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Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA

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Re: Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA

#181

Post by sporkologist »

beginningguava wrote: post #171
danieltillett wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very droll. Nice elude to dysgenics [0]. 0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysgenics

why would evolution stop at the neck? If intelligence isn't heritable and has nothing to do with genetics, please teach a paramecium how to do quantum physics and I'll give you a million dollars

"An Amoeba Just Found an Entirely New Way to Solve a Classic Computing Problem"

https://www.sciencealert.com/an-amoeba-has-solved-an-exponen...

It's not quantum physics, so I'll settle for $100k

Re: Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA

#182

Post by credit_guy »

cronix wrote: post #57

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…

This all sounds reasonable. On the other hand, you can randomly take half of someone's genetic code, complete it with half of someone else's and you get another fully functional one. That's not something you can say about programs written by humans.

Re: Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA

#183

Post by whatshisface »

sporkologist wrote: post #181
beginningguava wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why would evolution stop at the neck? If intelligence isn't heritable and has nothing to do with genetics, please teach a paramecium how to do quantum physics and I'll give you a million dollars

"An Amoeba Just Found an Entirely New Way to Solve a Classic Computing Problem" https://www.sciencealert.com/an-amoeba-has-solved-an-exponen... It's not quantum physics, so I'll settle for $100k

The parent said "teach," so you are out of luck. ;)

Re: Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA

#184

Post by anigbrowl »

ethbro wrote: post #161
sgc wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I am strongly against anything but the most urgent genetic engineering. We completely screwed up the industrial revolution. We have never recovered from it, and maybe never will. So now we are going to start in on biology?

> We completely screwed up the industrial revolution. Wait, WHAT?! The thing that allowed millions of people to ascend from what would now be seen as abject poverty and subsistence farming? The thing that enabled mass tool manufacture that eventually led to the Green Revolution and boosted agricultural yields enough to increase the planet's carrying capacity a few orders of magnitude? THAT screw up?! Say what you wan…

You can make that argument without all the histrionics and performativity. Please give it a try.

Re: Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA

#185

Post by skybrian »

theslurmmustflo wrote: post #138
tardigraded wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'll, the reality is that most people will continue eating meat regardless of what people like me and you think of it, so it's probably a good idea to put some effort into minimizing the negative consequences. Also, we can research lots of things at once, and research funding is not a zero-sum game. I don't think anybody's defunding non-animal agriculture research for this. Finally, there's a good chance that this s…

Meat could get very expensive soon if climate change reduces the amount of easily farmable land, and that might quickly change peoples opinions. Part of the reason I’m eating more vegetarian food is because the quality of meat that I want to be eating is very expensive.

This isn't zero sum. Some land is not suitable for farming (too dry or too hilly), but is useful for grazing. Land that's suitable for both often does better when rotated between crops and livestock. And grassland may be better than farmland at carbon sequestration.

It's probably a good idea to move away from feeding corn to livestock, though.

Re: Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA

#186

Post by whytaka »

ethbro wrote: post #161
sgc wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I am strongly against anything but the most urgent genetic engineering. We completely screwed up the industrial revolution. We have never recovered from it, and maybe never will. So now we are going to start in on biology?

> We completely screwed up the industrial revolution. Wait, WHAT?! The thing that allowed millions of people to ascend from what would now be seen as abject poverty and subsistence farming? The thing that enabled mass tool manufacture that eventually led to the Green Revolution and boosted agricultural yields enough to increase the planet's carrying capacity a few orders of magnitude? THAT screw up?! Say what you wan…

But if the benefit of it is enjoyed only by a few generations out of tens-thousands, then no. It'd be a failure.

If the oil lobby hadn't suppressed research and political will from doing something about climate change back in the 70s, we could be saying something different.

Re: Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA

#187

Post by ethbro »

whytaka wrote: post #186
ethbro wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We completely screwed up the industrial revolution. Wait, WHAT?! The thing that allowed millions of people to ascend from what would now be seen as abject poverty and subsistence farming? The thing that enabled mass tool manufacture that eventually led to the Green Revolution and boosted agricultural yields enough to increase the planet's carrying capacity a few orders of magnitude? THAT screw up?! Say what you wan…

But if the benefit of it is enjoyed only by a few generations out of tens-thousands, then no. It'd be a failure. If the oil lobby hadn't suppressed research and political will from doing something about climate change back in the 70s, we could be saying something different.

Our failure to do something about carbon (in the last 30 years we've comprehended it) doesn't diminish the progress made.

We wouldn't be having this conversation but for the Industrial Revolution, because none of us would be wealthy enough (in real terms) to afford the technology to do so.

Indeed, the technology itself likely wouldn't exist because the world as a whole wouldn't be wealthy enough to afford the research.

Avoiding progress out of fear for its effects is Luddite in the truest sense. And I don't say that pejoratively -- simply to note that it's tantamount to advising "Stop making progress!"

Innovate. Overcome challenges. Build and discover a better future.

Re: Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA

#188

Post by hkai »

labster wrote: post #136
akira2501 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From my laymans POV It's just so much more complicated than that. There is an additional huge array of variables like introns[1] and exons[2]. There's also the fact that not all base pairs encode even for genes, there's things like tRNA[3] and ribosomes[4] and the super amazing ribozymes[5]. Even after all that you have specific DNA binding factors[6] that along with the insane machinery[7] of our DNA regulate whic…

Sounds like it's time to refactor that system into something less crazy. Or better yet, rewrite it in Rust.

Too expensive, outsource it to rewrite in JavaScript

Re: Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA

#189

Post by ethbro »

anigbrowl wrote: post #184
ethbro wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We completely screwed up the industrial revolution. Wait, WHAT?! The thing that allowed millions of people to ascend from what would now be seen as abject poverty and subsistence farming? The thing that enabled mass tool manufacture that eventually led to the Green Revolution and boosted agricultural yields enough to increase the planet's carrying capacity a few orders of magnitude? THAT screw up?! Say what you wan…

You can make that argument without all the histrionics and performativity. Please give it a try.

I don't believe I can.

I'm honestly flabbergasted that I read "Burn the mechanized mills!" on Hacker News.

I'm not advocating groupthink, and there are certainly ways we could have built a better present, but the blind ungratefulness to say "Mass manufacture and electricity were mistakes" deserves some outrage.

Re: Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA

#190

Post by intralizee »

vxxzy wrote: post #124
intralizee wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m writing from a hard determinist mindset. I would argue that whatever is done in life is the will of God. Since choices are an illusion around oneself believing in free will. So basically life is predetermanism for every cause & effect. The phrase playing God just makes me think of something similar to how a bunch of game programmers have already created a simplified replication. The Sims. Who is to say the sims a…

It’s interesting... I like to think that we have freedom to make decisions within the “hard bounds” of the system. I don’t think the existence of “hard bounds” indicate a system’s lack of potential for free will to exist. I do think “bounds” can limit an agents Choice, but not their ability to make a decision. Our current existence/system appears bounded in some aspects and unbounded in others. As we learn more, idea…

Yah free will believers like to think they have choices/decisions in the system. The reality is no, when you become the person you are now from every preceding event making you the person you are now. I would only see the possibility of persons having responsibility or free will if they decided to live this life before birth and with beforehand knowledge of how everything would play out. The illustration of how a deterministic system is similar to clockwork with every part being moved by the whole clock is helpful. If something outside the system does something to the clock and makes the parts believe the reaction has no deterministic essence from the clock, such as quantum theory may show.. well it still doesn’t change everything being outside the control of the clock but is just hidden variables to the clock system, inobservable until it happens and would be like god deciding to alter the determanistic system slightly.
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