> This apartheid will only deepen generation after generation, with the wealthy having access to more and better wet hacks, while the unwealthy fall further behind.
That is, assuming there is no incentive to make these enhancements available to the public. But there is. Having a well educated population is an economic advantage. Sure, only the rich will be able to afford the newest enhancements, but this has always been true. The rich own the coolest cars. The rich own personal jets. The rich can afford the best educations. Money gets things done.
X-ray vision is useless because it requires a source of x-rays. But I don't see how having the ability to observe light that most humans cannot observe is an ethical issue.
You're being extremely vague there. Eating a carrot is harming another life. Unless you reformulate your post to something more concrete, 'because I felt like eating something orange' is a logical justification I can live with.
> "If we surgically or electrically modify someone's personality... that raises many questions about personal identity, (of) who we are at our core,"
Wouldn't altering someone's personality by altering their brain imply that 'we are our brain' (which is of course influenced by chemicals produced in other parts of the body, so in a way one could also say 'we are our bodies'), thus answering this boring question?
> Instead now we have Java,.NET and other "frameworks" which run one on top of the other and in the end it takes a dual core 2GHz CPU and 4GB of RAM to do the same things at a comparable speed that were possible to do using a 100MHz 486 and 32MB RAM.
That is simply not true. Java eats lots of RAM (and then some more), that is true, but it is not 20 times slower than native. JIT is our friend.
> Back to frogs - Extinction is a GOOD thing. It's how nature weeds-out the weak. Let them die, and the few that are left behind will be stronger & better.
What will be left behind is a fungus and a huge pile of dead frogs. I fail to see how that is a desireable state.
> Im sure that the frogs will adapt to the environment and overcome.
You do realise that when you look at the species around you, all you see are winners, right? During billions of years of evolution, millions of species have gone extinct. There is no magic that protects us or the frogs from extinction. Sometimes evolution saves your ass, and sometimes it kills you. Saying 'nature always finds a way' because the species around you are not extinct is comparable to saying 'I am immortal' just because you've never died ('I believe in reincarnation you insensitive clod!'). You don't have all the data and draw the wrong conclusion.
If they fail to adapt quickly enough they will go extinct. Which may very well have negative effects on the ecosystems they live in. Which might cause other species to go extinct. Which might have significant negative effects on the ecosystems they lived in. Repeat.
Biodiversity is nice. While it may be possible for us to live on a planet where the only other species are cows, grass, and trees, I wouldn't want to live in such a world. When there is a significant threat to biodiversity (such as a fungus making many species of frogs go extinct) I think we should try to fix it if we can.
Aye. And it's not just compassion. Suppose some bacterium mutates and becomes extremely lethal to cows, pigs, chickens, etc., and spreads like crazy, and kills every member of these species on earth. Some loony will shrug and say 'oh, evolution/natural selection, nothing to see here, move along', but it is NOT in our best interests to let these animals go extinct.
Just because evolution is 'natural' doesn't mean we shouldn't fight it when it is screwing us in some way. Dying of appendicitis is natural selection too, yet very few people suffering from such diseases refuse medical attention...
Re:Parents choose their baby's name
on
Designer Babies
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Oh c'mon, it'll be awesome! What would it be like to be able to see an extra color? Say, infrared or ultraviolet?
> Once we do this, we'd be wondering what else can we do, individuals with no limbs?
We can do that already, it is called 'amputation' and I don't recommend it.
> individuals with 8 arms?
I'm hardly able to use two arms at the same time, I simply don't have the concentration to effectively use another six. Eight arms are going to be pretty useless most of the time.
> eyes on the back?
Now you're just being crazy. Some genetic stuff is relatively easy, other stuff is pretty hard. Lets stick with UV-vision. Check out this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy : some males (and many more females) are already able to observe four different colors. Adding another color might well be as simple as adding a single gene. Putting eyes on your back would be much more difficult; it would require genetic modifications that tell your body where to put these eyes, how to connect them to the brain, how the brain should process this information, etc. And that is when you ignore the more tricky stuff, such as your normal eyes having a connection with your vestibular system to compensate when you move your head.
It'll be a long time, if ever, before we can create people with an eye on the back of their head, and even then nobody will do it because it is useless. 'A CIA spy with an eye on the back of the head, BRILLIANT!' except that it would become rather simple to identify such spies, don't you think? If you are really that paranoid (and like to overcomplicate stuff), attach a tiny camera to the back of your head and send the signal to your optical nerve.
Re:Wait, I have a better example
on
Designer Babies
·
· Score: 1
> Nah.. who would dare?
Some people. Google this: daughter adolph hitler cake
> They shouldn't be more impressed that I can do it with a uterus.
But it is more impressive. Example: I study computer science. In my year, we have 1 girl and like 40 guys. I don't think it would be unreasonable or insensitive for me to be pleasantly suprised when I meet a woman who (claims to) knows how to plug in a computer. It's not that I believe women are idiots and unable to plug in a computer, it's just that in my experience, many of them can't be arsed to learn how to do it (also true for many, but in my experience fewer, men). An exception to this rule is definitely going to leave an impression.
You are an exception to the (in my experience usually correct) stereotype, and every time you confirm that you are going to leave a bigger impression than someone who confirms to a stereotype. I'm sorry if that somehow makes you sad but I don't expect it's going to change any time soon.
Surely it must be possible to create a system that acts as a proxy for phonecalls? Other organizations could then subscribe and register their phone numbers with the proxy. Phone the proxy, then enter the phone number you want to call, and the proxy calls that number for you and starts acting as a (dun-dun-DUN) proxy. All the callee can see is where the proxy is located.
The great thing about comming up with a mechanism for this phenomenon would be that you could make predictions and come up with new experiments. To test the mechanism. For example, do both parents need to be in the enriched environment or is one of them enough (and if one is enough, does it matter if it is the mother or the father)? What happens when we take a fertilized egg from a rat from a boring environment and put it a rat from an interesting environment (or the other way round)?
A mechanism would make all kinds of (testable) predictions about the above questions. Once we have a mechanism we are beyond the 'we found a correlation' stage. Having said that I agree we can do without a mechanism for a little while longer. The results of a few more experiments in this area will make it much easier to come up with a mechanism.
> Regardless of how cool the OS' underpinings are, you could write C for it with an OS-specific compiler.
Actually, if the VM doesn't allow casting numbers to pointers, you won't be able to do things like
int * ptr = (int *)0x12; unless you implement a VM on their VM.
> I also don't understand why this would have any bearing on C/C++. Even if there is a virtual machine, it has underlying byte code to run apps, which means you can create a C/C++ compiler to compile to that specific byte code.. in the same way you can compile C/C++ code for intel, PowerPC, Arm, etc.
Wether this has or does not have bearing on C/C++ would depend on the VM. For example, it would be a real pain to write a C-to-bytecode compiler for the JVM, because Java doesn't really support C-pointers. It is of course possible to create 'Pointer' objects for huge byte-arrays and transparently use those, but that way you lose the boost in speed you can get by (correctly) using pointers (If you feel bored you can of course write an x86 emulator in Java, I believe its been done before). C code that would be very fast and efficient on an x86 would probably be much slower on the JVM when it uses features that the JVM instruction set does not support directly.
It is possible to write a C/C++ compiler for any Turing-complete instruction set, but the produced code could be aweful even with a very good compiler (imagine a VM that has Brainfuck as instruction set...).
So why is the C/C++ thing important? In some situations it is nice to have the option to sacrifice high-level abstraction to get closer to the metal and gain some more efficiency. On many machines C and C++ are the languages of choice for such a thing (or even assembly, which I personally like a lot, also if I'm honest I've never needed to use it except when I wrote my own bootloader). The point is that on a system where you might want to run Crysis, you want a VM that doesn't have an extremely high-level instruction set that forces you to use that and only that _all_ the time even when less abstraction might speed things up.
> Difficult to fool the system, plus, they're going to put insane fines/jail time on tampering.
That alone should be a reason not to implement it. If a system requires threatening everyone with insane fines and jail time just to function, it's probably a bad system.
Which country are you from that you have the third highest gasoline prices?
I'm no biochemist, but according to wikipedia the virus already has other methods of entering cells. Nevertheless, I think this kind of research should be done anyway, more experience in this gene-editing business would be nice, and if a few people live a few years longer and happier, that's a nice bonus.
Be honest. Have you read the source code of EVERY program you run, and of your operating system? Did you understand all of it? If you have read it all and understand it all, you're either running very few programs and a tiny, simple OS, or you have way too much free time. 'Knowing what someting does' is not a black-and-white thing. To get a good analogy: I can use a car and understand most of its parts without fully understanding the atoms it's made of, or how the car was made. Odds are GP is someone who knowns what all processes on his computer do, even if he doesn't know precisely how they do it. You create a false dichotomy by suggesting it is only possible to know what your programs do when you run an open source operating system.
Accepting the axioma of the earth being 6000 years old, Occam's razor would cut you for introducing new entities where they are not needed. More logical would be that someone used a granite rock from outer space to create stone axes and then arrange for some scientist to 'find' them.
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> This apartheid will only deepen generation after generation, with the wealthy having access to more and better wet hacks, while the unwealthy fall further behind.
That is, assuming there is no incentive to make these enhancements available to the public. But there is. Having a well educated population is an economic advantage. Sure, only the rich will be able to afford the newest enhancements, but this has always been true. The rich own the coolest cars. The rich own personal jets. The rich can afford the best educations. Money gets things done.
X-ray vision is useless because it requires a source of x-rays. But I don't see how having the ability to observe light that most humans cannot observe is an ethical issue.
You're being extremely vague there. Eating a carrot is harming another life. Unless you reformulate your post to something more concrete, 'because I felt like eating something orange' is a logical justification I can live with.
> "If we surgically or electrically modify someone's personality... that raises many questions about personal identity, (of) who we are at our core,"
Wouldn't altering someone's personality by altering their brain imply that 'we are our brain' (which is of course influenced by chemicals produced in other parts of the body, so in a way one could also say 'we are our bodies'), thus answering this boring question?
> Instead now we have Java, .NET and other "frameworks" which run one on top of the other and in the end it takes a dual core 2GHz CPU and 4GB of RAM to do the same things at a comparable speed that were possible to do using a 100MHz 486 and 32MB RAM.
That is simply not true. Java eats lots of RAM (and then some more), that is true, but it is not 20 times slower than native. JIT is our friend.
> And thus, the weakness in Darwinian Evolution.
Elaborate please.
> Back to frogs - Extinction is a GOOD thing. It's how nature weeds-out the weak. Let them die, and the few that are left behind will be stronger & better.
What will be left behind is a fungus and a huge pile of dead frogs. I fail to see how that is a desireable state.
> Im sure that the frogs will adapt to the environment and overcome.
You do realise that when you look at the species around you, all you see are winners, right? During billions of years of evolution, millions of species have gone extinct. There is no magic that protects us or the frogs from extinction. Sometimes evolution saves your ass, and sometimes it kills you. Saying 'nature always finds a way' because the species around you are not extinct is comparable to saying 'I am immortal' just because you've never died ('I believe in reincarnation you insensitive clod!'). You don't have all the data and draw the wrong conclusion.
If they fail to adapt quickly enough they will go extinct. Which may very well have negative effects on the ecosystems they live in. Which might cause other species to go extinct. Which might have significant negative effects on the ecosystems they lived in. Repeat.
Biodiversity is nice. While it may be possible for us to live on a planet where the only other species are cows, grass, and trees, I wouldn't want to live in such a world. When there is a significant threat to biodiversity (such as a fungus making many species of frogs go extinct) I think we should try to fix it if we can.
Aye. And it's not just compassion. Suppose some bacterium mutates and becomes extremely lethal to cows, pigs, chickens, etc., and spreads like crazy, and kills every member of these species on earth. Some loony will shrug and say 'oh, evolution/natural selection, nothing to see here, move along', but it is NOT in our best interests to let these animals go extinct.
Just because evolution is 'natural' doesn't mean we shouldn't fight it when it is screwing us in some way. Dying of appendicitis is natural selection too, yet very few people suffering from such diseases refuse medical attention...
Oh c'mon, it'll be awesome! What would it be like to be able to see an extra color? Say, infrared or ultraviolet?
> Once we do this, we'd be wondering what else can we do, individuals with no limbs?
We can do that already, it is called 'amputation' and I don't recommend it.
> individuals with 8 arms?
I'm hardly able to use two arms at the same time, I simply don't have the concentration to effectively use another six. Eight arms are going to be pretty useless most of the time.
> eyes on the back?
Now you're just being crazy. Some genetic stuff is relatively easy, other stuff is pretty hard. Lets stick with UV-vision. Check out this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy : some males (and many more females) are already able to observe four different colors. Adding another color might well be as simple as adding a single gene. Putting eyes on your back would be much more difficult; it would require genetic modifications that tell your body where to put these eyes, how to connect them to the brain, how the brain should process this information, etc. And that is when you ignore the more tricky stuff, such as your normal eyes having a connection with your vestibular system to compensate when you move your head.
It'll be a long time, if ever, before we can create people with an eye on the back of their head, and even then nobody will do it because it is useless. 'A CIA spy with an eye on the back of the head, BRILLIANT!' except that it would become rather simple to identify such spies, don't you think? If you are really that paranoid (and like to overcomplicate stuff), attach a tiny camera to the back of your head and send the signal to your optical nerve.
> Nah.. who would dare?
Some people. Google this: daughter adolph hitler cake
> They shouldn't be more impressed that I can do it with a uterus.
But it is more impressive. Example: I study computer science. In my year, we have 1 girl and like 40 guys. I don't think it would be unreasonable or insensitive for me to be pleasantly suprised when I meet a woman who (claims to) knows how to plug in a computer. It's not that I believe women are idiots and unable to plug in a computer, it's just that in my experience, many of them can't be arsed to learn how to do it (also true for many, but in my experience fewer, men). An exception to this rule is definitely going to leave an impression.
You are an exception to the (in my experience usually correct) stereotype, and every time you confirm that you are going to leave a bigger impression than someone who confirms to a stereotype. I'm sorry if that somehow makes you sad but I don't expect it's going to change any time soon.
Tell me, why exactly would we want to send 'virii' to a rock in space?
Then why are these 'advocacy groups for victims of domestic violence' concerned?
Surely it must be possible to create a system that acts as a proxy for phonecalls? Other organizations could then subscribe and register their phone numbers with the proxy. Phone the proxy, then enter the phone number you want to call, and the proxy calls that number for you and starts acting as a (dun-dun-DUN) proxy. All the callee can see is where the proxy is located.
Does this kinda thing exist already?
> Does it really need one?
The great thing about comming up with a mechanism for this phenomenon would be that you could make predictions and come up with new experiments. To test the mechanism. For example, do both parents need to be in the enriched environment or is one of them enough (and if one is enough, does it matter if it is the mother or the father)? What happens when we take a fertilized egg from a rat from a boring environment and put it a rat from an interesting environment (or the other way round)?
A mechanism would make all kinds of (testable) predictions about the above questions. Once we have a mechanism we are beyond the 'we found a correlation' stage. Having said that I agree we can do without a mechanism for a little while longer. The results of a few more experiments in this area will make it much easier to come up with a mechanism.
You didn't answer my question. Which country are you from?
Where are you from? I am from 'the now socialist Western Europe' too and I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
> Regardless of how cool the OS' underpinings are, you could write C for it with an OS-specific compiler.
Actually, if the VM doesn't allow casting numbers to pointers, you won't be able to do things like
int * ptr = (int *)0x12;
unless you implement a VM on their VM.
> I also don't understand why this would have any bearing on C/C++. Even if there is a virtual machine, it has underlying byte code to run apps, which means you can create a C/C++ compiler to compile to that specific byte code .. in the same way you can compile C/C++ code for intel, PowerPC, Arm, etc.
Wether this has or does not have bearing on C/C++ would depend on the VM. For example, it would be a real pain to write a C-to-bytecode compiler for the JVM, because Java doesn't really support C-pointers. It is of course possible to create 'Pointer' objects for huge byte-arrays and transparently use those, but that way you lose the boost in speed you can get by (correctly) using pointers (If you feel bored you can of course write an x86 emulator in Java, I believe its been done before). C code that would be very fast and efficient on an x86 would probably be much slower on the JVM when it uses features that the JVM instruction set does not support directly.
It is possible to write a C/C++ compiler for any Turing-complete instruction set, but the produced code could be aweful even with a very good compiler (imagine a VM that has Brainfuck as instruction set...).
So why is the C/C++ thing important? In some situations it is nice to have the option to sacrifice high-level abstraction to get closer to the metal and gain some more efficiency. On many machines C and C++ are the languages of choice for such a thing (or even assembly, which I personally like a lot, also if I'm honest I've never needed to use it except when I wrote my own bootloader). The point is that on a system where you might want to run Crysis, you want a VM that doesn't have an extremely high-level instruction set that forces you to use that and only that _all_ the time even when less abstraction might speed things up.
> Difficult to fool the system, plus, they're going to put insane fines/jail time on tampering.
That alone should be a reason not to implement it. If a system requires threatening everyone with insane fines and jail time just to function, it's probably a bad system.
Which country are you from that you have the third highest gasoline prices?
I'm no biochemist, but according to wikipedia the virus already has other methods of entering cells. Nevertheless, I think this kind of research should be done anyway, more experience in this gene-editing business would be nice, and if a few people live a few years longer and happier, that's a nice bonus.
Be honest. Have you read the source code of EVERY program you run, and of your operating system? Did you understand all of it? If you have read it all and understand it all, you're either running very few programs and a tiny, simple OS, or you have way too much free time. 'Knowing what someting does' is not a black-and-white thing. To get a good analogy: I can use a car and understand most of its parts without fully understanding the atoms it's made of, or how the car was made. Odds are GP is someone who knowns what all processes on his computer do, even if he doesn't know precisely how they do it. You create a false dichotomy by suggesting it is only possible to know what your programs do when you run an open source operating system.
Accepting the axioma of the earth being 6000 years old, Occam's razor would cut you for introducing new entities where they are not needed. More logical would be that someone used a granite rock from outer space to create stone axes and then arrange for some scientist to 'find' them.