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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

#251

Post by renewiltord »

alisonkisk wrote: post #244
renewiltord wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I did. And I find that acceptable. After all, child killing isn't an unalloyed evil. There are children I am morally all right with killing. I make this choice actively every day. I sleep soundly after.

Are you also morally comfortably with yourself being killed? I assume so, for the same reasons you give.

I think I can admit that there are moral frameworks that don't care if I live or die and don't, therefore, take active action to prevent the death of this person, and therefore that are comfortable with killing me through inaction should a situation arise where I will die without aid. It would be foolish to believe otherwise. Most people actively take this position. If I were to post that I'm dying, not one on this site would save my life.

I don't subscribe to an absolutist view of the veil of ignorance. My life is, to me, of higher utility than yours or the random children who I actively choose to let die daily.

So I'm going to act in a manner that preserves my life. That seems natural, after all. The other day I bought a new phone instead of saving a child's life. I don't even like this Pixel 5 that much. I like my life very much. Think about how many kids I'd kill for that.

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

#252

Post by derangedHorse »

jassany wrote: post #150

The fact they didn't let the fetus grow really fucking sucks. Sure, ethics most definitely has its name etched on the science stone. But people WILL without a shred of doubt recreate this experiment, and they most likely won't be as ethically inclined as the nice folks behind this paper. The point am trying to make here is that we need to be prepared to deal with how a discovery like could influence our future. The b…

Killing animals off after a sufficient time period is common in lab testing (and even enforced). They probably had to get approval for the 100 days and most likely wouldn’t be allowed to make any decisions regarding the matter themselves. That being said, most labs in the US have to abide by the same guidelines and if this does happen again in a setting where the scientists can choose an arbitrary age to let the fetus live it probably won’t be in the US

I have no idea what the process is for other countries like Germany in Japan but I’d like to think they’re similar.

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

#253

Post by renewiltord »

alisonkisk wrote: post #242
renewiltord wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A good sanity check is "any moral theory that proves Nazism correct is probably mistaken".

What aspect of Nazism do you suspect is "proven correct" here? Certainly no position that aims to increase the number of sapient lives is consistent with a systematic eradication of sapient lives.

The Nazis killed at least 12 million human beings. Did they save 12 million humans through that process? Certainly the anatomy books they produced in their horrific experiments led to an improved understanding of humans and perhaps some better treatment but I think it will take a lot of evidence to convince me that this method is differentially superior to approaches that are more palatable to me. I don't think they saved a net 12 million lives in the process, and after all, if you kill one man you kill all his descendants. So currently I think I have a high prior probability of Nazi Germany harming humanity far more than they have benefited it.

It's going to take some convincing, I'm afraid.

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

#254

Post by zanethomas »

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 assume the Chinese have not already done something like this. The CCP would like nothing more than a population of semi-intelligent monkeys.

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

#255

Post by renewiltord »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #212
renewiltord wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 res…

Given sapience, beings can choose non-sapience, provided we supply them with the tools, which I think we should. The sacrifice of some measure-zero-equivalent of the population is nothing. This is a worthwhile prize to attempt.

And naturally there is no "responsibility" externally. All ethics arise from us since no other beings capable of complex cognition are present within our immediate vicinity.

Certainly one can argue for respect for all living beings and I think one should be able to construct such an example easily. My one great moral horror is that I recognize diminutive intelligence in animals that I still would gladly farm and consume. One day we will be called to task for that. My hope is to be long dead by then.

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

#256

Post by kypro »

PIKAL wrote: post #69

I am overwhelmed with curiosity about what the animal would have been like if it had been allowed to live. Imagine that it was smart enough to speak or resemble humans even more closely than monkeys already do... imagine how earth shattering that would be. An entire race of beings to reconcile with. I wish they had let it live.

I wonder what political ramifications this would have. Say these monkeys were intelligent enough to have conversations with and they had thoughts and opinions on the world, but they weren't quite as smart as humans – they couldn't do advanced maths and were intellectually closer to young children – would we deny them the right to vote? Would we deny them employment rights? Etc...

If we did on what grounds would we do so? Lower average intelligence? How exactly could we do that while granting similar rights to humans with equivalently low IQs?

It's hard to imagine that this wouldn't destroy modern liberal societies. We would either grant them equal rights at a huge societal cost, or start denying rights based on intelligence which would come at a huge ethical cost.

I think about this a lot in regards to extinct human species. I often wonder what would happen if we found Neanderthals hiding out on an island somewhere. What rights would we give them? Would we allow them to bred with humans? It seems every answer is wrong.

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

#257

Post by lopmotr »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #141
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…

I feel pretty simply, I feel a sense of sadness at the kinds of 21st century problems my kids and their kids are going to have to deal with. At some point in the next 25 years I expect there to be a 'procedure' available, which consists of cultivating a persons stem cells from their bone marrow, using a genetic editing technique to add and/or delete and/or "correct" certain genetic sequences, and then to have a "bone…

How is that something to be sad about? In case your kids miss out and feel jealous? Surely if yours kids have only an average intelligence, you'll still be happy for them despite the fact that they probably can't achieve as much success as their most successful peers in any intellectual field.

Your attitude sounds like my Dad's attitude of being sad that my generation doesn't believe in God anymore or his own Dad's unhappiness at him for not being a proper loyal soldier in the Navy. It's tempting to believe that our own generation has the ultimate peak of right behavior and any change is for the worse, but it's also arrogant and repeatedly proven to be wrong.

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

#258

Post by geuis »

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…

> We're playing with things we barely understand that could have consequences we can't even imagine.

The only way people ever understand anything is by play and experimentation. You didn’t spend 5 years thinking about how to ride a bike before getting on. You scraped your knees and kept trying till you learned.

I’d like to see your list of “pretty terrifying things”.

If our remote ancestors had that kind of approach to life, they would have stoned to death every member of their tribes that successfully learned how to start a fire.

Wouldn’t exactly have ended well for us.

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

#259

Post by [deleted] »

ativzzz wrote: post #111

So what exactly is inherently unethical about letting this engineered organism live? Is it a violation of "Christian" ethics of playing God? If so, we've already gone way past that point with modern medicine and things like genetic engineering of mosquitoes. 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?

[deleted]

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

#260

Post by anchpop »

alisonkisk wrote: post #246
grimgrin wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

Excuse me, but "pro-choice" doesn't mean you get to choose whether to abort someone else's fetus.

It was a monkey's fetus (I think saying "someone" implies a person rather than a monkey in this context, but sorry if I misinterpreted you).

Arguably you shouldn't abort monkey's fetuses but you probably shouldn't genetically modify their embryos then forcibly implant them either. Or eat any kind of meat

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