Transhumanism: is it viable?

[LionElJonson]

I split this from the "Misconduct found at Harvard Cognition Lab" thread. LionElJonson managed to hijack the thread from post one, so I just split out the OP. -S
Data falsification is never good. I hope Harvard will release information on what exactly it was he was lying about so that the science can continue. Hopefully this won't delay things like DNI or uplifting technologies too much.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Data falsification is never good. I hope Harvard will release information on what exactly it was he was lying about so that the science can continue. Hopefully this won't delay things like DNI or uplifting technologies too much.

Um... I hate to break it to you, but uplifting is fiction for a reason...

[LionElJonson]

Data falsification is never good. I hope Harvard will release information on what exactly it was he was lying about so that the science can continue. Hopefully this won't delay things like DNI or uplifting technologies too much.

Um... I hate to break it to you, but uplifting is fiction for a reason...

Humans are as smart as we are for a reason (or, more likely, a number of interrelated reasons), all of which are likely stored in DNA. Once we figure out what that is (or they are), we can reproduce it to produce uplifted animals, most likely starting with dolphins and chimps, and eventually moving onto other great apes, and then onto more extremely hybridized organisms like ravens genetically engineered with size genes from one of the larger flying birds, and the wing-claws from the hoatzin.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Data falsification is never good. I hope Harvard will release information on what exactly it was he was lying about so that the science can continue. Hopefully this won't delay things like DNI or uplifting technologies too much.

Um... I hate to break it to you, but uplifting is fiction for a reason...

Humans are as smart as we are for a reason (or, more likely, a number of interrelated reasons), all of which are likely stored in DNA. Once we figure out what that is (or they are), we can reproduce it to produce uplifted animals, most likely starting with dolphins and chimps, and eventually moving onto other great apes, and then onto more extremely hybridized organisms like ravens genetically engineered with size genes from one of the larger flying birds, and the wing-claws from the hoatzin.

God damn you transhumanists are stupid.

Yes. The instructions for being intelligent are stored in our DNA. But there is not an intelligence gene. It is a complex network of regulatory genes that also play roles regulating our other developmental processes combined with specific genes that control the development of certain structures. It is not a nice neat set of instructions. It is a freakishly complex morass of instructions that would probably fuck up the development of any animal we tried to uplift.

To say nothing about most of them not having a brain case of sufficient size.

[Johonebesus]

In other words it could be hypothetically possible, in a few centuries, if we had an absolutely perfect understanding of exactly how the entire genome of the target animal works and could precisely engineer the whole thing. But at that point we might as well just build a new creature from scratch, as it would probably be easier. Of course, I still don't see why anyone would want to bother with this "uplift" business anyway.

[Eleas]

In other words it could be hypothetically possible, in a few centuries, if we had an absolutely perfect understanding of exactly how the entire genome of the target animal works and could precisely engineer the whole thing. But at that point we might as well just build a new creature from scratch, as it would probably be easier. Of course, I still don't see why anyone would want to bother with this "uplift" business anyway.

That one's easy: removing the bells and whistles, uplifting as a concept is all about conferring our own Specialness unto the benighted animal Heathens, so that they too can experience the Grace of Being Just Like Us.

Or in other words, proselytism by way of bioengineering.

[lazerus]

God damn you transhumanists are stupid.

Yes. The instructions for being intelligent are stored in our DNA. But there is not an intelligence gene. It is a complex network of regulatory genes that also play roles regulating our other developmental processes combined with specific genes that control the development of certain structures. It is not a nice neat set of instructions. It is a freakishly complex morass of instructions that would probably fuck up the development of any animal we tried to uplift.

To say nothing about most of them not having a brain case of sufficient size.

Woah woah. Woah.

Hold the fuck up.

Transhumanists aren't stupid. He's stupid.

I think you should retract that comment.

[Alyrium Denryle]

God damn you transhumanists are stupid.

Yes. The instructions for being intelligent are stored in our DNA. But there is not an intelligence gene. It is a complex network of regulatory genes that also play roles regulating our other developmental processes combined with specific genes that control the development of certain structures. It is not a nice neat set of instructions. It is a freakishly complex morass of instructions that would probably fuck up the development of any animal we tried to uplift.

To say nothing about most of them not having a brain case of sufficient size.

Woah woah. Woah.

Hold the fuck up.

Transhumanists aren't stupid. He's stupid.

I think you should retract that comment.

I stand by my statement. The concept of the nerdrapture singularity, freedom from death, post scarcity etc is just too silly for me to contemplate.

[Akhlut]

Relating to the 'uplifting' of animals: what the hell purpose does that serve, anyway? Even if we could give, say, tigers the same capacity for thought as humans, what does that do? A single uplifted tiger is a completely alienated being, without a single being it can relate to as an equal or having a similar mindset. A population of them is suddenly dependent on humans for every need (due to the lack of opposable thumbs and all), and yet is completely alienated from the humans too. A population of them that has the ability to manufacture their own tools does good for whom? Yeah, they can build things and make their own novel creations, but to what goal? What if they hate their existence? Why can't we just let animals be to live their own lives?

[Ziggy Stardust]

I stand by my statement. The concept of the nerdrapture singularity, freedom from death, post scarcity etc is just too silly for me to contemplate.

I have to agree with Alyrium on this one. Every time I see an argument about it on this board, the transhumanist crowd never actually produces any evidence, they just mumble about computers and that singularity is inevitable. I can't find the thread, now, but IIRC Wyrm had a very thorough debunking of the whole nonsense at one point.

Anyway, that's enough of this thread hijack ...

Well, his career is over...

It definitely doesn't look good for him. The question is whether the Harvard investigation will actually accuse of him of outright falsification or not. It was certainly sloppy science on his part, but when it comes to animal behavior, especially of those animals that we consider to be "smarter" than others, it is definitely easy to read too much into what you are seeing, and ascribe meaning that isn't there. I mean, either way his career is dead, except possibly as a lecturer somewhere. He certainly isn't getting any big research grants ever again ...

[Molyneux]

God damn you transhumanists are stupid.

Yes. The instructions for being intelligent are stored in our DNA. But there is not an intelligence gene. It is a complex network of regulatory genes that also play roles regulating our other developmental processes combined with specific genes that control the development of certain structures. It is not a nice neat set of instructions. It is a freakishly complex morass of instructions that would probably fuck up the development of any animal we tried to uplift.

To say nothing about most of them not having a brain case of sufficient size.

...and there's no way that studying the development and structure of animal and human minds could ever lead to an understanding of how to modify that, no sirree. It's sure impossible that we could ever learn to create hybrid organisms, yep!

Outright uplifting an animal might always be a fantasy, but you're talking like there's no way we can ever understand the nature or development of intelligence. News flash: our current lack of a model for a phenomenon doesn't prevent us from learning more about it, dipweed.


And to be on-topic: falsifying data is harmful to all of science, I hope whatever valid experiments this guy ran haven't been irretrievably tainted by this stain.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Outright uplifting an animal might always be a fantasy, but you're talking like there's no way we can ever understand the nature or development of intelligence. News flash: our current lack of a model for a phenomenon doesn't prevent us from learning more about it, dipweed.

Understanding is one thing. Creating an artificial brain via computer we could probably do. Uplifting animals, creating functioning hybrids from distantly related organisms, or tinkering majorly with the brains of an existing organism... no. That is fantasy. Understanding something does not give you the ability to modify it. It would be easier to create an entirely new vertebrate from scratch than it would be to tinker with an existing one without fucking it up. Though even creating a single cell from scratch is beyond our current capability, we have to use templates.

[Zixinus]

Humans are as smart as we are for a reason (or, more likely, a number of interrelated reasons), all of which are likely stored in DNA. Once we figure out what that is (or they are), we can reproduce it to produce uplifted animals, most likely starting with dolphins and chimps, and eventually moving onto other great apes, and then onto more extremely hybridized organisms like ravens genetically engineered with size genes from one of the larger flying birds, and the wing-claws from the hoatzin.

Why on Earth would you want to do that?

Really, humans are insane enough as it is. Why add the insanity and neurosis of various uplifted animals, that likely can't contribute anything meaningful to a human workforce?

[Molyneux]

Outright uplifting an animal might always be a fantasy, but you're talking like there's no way we can ever understand the nature or development of intelligence. News flash: our current lack of a model for a phenomenon doesn't prevent us from learning more about it, dipweed.

Understanding is one thing. Creating an artificial brain via computer we could probably do. Uplifting animals, creating functioning hybrids from distantly related organisms, or tinkering majorly with the brains of an existing organism... no. That is fantasy. Understanding something does not give you the ability to modify it. It would be easier to create an entirely new vertebrate from scratch than it would be to tinker with an existing one without fucking it up. Though even creating a single cell from scratch is beyond our current capability, we have to use templates.

Just like it's a fantasy to create a computer smaller than a room, right? Just because we can't do something now doesn't mean that we'll never have the capacity to do so. Hell, tinkering with the brains is something we've been trying to do ourselves for centuries now, albeit with startlingly crude means.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Outright uplifting an animal might always be a fantasy, but you're talking like there's no way we can ever understand the nature or development of intelligence. News flash: our current lack of a model for a phenomenon doesn't prevent us from learning more about it, dipweed.

Understanding is one thing. Creating an artificial brain via computer we could probably do. Uplifting animals, creating functioning hybrids from distantly related organisms, or tinkering majorly with the brains of an existing organism... no. That is fantasy. Understanding something does not give you the ability to modify it. It would be easier to create an entirely new vertebrate from scratch than it would be to tinker with an existing one without fucking it up. Though even creating a single cell from scratch is beyond our current capability, we have to use templates.

Just like it's a fantasy to create a computer smaller than a room, right? Just because we can't do something now doesn't mean that we'll never have the capacity to do so. Hell, tinkering with the brains is something we've been trying to do ourselves for centuries now, albeit with startlingly crude means.

When I said tinkering with the brains, I meant development thereof. A single living cell is more complicated than any modern computer. A vertebrate has a development such that messing around with developmental genes organism wide can and will fuck up the entire organism. There is a reason why most germ cell mutations are lethal to the developing organism and why the majority of developing embryos are spontaneously aborted. All you are going to do seriously mucking around with those beyond preemptively fixing mutations through gene modification is cause a lot of misery and death. Nature is a jury rigged mess, it does not lend itself well to engineers. As I said, building a vertebrate from scratch with a completely new genome would be easier.

This is not like building new computer components or inventing a new type of processor. There you can start from first principles. You cannot do this with a living thing. To complicated. To interconnected.

[Molyneux]

When I said tinkering with the brains, I meant development thereof. A single living cell is more complicated than any modern computer. A vertebrate has a development such that messing around with developmental genes organism wide can and will fuck up the entire organism. There is a reason why most germ cell mutations are lethal to the developing organism and why the majority of developing embryos are spontaneously aborted. All you are going to do seriously mucking around with those beyond preemptively fixing mutations through gene modification is cause a lot of misery and death. Nature is a jury rigged mess, it does not lend itself well to engineers. As I said, building a vertebrate from scratch with a completely new genome would be easier.

This is not like building new computer components or inventing a new type of processor. There you can start from first principles. You cannot do this with a living thing. To complicated. To interconnected.

Yet tinkering with developing brains is something that we also see in today's research, although generally in something much less complex than mammalian brains. The impossibility of modifying developing critters today is not evidence for the eternal impossibility of doing such; you're talking about a field that is still in infancy.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Yet tinkering with developing brains is something that we also see in today's research, although generally in something much less complex than mammalian brains. The impossibility of modifying developing critters today is not evidence for the eternal impossibility of doing such; you're talking about a field that is still in infancy.

Yes. We tinker with it through knocking out genes in those specific regions to see what their functions are (and there are usually several). No one is thinking about or trying to figure out ways to modify them so they bigger, stronger, of faster than before. Why? Because it is an interlocking morass. You modify a gene and you create incompatabilities which kill the organism.

It is also done through lessioning the region to see what that part of the brain does by noticing the lack of it. All of this is of course done in as simple organisms as possible.

[Molyneux]

Yet tinkering with developing brains is something that we also see in today's research, although generally in something much less complex than mammalian brains. The impossibility of modifying developing critters today is not evidence for the eternal impossibility of doing such; you're talking about a field that is still in infancy.

Yes. We tinker with it through knocking out genes in those specific regions to see what their functions are (and there are usually several). No one is thinking about or trying to figure out ways to modify them so they bigger, stronger, of faster than before. Why? Because it is an interlocking morass. You modify a gene and you create incompatabilities which kill the organism.

It is also done through lessioning the region to see what that part of the brain does by noticing the lack of it. All of this is of course done in as simple organisms as possible.

As I said: the field is still in its infancy. How does anything support your assertion that modifying the development of complex organisms will never be possible?

[Alyrium Denryle]

Yet tinkering with developing brains is something that we also see in today's research, although generally in something much less complex than mammalian brains. The impossibility of modifying developing critters today is not evidence for the eternal impossibility of doing such; you're talking about a field that is still in infancy.

Yes. We tinker with it through knocking out genes in those specific regions to see what their functions are (and there are usually several). No one is thinking about or trying to figure out ways to modify them so they bigger, stronger, of faster than before. Why? Because it is an interlocking morass. You modify a gene and you create incompatabilities which kill the organism.

It is also done through lessioning the region to see what that part of the brain does by noticing the lack of it. All of this is of course done in as simple organisms as possible.

As I said: the field is still in its infancy. How does anything support your assertion that modifying the development of complex organisms will never be possible?

It may be possible at the technological point where we have transcended our physical bodies and become vorlons. Put it that way. It is an inherent constraint on our technological development. Nothing is stopping us from building a synthetic zebra. However modification of the development (and I am not talking simple things like making something taller or shorter. Simple gene complexes control that) of a complex organism is beyond the scope of what we will be able to do. At least not for so long that the idea can be relegated to the realm of fantasy.

It is like postulating wormhole travel. Sure. Someday in the far far distant future it may be a possibility, but for now it is a notion to be scoffed at.

[Molyneux]

It may be possible at the technological point where we have transcended our physical bodies and become vorlons. Put it that way. It is an inherent constraint on our technological development. Nothing is stopping us from building a synthetic zebra. However modification of the development (and I am not talking simple things like making something taller or shorter. Simple gene complexes control that) of a complex organism is beyond the scope of what we will be able to do. At least not for so long that the idea can be relegated to the realm of fantasy.

It is like postulating wormhole travel. Sure. Someday in the far far distant future it may be a possibility, but for now it is a notion to be scoffed at.

If I may ask: is this something that you work with on a regular basis? Do you have any profession experience in this field?

[Alyrium Denryle]

It may be possible at the technological point where we have transcended our physical bodies and become vorlons. Put it that way. It is an inherent constraint on our technological development. Nothing is stopping us from building a synthetic zebra. However modification of the development (and I am not talking simple things like making something taller or shorter. Simple gene complexes control that) of a complex organism is beyond the scope of what we will be able to do. At least not for so long that the idea can be relegated to the realm of fantasy.

It is like postulating wormhole travel. Sure. Someday in the far far distant future it may be a possibility, but for now it is a notion to be scoffed at.

If I may ask: is this something that you work with on a regular basis? Do you have any profession experience in this field?

I study behavioral and tradeoffs tradeoffs and behavioral syndromes relating to anti-predator defense and interspecific competition. It has required a least a passing knowledge of developmental biology and genetics. However I do not study development of nervous systems. I do however have a decent amount of experience with genetic incompatabilities, as that is what I did part of my undergrad work with. Examining nuclear-cytoplasmic incompatability in recombinant inbred lines of wasps.

Put it this way. Say you want to modify Cytochrome C Oxidase to make it more efficient and thus increase ATP production, a comparatively simple tasks. Even function neutral mutations in this single gene can create incompatibilities in the rest of the electron transport chain that kill the organism during development. That is how this gene has actually driven speciation in those wasps.

[Marcus Aurelius]

It is like postulating wormhole travel. Sure. Someday in the far far distant future it may be a possibility, but for now it is a notion to be scoffed at.

Let's put it this way: it's certainly possible to extensively modify complex traits of complex organisms to our liking, but it's not something that will be relevant within this century even if we assume no breaks in advance of biological sciences. I would not make predictions going any further than that, however, since there are too many variables, which makes such predictions useless. Nevertheless, I agree that right now such ideas have no practical relevance. For example switching to fusion power is a more worthwhile goal and a lot more practical within the next 50-100 years despite all the problems involved in controlled nuclear fusion.

[Molyneux]

It may be possible at the technological point where we have transcended our physical bodies and become vorlons. Put it that way. It is an inherent constraint on our technological development. Nothing is stopping us from building a synthetic zebra. However modification of the development (and I am not talking simple things like making something taller or shorter. Simple gene complexes control that) of a complex organism is beyond the scope of what we will be able to do. At least not for so long that the idea can be relegated to the realm of fantasy.

It is like postulating wormhole travel. Sure. Someday in the far far distant future it may be a possibility, but for now it is a notion to be scoffed at.

If I may ask: is this something that you work with on a regular basis? Do you have any profession experience in this field?

I study behavioral and tradeoffs tradeoffs and behavioral syndromes relating to anti-predator defense and interspecific competition. It has required a least a passing knowledge of developmental biology and genetics. However I do not study development of nervous systems. I do however have a decent amount of experience with genetic incompatabilities, as that is what I did part of my undergrad work with. Examining nuclear-cytoplasmic incompatability in recombinant inbred lines of wasps.

Put it this way. Say you want to modify Cytochrome C Oxidase to make it more efficient and thus increase ATP production, a comparatively simple tasks. Even function neutral mutations in this single gene can create incompatibilities in the rest of the electron transport chain that kill the organism during development. That is how this gene has actually driven speciation in those wasps.

Thanks; you know more on this topic than I do, I'm a computer programmer.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Computers are awesome for engineers and programmers. If you want a new program you may need to design it around an OS ja? But from there you can go from first principles and code into it whatever you need. Sure you need to bug-check and fix typos, other than that though no problem. Each command is just that. A single command, maybe you could have something referring back to that command as part of an algorithm. Am I more or less correct thus far?

Now take a biological system, just the genetic code. You have multiple reading frames (three), and multiple splice sights so that each gene can actually code for several different variations of a protein. Within a single cell, genes get turned on or off, or have their transcription rates modified by positive feedback loops, negative feedback loops and several different types of upstream (prior to gene), and downstream (after the gene) regulatory controls, in addition to inhibition of translation and epigenetic modification of the histone which prohibits the binding of transcriptase... All of this in the case of a single cell is regulated by the myriad of gene products which are produced not only by that gene, but everything else in the genome as well as stimulus from the external environment. That is just one cells.

Then keep in mind that in a multicellular organism the cells are signaling eachother as well through a variety of signal transduction pathways. Once you have the complexity of that down, you get into the development of something like an insect or vertebrate and your brain wants to curl into a corner and perform fellatio on a shotgun.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Oh, and I forgot. One signaling protein or gene can have multiple functions... Just saying