Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The first early human eggs from stem cells

conception.bio

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 145 posts

Re: The first early human eggs from stem cells

#101

Post by buran77 »

throwaway173738 wrote: post #98
qsera wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have not ended up with "humans which aren't as strong, aren't as smart, aren't as well adapted to a changing environment, etc." Haven't we?

This line of reasoning leads to “some people are weak and unworthy of life because they are impure.” I don’t think rolling back our work to end infant mortality to prevent weak people from living is the right answer.

> This line of reasoning leads to

It doesn't "lead to". Supporting a wrong conclusion even with a valid argument is as old as time. Fans of eugenics don't need an excuse to go down that path.

Our natural and artificial environments shape us for better or worse. We're bigger and more intelligent as a direct outcome of better nutrition. But we also have far more people with deadly allergies because we're so good at managing them now.

Re: The first early human eggs from stem cells

#102

Post by tskj »

throwaway173738 wrote: post #99
tskj wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's the point about unknown unknowns though, we actually have no idea what the probability is. But we do know it's not low, that's the only unlikely scenario. We only know it's a very complicated system with many interlocking dependencies, and based on what we know about complicated systems in general, as well as biology in particular, is that if any one of these unknown dependencies break, the whole system c…

I don’t think this technology we’ll get people to stop having sex to the degree that IVG is all we’ll ever use. And to the degree that we believe some humans are genetically destined for anything, that’s the line of thinking that leads to dystopia.

I don't know man, people basically aren't having sex already. The fertility rate is way below replacement in all modernized countries, half of gen Z has never had sex at all, contraception is free, people struggle to get pregnant the more chronically ill the population gets, and the people who actively do want to get pregnant are going to want to use whatever technology there is to improve things.

Re: The first early human eggs from stem cells

#103

Post by cassepipe »

100ms wrote: post #70
DanielHB wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

25% of humans died before reaching 5 in 1800s US, today it is We have not ended up with "humans which aren't as strong, aren't as smart, aren't as well adapted to a changing environment, etc."

Probably throwing quite the grenade here, but around 29% of pregnancies end in termination globally. Absent cultural considerations, it's questionable whether life expectancy has improved in absolute terms in modern times

I don't think it's a grenade unless you are implicitly trying to mean it that life begins before birth, which ultimately is a definition game since it's actually quite hard to define life, hard enough that calling it "life" is a matter of personal worldview. I personally think it's quite reasonable to exclude pre-birth "deaths" from life expectancy, or event infant deaths sometimes, depending on what you are trying to measure.

In any case I didn't know this number and it's quite relevant to the discussion of how much we got rid of natural selection.

Re: The first early human eggs from stem cells

#104

Post by throwaway173738 »

plasticeagle wrote: post #88
killerstorm wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A computer genetic algorithm run for a billion generations doesn't lead to anything anywhere near the the complexity of a human. What?... Our computers can't simulate anything similar to a real world. You're comparing apples to galaxies. > meaningful loss of fitness What makes you think we don't have "loss of fitness" already? 150 years ago child mortality was around 30% in the developed world, now it's less than 1…

It's a very common misconception that "survival of the fittest" means something related to physical fitness or stamina. It does not, in fact it's almost tautological. It means only "survival of those most likely to survive." Natural selection is still fully in operation, but the things being selected for may have changed. Whatever they are now, they are still being selected for. Those most likely to reproduce are tho…

“survival of the fittest” was actually coined by a political economist, Herbert Spencer, to explain how lassiez-faire economics produces better companies. Darwin didn’t extrapolate to that in his theories and the quote is often applied to explain how evolution works, but that may not be the case. We can say that evolution results in change but that there are no guarantees that those changes result in fitness of the organism. We can only say that sometimes they obviously do and in other cases we can make up “just-so” stories to explain stuff in terms of fitness.

Re: The first early human eggs from stem cells

#106

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

qsera wrote: post #53
DanielHB wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

25% of humans died before reaching 5 in 1800s US, today it is We have not ended up with "humans which aren't as strong, aren't as smart, aren't as well adapted to a changing environment, etc."

> We have not ended up with "humans which aren't as strong, aren't as smart, aren't as well adapted to a changing environment, etc." Haven't we?

Objectively we’ve only become smarter (IQs have increased), stronger (fitness records continue to be broken), etc. since infant mortality shrank. If you believe otherwise please provide evidence.

Re: The first early human eggs from stem cells

#107

Post by soco »

tskj wrote: post #28
warent wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re layering several hypotheticals on top of each other, which leads to progressively distant possibilities. Good on you for caring about humans though

I think this is decisively the wrong way to think about it. Yes, layering hypotheticals like that means that any one scenario is extremely unlikely to be the thing that gets you, but that doesn't mean the shape of the problem is wrong. It's like arguing with someone who doesn't believe in using seat belts when driving. "Why should I put them on?" they say, and when you try to explain what might go wrong they won't li…

The history of humanity, I say of hominids even, was defined by humans playing it unsafe - migrating, sailing, inventing bombs, you name it. We played god before even we invented gods, and reached this point in time. Should we say "this is best we can do, let's stop everything"? Nah, not likely.

Re: The first early human eggs from stem cells

#108

Post by BiteCode_dev »

DanielHB wrote: post #45
londons_explore wrote: post #20

I am worried about the long term impact of research involving human conception, IVF, etc. The reason is that genetics/evolution don't yet seem to fully explain how humans exist. A computer genetic algorithm run for a billion generations doesn't lead to anything anywhere near the the complexity of a human. I suspect there are as-yet undiscovered effects which shape the next generation. Whether that be DNA methylation,…

25% of humans died before reaching 5 in 1800s US, today it is We have not ended up with "humans which aren't as strong, aren't as smart, aren't as well adapted to a changing environment, etc."

We have, we just have much, much better conditions for food, hygiene, personnal safety and medicine.

But have worse hormonal health (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7063751/), and are less fit (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4033061/). The flynn effect also seems to decline in some parts of the world: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289619301679

It just doesn't compensate the immense gains tech created.

Turns out it's ok to be weaker if you don't have to worry about dying of parasites, malnutrition, cold.

Which, you could conclude, means the individual is weaker, but the species is stronger.

Re: The first early human eggs from stem cells

#109

Post by soco »

tskj wrote: post #102
throwaway173738 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think this technology we’ll get people to stop having sex to the degree that IVG is all we’ll ever use. And to the degree that we believe some humans are genetically destined for anything, that’s the line of thinking that leads to dystopia.

I don't know man, people basically aren't having sex already. The fertility rate is way below replacement in all modernized countries, half of gen Z has never had sex at all, contraception is free, people struggle to get pregnant the more chronically ill the population gets, and the people who actively do want to get pregnant are going to want to use whatever technology there is to improve things.

But outside the bible, who says we must be more and above replacement rates? Is such a tragedy for humanity if there are only 4 billion humans in 100 years? 4 happier billions? It doesn't HAVE to go up all the time, and between extinction (zero humans) and overcrowding (X billions) there are many unknown ways to go.

Re: The first early human eggs from stem cells

#110

Post by fellowmartian »

scotty79 wrote: post #5

That can't be good. Life cycle of a human egg is organized around preserving mitochondria to be as young and fresh as possible across generations. Using adult cell, even a stem cell to make an egg probably gives it mitochondrial damage that usually takes hundreds of human generations to accumulate.

Life wouldn’t be here if mitochondria only accumulated damage. We can do in the lab what biology does in the wild - introduce selection pressures. Either by sequencing iPSC clones and picking the best, somehow inducing the natural purifying selection, or simply using a donor mitochondria.
Post reply on HN