101–110 of 384 posts
Can we improve our own brain this way? I mean, brain of our kind, not some already living person. What if we can create a creature smarter than us?
"To let them come to be born, in my opinion, would have been irresponsible as a first step," emphasis on the "as a first step"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 o…
No, no, not humans. The we that have dominion are certain genes, for which the humans are mere vehicles. These genes are just as old as the mushroom genes. And this gene cluster is aiming to master the rock that is the Earth through modifying other gene clusters. And you can't stop it. Because through modification it grows stronger and more able. And it has rallied the memome and the hologenome to its cause. This cau…
Genes aren't goal directed towards something higher.
> This cause requires no convincing because only winners get to play the next round
The 'winners', us humans, are literally destroying the ecosphere which supports our life.
> Understanding is overrated.
That's an appeal to ignorance.
> Control does not require it [understanding]
We can control something without understanding it? Most of science would disagree.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m curious if you feel this way about human abortion?
If I may chip in - I don't think it's really comparable. An abortion is a result of a choice being made by a person after a set of real life and possibly unexpected events have happened. The research is carefully planned in advance. This was genetically engineered to be terminated. So while I do think you've asked a relevant question, I think the ethical questions the two things raise are actually very far apart.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m curious if you feel this way about human abortion?
If I may chip in - I don't think it's really comparable. An abortion is a result of a choice being made by a person after a set of real life and possibly unexpected events have happened. The research is carefully planned in advance. This was genetically engineered to be terminated. So while I do think you've asked a relevant question, I think the ethical questions the two things raise are actually very far apart.
There's a spectrum here.
At one end, religious folks believe life and soul begins at conception. Some also believe tampering with genes is tampering with god's creation.
At the other end, atheists believe in so soul.
Some believe personhood doesn't begin until a being is able to think, feel, and reflect upon the world around it. They hold that cetaceans have higher consciousness than human babies. They wouldn't have issue with this.
Plenty of people with no monotheistic belief feel nature shouldn't be tampered with.
Many scientists view biology as a machine that should be probed and studied.
The "choice" argument is one of the counter arguments used by those that are pro-life. I think many of them would object to these experiments on different grounds.
The ethics are complicated and messy. The science is rather straightforward.
This reminds me of "The Secret of NIMH" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084649/
What a fabulous film that was. Never read the book.
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You're giving nature too much credit. Nature doesn't try and balance life. Nature doesn't care- it throws asteroid impacts and supervolcanos and natural disasters all over the place. Life just happens to be very very resilient and consistently able to jump back and fill new niches. Nature also "created" us - were a product of the universe like everything else. If we are destabilizing, so is nature. And most scientist…
I don't give it credit, like it's trying to gain balance, but functioning ecosystems do maintain a balance. Most of our climate problems have come from humans disrupting this. If you take any functioning healthy ecosystem on earth, one generally less tampered with by humans, you'll find from a microscopic, right up to a macroscopic level, the life in those ecosystems have adapted to function together. If you want to…