So when do we get dinosaurs?
'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists
31–40 of 97 posts
Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists
#32This is a huge deal, and I'm not surprised to see that Craig Venter had something to do with it. Kudos!
This is a nice step for technology and a really huge deal for human culture and religion. A certain Someone said once "Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth." That certain Someone later said: "Behold, man has become like one of us..."
I can't decipher which English-speaking reader of the New Revised Standard Edition post 1989 you are referring to, how elusive!
Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Luddite. In all seriousness, the dangers brought up in the article can only come from a person lacking significant knowledge of bacteria. Unimaginable numbers of bacteria permeate every part of the world, including miles within the earth, deep sea volcanic vents, radioactive waste, the rain drops falling on our heads, and us, up our noses, in our skin pores, our guts, etc. Those simple bacteria evolve at staggering r…
It doesn't only bother me practically. Yes I did consider the fact that they'd have to compete, though I didn't consider the fact that they evolve all the time anyway, that's a good point. BUT, especially if they're talking about something as drastic as eating up a significant amount of carbon in the air, it will change the ecosystem. It'll pose the same danger as moving animals across continents. But really it bothe…
Luddite^2
Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists
#34They just copied the genome of an existing micro-organism. Making changes to the genome to accomplish some task is much harder to do.
You're probably getting negged because you appear to be disparaging the accomplishment. But yeah, they did copy over an existing dna structure, they didn't create one from scratch.
However, the scientists did (according to the arstechnica article, posted above) have to remove a section of the DNA (something to do with the bacterium cutting DNA originating in yeast into small pieces... sigh, wish I understood this sort of thing). So they did actually make modifications to the genome, I think...
Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Luddite. In all seriousness, the dangers brought up in the article can only come from a person lacking significant knowledge of bacteria. Unimaginable numbers of bacteria permeate every part of the world, including miles within the earth, deep sea volcanic vents, radioactive waste, the rain drops falling on our heads, and us, up our noses, in our skin pores, our guts, etc. Those simple bacteria evolve at staggering r…
It doesn't only bother me practically. Yes I did consider the fact that they'd have to compete, though I didn't consider the fact that they evolve all the time anyway, that's a good point. BUT, especially if they're talking about something as drastic as eating up a significant amount of carbon in the air, it will change the ecosystem. It'll pose the same danger as moving animals across continents. But really it bothe…
Your dog is genetically engineered. Your tomato. Your children. And I don't mean in the lab, but the usual way, by using your intelligence to choose suitable stock and then breeding until you get what you want. The shortcut in the lab is just faster and cheaper, not different in any basic or ethical way.
Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And unless you believe in magic it is unlikely to out-compete in a pre-existing niche. Cars are faster than land animals. Planes are faster than birds. Not being constrained by needing to have come from slow gradual iteration might open some possibilities, some terrifying. Biology doesn't produce the wheel. To consider this as a possibility is not to believe in magic.
> Cars are faster than land animals. Planes are faster than birds. There's no comparison. I'm sitting here looking out the window at my car, and there are caterpillars out there that are moving faster than it. Not only that, but that caterpillar can refuel itself. And it'll turn itself into new ones next year. In the meantime, my car will sit and rust. Really, it's the height of hubris to think that we can engineer s…
> but this is also the fatal conceit
I think considering the possibility that removing gradual iteration as a constraint, or considering the big picture, could lead to improvements of some natural designs, true or not, is unlikely to be fatal!
I don't see how anyone would just dismiss this point a priori. Both of those things seem, intuitively, to be fundamental constraints in evolution. Human biology plus technology leads to us out-competing every other similarly sized animal in any land niche we choose. The question is whether bacteria biology plus human ingenuity could have any similar advantages over biology alone. If you trust your snap judgment without extremely careful consideration, I just hope you're not in charge of the relevant policy decisions!
Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even so, calling it artificial life is highly misleading.
I agree. They wrote a new OS and uploaded it into existing hardware. Still a great feat, but not quite 100% "artificial life" yet.
More than that: an OS is millions of lines of code. The hardware is a hundred thousand. But cells! They have orders of magnitude more wiring than all the bits of DNA put into them. I liken it to a vast machine that can create either 1) a man or 2) a mouse. The dna programs the switch: man or mouse. Pretty trivial in comparison.
Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists
#38Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists
#39Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists
#40Advancements like this make it feel exciting to be young and have so much time ahead of you. The future is bright. Science is key.
Advancements like this make it feel exciting to be young and have so much time ahead of you.
What, you're still using your original telomeres?