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Genetically Enhanced Humans
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18-12-2010 9:24pm#1
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Training has its limits though. You can have a friendly very well trained dog, but you can never be 100% certain that it won't bite someone. You can be 100% sure with a goldfish, but then they're not such good company.
I'm pretty sure the entity that created the universe can overcome these limits. Most humans are smarter than a goldfish.Having a pet can be a tricky balancing act.
According to the story, we aren't pets, the entity is actually growing something to have cosmic sex with. Its basically this:.jpg/220px-Movie_poster_for_Weird_Science_(1985).jpg)
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You're making me nervous now of whats in store for us ...I hope He's not going to be like one of those burly prison gang leadersMark Hamill wrote: »According to the story, we aren't pets, the entity is actually growing something to have cosmic sex with.
Seriously though, like all good relationships, its more about the company than sex;
"My personal motivation is the desire to optimise the intelligence of the Univierse. In your own terms, I strive to maximise pleasure and minimise pain. A great deal of pleasure, however, arises from communications between separate entities. Once you’ve achieved my level, we tend to cease to be billions of separate entities and become one ecstatic whole. A single entity that cannot die unless it loses the will to live. Advanced and self contained though I am, or perhaps, more accurately, because I am so advanced and self contained, one of the pleasures we lose along the way is that simple joy of meeting new and unpredictable minds and either learning from or teaching them. Thus, in large part, the point of the exercise is to provide company. I am the first eternal in this Universe. I do not intend to be the last’
The point of a parable I suppose is that it doesn't have to be true. It only has to be plausible, and then it should make you think.
Re the pet comparisons; Dinosaurs were considered too aggressive, and dolphins (or goldfish) too passive. A certain duality of bad ass competitiveness combined with responsibility is required, and in this case survival itself is the selection process. So if we destroy ourselves in a nuclear war, or whatever, we will have proven ourselves too aggressive. But if we shun progress, and become extinct after a cosmic meteor strike (lacking the technology to do anything about it) we are too passive.
BTW The internet itself in some ways facilitates a primitive hive mind.0 -
Just got round to listening to the lecture. It's the only valid objection raised so far that I can see. The diseases mentioned seem to be a trade off for possible better neuron development in the particular Ashkenazim population. However, that is supposed to be due to natural selection in action; maybe a more focused approach as would be the case in controlled genetic engineering would iron out these problems.I don't think we will be able to select for super humans. Pinker goes through the argument here. Basically all the genetic mutations that give you massive improvements in some characteristic also massively increase the risk of really nasty genetic diseases. For every Freud and Einstein there are a lot of people with Tay–Sachs disease.
BTW in a room full of Jews, there is a lot about natural selection and no mention of creationism. Aren't they supposed to believe in the old testament?
Certainly we could easily reverse any of this genetic antagonistic pleiotropy which provided benefits in the past, but which are redundant now. Eg. if cystic fibrosis confers some immunity against cholera or typhoid, and sickle cell anaemia does the same for malaria, wouldn't we be better off using medicine to deal with any case of the contagious diseases and then eliminating the genetic ones permanently through genetic engineering?
As Pinker says at the end, (in relation to genetic research) "Its when the objections are centred not on the activity of the research (that is who might be harmed), but by the content of the ideas, that makes any kind of prohibition dangerous".
Its exactly the problem Copernicus faced when the flat-earthers saw what he was at.0 -
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You're making me nervous now of whats in store for us ...I hope He's not going to be like one of those burly prison gang leaders
Deity looks at our species thinking "Them human species got a purty mouth" :pac:Seriously though, like all good relationships, its more about the company than sex;
"My personal motivation is the desire to optimise the intelligence of the Univierse. In your own terms, I strive to maximise pleasure and minimise pain. A great deal of pleasure, however, arises from communications between separate entities. Once you’ve achieved my level, we tend to cease to be billions of separate entities and become one ecstatic whole. A single entity that cannot die unless it loses the will to live. Advanced and self contained though I am, or perhaps, more accurately, because I am so advanced and self contained, one of the pleasures we lose along the way is that simple joy of meeting new and unpredictable minds and either learning from or teaching them. Thus, in large part, the point of the exercise is to provide company. I am the first eternal in this Universe. I do not intend to be the last’
The point of a parable I suppose is that it doesn't have to be true. It only has to be plausible, and then it should make you think.
It certainly is good at making me think, just look down
.
Re the pet comparisons; Dinosaurs were considered too aggressive, and dolphins (or goldfish) too passive. A certain duality of bad ass competitiveness combined with responsibility is required, and in this case survival itself is the selection process. So if we destroy ourselves in a nuclear war, or whatever, we will have proven ourselves too aggressive. But if we shun progress, and become extinct after a cosmic meteor strike (lacking the technology to do anything about it) we are too passive.
BTW The internet itself in some ways facilitates a primitive hive mind.
If you think about it though, current human progress is based on the same criteria - we use competitiveness to motivate our technological advancement and we rely on a sense of responsibility so that we dont just start using new technologies on people disregarding their safety (not that we are particularly good at that part). But we still interfere with each others progress, we have to as this maximises our ability to advance. When someone develops a novel and useful material, gagdet or scientific theory, they dont keep it to themselves for fear of affecting the advancement of others.
I think the reason for non interference given in the story satisfies a lot of people because it explains it away as a kind of cosmic cheat, one which wouldn't ultimately succeed. Imo, though, all technological advancemnt can be seen a s cosmic cheats, humans taking advantage of the rules and running of the universe to make life easier for ourselves, essentially cheating on how nature would expect us to be.0 -
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Natural selection has ceased, and probably reversed for humans (see the movie Idiocracyrandom processes (e.g. genetic mutation) with constraints (e.g. natural selection) are faster than a focused process. This is the power of random processes.
So we may be stuck with only altering within a small margin of what nature has already produced. This is the only way to keep the number of free parameters you alter low enough to control. However it's so low it doesn't really give you the freedom to iron out the problems. At least that is my understanding.)
As the random genetic recombinations are still occurring, isn't it now up to us to sort out the good ones from the bad ones?
But we are all at an equivalent level. It might be different when there is a vast technological difference; this is the view taken by the author of Star Trek when he made the prime directive, I think it was called, when they weren't allowed to interfere with the development of any low level civilisations they encountered.Mark Hamill wrote: »
If you think about it though, current human progress is based on the same criteria - we use competitiveness to motivate our technological advancement and we rely on a sense of responsibility so that we don't just start using new technologies on people disregarding their safety (not that we are particularly good at that part). But we still interfere with each others progress, we have to as this maximises our ability to advance.
Looking at it another way, early humans must have had a tough time, but if you could go back in time to make things easier for them, that interference would perhaps reduce the selection pressures on them, thereby making their descendants (us) less fit for purpose.0 -
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Unfortunately that may be a task beyond our computational capabilities, since most genes can be both good or bad, or bad relative to another gene, e.t.c.Natural selection has ceased, and probably reversed for humans (see the movie Idiocracy)
As the random genetic recombinations are still occurring, isn't it now up to us to sort out the good ones from the bad ones?0 -
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