61–70 of 218 posts
This is very conflicting. Clearly, we have to learn somehow... But this is just about the last kind of thing where you want to do trial and error.
Like if you can't cut out that gene to remove X without also altering Y and you can't live with the possibility of altering Y in a negative way then you cannot remove X.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed. DNA is the most fucking complex and complicated programming language. We have barely any understanding of how the whole thing hangs together, let alone how it's parsed and written, and how it all translates from stem cells to whole organs, an immune system, the complex interrelation between organs, the nervous system, the whole gamut. And that's not even touching on the nature of mind and consciousness in rel…
The equivocation to programming language is misleading, it implies the “language” is context free or context sensitive when dna is probably on the order of natural language complexity (posits I).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And delete all the builds which don't work?
Or make them into burgers.
From my laymans POV, DNA is just a shit ton of variables in a very complex code that interact with each other. No single point just does a single thing. They all interact with each other. No different than changing a variable in one piece of code and having it create a bug in another that was previously working. For me, the real scary part is altering something, which inadvertently changes something else that isn't q…
Exactly this! And this is why GM foods are more dangerous than you might expect. Even if gene x does only x in organism A, there is no guarantee that gene x does only one thing or the same thing in organism B.
There's always the argument about "Playing God" but we do vaccinate ourselves right? I mean I think the real issue is inflicting a change to a being that will become "Sentient" or "Conscious". When we genetically alter that which has potential for "life", do we know, beyond a doubt, that the change we inflict will be positive for the individual AND positive for our species as a whole? If we cannot say for certain, th…
I come from a religious background and this is an argument that has ceased to have meaning to me. We can't possibly play God. We can't create something from nothing. All we can do is fiddle around with this existence we're in. Part of that happens to be genetics.
What drove me to change my mind was the question "if you have the ability to treat a genetic disease, and you don't exercise that ability, are you complicit in the person's condition?"
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Or make them into burgers.
Given that the human microbiome [0] takes up genetic material from the food we consume, I'd be concerned about eating this stuff. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5711824/
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The equivocation to programming language is misleading, it implies the “language” is context free or context sensitive when dna is probably on the order of natural language complexity (posits I).
DNA is almost exactly machine code. It's directly executed by ribosomes and other cellular machines. Of course there are no guard rails.
From my laymans POV, DNA is just a shit ton of variables in a very complex code that interact with each other. No single point just does a single thing. They all interact with each other. No different than changing a variable in one piece of code and having it create a bug in another that was previously working. For me, the real scary part is altering something, which inadvertently changes something else that isn't q…
"No single point just does a single thing." Exactly this! And this is why GM foods are more dangerous than you might expect. Even if gene x does only x in organism A, there is no guarantee that gene x does only one thing or the same thing in organism B.
From my laymans POV, DNA is just a shit ton of variables in a very complex code that interact with each other. No single point just does a single thing. They all interact with each other. No different than changing a variable in one piece of code and having it create a bug in another that was previously working. For me, the real scary part is altering something, which inadvertently changes something else that isn't q…
"No single point just does a single thing." Exactly this! And this is why GM foods are more dangerous than you might expect. Even if gene x does only x in organism A, there is no guarantee that gene x does only one thing or the same thing in organism B.