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.
Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
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Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#62I 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…
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)?
Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#63We've already had the plague this year, bring on the intelligent monkeys... Where do I buy tickets to an Elon Musk rocket now?
https://xkcd.com/979/
To future researchers, here is where 2020 finally jumped the shark. Best wishes.
Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#64I 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…
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)?
> We massively fucked up chemistry
?
Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#65I 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…
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 f…
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.
Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#66This reminds me of "The Secret of NIMH" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084649/
Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#67I 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…
I’m curious if you feel this way about human abortion?
Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#68This 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.
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.
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.
Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#69I 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.
Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#70I 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…
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?"