.
| LockAndLol wrote:
| > I don't give it credit, like it's trying to gain balance,
| but functioning ecosystems do maintain a balance. Most of
| our climate problems have come from humans disrupting this.
|
| We didn't come out of a void. We are a natural evolution
| too, with the only difference being that we reached this
| stage before other animals. Since we are disrupting our
| ecosystem, we are living proof that either:
|
| - this ecosystem we are in is not function according to
| your definition - or functioning ecosystems do not maintain
| balance
|
| > The reason why we have so many ecological problems around
| the world is that humans have been constantly disrupting
| this. We introduce invasive species that dominate the
| landscape, cause extinctions and extirpations of native
| species and change the fundamental balance of the
| ecosystem.
|
| Ecosystems are constantly being disrupted and have been
| long before humans evolved. Wind can carry the seeds of one
| plant into another ecosystem where it suddenly dominates
| because it has no "natural predators". Birds can fly over
| an ecosystem, defecate and drop an entirely foreign species
| into another ecosystem.
|
| Cyanobacteria are even attributed as the reason for one of
| the first mass extinctions [0]. Is that a sign of a
| functioning ecosystem?
|
| > Altering life at a fundamental genetic level goes even
| further than how we alter ecosystems.
|
| Viruses and bacteria actively mess around with the DNA of
| other organisms in order to render them susceptible or make
| them carriers. Nature has been messing with itself long
| before we ever learned how.
|
| We are in no way special in this universe or in our
| actions. We are just copying what we see in nature.
|
| [0]: https://slate.com/technology/2014/07/the-great-
| oxygenation-e...
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "I prefer the native songbirds and shrubs that are local to
| my area than a landscape full of Japanese knotweed and
| starlings."
|
| Don't you think, you feel that way, because you grew up
| with the native songbirds?
|
| "If we barely understand how life works on a macroscopic
| level, what makes us think we're ready to change it at an
| even lower level? "
|
| Like the other poster have said: nature does not plan in
| advance or makes ethical discussions. Nature just is and
| everything in it trys to adapt. Some prosper, some die out.
| Now with our technology we disrupted quite a bit, but why
| must we understand everything we do, when nature aparrently
| does not either?
|
| With research like this, I am more worried, what things
| like this, does to us. To maybe get to the point, where new
| babys are created in a laboratory and the less successful
| experiments goes to the bin. All for Evolution.
|
| Now I am grossed out by that thought. But from a
| philosophical point of view, I have to ask myself: "who
| defines that this is bad?"
|
| Maybe this gets us to the stars, so life can spread, in
| case earth life gets vanished, by a big asteroid. So maybe
| it is ethical to do all we can, to get there? To preserve
| life itself? (humans are not at all adopted for space,
| radiation, zero g etc., so CRISPR?)
|
| (well no, I don't think it is ethical to do by all means,
| but I do think ethics are subjective and the next
| generations might have different ethics)
| mlavin wrote:
| It's an easy qualitative decision to consider a variety
| of species with pleasant calls and plants which coexist
| in their own niches better than swarms of one single
| species of bird and an aggressively invasive plant
| species which chokes out all other growth. Knotweed in
| particular is an absolute pox on the landscape in North
| America.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Ok, I don't know of the specific case, it is just, that
| here in germany, the "invasive" species people complain
| about, I wittnes as a welcome variation. Brings in more
| color. The areas that do get dominated, will very likely
| balance it out with a different species, soon.
|
| edit: had to translate it, but: we also have knotweed and
| people complain, but I actually like it. And I do not see
| it dominating, just a spot here and there, just like
| nettles.
| ericffr wrote:
| Not every weed moves as fast as a virus. It might take
| decades before we realize that some species have
| disappeared, and in their wake, others are going too, and
| we are left with a homogeneous ecosystem where a new
| virus will come and be even worse (like the wheat rust
| which decimated the single species of wheat growing in
| North America). Obviously, Nature, being random, might
| cause destruction on its own (like when plants appeared
| and the high level of oxygen they produced killed earlier
| species), but this happens on millions of years. And
| sure, nothing prevents "Nature" from killing humans too.
| We are not more precious than any other species, from the
| Nature point of view.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "we realize that some species have disappeared, and in
| their wake, others are going too, and we are left with a
| homogeneous ecosystem "
|
| Species come and go all the time. Globalisation just made
| it a lot faster. So there will be imbalances and local
| system collapsing and temporary a dominating species
| etc., but alltogether the diversity of species will be
| increased, with fast global exchange. Because there are
| more candidates to fill a niche.
|
| Local established ones still have a home bonus. Their DNA
| is adopted to the local climate and soil, unlike the
| invaders. They won't vanish anytime soon.
|
| The thing really threatening diversity are monoculture
| fields with pesticides.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| > Nature took a long long time to get to this point where life
| has come to a sort of balance
|
| There is no balance. It's an illusion of selection bias and
| inability to consider time-scales not at the human scale.
| klunger wrote:
| I don't. It makes me sick to my stomach.
|
| I am speaking as someone who is pro-choice, pro-GMO's and pro-
| stem cell research, etc. This research has crossed a line that
| none of the above do. It is creating a new _kind_ of sentience,
| a new kind of soul.
|
| And, what's the point? To confirm a theory about a gene? So
| fricking what. That really doesn't matter, not in relation to
| the possible consequences: someone taking this research to
| create a race of "sub-human" slaves that think and feel as
| acutely as we do. Pick your genetic engineering dystopia for
| where this is leading us- Brave New World, Planet of the Apes,
| Gattaca, even the Uplift series.
|
| It never should have gotten approved by an ethics review board.
| The 100 days termination was just so they could claim to have
| considered ethics. If they actually seriously had done so, this
| project would have never left the drawing board.
|
| Finally: I wish people would stop staying the genie is out of
| the bottle. The genie is whatever we humans decide to do. You
| can't just assume that because something is possible that it
| will be done. We can have moral boundaries as a society. We can
| say "this is a bridge too far and no one should cross it". And
| anyone who does will be excommunicated from the scientific
| world.
|
| There is nothing inevitable about this dark path. Saying that
| it is inevitable just removes responsibility from whoever does
| it, which is just BS.
|
| .
|
| edit: grammar, clarity
| belval wrote:
| Have you ever stopped and thought about why you feel in such
| way towards these experiments? Why do you see sentience as
| the line not to cross and even go as far as to call it a
| "dark path"?
|
| You use a lot of wording that are very religious sounding
| such as "soul", "excommunicated", "dark path", but have you
| considered that you cannot really excommunicate a scientist,
| that the mere concept of a soul might be wrong?
|
| To be clear it makes me feel weird too, but we have to be
| able to discuss this instead of using inefficient red tape.
| whytaka wrote:
| If there's any science of morality to be done, the most
| basic quantum of moral value is suffering. Sentient
| creatures have greater capacity for suffering, being aware
| of their pain and the injustice of their existence. If we
| are to bring it into existence, we are responsible for its
| suffering.
| golemotron wrote:
| It would be good to use science fiction to explore some of
| these ideas before we do them.
| kungito wrote:
| "Is it right to create something that may be similar to us and
| then not even give it a chance to live?" If trying to be "good"
| doesn't this thought come off as really selfish? Just because
| something is more similar to us it should have more right to
| live? These thoughts are just basic survivalist instincts
| wrapped in nice 21st century "morals". We will do whatever the
| hell we want in the end and maybe we eradicate ourselves in the
| end before something else does
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| The answer is simple: We massively fucked up chemistry in the
| last 100 years. How do we get the confidence to know we can't
| fuck up biology (much much much much more complex)?
| neolog wrote:
| > We massively fucked up chemistry
|
| ?
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| - Thalidomide
|
| - Leaded fuel, the highest ever source of lead exposure and
| poisoning for Humans.
|
| - Asbestos still present in 60' to 80's construction
|
| - Refrigerants with Ozone destroying CFCs
|
| - 1800's arsenic pesticides still contaminate today's rice
| fields and most of the world's rice crops.
|
| - DDT
|
| - Plastics are currently leaching estrogenic-mimicking
| endocrine disruptors and contaminating water supplies,
| wildlife and Humans.
|
| That's just a few from memory, I am sure there are more.
|
| Edit: yes as someone else commented our grenhouse gas
| emissions are probably the biggest elephant in the room
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Greenhouse effect
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| I'd guess talking about advances in physical chemistry and
| the ability to more closely model and understand how atoms
| interact?
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| "Is it right to create something that may be similar to us and
| then not even give it a chance to live?"
|
| The only difference between this and abortion is that the
| species is somehow "novel".
|
| You should resolve the ethical issues with genetic engineering
| research in a similar way to however you resolve the ethical
| issues related to abortion.
| vmception wrote:
| I would like to see it be born. I want to know where this goes.
| What other genes it needs to become superior, or what genes we
| can tweak to optimize some things further.
|
| Humans are have tons of issues including cellular and cognitive
| deficiencies. This is a way to learn more about that and fix
| it.
|
| Sure, someone will make the new slave labor force, let's cross
| that bridge when we get there.
| FPGAhacker wrote:
| I'm curious if you feel this way about human abortion?
| grawprog wrote:
| No, that's why I find it hard to describe how I feel. I'm pro
| choice. It's not my place to tell someone what to do with
| their bodies or the fetuses they're carrying(please don't get
| into an abortion debate because of this, i'm not going to
| answer any comments going on about that to avoid things
| getting out of control), but this still makes me feel
| uncomfortable.
|
| This is something different, this is the first time this has
| been done, there was signs that their brains were going to be
| similar to ours, meaning possibly self aware and intelligent,
| I dunno, like i say, i'm not even sure which I feel like is
| the ethical choice...
|
| Like I say, I find it hard to describe how I feel about it
| all.
| FPGAhacker wrote:
| Thanks for replying on a sensitive topic.
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| > No, that's why I find it hard to describe how I feel.
|
| Cognitive dissonance? Sorry to be snarky.
| grawprog wrote:
| Yup, I thought I made that clear in my op honestly....
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Like I say, I find it hard to describe how I feel about
| it all.
|
| This is good, I like people that can recognize this.
| Cognitive dissonance _should_ hurt. It 's the people who
| can't feel it that I worry about being around...
| ivnubinas wrote:
| I feel there's a new tendency to value animal life more than
| human life and I'm not sure how to feel about it.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| If I may chip in - I don't think it's really comparable.
|
| An abortion is a result of a choice being made by a person
| after a set of real life and possibly unexpected events have
| happened.
|
| The research is carefully planned in advance. This was
| genetically engineered to be terminated.
|
| So while I do think you've asked a relevant question, I think
| the ethical questions the two things raise are actually very
| far apart.
| abortmission wrote:
| Just 1% of women obtain an abortion because they became
| pregnant through rape
| echelon wrote:
| If you ponder whether these things have souls, then they're
| directly related.
|
| There's a spectrum here.
|
| At one end, religious folks believe life and soul begins at
| conception. Some also believe tampering with genes is
| tampering with god's creation.
|
| At the other end, atheists believe in so soul.
|
| Some believe personhood doesn't begin until a being is able
| to think, feel, and reflect upon the world around it. They
| hold that cetaceans have higher consciousness than human
| babies. They wouldn't have issue with this.
|
| Plenty of people with no monotheistic belief feel nature
| shouldn't be tampered with.
|
| Many scientists view biology as a machine that should be
| probed and studied.
|
| The "choice" argument is one of the counter arguments used
| by those that are pro-life. I think many of them would
| object to these experiments on different grounds.
|
| The ethics are complicated and messy. The science is rather
| straightforward.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _At one end, religious folks believe life and soul begins
| at conception. Some also believe tampering with genes is
| tampering with god 's creation._
|
| Not all religions. The Qu'ran states that the soul enters
| the body exactly 40 days after conception, for example.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Heinlein's Starship Troopers novel touched on this. Neo Dogs
| are a novelty in society, a sideshow to the general public, but
| they have the Intelligence similar to a human moron, but is a
| Mozart for their species. And they use them in war, which is
| their main use. The recruiter that works with the protagonist,
| was a bonded partner. They bond deeply to their Neo Dog and if
| the Neo Dog dies, it is more humane to kill the handler
| immediately, or put them in a drug induced coma for a couple
| months and then rehabbing them. The recruiter was put into a
| coma, but is still dealing with the loss of his Neo Dog, and
| agrees that killing the handler asap is kinder than having to
| go through the rehab.
| PeterisP wrote:
| It's interesting that the novel assumes that the bonding is
| likely to be stronger than almost all other bonds humans form
| - for example, we grieve when our spouse, best friend or
| child dies, but we don't usually presume that euthanizing the
| grievers asap would be kinder than having them to go through
| grief and rehab. It would seem plausible for _some_ of the
| individual bonds to be like that, but notas a general rule.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Yeah, the bonding process seems like immersion when
| learning a language, I figure that the handler's lost all
| connection to that unique world they were immersed in and
| couldn't cope. Kind of like losing your self identification
| when people rely on their jobs to give them an identity.
| Who are the handlers without the Neo Dogs?
| patcon wrote:
| Honestly, though the ethics are certainly dicey, I do wonder
| whether recreating a bridge intelligence between man and animal
| would raise appropriate societal questions that we've chosen
| not the think about all of modern history (lacking any sort of
| Neanderthal cohabitant).
|
| It might help us all be in more relation with the world. Our
| lack of relation feels to me to be part of what's driving us
| into this extinction event. A "monstrosity" that convinces us
| to rethink the moral rights of other living creatures would
| perhaps be welcome...?
|
| Maybe it ends up being the unasked-for bastard creature that
| saves all the others (incl us) _from_ us, just by making us
| slow down and go "hold on hold on hold on. what THE FUCK?"
| plutonorm wrote:
| Neanderthals had larger brains in proportion to their body
| mass than we do. They were possibly smarter than we were.
| ben_w wrote:
| We don't know enough to know if that's a good measure; if
| it is, ants would be at the top of the list for all
| animals, and treeshrews for mammals:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-to-body_mass_ratio
| salty_biscuits wrote:
| The scaling power coefficient matters, they are so far
| off our mass that the coefficient might just be wrong.
| Neanderthals are about the same size so an error in the
| coefficient won't matter so much.
| bredren wrote:
| I would guess such information would be preferred by many to
| remain unillustrated.
|
| I suspect we have more to answer for in the scale of animal
| suffering than we could possibly imagine.
|
| An awakening to the truth of how cruelly indifferent we are
| to animals would threaten power structures at a magnitude
| that makes #metoo look small.
| mooreds wrote:
| Feels like the beginning of the Uplift Saga. Spooky times.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > The cat's out of the bag with this research so to speak now.
| Someone's bound to do this again
|
| If they do it again and again and again, the progress will be
| substantial, and society stands to benefit enormously.
|
| With exponential increases in the parts of the brain
| responsible for intelligence, morality and justice, imagine a
| future president of the United States elected from this cohort.
| [deleted]
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure I saw this movie - had Charlton Heston in it. You
| know someone is going to grow this to maturity, either an
| individual researcher looking for fame or a sovereign state
| looking for prestige, then of course we'll have to know if the
| mutations are propagated.
| jbeard4 wrote:
| This reminds me of "The Secret of NIMH"
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084649/
| plutonorm wrote:
| What a fabulous film that was. Never read the book.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| The book was better (naturally); as I recall, they used
| technology instead of a "magic amulet" to work their way out
| of the problem, in keeping with the theme of hyperintelligent
| mice.
| aaron695 wrote:
| The sequels I thought were ok as well.
|
| By his daughter, my one exception to sequels not by the
| author.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| _This is crucial in order to maintain ethical boundaries. After
| about 100 days after the fetus had been growing, the
| international team unanimously agreed to remove the fetus through
| a C-section_
|
| I feel we've already entered into sensitive territory by aborting
| it.
| Geminidog wrote:
| Yeah, aborting in some circles is the same as murder so the
| "ethics" is a bit blurry here. The crossed the line by creating
| life and then they killed what could essentially be something
| that could have had the intelligence of a regular human being.
|
| I'm not an anti-abortionist but I can't deny that the ethics in
| this area is blurry. Even worse is when you're aborting
| genetically modified life.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > I can't deny that the ethics in this area is blurry
|
| If you don't like the ethics of aborting a monkey fetus
| because it is "like murder", you're going to hate what
| happens to lab monkeys they don't abort.
| FriendlyNormie wrote:
| Too late for an edit to save you, the reddit trannies found
| your comment where you didn't blindly agree with what some
| faggot scientist said. Enjoy your downvotes
| treeman79 wrote:
| Scientist: we've created the first new sapient species in the
| last million years. Oh now it's extinct.
|
| Killing of inconvenient people is one level of messed up.
|
| This is just freaking insane.
| PIKAL wrote:
| I am overwhelmed with curiosity about what the animal would have
| been like if it had been allowed to live. Imagine that it was
| smart enough to speak or resemble humans even more closely than
| monkeys already do... imagine how earth shattering that would be.
| An entire race of beings to reconcile with. I wish they had let
| it live.
| jassany wrote:
| The fact they didn't let the fetus grow really fucking sucks.
| Sure, ethics most definitely has its name etched on the science
| stone.
|
| But people WILL without a shred of doubt recreate this
| experiment, and they most likely won't be as ethically inclined
| as the nice folks behind this paper.
|
| The point am trying to make here is that we need to be prepared
| to deal with how a discovery like could influence our future. The
| best way to do that is to know what expect with enough time ahead
| to react.
|
| And yeah sure people will say this is just an excuse for morbidly
| curious people like me to simply see what happens, and while I'm
| literally brimming in desire to know myself, theres a bigger
| picture, bearing witness is just a perk:)
| vikramkr wrote:
| This research is as terrific as it is terrifying. These are some
| terrific insights into the evolution of intelligence. I doubt
| that it was one gene alone that drove the whole thing, but as the
| article mentions, the ethical dilemmas already arise, and it's
| easy to see how scientifically valuable it would be to study the
| impact of the gene further by allowing the transgenic animals to
| be born. The ethical dilemmas cut both ways - research like this
| might be crucial to understanding Alzheimer's and other serious
| diseases. Complicated and difficult questions to be sure, but
| it's extraordinary and a testament to the power of science that
| we're even in a position to be asking those questions. Lets hope
| we answer them correctly.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| Isn't that literally the plot of the Planet of the Apes remake?
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| Maybe it is time for continental and east asian arms and self
| defence legislation to add an exception for putting down
| runaway lab experiments. Standing your ground and castle
| doctrines are privileges unique to America.
| tiku wrote:
| As long as no one takes a monkey home we should be okay.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| So "Planet of the Apes" was not so far fetched after all.
|
| Now somewhere someone will think ... hmmm why can't we replace
| all our complaining factory workers and their
| wages/healthcare/retirement plans with these "creatures" and only
| pay them peanuts and banana's.
| to11mtm wrote:
| Oddly, I came up with a pretty good plan for Enslaving Humanity
| without most of them noticing (and the software architecture
| that would power it) during a Sunday Drive today.
|
| I'll say that the concept I came up with was probably far far
| cheaper than gene therapy and could be reached in 5-10 years.
| So I wouldn't lose sleep over _this_
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Unless you can think of any steps to prevent your plan from
| working, try to forget about it. Somebody will re-invent it
| later, but that'll be _later_. We 've created more of the
| readily-accessible good technology than the readily-
| accessible bad technology, and it'll take an active effort to
| keep it that way.
| chacha2 wrote:
| Currently most of humanity is oblivious to it's enslavement,
| what does your strategy add?
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| Brave New World had a similar idea
| SimeVidas wrote:
| Future brainy monkeys will watch that movie like it's a
| documentary.
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| David Brin, Uplift Universe. Start with Startide rising. It
| covers this in a more interestingly ethical way I think.
| delecti wrote:
| There have already been issues with some coconut harvesting
| operations using monkeys as laborers.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| We've been replacing factory workers with machines for 250
| years. It's made us, including the remaining factory workers,
| very very rich, compared to where we started.
| jhardy54 wrote:
| Productivity has gone up but wages haven't kept up. The
| owners are rich, sure, but we should be honest about the
| working class getting the short end of the stick here.
| ummonk wrote:
| What the hell?!?
|
| There is no pro-choice argument for killing the fetus here - the
| mother monkey is not sapient and was not consulted as to whether
| she wished to carry the potentially sapient baby to term or not.
|
| This is straight up feticide.
| erickj wrote:
| +1 to "There is no pro-choice argument for killing the fetus
| here"
|
| There is no pro-choice analogy to make here.
|
| As for the rest of your comment about feticide... I think there
| is room for discussion here.
| ende wrote:
| This is either going 28 Days Later or Planet of the Apes.
| adventured wrote:
| Has anyone seen Marlon Brando lately?
| Jaruzel wrote:
| You were down-voted I think because people are not familiar
| with:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_of_Dr._Moreau_(1996.
| ..
| idebug wrote:
| So, we are trying to make Planet of the Apes happen IRL?
| keithwhor wrote:
| Charlton Heston would like a word with these scientists.
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