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When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

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Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#101

Post by Cybiote »

quantumhobbit wrote: post #8
YCode wrote: post #3

I understand prion diseases are rare and it's more likely I'll die in a car accident or something, but the persistence of prions is just a horrifying concept. Highly resistant to heat, radiation, proteases, enzymes... Basically if you've got a prion disease it's just a matter of time before they end you.

What would a cure for prion diseases even look like? Are prions targeted by the immune system at all? That to me is what is scary about them.

We can look at kuru survivors who sadly, recently underwent rapid natural selection. Among this population are those possessing a variant of the prion protein gene that conveys strong resistance to prion diseases and the propogation of misfolded prion proteins. Here's an article: http://www.nature.com/articles/srep21804

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#102

Post by webkike »

adrianN wrote: post #43
hdhzy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No-meat diet is not 100% prion-proof according to Wikipedia: > When researchers fed hamsters grass that grew on ground where a deer that died with chronic wasting disease (CWD) was buried, the hamsters became ill with CWD, suggesting that prions can bind to plants, which then take them up into the leaf and stem structure, where they can be eaten by herbivores, thus completing the cycle. It is thus possible that there…

Prions are nature's grey goo.

I have read on Wikipedia that lichens degrade prions, so I disagree with that analogy

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#103

Post by wybiral »

Razengan wrote: post #68
pound wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you consider your copy to be you?

Ah there's where it gets icky, but it's something for the philosophers to sort out. :) As long as my copy has my memories up to that point, and the plans I had for the future from there on, it's as good as me.

> As long as my copy has my memories up to that point, and the plans I had for the future from there on, it's as good as me.

What happens if they don't destroy the original version of you and now two exist...

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#104

Post by irisli »

DiThi wrote: post #90
computerphage wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "not alive" => "doesn't need resources", then "needs resources" => "alive". That doesn't seem right to me.

That's a deductive fallacy. Alive things need resources, but things that need resources are not necessarily alive.

computerphage wasn't using deduction but rather contraposition. (A -> B) => (!B -> !A). The absurdity of (!B -> !A) shows that (A -> B) is not true for all cases.

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#105

Post by xkcd-sucks »

jcoffland wrote: post #63
maxerickson wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would put bacteria in that role and call them green goo. One thing I find interesting is that gray goo would have to compete with bacteria for resources. I'm not sure that it would necessarily be easy.

Prions are not alive and therefore do not need to compete for resources to further their existence.

They absolutely compete for resources, in the form of peptides that can fold into more prion aggregates or other proteins

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#106

Post by Razengan »

wybiral wrote: post #103
Razengan wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah there's where it gets icky, but it's something for the philosophers to sort out. :) As long as my copy has my memories up to that point, and the plans I had for the future from there on, it's as good as me.

> As long as my copy has my memories up to that point, and the plans I had for the future from there on, it's as good as me. What happens if they don't destroy the original version of you and now two exist...

Although fiction that touches on these issues is my favorite genre (like [0][1][2]), I don't have an answer for that.

All I can say is that technology has a way of forcing people to reevaluate their laws, ethics and society, and this will be no different.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiba

[1] http://store.steampowered.com/app/272270/ (Tormenet: Tides of Numenera)

[2] http://store.steampowered.com/app/282140/ (SOMA)

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#108

Post by MayeulC »

pound wrote: post #61
Razengan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically if you've got a prion disease it's just a matter of time before they end you. Unless you had a mind backup and a second body ready. Which, I think, all medicine ultimately aims, should aim, for; Why bother learning how to repair the single same body over and over (which won't help in unexpected catastrophic failures aka fatal accidents anyway) when you can just grow and jump into a new one?

Do you consider your copy to be you?

OK, that's a bit off-topic, but an interesting question regardless, and I've been thinking about this lately. I've finally decided on something some time ago, though my opinion on the matter could still change.

I think that we are in perpetual evolution. Our memories are perpetually updated, and we make our choices based on our experience (and probably some biochemical mechanisms that affect the decision making process, probably by changing how those memories are accessed, among others.

Aren't we dying everyday, for someone else to wake up in our place the next day? To put it more bluntly, our consciousness is interrupted for the night, a "garbage collector" running, and we "reboot" the next day. What about this night you can't remember because of alcohol? Someone was here, controlling your body, yet it wasn't you (and to repeat myself, the one writing this - me - is probably going to be slightly different than the one reading the possible replies - "me" as well - and that's OK).

What I find valuable is experience. Period. It takes a huge amount of energy to train a child, and the goal is for him to be beneficial to the society (think tribe/species if you want) in return. He will be able to pass on part of his experience to the next generation, thus improving the pool of knowledge for the society (this is a general rule, it can work with genes as well).

Thus, jumping a bit to conclusions, I value my experience and memories more than this body. And I would gladly part with it if it could mean a longer life span for them. Even existing only as an "archive". But I consider that I have still much data/experience collection I can do before passing out. And there is no way to pass this data on.

If you think about it this way, a copy is a fork, and is likely to preserve experience: that's good. And cooperation is a given if the two share this idea. Moreover, I consider it to be a rather optimistic and cheerful way of viewing things, it can be comforting at times; And I feel like some robot apocalypse or similar is simply a non issue, as long as knowledge is preserved.

That's the thought process you can have if you think too much about issues like teleportation.

Now, I need to get back to work on my brain scanner.

Seriously though, what is your opinion on the matter, now that I exposed my current one? I would be curious if you could "share your experience" with me :P

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#109

Post by Razengan »

MayeulC wrote: post #108
pound wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you consider your copy to be you?

OK, that's a bit off-topic, but an interesting question regardless, and I've been thinking about this lately. I've finally decided on something some time ago, though my opinion on the matter could still change. I think that we are in perpetual evolution. Our memories are perpetually updated, and we make our choices based on our experience (and probably some biochemical mechanisms that affect the decision making proce…

> Aren't we dying everyday, for someone else to wake up in our place the next day? To put it more bluntly, our consciousness is interrupted for the night, a "garbage collector" running, and we "reboot" the next day.

That.. is eerily similar to something I heard or read from a character in a game/anime/book/show very recently, but the name escapes me..

Maybe it was from Tides of Numenera.. You should definitely check out that game as well as SOMA. There's also a charming-yet-mindfuck'y anime called Kaiba. They go pretty deep into the idea of consciousness, identity and free will.

By the way, is there a name or term for that, uh..idea? That our self "resets" in sleep?

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#110

Post by sqeaky »

cookiecaper wrote: post #60
zdragnar wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardly. Plenty of species exhibit cannibalism; see certain spiders and praying mantis (mantis?) post-mating rituals.

Correct, I don't mean to imply that no species are cannibalistic; as you note, some instances are well-known. Nevertheless, cannibalism can be a real risk for some species and adaptations to prevent it are useful, especially in the case of mammals.

A hard to detect and easy to mis-attribute wasting disease is not an adaption.
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