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One step closer to our own Chimeras; Plans to engineer human-cow hybrid
Topic Started: Nov 8 2006, 11:32 AM (223 Views)
Aqua Letifer
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ZOOOOOM!
Obvious jokes aside, WTF is wrong with the lot of us? Why do this kind of research?

British scientists are to submit plans to create a hybrid embryo — part human, part cow.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2440721,00.html
I cite irreconcilable differences.
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
A tiger I can understand, but a cow???

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The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Dan
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That's a moooooooooooooooooooooost interesting idea.
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apple
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you could just drink yourself if they made the udders right.
it behooves me to behold
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Aqua Letifer
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Obvious jokes aside, I says! :P

Oh well, I guess it is pretty funny. And really scary.
I cite irreconcilable differences.
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Moonbat
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At the moment we don’t know if the nuclear transfer process works well enough in humans to create useful embryonic stem cells. We need to carry out many tests to establish this and, as animal eggs are freely available, it makes sense to use these. Stem-cell research promises huge potential medical advantages and we believe we will be working towards our ultimate goal of developing new patient therapies


That's why.

What possible reason is there not to do it?

The cow-people argument is absurdly weak:

They aren't going to be developed past 14 days, you can't grow an animal in a petri dish anyway, you'd need to implant it into a womb, even if you did implant it into a womb it would self terminate -hybrids don't work between species that do not have a very recent common ancestor.

The only reason to consider vetoing this stuff is if it had a palpable risk of causing suffering. I can't see that risk here.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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Aqua Letifer
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I'm not suggesting they're trying to grow human cows just 'cause they wanna see if they can, but I don't see the cost-benefit with this kind of research.

We need to carry out many tests to establish this and, as animal eggs are freely available, it makes sense to use these. Stem-cell research promises huge potential medical advantages and we believe we will be working towards our ultimate goal of developing new patient therapies

Since there are other avenues to take, I don't see why they would try this one over any of the others.
I cite irreconcilable differences.
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
We are all just bags of chemicals that have the ability to know that we are bags of chemicals. Things like human dignity are just constructs that are the byproduct of consciousness.

Things like scruples about human suffering are also just the byproducts of consciousness and need not be taken seriously -- I am sure that some strain of biomachines that have less compassion will eventually develop and take over since the electrochemical mechanisms that produce compassion and concerns for suffering and human dignity and ethics are obviously weak traits in the human biomachines.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Moonbat
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Aqua Letifer
Nov 8 2006, 08:11 PM
I'm not suggesting they're trying to grow human cows just 'cause they wanna see if they can, but I don't see the cost-benefit with this kind of research.

We need to carry out many tests to establish this and, as animal eggs are freely available, it makes sense to use these. Stem-cell research promises huge potential medical advantages and we believe we will be working towards our ultimate goal of developing new patient therapies

Since there are other avenues to take, I don't see why they would try this one over any of the others.

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Since there are other avenues to take, I don't see why they would try this one over any of the others.


I dunno - seems plausible to suggest that since we have techniques that are effective in animals if we make chimeras and examine how those techniques break down and how we have to modify them to make them work we can learn how to gain control over human stem cells.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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Moonbat
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Things like scruples about human suffering are also just the byproducts of consciousness and need not be taken seriously --


Pain is "just the byproduct of consciousness" feel free not to take it seriously next time you stub your toe.

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-- I am sure that some strain of biomachines that have less compassion will eventually develop and take over since the electrochemical mechanisms that produce compassion and concerns for suffering and human dignity and ethics are obviously weak traits in the human biomachines.


Obviously weak traits? From what stand point? Evolution? Nonsense.

Darwinian evolution is fairly irrelevent now anyway, and i don't see people engineering their children to be bastards, a) they'll be heavy regulation b) they won't want to because they have empathy - most people don't wish their children were psychopaths, c) those that did would get selected against because those with empathy would oppose them, just as we oppose psychopaths.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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ivorythumper
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Moonbat
Nov 8 2006, 01:33 PM
Quote:
 

Things like scruples about human suffering are also just the byproducts of consciousness and need not be taken seriously --


Pain is "just the byproduct of consciousness" feel free not to take it seriously next time you stub your toe.

Quote:
 

-- I am sure that some strain of biomachines that have less compassion will eventually develop and take over since the electrochemical mechanisms that produce compassion and concerns for suffering and human dignity and ethics are obviously weak traits in the human biomachines.


Obviously weak traits? From what stand point? Evolution? Nonsense.

Darwinian evolution is fairly irrelevent now anyway, and i don't see people engineering their children to be bastards, a) they'll be heavy regulation b) they won't want to because they have empathy - most people don't wish their children were psychopaths, c) those that did would get selected against because those with empathy would oppose them, just as we oppose psychopaths.

No, pain is not a byproduct of consciousness -- nonrational animals have pain. The ability to be conscious of pain is a byproduct of consciousness.

As for the other point -- ethics and compassion lead people to give advantage to others who natural forces would terminate, thus allowing the continuance of weakenesses in the gene pool. A strain that would have both consciousness and no moral scruples about terminating weak members would be more successful at survival and replication than one that has such scruples.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Moonbat
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No, pain is not a byproduct of consciousness -- nonrational animals have pain. The ability to be conscious of pain is a byproduct of consciousness.


Pain is the ability to be conscious of painful stimuli, the concept of unconscious pain is incoherent. (Animals blatently feel pain too)

In this particular context rationality appears pretty irrelevent - pain is real to me and to you too, denying it would be silly, empathy - the ability to 'appreciate' what it means for another to suffer, is also real to both us. You seem to think that it's possible to delude oneself into disbelieving this by using language that pretends that people aren't conscious. But people are conscious. So it doesn't work.

Denying one's experiences is absurd, if i told myself i didn't feel empathy, i would be lying to myself. I can no more deny that i feel empathy for those who suffer than i can deny that if you kick me in the shins it hurts or if i listen to Beethoven i feel inspiration.

It is part of what i am, of who i am. To deny it, is to deny me, which is self-evidently ridiculous.

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As for the other point -- ethics and compassion lead people to give advantage to others who natural forces would terminate, thus allowing the continuance of weakenesses in the gene pool. A strain that would have both consciousness and no moral scruples about terminating weak members would be more successful at survival and replication than one that has such scruples.


Traits are selected for if they confer an advantage in terms of reproductive fitness, genes conferring ruthlessness face negative selection pressure because the individuals who have them are more likely to get ostracised from society.

Empathy is a reproductively beneficial trait - that's why it's here. It probably relates to cooperation (teaming up makes hunting/building houses/etc. much easier), and to communication (knowing what it means to feel what someone else feels would seem a clear aid to understanding one another).

But Darwinian selection is irrelevent from the perspective of defining what ethics means to us on a personal level (though it can tell us where it came from, and why it is the way it is) and from the perspective of practical consequences - it's far too slow to matter now.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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ivorythumper
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Moonbat
Nov 8 2006, 03:17 PM
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No, pain is not a byproduct of consciousness -- nonrational animals have pain. The ability to be conscious of pain is a byproduct of consciousness.


Pain is the ability to be conscious of painful stimuli, the concept of unconscious pain is incoherent. (Animals blatently feel pain too)


Nope: you are confusing or perhaps conflating pain with the apprehension of pain. Pain is simply a basic bodily sensation induced by a noxious stimulus, received by naked nerve endings, characterized by physical discomfort. We as rational animals know that we hurt, a dog just hurts. It might be incoherent to you, but that just evinces your weak genes that need to be elimated from the gene pool. :wink:
Quote:
 


In this particular context rationality appears pretty irrelevent - pain is real to me and to you too, denying it would be silly, empathy - the ability to 'appreciate' what it means for another to suffer, is also real to both us. You seem to think that it's possible to delude oneself into disbelieving this by using language that pretends that people aren't conscious. But people are conscious. So it doesn't work.

Not at all. Empathy can easily be overridden. No one is denyng pain as an electrochemical reaction in the body to an adverse stimulus. You however valorize pain or freedom from pain as a basis for your ethic when that is an absurd position. The ability to endure pain, and even the willingness and ability to inflict pain, both for other ends, can also be considered important in the ethical mix. It has nothing to do with consciousness, you are just so enmeshed in your own subjectivity that you can't escape
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Denying one's experiences is absurd, if i told myself i didn't feel empathy, i would be lying to myself. I can no more deny that i feel empathy for those who suffer than i can deny that if you kick me in the shins it hurts or if i listen to Beethoven i feel inspiration.

It is part of what i am, of who i am. To deny it, is to deny me, which is self-evidently ridiculous.

So? It's all about you? You are the determiner of your own being and of all of us as well? The fact that a 3 month old fetus feels pain does not stop you from thinking of it as a blind sack of chemicals and outside the realm of ethical import and open to destruction with impunity. You don't even consider a three month or an eight month fetus as a human being, and you make all these claims about "sentiency" as the basis for ethics while turning a blind eye to the obvious infliction of pain for some other end that you choose to prefer.
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Quote:
 

As for the other point -- ethics and compassion lead people to give advantage to others who natural forces would terminate, thus allowing the continuance of weakenesses in the gene pool. A strain that would have both consciousness and no moral scruples about terminating weak members would be more successful at survival and replication than one that has such scruples.


Traits are selected for if they confer an advantage in terms of reproductive fitness, genes conferring ruthlessness face negative selection pressure because the individuals who have them are more likely to get ostracised from society.

That is only because part of modernist tweaking has been to propagandize us into gentle and passive subjects for manipulation. Again, just another experiment of the social engineers. Other societies valorize aggression and so have spread their genetic material more efficiently. Why do you think there are Viking characteristics -- tall, thin, red hair, blue eyes -- among the portuguese and mediterranean peoples?
Quote:
 

Empathy is a reproductively beneficial trait - that's why it's here. It probably relates to cooperation (teaming up makes hunting/building houses/etc. much easier), and to communication (knowing what it means to feel what someone else feels would seem a clear aid to understanding one another).

It serves a purpose, but there is no reason to think that that purpose has any last importance, and there is no need to absolutize it as you seem to be doing.
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But Darwinian selection is irrelevent from the perspective of defining what ethics means to us on a personal level (though it can tell us where it came from, and why it is the way it is) and from the perspective of practical consequences - it's far too slow to matter now.


You can do whatever you wish with the Moonbat biomachine. Your chemical reactions are real to you and mine are real to me. There is no basis for any sort of universal ethics, just a series of physical reactions that you process as important due to some sequence of physical reactions in the Moonbat biomachine. You are completely encased in your own subjectivity, which is really just the objective laws of physics in operation and creating the delusions of freewill, ethics, compassion and empathy as being important.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Moonbat
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Quote:
 

Pain is the ability to be conscious of painful stimuli, the concept of unconscious pain is incoherent. (Animals blatently feel pain too)


Nope: you are confusing or perhaps conflating pain with the apprehension of pain. Pain is simply a basic bodily sensation induced by a noxious stimulus, received by naked nerve endings, characterized by physical discomfort. We as rational animals know that we hurt, a dog just hurts. It might be incoherent to you, but that just evinces your weak genes that need to be elimated from the gene pool. :wink:


How do you know animals don't know they hurt? Spent much time as a dog? - After all they learn to avoid painfull stimuli.

In anycase i don't see the relevence, our concept of self might allow us to have some abstract concept of our own pain but clear;y what matters are actual sensations, perhaps our abstracts concepts themselves serve to create new sensations, perhaps knowing we are in pain itself amplifes pain and the same with joy, but again we fall back on the actual sensations, the percepts themselves as the elements of significance.

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Not at all. Empathy can easily be overridden. No one is denyng pain as an electrochemical reaction in the body to an adverse stimulus. You however valorize pain or freedom from pain as a basis for your ethic when that is an absurd position. The ability to endure pain, and even the willingness and ability to inflict pain, both for other ends, can also be considered important in the ethical mix. It has nothing to do with consciousness, you are just so enmeshed in your own subjectivity that you can't escape


Pain is an experience, it's mechansims are irrelevent to us the ones experiencing it, empathy is an experience it's mechanisms are irrelevent to us the ones experiencing it.

Empathy can be overridden by other drives, pain can also be overrideen by other drives (you can do something that will cause pain if you really want too - consider picking up a hot pan termporarily). Of course if we take one drive and sequential increase the pressure it applies eventually the subject will give in to that drive. That applies equally to any drive.

You can prerend you don't feel empathy if you like, you can pretend that the only reason you help those who suffer is because of some... actually you don't even have a coherent answer [Only incoherent words like "trancendental", which of course are never defined] which is why are debate is framed on my views.

Suggesting that if one realising that specifying the wavefunction of the universe specifies it's properties there are necessary consequences for how one seeks this universe to be is a nonsensical argument. It's a category error. How the universe is, and how we respond to that are necessarily seperate from our perspective. That we can describe ourselves objectively albeit abstractly alters nothing.

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So? It's all about you? You are the determiner of your own being and of all of us as well? The fact that a 3 month old fetus feels pain does not stop you from thinking of it as a blind sack of chemicals and outside the realm of ethical import and open to destruction with impunity. You don't even consider a three month or an eight month fetus as a human being, and you make all these claims about "sentiency" as the basis for ethics while turning a blind eye to the obvious infliction of pain for some other end that you choose to prefer.


If it feels pain, i value it; i value experience. I do not describe systems that feel as blind sacks of chemicals, the whole point of that "blind" word is to indicate that there is nothing conscious there. It is fertilised eggs that that are blind sacks of chemicals not embryos that can feel pain.

My views on ethics are necessarily connected to me. That's a truism. I value experience, i evaluate actions from the perspective of maximising positive conscious experience and minimising negative conscious experience across all conscious observers in the universe. Or atleast that is my utlimate framework, in practice i often appeal to empirically justified rules to do this because the evaluation is computationally intractable otherwise.

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That is only because part of modernist tweaking has been to propagandize us into gentle and passive subjects for manipulation. Again, just another experiment of the social engineers. Other societies valorize aggression and so have spread their genetic material more efficiently. Why do you think there are Viking characteristics -- tall, thin, red hair, blue eyes -- among the portuguese and mediterranean peoples?


Evolution goes back 3.5 billion years it has nothing to do with modernist tweaking. You can see the arms race between free riders and those they exploit across all social groups in nature from eusocial insect collonies to prides of lions to human beings.

Your example doesn't demonstrate your point:

1) It conflates genes and memes
2) No one said agression has not also been selected for, it's only if you want to genetically undo the neurological basis for ethics that you're going to be introuble.

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It serves a purpose, but there is no reason to think that that purpose has any last importance, and there is no need to absolutize it as you seem to be doing.


Importance? Importance to who? It's obviously important to us, because it is us.

Like i said pain serves an evolutionary purpose, feel free not to "absolutize" it next time you stub your toe. If you can do that i'll feel free to ignore the empathy i feel for those that suffer.

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You can do whatever you wish with the Moonbat biomachine. Your chemical reactions are real to you and mine are real to me. There is no basis for any sort of universal ethics, just a series of physical reactions that you process as important due to some sequence of physical reactions in the Moonbat biomachine. You are completely encased in your own subjectivity, which is really just the objective laws of physics in operation and creating the delusions of freewill, ethics, compassion and empathy as being important.


There is basis for a 'universal' ethics amongst organisms that have empathy, such organisms necessarilly appreciate other's experiences. They appreciate that pain is a negative experience. They appreciate that pain hurts. Ethics is a consideration of others. Empathic agents necessarily have a concept of ethics..

Psychopaths are forever doomed to be amoral, those of us who are not psychopaths are not.
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Daniel\
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Dogs know they feel pain. Dogs aren't stupid.


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