Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution • Hacker News Board

Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution

#211

Post by senectus1 » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 12:14 AM UTC

vikramkr wrote: post #56

grawprog wrote: post #46

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…

I think also that "New Species" may also be a big leap.

Its an enhanced mutant example at best...

Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution

#212

Post by jrochkind1 » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 12:17 AM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #55

grawprog wrote: post #46

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…

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…

What makes you think "sapience" is a gift? I think the "monkeys" (they're apes of course) are just as likely to damn us for it, if it happened.

Who decides what is of value, that "sapience" is an absolute value we are required to work towards? There is no answer to this we have access to except we ourselves decide.

Therefore, there is no "responsibility" from outside ourselves, certainly not some kind of external responsibility to prioritize some values (creating more "intelligent" species) over other values (not creating frankenstein monsters with capacity for incredible suffering).

I think living beings that lack recognized-by-us "sapience" still have their own inherent value that must be respected. To suggest that becoming more like us is their only destiny is to disrespect them as they are, they don't need to be more like us to be respectable.

Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution

#213

Post by nkrisc » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 12:18 AM UTC

grawprog wrote: post #46

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…

> Nature took a long long time to get to this point where life has come to a sort of balance. Assuming we can go in and just start blindly messing around and do better seems like an extreme level of arrogance that's going to end up blowing up in our faces.

Balance is something humans project on the world. There is no balance, there is only the status quo that can change in an instant.

Nature only seems balanced because we can only view a tiny slice of time. Extinction events in the geological record show us there is no balance and 90% of life can easily be obliterated.

Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution

#214

Post by nkrisc » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 12:21 AM UTC

senectus1 wrote: post #211

vikramkr wrote: post #56

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 think also that "New Species" may also be a big leap. Its an enhanced mutant example at best...

What is a species but a mutation of another one? Let's not forget most definitions of "species" are tenuous at best. The natural world is not so easily categorized.

Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution

#215

Post by schrodinger » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 12:22 AM UTC

cubano wrote: post #186

erickj wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However in the exact same vane that "Nature doesn't care"... We as Humans should and DO care. We are not Nature, and thus these existential defining issues should at least give us some pause to debate and evaluate the moral quandaries and responsibilities that this level of engineering power wields.

How can you possibly even say "We are not Nature"? Of course we are Nature. We came to being the exact same way every other current living species did, thru natural selection. So then how can we be living, as you say, somehow outside this "Nature" you speak of? Hell, I know I may be in a small minority who says, by definition, nothing that we do is "wrong" because we are simply doing what our brains, which are 100% a…

I believe the point is that “the interest of humans is not the same as the interest of nature.” We are part of nature, but not referentially equal.

“Nature” may not care what happens to the human species, but we do!

Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution

#216

Post by grimgrin » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 12:22 AM UTC

grawprog wrote: post #46

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…

> This 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. Bringing a "new human-gene-influenced monkey into this world would step over the ethical line," said Huttner.

> "To let them come to be born, in my opinion, would have been irresponsible as a first step," Huttner mentioned, "because you don't know what kind of behavioral change you'll get."

1) they thought about it

2) if you are ok with abortions, 14 weeks is isn't alarming territory

Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution

#217

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 12:22 AM UTC

linkdd wrote: post #210

jonplackett wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really an argument about the definition of natural isn’t it. We’re from nature but personally I believe humans are something different. We’re the only animal with choice - that we know of at least, and if you believe in free will, which some people don’t of course.

It's not a matter of what we believe, but it's a matter of facts. Humans comes from nature, and the building blocks of a human are the same as everything else in the universe (as far as we know). Recent studies have shown that "choice" is made before we are even conscious of it (so byebye free will?), and no studies have shown that we are the only living creature able to make "choices". "Humans are special", "Humans…

It is a matter of definitions, and it's a matter of avoiding a fallacy. Just because "we come from nature", doesn't mean we're bound to whatever patterns of behavior we observe in animals, and it especially doesn't mean the "nature" tells us what we should or shouldn't do. The world of non-human living things is a very bad place to look for lessons in morality.

"Humans are different" isn't arrogance, it's observable reality. And we need some words to separate the categories of "things done / caused by humans" vs "things done / caused by everything else" - hence the common meaning of "natural" and "nature".

> the building blocks of a human are the same as everything else in the universe (as far as we know).

Building blocks of everything in the universe are the same, but there's still meaningful difference between things.

Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution

#218

Post by MinusGix » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 12:23 AM UTC

cubano wrote: post #186

erickj wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However in the exact same vane that "Nature doesn't care"... We as Humans should and DO care. We are not Nature, and thus these existential defining issues should at least give us some pause to debate and evaluate the moral quandaries and responsibilities that this level of engineering power wields.

How can you possibly even say "We are not Nature"? Of course we are Nature. We came to being the exact same way every other current living species did, thru natural selection. So then how can we be living, as you say, somehow outside this "Nature" you speak of? Hell, I know I may be in a small minority who says, by definition, nothing that we do is "wrong" because we are simply doing what our brains, which are 100% a…

In part this is arguing over a definition of nature. You're going for the obvious "We are part of nature because nature created us and we work within the system." while they're going for the idea of it being more strictly influenced by evolutionary change which we have the ability to 'escape' (escape in the sense that we can go farther than an animal can due to being able to design larger systems without having each step useful). The definition of "we are of Nature" is essentially "we are of Physics". This is true, but its not really useful.

On your morality lines: Morality is a personal concept in people, but it is influenced by society and the people they interact with. There doesn't have to be some objective right/wrong, and so people can say that the scientists were being immoral (according to the person's own moral ideas). The scientists may very well believe they were being moral, or perhaps they didn't think about it (people do that!)

> that our nature-created brains have led us to create? Well, as stated before, morality isn't the same between humans. There's no objective authority that decides X is right or Y is wrong, simply social/cultural influences throughout the world.

You could view morality as a way that you think the world/people should behave to maximize some value you hold. Perhaps you value sentient life, and so you hold self-sacrifice to save a dozen people to be a moral good as it continues more sentient life.

Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution

#219

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 12:27 AM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #14

Retric wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, I was talking to a fruit fly yesterday... Wait no, that’s not accurate because while larger brains don’t inherently equate to more intelligence, there is a minimum size for any given level of intelligence. That said, this wasn’t a test of intelligence, just how cells grow in response to specific genetic alterations.

But larger brains in monkeys do equate to larger social groups (dunbar's number. monkeyspheres) and could be a necessary precursor to civilization.

[deleted]

Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution

#220

Post by Retric » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 12:33 AM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #14

Retric wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, I was talking to a fruit fly yesterday... Wait no, that’s not accurate because while larger brains don’t inherently equate to more intelligence, there is a minimum size for any given level of intelligence. That said, this wasn’t a test of intelligence, just how cells grow in response to specific genetic alterations.

But larger brains in monkeys do equate to larger social groups (dunbar's number. monkeyspheres) and could be a necessary precursor to civilization.

It’s important to separate changes across evolutionary timescales with individual mutations. Brian’s have a metabolic cost which promotes efficiency over time, but efficiency is just one of many relevant factors. A whale has significantly less relative metabolic cost per Lb of brain than a mouse. Further, individual mutations may be a net negative.