The interesting thing about gene ARHGAP11B is that it is a truncated version of ARHGAP11A, meaning that it was caused by a degenerative mutation, which goes totally against creationist arguments that degenerative mutations can never lead to improvements, let alone the development of new species. This should be mentioned in every textbook about evolution to counter the arguments of creationists.
Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
311–320 of 384 posts
Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you can uplift species and you choose not to, you have killed their cognition. By that logic you killed all the kids you could have made when you weren't having sex.
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.
> We owe the monkeys their sapience.
> I did [killed all the kids I haven't had] and I find it acceptable.
Don't you think it's a self-contradiction? There's 0 evidence to support valuing hypothetical descendants of these monkeys over hypothetical descendants of your children.
Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#313The 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…
Let's all just agree that if that lil smart monkey was born, nobody's allowed to kill it until it dies a ripe old age of natural causes, and we hopefully teach it to play Winston in Overwatch.
Otherwise, that's way too close to murder - thank you very much.
Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#314While a profound breakthrough, we’ll be creating, with luck, an animal that is what we are: one with consciousness. Which also means one with a lot of mental health issues, and other issues. (Disoriented, seeking identification, cognitive biases, ignorant yet certain, etc). Not bad, just is what it is. I think it’s important, though, for nature, to let it struggle for life like the rest of us, and care for it and learn from it. It, after all, is a part of life. If we’re in the ballpark that nature created sapiens, and we are thus a part of nature, and thus nature had a hand in this. The ethical thing to do is to let it become part of our “Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom library of life” sooner, rather than later. After all, as many have already said, it’s inevitable. And I agree.
Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#315The interesting thing about gene ARHGAP11B is that it is a truncated version of ARHGAP11A, meaning that it was caused by a degenerative mutation, which goes totally against creationist arguments that degenerative mutations can never lead to improvements, let alone the development of new species. This should be mentioned in every textbook about evolution to counter the arguments of creationists.
Creationists are convinced by stories, not facts.
Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#316While a profound breakthrough, we’ll be creating, with luck, an animal that is what we are: one with consciousness. Which also means one with a lot of mental health issues, and other issues. (Disoriented, seeking identification, cognitive biases, ignorant yet certain, etc). Not bad, just is what it is. I think it’s important, though, for nature, to let it struggle for life like the rest of us, and care for it and lea…
> we’ll be creating, with luck, an animal that is what we are: one with consciousnes
You seem to be assuming that, right now, humans are the only animal with consciousness.
I doubt that's the case. Far from it.
Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#317I 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 have an ethical duty to seed life and uplift all species across the universe.
Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#318for a long time i have felt this was a serious problem.
However, it didn't seem to me that they would get this far, this soon.
Someone's bound to take the next step. The philosophical hunger for other sentient species, the egotistical ambition to be a creator, and the pervasive desire to tinker will lead to progressively more and more amoral research projects, in whatever timeframe the researchers believe the public will accept.
It starts with experimental fetuses. It will ultimately mean research subjects. It starts with a few genes here and there. It will ultimately mean trying to fully unlock what genes lead to what traits via transplanting them. It presently merely means the monkey would be more intelligent.ultimately, however, they would be capable of and likely willing to experiment with human-animal chimeras. They will tell us this will expand our sources of surrugate organ donors. They will tell us this will help us understand our own genome.
What they wont do is accept moral culpability for academic consequences. The research will be proliferated and each laboratory will go a little bit further.
Eventually we will see genetic engineering taken too far. And it's not just research on the genetic origins of mammal traits.
We'll see scientists who want to create synthetic life. Who may want to modify nature so that it is more efficient, which is to say, loses the survival bonus conferred by millions of years of evolution in favor of a streamlined metabolism oriented to anthropocene conditions. They will want to engineer species and to engineer species extinction.
This will likely eventually mean a loss of species diversity and the destruction of entire ecological systems, every time it happens, sooner or later.
Today it is mosquitos. Tomorrow the corporate morality may serve a different, but equally wealthy and powerful authority, one with less scruples and a more pragmatic, selfish perspective. Tomorrow it may be flies, or even wild rabbits. Whatever exists to the detriment of man, man will eventually justify the destruction of. Whatever exists to the benefit of man, eventually, the temptation of power and influence may yet bring about, as undavoidably and unstoppably as death and taxes.
And scientists, no matter how ethical they are today about publishing their research findings and their methods, will eventually make their learning known as it becomes commonplace. Each new landmark finding will become wikipedia articles at the same time the competitors discover the effect, because nobody wants to miss out on the fame and fortune. Any attempt to censor, classify, or restrict the publication of research that might prove dangerous will ultimately only delay, not prevent the opening of pandoras box.
The era of custom-tailored biological weapons of viral, fungal, bacterial, and parasitical origins, capable of things far more terrifying than anything cobbled up in an imaginary video game, for sale to, or even created by, various governments, seperationist movements, and terrorist organizations- even down to single individuals- is not a fantasy. The experts are concerned, but can do nothing. The wheel of progress turns, no matter who stands with their shoulder against it. We have, maybe a decade, maybe two.
Eventually the kind of people you do not want conceiving of genocidal and maniacal schemes will have reasonable materials, a great swath of research materials, and a plentitude of futuristic methods in their arsenal. They'll make the kind of pathogen that makes smallpox, ebola, and anthrax look like harmless little playthings for drunken grad students. It is not a matter of if- it is merely a matter of when.
All of these things are merely a matter of when, not if.
It may soon be time for the butlerian revolution of the genome. For a luddism of the soul. I will stand by and watch only so long. If required, I plan to take a side. I will likely be siding with those who would burn these hallowed halls of academie to the ground, regardless of what great remorse and lacrimonious wailing it produces in my soul. I hope you understand. It would be better, of course, if we could just move all this research offworld where it would be safe and we could control what portions of it enter our realm via a worldwide watchdog network based on the moon. We shall see. It shall certainly come in our lifetimes.
Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#319I 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…
>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.
If that is true then these scientists made the right judgment and they should stop with these types of experiments. What are you going to do with these intelligent but still less than human animals? Let them integrate into society and become a source of conflict? We already have enough conflict between humans over trivial matters as it is. If you add an explicit difference between two parties like a different species then conflicts will continue forever until one side is extinct.
If this research succeeds there will be two potential scenarios: Easily controlled monkey slaves doing manual labor or alternatively those monkeys receive extensive genetic engineering because of lack of ethics to outperform us and therefore replace us.
I don't want either.
Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
- Thalidomide - Leaded fuel, the highest ever source of lead exposure and poisoning for Humans. - Asbestos still present in 60' to 80's construction - Refrigerants with Ozone destroying CFCs - 1800's arsenic pesticides still contaminate today's rice fields and most of the world's rice crops. - DDT - Plastics are currently leaching estrogenic-mimicking endocrine disruptors and contaminating water supplies, wildlife an…
Thalidomide wasn’t a failure of chemistry, but of medicine. CFCs were an amazing breakthrough as they stopped people getting gassed by their refrigerator and killed (ammonia was used before). Once a problem was identified then changes were made. Similar with asbestos (not actually chemistry), leaded fuel and DDT. As for the others you have concentrated on the tiny percentage of bad outcomes rather then the millions o…
Unnecessary ad hominem with the 'special mind' but I will try to bring it back to the actual discussion point.
All the points I mentioned were massive breakthroughs and improvements in their primary application. The point is they had massively wide scale secondary effects which Humans at the time were unable to predict.
You say a small percentage of outcomes but many of those small percentage of occurences have had a negative effect on the whole of Humanity and even a Planetary negative effect. Just because the are few applications it doesn't make their magnitude small.
The original argument from GGP was that we as a species have failed to forecast these secondary effects on Chemical compounds which are theoretically less complex systems than Biological ones (by simpler I don't mean with less merit).
If we fail to predict theses effects on a Chemical level, it follows that the claim that we can confidently make such changes on a Biological system without secondary effects is very weak.
In my comment I was not arguing that the last 3 centuries of Chemistry are a failure or that we should stop developing, I am providing supporting evidence that even a 'simple' field as Chemistry is already vastly more complex than we can currently predict, it follows that changes to a more complex Biological field will very likely introduce more complex secondary effects which we once again will fail to predict.