151–160 of 231 posts
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I can’t wait for a geneCAD where we for example, design wings for a human body and then it works out the rest and generates a CRISPR based AAV that you can inject yourself with. True race and sex changes too. Hopefully in the next 50 years but that’s wishful thinking.
Synthetic biology CAD software does exist, and works better than most people would expect, but of course are not at the level you are imagining yet.
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Taking it seriously for a moment, that still seems outlandish even in a sci-fi scenario. The amount of changes that would be necessary to the body for a human to achieve autonomous powered flight would be substantial. Given our overall density, we would need enormous wings and musculature. Consider that the heaviest flying birds alive today weigh maybe 40lbs and have a wingspan of 8ft or so. If we naively extrapolate…
A futurist I knew of long ago pointed out that the Moon’s gravity is light enough that the human skeleton could achieve sufficient lift without sustaining damage in the process. True, you might have to be a junior Olympian to do it, but it’s possible. On earth your pectorals would tear off of your sternum long before you achieved takeoff.
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> it would have to completely transform you into a completely different creature, simply due to the physics of flight In OP's defence, they never mentioned flight. Maybe they just want a peacock train.
Ok, fair enough. I hadn’t considered that. In my mind, wings you can’t fly with are worse than no wings.
I would opt for smaller tweaks like an extra rhodopsin folding with longer features so I could see near (like tv remotes) ir. re-enable hibernation. Things some mammals already have would be good starts.
You can't "restore" hearing to those who never had it.
Wait until they have kids. The deafness gene will be passed along. Soon enough we'll be like the cars with the hardware without the software or the locked features.
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I can’t wait for a geneCAD where we for example, design wings for a human body and then it works out the rest and generates a CRISPR based AAV that you can inject yourself with. True race and sex changes too. Hopefully in the next 50 years but that’s wishful thinking.
Let's try to fix the world's vast number of actual, boring health problems before trying to add the equivalent of spoilers and chrome-plated hubcaps to perfectly healthy human bodies.
We can, and always will, work on many different things at once.
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Let's try to fix the world's vast number of actual, boring health problems before trying to add the equivalent of spoilers and chrome-plated hubcaps to perfectly healthy human bodies.
Sex changes/gender transitions is an actual boring health problem. The inability to assume the correct gender for a trans person often leads to social rejection, violence, poverty, prostitution, murder, and suicide.
This stuff seems miraculous. > "Through minimally invasive surgery, Shu injected adeno-associated virus (AAV) engineered to carry and deliver functioning copies of the human OTOF transgene, into the children’s inner ears. " Can't read that and not get curious, excited, for the future. Congratulations to all those involved in the research and thanks to all who contributed to it - including all taxpayers if public fund…
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Sex changes/gender transitions is an actual boring health problem. The inability to assume the correct gender for a trans person often leads to social rejection, violence, poverty, prostitution, murder, and suicide.
If through gene editing you could also erase someone's disphoria what option would you choose?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Taking it seriously for a moment, that still seems outlandish even in a sci-fi scenario. The amount of changes that would be necessary to the body for a human to achieve autonomous powered flight would be substantial. Given our overall density, we would need enormous wings and musculature. Consider that the heaviest flying birds alive today weigh maybe 40lbs and have a wingspan of 8ft or so. If we naively extrapolate…
A futurist I knew of long ago pointed out that the Moon’s gravity is light enough that the human skeleton could achieve sufficient lift without sustaining damage in the process. True, you might have to be a junior Olympian to do it, but it’s possible. On earth your pectorals would tear off of your sternum long before you achieved takeoff.
The lack of Moon atmosphere is a real problem though.