wired.com — Craig Ventner has created the first Genome from scratch - essentially accomplishing the inverse of the human genome project - by taking an almost 600,000 long base pair sequence from a computer and turning it into a DNA strand. This allows scientists to create living "robots" from scratch, and could lead to man-made biofuel producing cells.
Jan 24, 2008 View in Crawl 4
thejoe88Jan 26, 2008
Unfortunately for you, there is no evidence for any intelligent being creating us. Human beings are product of evolution by natural selection.
blast_flameJan 27, 2008
Mr breen took a page from history and took a truly good concept (transhumanism) and distorted it to achieve his goals. This does not mean that their is anything inherently bad about transhumanism.
starrychloeJan 27, 2008
If we design little living robots to produce chemicals for us, I wonder at which point does it become slavery? How many base-pairs would it take to be considered a slave? Obviously eventually we (or South Korea) will create a big enough genome to create a creature as complex as a human. If we make it do stuff for us, will that be slavery? This also reminds me of Alien 4, 12 Monkeys, and I Am Legend - what are the side effects?
watchdogxJan 27, 2008
I lack faith in humanity.
jabrthelJan 27, 2008
Of course I believe people should proceed cautiously... I do, however, sometimes get defensive when people suggest that we should restrict the free flow of knowledge. Our differences on this subject of precaution most likely arises because we are arguing from different perspectives. I believe you are speaking from the perspective of how people should proceed in their personal lives, I'm speaking from the perspective of what role gov't should play in all this. This is why your refute of my logic doesn't stand, since in my personal life I would never do such a thing and yet I believe that gov't should not keep another from doing that. Another thing I should have made more clear is the distinction between my feelings for punishing people (by restricting info) for crimes and mistakes they could possibly commit and my feelings for punishing people for crimes they actually commit. I am for the latter and not the former. Hence, if an energy corporation were to dump it's nuclear waste on an acre of land they own in a neighborhood populated by people, the result being massive death, I believe they should be justly punished. This is because massive radiation from the waste invaded the property of the people and killed them. The ultimate point here is that tests and occurrences have been documented on this. And, yes, it might be possible to find a person immune to such radiation...but the fact remains that it hasn't been PROVEN that such a man or woman exists and thus the corporation committed a crime. If it were proven that such a person exists, then the corporation would still have committed a crime because it is known that a large portion of the population were still not immune and thus they invaded their property and put them in harms way. Further, even if all the population turned out to be immune... then they still would have committed a crime (albeit a lesser one) since they were still invading their property with radiation. I often assume that when others call for restriction of things, they aim to use gov't to force others to do so... not voluntary action. As I said before, there isn't an object in this world that can't be made used in a dangerous fashion. Some might argue that there is need to restrict people's knowledge and actions when the result of such things might become massive catastrophe. And to this I ask how much potential (keep in mind that it is potential not real we're talking about) danger is too much danger? 1 possible person dead? 10? 100? 1,000,000? To place a number on that potential danger would be completely arbitrary and necessarily emotional. As a hypothetical, I can stomach 1 accidental death a year (as a result of people with peanut allergies accidentally eating peanuts for example) but 10 deaths a month would be too much and hence we should ban the product. As a quick side note, if the company were claiming that peanuts were safe for everybody, then the company should be convicted in the same manner that cigarette manufacturers were. Anyways, that distinction between the number of deaths is undeniably an emotional one, not one based on reason. Because if one death were ok, then 2 should be ok and so on. Or, inversely, if 10 were bad, then 9 should also be bad and so on. After all, every human life must be equal, so we can't sit around and say it's ok when 9 people a month die and suddenly call for intervention when it becomes 10. My answer to whether or not our gov't should be based on reason or emotion is this; when put on trial in front of a jury of my peers, I wish to be convicted not for emotional reasons but for ones based on logic... and this is not at all possible if the very laws they are convicting me for trespassing were written with emotion.The problem here, then, becomes one of what we should do when tragedies could occur and there is no one to blame. Should accidental deaths be acceptable under law? Or should they be unacceptable? This problem encompasses the one you are worried about. The group of scientists in your first example, the ones trying to cure cancer, are not to blame for the death they caused anymore than a person is for the deaths he causes when he unwittingly introduces the Ebola virus into a population. Should we ban all physical interactions between people in the name of preventing deaths by communicable disease? If so, then we should also restrict the knowledge of the creation of genomes in the name of preventing your scenario. If not, then we should not restrict that knowledge.These two options are the only ones available to us when we wish to form a gov't based on reason and not emotion. Either we should accept that accidents occur and we should not use the force of gov't to prevent or persecute blameless occurrences or we should view blameless accidents as unacceptable and hence use the force of gov't to prevent there occurrence by any means necessary. To be logically consistent while taking the latter view would result in Orwellian actions. Everything from the banning of peanuts and the implementation of a morning calisthenics program to the restriction/banning of potentially dangerous research.
Closed AccountJan 27, 2008
You can believe whatever you want as long as you don't make a empirical claim that can be tested.
searcadeJan 28, 2008
Hero...
spudgun88Jan 29, 2008
That was for phibit, by the way.
linageeMar 20, 2008
mmm... shredded wheat.
thejackylDec 4, 2008
@ manitoba:If it started attacking human cells, your immune system would take it down.