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Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid
eglamkowski writes "Researchers Discover Gene That Controls Ability To Learn Fear.
The poor, misguided scientists say this will enable them to treat people who suffer from anxiety, panic disorders or depression(??). Of course, it also means an evil, despotic country that is cloning humans for its army can make its soldiers completely fearless, eliminating one source of possible defeat on the battlefield (breaking of morale).
(Why does there seem to be no cynical scientists? ;-)"
Once the money's in the bag though, anything can happen!
Pathman, Free (as in GPL) 3D Pac Man
There are perfectly good things that can be done with all this genetic enhancement to eliminate fear. Like creating a CLONE ARMY for myself so I can TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!
In time, you shall call me master. MUAHAHAHA!!
Repeal the DMCA!
It is ironic, but unfunny, that you would use scare tactics to try get us all worked up about this fear research.
Why does there seem to be no cynical scientists?
Because, in general, scientists tend to have, as their goal, knowledge, regardless of any potential side effects.
Knowledge, in an of itself, is never a bad thing. Was Einstein's e=mc2 evil because it enabled the discovery of the atomic bomb? Or course not.
A Minesweeper clone that doesn't suck
I hope that description was in jest. First of all, it only stops learned fear. This would mean that you would somehow have to stop these soldiers from learning fear of combat situations. You would have to do that at a young age, then how the hell would you train them?
seriously there are some dangerous area you have to get into if you want to solve serious problems. I mean, would could probably create ppl with 4 arms, or 2 kidneys right now, but we don't.
The research will be done no matter what, I would prefer all the info be out in the open rather than behind closed doors in some "evil empire". Please be cautious of your cynicisms of science. It is this mass fear propaganda that got the whole world to be afraid of biotech (which is currently saving their lives).
Right now we could possibly have treatment for ppl who are paralized, but limitations on stem cell research slow this down. This is mainly due to misinformed ppl spouting off untrue facts and unlikey predictions to scare the ignorant general public.
Please think before you speak, for everyone's sake
http://monkeyserver.com --- weeeeee
All the cynics are too busy editing Slashdot.
I understand the humorours cynicism but, fearless soldiers would be such a waste of money. Lack of fear means lack of caution. Imagine soldiers running out into battle with no reguard for themselves. Sounds like an easy target to me. It would be like our armies were made up of DooM baddies set on "I'm too young to die"
-- Insert wisdom here:
This has only been observed in rodent specimens. However similar mammals are across the neural make-up spectrum, there is still little proof that this might work in a human brain.
Being more complex, our brain might not be susceptible to such treatment. I'll be keeping an eye on this effort, however; for it could yield some effective treatments for some of the most common mental disorders. These would be depression, anxiety, bi-polar disease, etc..
Being Bi-Polar myself, this would be welcome.
Of all the Universal Constants, here's one I know: Nice guys finish last
That editors were the sharpest tools in the box.
Fear serves a number of useful roles, not least the one of self-preservation. What's that old saw about discretion being the better part of valour?
I can think of two reasons why this is just BS on the part of the editors (well, many others too, but let's leave that for now). Let's take as a starting point that the leap is valid.
Possible follow-on points:
1. 'Emotional intelligence' seems to play a role in most people's rationality (no, I'm not going to dig up the reference to the EQ book; that's for a Google / Amazon search) and intelligence generally.
2. Removing fear could possibly remove a certain level of rational appreciation of things ie/ the need to keep oneself intact.
3. This would be tantamount to partially lobotomising one's own army. Would any country want to do this?
========================================
Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
The fact remains that the research still isn't being done.
;)
Sure, Bush put limits on stem cell research mainly because of the religious outcry. If he hadn't, many of those scientists still wouldn't have proper funding to conduct the type of research that could yield the results you speak of.
We're talking testing, MAJOR testing. Testing that before yielding results, could cost hundreds of millions. Think the drug companies would pay for that? I don't. Think the government would? Not enough.
At this point in time, it's not the government holding science back. It's the funding. Same with our space program.
Properly funded, we could have had a base on the moon by now. We are already capable of doing it, we just need to test it. That testing is in the same dilemma as the stem cell research.
It all comes down to resources, not law or limit. Half of our HIV inhibiting drugs wouldn't be around if all the research was done legally
Of all the Universal Constants, here's one I know: Nice guys finish last
Um, our side could use this too. From what i understand, a big part of baisc trainig si to keep people from just locking up and freezing in combat. Id be willing to bet anyone with an extreme case of the shakes might like a pill to fix it for emergencies, like dramamine for seasickness.
For that matter, this seems like really bad idea in a conscript army, if theyre not afraid of anything, shats to stop them from shooting their own officers?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Of course, it also means an evil, despotic country that is cloning humans for its army can make its soldiers completely fearless, eliminating one source of possible defeat on the battlefield (breaking of morale).
This just in: Scientists in an evil, despotic country have started a crash program to develop a way to "turn off" the gene that causes fear in their existing soldiers, and make them fearless in battle.
The code-name for this program is Alcohol.
Ed Wedig
Graphic design services
docbrown.net
Fear is a very big part of how evil despots maintain their grip on power. A fearless army wouldn't be afraid of their evil dictator leader or his secret police.
Maybe we should "accidentally" leak the secrets to our favorite evil despots...
It's easy to make up & spread cool- and credible-sounding stuff. Finding & checking hard facts is hard work.
But the gene that controls learning to fear itself.
If I was a hypothetical dictator or mad scientist I'd rather create a population of people who easily learn to fear me and thus were easily coerced into servitude and on the whole rather tractable.
Muha... Muha.. Muhahaha..
This is decent timing for the Daredevil movie, isn't it? Could actually have a 'man with no fear'....
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
I guess psychology and war are not the editor's strong points.
/. editors?
Fearlessness is NOT related to military morale. Morale seems to depend more on confidence of victory or of trust of immediate leadership. Fear is what a soldier focuses on FOR THE MOMENT. Many soldiers have had good morale and froze in actual battle.
Second, there is NO MENTION of military uses or effects of this discovery in the article, so where does the editor of a tech column get off going in that direction?
I would suggest you know about a thing before you use the power of editorship to make your own paranoid and knee-jerk reactions seem appropriate.
And speaking of paranoia -- embedded fear quickly becomes that in any person, warping his/her view of the world into seeming to be the dangerous place his/her body/emotions feel it is.
In effect, you make the world that fits your expectations.
Perhaps that's why there are no cynical scientists -- they are creating something. Can we say there are no paranoid
Perhaps our editor could use some of the results of the experimental cure mentioned in the article.
We are subject to Michael's assinine editorial comments. Just to lay everybody's fears to rest (ha) there will be no such army, because none of the soldiers would respect the chain of command. What a jackass.
?-|||-----x<*))))><
In your case, I think "mastur" is more appropriate.
My fine colleagues at the hhmi (look to my e-amil address) have discovered a gene that REPRESSES the fear response.
In general, the thing you can do with that knowledge is to REMOVE the genes effect; it is far more difficult to enhance the gene. Overexpressing the gene (so that it was always on) would almost-certainly produce nasty brain defects.
"When we compared the mouse strains, we saw a powerful enhancement of learned fear in the knockout mice,"
Emphasis added.
Once they understand WHAT IT IS THAT THE GENE INHIBITS, then they may be able to make some fearless mice.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Because the fearless clone army makers saw them as a threat and wiped them out!
Look, the studies have been done, and everyone knows that this is infeasable. As the fear level drops, the urge to eat brains increases at an alarming rate.
As Napoleon said, "An army marches on its stomach", and there is just not enough brains in the world to have a whole zombie army.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
There is no magic bullet gene for "solving" large-scale phenotypical behavioral issues. Many genes control the behavioral phenotypes we observe.
You needn't worry about an army of fearless clones anytime soon.
Even if we discover enough about how genes relate to observed phenotypical behavioral patterns, that doesn't mean that it'll be useful in creating an army.
Fear is not some useless emotion which serves no purpose. It is something which has been evolutionarily selected for because it leads to better survivorship. The gazels that didn't fear the lions got eaten. Fear plays a useful and necessary role in any conflict.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
So, if Yoda had known about this, he could have treated Anakin and prevented him from becoming Darth Vader.
One of the things we did was to tell him that we heard him say a swear word and that we were going to report him to the counselors. He would then start crying and saying that he didn't say a swear word, pleading and begging for us not to do it. No other kid at camp would have fallen for this since the counsellors were just stoned out college students working a summer job, and would have said 'yeah whatever' to any such tattle tale. We did this same trick to him dozens of times and would consistently get the same desperately fearful response.
We also used to say 'Boo' to him alot. He would always jump and scream. One did not even have to sneak up on him before saying 'Boo!' to get him to jump. It would work even if he was looking right at you the whole time. If you waited five seconds or so you could 'Boo' him again and he would always jump.
Sometimes we would chant 'spiiiiders' or tell him there were maggots or other bugs on him to get him to squeal real loud. Or rock the canoe. Once he crapped in his pants when some kids did that.
He never seemed to learn that our lame tricks were just tricks and he was very afraid of anything that could remotely be considered scary.
Once I asked him if he was retarded or something because I didn't want to be picking on a retarded person. It was against the moral code I had set for myself, and even offered to kick some asses for him if he was retarded, but he insisted that he was not retarded. I don't think he was retarded since he was normal in other ways but fear and gullibility.
So I tormented him guiltlessly with the other children. I figured that this guy must have been over sheltered or something by his parents and that he needed to learn stop being such a wuss if he was going to survive in the world even if it meant a few tears.
But over sheltering doesn't explain his extreme gullibility and inability to learn to detect the lame pranks we repeatedly tortured him with.
Of course my ( and others ) callous cruelty was inexcusable regardless of whether he admitted to having a certified disease like mental retardation. He was too soft a target for our boredom inspired harassment, and I regret taking part in it. But maybe this is understandable to anyone who has read Lord of the Flies
Kids are cruel to anyone who is different and there were others that got picked on like the time at a sleep over when about 20 kids lined up to jump off the porch railing onto an unfortunate sleeping fat girl who wouldn't wake up from sleeping no matter how many World Wrestling Federation moves the other children tried on her sleeping bag covered body.
I suspected someone would get in trouble so I bugged out early after a few shoves and yelling GET UP a few times, but watched as kids beat on her for a half hour before she finally awoke coughing and crying - barely able to breathe.
Only one kid got in some trouble for that because he was there when the counselors came.
My question for slashdot readers is: Does anyone know of a disease that could make Joe the way he was? Over fearful, socially gullible but otherwise normal?
Eat at Joe's.
As a competent evil overlord, I will NOT create fearless troops. Troops that are fearless will not be afraid to try to overthrow ME.
--
Note - any henchman that thinks that this is insightful instead of funny is reading too much into it, and should be immediately sent for a session with my new zombification system.
Liquor
Sanity is a highly overrated commodity.
I guess the joke was on all of you in the end ;)
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
Ummm, IANALA (I am not a line animal) but I should think that truly fearless super soldiers would be a baaaaaad idea.
Officer: "You guys! Charge through that minefield, dodge the mortar rounds, and take out those machine gunners! Get on with it before it gets dark!"
FSS: "Okay!" [kaboom!]
Officer: "Dang, I better get some more super soldiers."
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
What I would like to know is what syndrom, or
family tragedy, sexual abuse, or siblings caused you to behave in this psychotic manner?
The fact that you participated in this act with
a group is no excuse.
You should see a psychologist or therapist
I'm worried about the /. science section.
Let me explain -
Two of the current main stories on the science page (this one and the one on influenza) were written as a reaction to science rather than a reporting of science. As an example - the title of this topic is "Be afraid, be very afraid" however, if you read and think about the actual science there is nothing really to be afraid of - just the opposite.
Two points that have been made to counter the opinion of this research being used in the military, and that I agree with are -
1) Humans are way to complex to have one pathway that leads to the fear response - therefore - any drug that inhibits this pathway will not be effective due to the other pathways being available and
2) This article describes the learning of fear, not the behavior of fear.
The same goes for the previous article on looking at the influence virus from 1918. The fear shown in the original post is countered by the actual science.
I don't want to read fearful rants about science. I want to read the science and decide for myself.
Of course, it also means an evil, despotic country that is cloning humans for its army can make its soldiers completely fearless, eliminating one source of possible defeat on the battlefield
No, they will end their life earlier by not looking both ways before crossing the street.
But imagine all the cool Extreme Darwin Awards TV shows it would generate.
Table-ized A.I.
They are called violent criminals.
There are exceptions of course. A soccer mom driving in the mountains at night in the rain while feeding french fries to their kid in the back seat while talking on the cell phone probably counts too. Yes, that is a true story. I was scared sh1tless while it was happening, so I definitely have the fear gene.
Anyone truly without a fear gene (or whatever) probably wouldn't survive to adulthood.
I mean, look at how many stupid things we do as kids/adolescents even with fear genes -- it's amazing that as many of us make it as do.
There's a reason that fear gene evolved, after all.
-- Alastair
Huh? I thought Be was already dead.
1) The scientists found out that knocking out a gene _enhanced_ the effect of fear.
2) You can't have soldiers without fear.
a) An army needs authority and hierachy, respect does work, but you need some fear.
b) It's the fearless ones who get everyone killed. The scared stiff ones may be useless but at least they won't break cover and shout "Haha stupid! You're shooting the wrong direction!" to 300 enemy soldiers.
c) Even if everyone somehow survives, the fearless ones will have not learnt their lesson. So if they don't get locked up, someone will probably frag em.
3) The soldiers may not even survive childhood without fear. Even if they do, they won't survive battle training.
e.g. Sarge yelling: "For the last time @#$@%!$. Throw the grenade not the pin @!$$#%!".
Fear is necessary, as long as there are bad consequences. Only fools have no fear.
The Viking battle religion probably helped.
Even today, there are many who believe that dying in certain battles will guarantee them a place in heaven. Which is especially encouraging to those who figure they have accumulated more than enough minus points for the alternative.
Its ALWAYS turned on by default. I mean we are all afraid of different things/situations.
IANAPsi
Depression is associated with a kind of fear. Not panicky fear, bur fear nonetheless.
Its usuallly associated with a total apathy (as opposed to the popular belief that its symptom is sadness) tied with a fear of not-belonging and pointlessness in every action.
I don't know how those fears are "feedbacked" into the depression spiral but maybe they could help in preventing the "escalation" of depression.
I wonder if they can use this research to help remove the abject fear of gay people that the military seems to have. The very idea that letting a gay person in would so traumatize all the soldiers that the army would be completely ineffective is just the most bizzare homophobia I've ever seen. Never mind the direct counter-evidence available in just about every other NATO military organization outside the U.S. Yeah, I think the military needs this research to help our military personel get over their intense fear of gay guys.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't