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Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution

interestingengineering.com

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

#201

Post by belval »

fiblye wrote: post #194
whytaka wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's any science of morality to be done, the most basic quantum of moral value is suffering. Sentient creatures have greater capacity for suffering, being aware of their pain and the injustice of their existence. If we are to bring it into existence, we are responsible for its suffering.

And if a presumably sentient creature is aborted before it attains sentience, has it suffered?

Not the commenter you are responding to, but I would assume if it has not attained sentience then it should not be considered sentient and as such is not a sentient creature.

It has to be, otherwise the abortion debate would be very different. Aborting a somewhat conscious fetus would be much closer to murder.

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

#202

Post by BurningFrog »

jhardy54 wrote: post #157
BurningFrog wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've been replacing factory workers with machines for 250 years. It's made us, including the remaining factory workers, very very rich, compared to where we started.

Productivity has gone up but wages haven't kept up. The owners are rich, sure, but we should be honest about the working class getting the short end of the stick here.

250 years ago people in England, among the richest in the world, lived considerably poorer lives that the worst in the third world today.

GDP per person has, to the extent it's possible to compare, gone up by 30x (3000%) since then.

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

#203

Post by pengstrom »

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…

Yet you are able to learn, reason and communicate. That potential is why we're not hunters and gatherers still.

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

#205

Post by Ericson2314 »

Research ethics can so miopic... just delaying the inevitable. (Maybe to stretch research over multiple papers muahahaha.)

I agree with the other commenter that we should blue the human intelligence boundary as much as possible to trash human exceptionalism.

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

#207

Post by partyboat1586 »

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…

Pretty sure if we engineer smart monkeys they will quickly be bred for use as slaves.

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

#208

Post by nazgulnarsil »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #152
tibbydudeza wrote: post #48

So "Planet of the Apes" was not so far fetched after all. Now somewhere someone will think ... hmmm why can't we replace all our complaining factory workers and their wages/healthcare/retirement plans with these "creatures" and only pay them peanuts and banana's.

David Brin, Uplift Universe. Start with Startide rising. It covers this in a more interestingly ethical way I think.

and Sirius by Olaf Stapledon.

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

#209

Post by berdario »

jjoonathan wrote: post #128
nwienert wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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's the point: naturalism can justify anything, and that makes it a poor guiding principle. As do many other things. There are many natural things that are good. Clean air, unique little ecosystems like GP describes, endless variety -- and we should strive to respect and preserve those, but not because they are natural. Poor animals teeming with parasites, population "balance" maintained through periodic overpopul…

> population "balance" maintained through periodic overpopulation and starvation (How do people think it happens? Forest fairies tell the deer how many babies to have?)

Thinking about this, I just realized a simple thing: balance in animal population via starvation might not be as grim as we expect (i.e. it happens completely because the weakest/least fit individuals cannot compete for food and literally starve).

The sexual reproductive system is apparently one of the things that stops working earliest when you're affected by disease or malnutrition. This means that malnourished deers will just start having fewer/no babies while they're being famished.

Still grim, because lots of animals would starve, and still very uncomfortable for the deers which, even if they might survive to "old age", will fail to breed due to starvation... but still better than the alternative in which every baby deer gets born in the world as usual, only to then starve to death while they're still very young.

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

#210

Post by linkdd »

jonplackett wrote: post #191
cubano wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 are different", "Humans are smarter" is the perfect example of arrogance and ignorance of humans.

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