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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
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
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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?
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Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
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.
Which one of you should we call master? ;P
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
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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.
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.
while you might be right at some levels, I don't feel that invalidates my argument. There will be very little funding while the public opinion (however wrong it may be) is against the techonology / research. What major company wants to be branded as "evil". For that matter, who is going to fund something that is fundamentally illegal, unless they want to challenge it's legality.
True, an overall lack of funding will hurt all efforts, but one cause of that lack of funding is public opinion.
I do feel tht your argument isn't entirely accurate, that MAJOR testing is necessary for ALL drugs in the US, it does cost a lot, but all companies in that area know that. That is why many of the them are in France or other countries that require less testing. It's a known cost, but trust me, some one with deep pockets knows there is a big ROI on a AIDs vaccine or a treatment for paralysis.
http://monkeyserver.com --- weeeeee
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<*))))><
Besides, why would you go to all the trouble of creating a clone army? It's much easier just to "condition" your existing soldiers to be fearless. You'd still have to do lots of conditioning with the fearless clones - you have to get them to follow orders unquestioningly and be willing to kill on command.
It's also worth noting that an army of clones could easily be wiped out by a carefully engineered bioweapon (or an accidental illness, for that matter). Genetic diversity in your troops is an asset.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
I don't see any comments by michael on this article.
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
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.
No, I don't think it would be as easy as all that. Unless you are going to custom-tailor a virus based on the 0.00001% or so of DNA that makes the clone different from all other humans, you will end up with an outrageous amount of co-lateral damage among the surrounding populace, or worse, among YOUR troops. You also have the problem of mutation rates in your newly created virus. Could you guarantee that the release of said pathogen will not mutate in nature and kill all primates?
When I say "you" I mean the collective "we".
Skuncle
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.