NYTimes Year in Ideas

jonbrewer writes "The New York Times is back again with their "Year in Ideas" and one that Slashdot missed this year was the RatBot. As featured in the BBC and Business 2.0 earlier this year, these critters are trained to navigate mazes based on remote stimuli. Ethical? Doubtful. Cool? Yes."

Comments

Missed??

[martingunnarsson]

I don't think /. missed the rat-story, I even recall it was a dupe!

Hmm..

[RaboKrabekian]

Ethical? Doubtful. Cool? Yes.

How is this any more unethical than the thousands of other experiments performed on rats and mice? Would it be unethical to remote control a human in this manner? Of course. Would it be unethical to perform any number of experiments on a human? Yes - which is why we do it on rats and mice.

Re:Hmm..

[kypper]

I think we need to get past this 'ethical' bullshit on animals. So long as they aren't screaming in absolute agony and we're sitting there laughing at it, of course... but this image of cruel scientists performing sadistic acts on animals, then doing the actual research to ensure funding remains intact is crap. Psychologists and Biologists, in most animal-testing cases, are simply trying to test hypotheses in order to improve our understanding of the world around us. Is that so fucking hard to understand??

NYTimes: Idea of the year chosen by SlashDot

[dagg]

NYTimes idea of the year chosen by SlashDot members:

Random Login Generator

Re:Creepy? Or Just Pointless?

[kypper]

Nope, no cruelty at all. Aside from drilling holes in the rat's skull, attaching wires into his brain, and mounting a control box permanently behind his head.

The brain has no pain receptors. Human patients have been drilled into and probed without any pain whatsoever.

Crying baby translator...

[doormat]

I saw that as one of their ideas.... wasnt that a simpsons episode with homer's brother??

Re:Creepy? Or Just Pointless?

[orthogonal]

Time and again, a sizable portion of Slashdot posters seems to stick up for animal research, no matter how cruel and no matter how pointless.

I'm just happy my angioplasty was "cruelly and pointlessly" tested on dogs before it was tried on me.

But I suppose you forego most drugs and medical procedures so as not to benefit from animal testing.

Re:Creepy? Or Just Pointless?

[bytesmythe]

ignoring the fact that so much of what's done is useless fluff, much like these remote controlled rats.

While you also ignore a few facts of your own...

1. Animal experiments are very expensive. If there is really a way to do an experiment without animals, it will be done. With animals, you have to keep them comfortable, fed, watered, and pay staff to care for them.
2. All animal experiments have to have special approval. You cannot proceed without it.
3. There are very tight regulations related to the treatment of animals in experiments. Pretty much any procedure more invasive than a simple injection requires anesthesia.
4. No one does these experiments to be cruel or evil. Experiments are done with the intention of learning something important. This is not the laboratory equivalent of a 7 year-old pulling the wings off flies.

Neurological experiments absolutely cannot be performed on anything other than a living biological organism. The idea here isn't just to create remote controlled rats, but to discover how we can advance new technologies related to the brain. Modern probes that can monitor the firing patterns of 4 individual neurons simultaneously? The idea that we can now partially enable the blind to see? Do you think that the experiments required to pull this off were performed on neurons in a petri dish? Of course not, and it wouldn't even be possible. Perhaps one day in the future if, heaven forbid!, you are ever tragically paralyzed in an accident, you will perhaps thank the researchers who come up with remote control technology. I know if it were to happen to me, I'd be very glad to have a way to communicate with my family, or take care of myself instead of being a complete burden.

Especially since there's no critical look at whether full-fledged robots could be developed to perform these functions.

Many researchers devote their time to developing small-scale robotics, but nothing is close to being anywhere near as agile as a biological organism. But again, the research isn't just about controlling rats; it's also a way to figure out how to interface with the brain. Given the paralysis scenario, what good would a robotic "supplemental" body be if you couldn't control the damn thing? When that kind of technology comes about for general use, you'll have researchers, rats, and monkeys to thank for it.

The sad thing is that I'm probably going to be modded down for raising these concerns.

Well, I've got one point left, but I chose to reply instead. Besides, I don't mod down. ;)

You Can't Stop The Ratbots

[USC-MBA]

One common theme (aside from terrorism, of course) clearly stands out from among the NYT's long list of ideas. What do all these have in common?

• Botox Parties
• Featherless Chickens
• Ratbots
• Genetically Modified Saliva
• Cooling Atheletes From The Inside Out

The answer is they are all about using technology to enhance or modify biology. There is a human impulse to go above and beyond the constraints of biological limitations. This is because the imagination will always overflow and escape the boundaries of our bones, nerves, and muscle.

This impulse to strive, excel, and improve is at the heart of what makes us human. The striving imperative motivates everything from mountain climbers to astronauts, to the market economy itself. To stifle this urge would be to stunt our very humanity.

As a libertarian I strongly support any efforts by striving, creative individuals to transcend the forces that constrain humanity. "Ratbots" may seem creepy to timid animal rights fundamentalists, but I prefer to see these kinds of experiments as an exciting beginning, as one tiny step on the part of humankind into a new world of freedom and possibility.

Murder rates most interesting

[Goonie]

On my quick browse through, perhaps the most interesting idea was the one on murder rates.

Basically, murder rates have remained essentially static over the past few decades, while other types of crime such as assaults have become more common. Why are murders different?

The hypothesis is that improvements in medical treatment have meant that people who would otherwise have died of injuries are now surviving, and thus the murder rate has gone down. Evidence includes the fact there was a decline in the murder rate in the years after the Vietnam War, where improvements in trauma surgery made their way back into the civilian health system.

I don't know if it's true or not, but it's certainly an interesting, plausible, and quite disturbing idea.