111–120 of 384 posts
If it's a fear of how society reacts to the organism surviving and causing an upheaval of life philosophy, isn't all science then unethical?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ?
- Leaded fuel, the highest ever source of lead exposure and poisoning for Humans.
- Asbestos still present in 60' to 80's construction
- Refrigerants with Ozone destroying CFCs
- 1800's arsenic pesticides still contaminate today's rice fields and most of the world's rice crops.
- DDT
- Plastics are currently leaching estrogenic-mimicking endocrine disruptors and contaminating water supplies, wildlife and Humans.
That's just a few from memory, I am sure there are more.
Edit: yes as someone else commented our grenhouse gas emissions are probably the biggest elephant in the room
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
You’re missing survivorship bias - nature didn’t just create these balanced ecosystems, it creates anything that goes, and things that don’t work out just die. Humans ruining earth for themselves is just as natural, just that we might die as result. But life won’t - it’s much more resilient than just one species. Or several.
I think if you accept at all that there is suffering and there is beauty, then you shouldn’t hide behind “everything’s natural” and instead try and have a backbone and stick up for something more.
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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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re missing survivorship bias - nature didn’t just create these balanced ecosystems, it creates anything that goes, and things that don’t work out just die. Humans ruining earth for themselves is just as natural, just that we might die as result. But life won’t - it’s much more resilient than just one species. Or several.
Following this line of logic you can justify anything. If I kill your entire family, that’s natural. Would you be ok with that? I think if you accept at all that there is suffering and there is beauty, then you shouldn’t hide behind “everything’s natural” and instead try and have a backbone and stick up for something more.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re missing survivorship bias - nature didn’t just create these balanced ecosystems, it creates anything that goes, and things that don’t work out just die. Humans ruining earth for themselves is just as natural, just that we might die as result. But life won’t - it’s much more resilient than just one species. Or several.
Following this line of logic you can justify anything. If I kill your entire family, that’s natural. Would you be ok with that? I think if you accept at all that there is suffering and there is beauty, then you shouldn’t hide behind “everything’s natural” and instead try and have a backbone and stick up for something more.
That doesn't make it okay.
I 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…
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> is aiming to master the rock that is the Earth 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 unde…
No, but "this gene cluster" is me - and I am goal-directed.
> We can control something without understanding it? Most of science would disagree.
No, they wouldn't. Epistemology has progressed beyond this. Models have various levels of fidelity. And 'understanding' is a colloquial term that refers to a higher standard of fidelity than that required for control. Few drivers know how their cars work. Most drivers can drive their cars.
But I do enjoy the amusing attempt at cutting out the sentence to create damning gotchas. Here, I mimicked your style and made one from your comment:
> We can control something without understanding it
Why, thank you for agreeing with me! Quite gratifying to receive such support.
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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.
If you ponder whether these things have souls, then they're directly related. 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 t…
Not all religions. The Qu’ran states that the soul enters the body exactly 40 days after conception, for example.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
We didn't come out of a void. We are a natural evolution too, with the only difference being that we reached this stage before other animals. Since we are disrupting our ecosystem, we are living proof that either:
- this ecosystem we are in is not function according to your definition - or functioning ecosystems do not maintain balance
> The reason why we have so many ecological problems around the world is that humans have been constantly disrupting this. We introduce invasive species that dominate the landscape, cause extinctions and extirpations of native species and change the fundamental balance of the ecosystem.
Ecosystems are constantly being disrupted and have been long before humans evolved. Wind can carry the seeds of one plant into another ecosystem where it suddenly dominates because it has no "natural predators". Birds can fly over an ecosystem, defecate and drop an entirely foreign species into another ecosystem.
Cyanobacteria are even attributed as the reason for one of the first mass extinctions [0]. Is that a sign of a functioning ecosystem?
> Altering life at a fundamental genetic level goes even further than how we alter ecosystems.
Viruses and bacteria actively mess around with the DNA of other organisms in order to render them susceptible or make them carriers. Nature has been messing with itself long before we ever learned how.
We are in no way special in this universe or in our actions. We are just copying what we see in nature.
[0]: https://slate.com/technology/2014/07/the-great-oxygenation-e...