What's the point of a hydrogen fuel cell plant when we'll need a conventional power plant sitting beside the electrolysis facility?
Many people just don't get hydrogen power. Hydrogen is not a power source, its an energy storage medium.
If we were to run out of oil and had to use coal to power everything, it would be much easier to have a coal-fired power plant producing hydrogen to use as fuel for cars than it would be to design cars that run on coal.
Just think of hydrogen as an abstraction layer, a simple interface between two independent processes.
Sure seems like bunker-buster bombs should focus more on penetration power than raw explosive power. I mean, what good is a megaton bunker buster if the bunker to be busted is in downtown Bagdad?
I don't have a big problem with nuclear weapons research, mostly because I don't think that we've seen the last of small countries developing them. I would like to see our military tools developed in such a way that we would never need to deploy nuclear weapons, but the psycological effect of there existence should not be discounted. 'The Bomb' has been the ultimate weapon for so long that I can imagine some country thinking that since the US(*NB) does not have 'The Bomb' that if they did, they would be invincible on the battlefield. They would not of course, because the US would have superiour strategy, equipment and soldiers. But if the goal is to prevent deployment of nuclear weapons (and prevent the associated risks), its best if the US plays the game in such a way as to prevent anyone from developing new nuclear weapons.
It might seem silly to try to prevent the development of nuclear weapons by developing nuclear weapons, but when theres only one super-power, its probably an effective stratagy. The game changes if another super-power emerges and it is no longer clear to either side who would win in an all-out battle. In this case cooperation would be a much better solution.
But then I don't know much about game theory, and I don't thing Bush Jr. does either. Maybe the US govenment needs a Department of Game Theory or something to advise them on given situations. Because they sure make some dumb-assed foriegn policy decisions sometimes.
*NB: I'm just using 'the US' to mean the dominant military power, it could be anyone.
it takes 6 truckloads of paper bags to deliver one equivalent truckload of plastic bags
Not here at the local Wal-mart. Most of the checkers load each plastic bag with two items. And I'm not talking milk here. Often I'll get home and find 50 bags each containing something like a can of beans and two envelopes of kool-aid. No kidding.
Occasionally I'll run into a checker that makes an attempt to fill bags more optimally. One would even use that 6 bag turntable thing they use to hold 6 partially full bags, turning it around to fill bags reasonably (eg, tall stuff in the same bag, canned goods seperate from the bread, etc). They are few and far between.
astronauts have pulled off some damn complex assembly operations on orbit - like, for example, assembling the space station they're living in. It's just a matter of giving them the right procedures.
And paying them to practice those procedures here on Earth over and over and over and over, for months on end, tying up very expensive training facilities and lots of support people, etc. Astronauts are about the most expensive labor you can get.
Most of the spam I get doesn't contain any email addresses, presumably to avoid mail bombing and complaints. Usually its just a web address where you can place an order for the product.
How many different ways does the government have to tax the exact same transaction before it becomes too much
As many as it takes to make the individual amounts of the taxes look small enough to the average consumer.
I tend to favor something like whatfairtax proposes, particularly if there is a per person rebait (to keep the 'poor people' from paying too much tax on the basics), and a very explicit 'no exceptions' rule so nobody can pay congress to exempt their products (and to tax other products more for thus-and-such reason, etc).
Book-keeping for multitudes of taxes on hundreds of millions of people is a rediculious thing to even attempt, it would cost way to much to make it work properly. It would be a much better idea to design the system to require minimal bookkeeping and spend the effort on something more worthwhile.
X10 is also extremely slow. Without data compression you can max out at less than 8 bytes per second;
X10 transmits only during the zero crossing of the AC powerline. If memory serves its a 10kHz signal for 1mS. One bit every 1/60th of a second, less framing and retransmissions (X10 includes some redundancy to reduce errors). Effective data rate even with compression would probably be less than 4 bytes per second.
You should check out Tesla's work. He was broadcasting electricity ages ago
Pratical Note: faraday shield for the computer will be required.
Technical Note: Tesla wanted to transmit power wirelessly by conduction, possibly using the planet's atmosphere as a giant resonant cavity running around 8Hz. While Tesla was quite a genious, this probably would not have worked very well, and if it had worked, the effect on the environment would probably not have been good. Not to mention the economic issues associated with providing free power to anyone on the planet with a receiver.
The wireless power one can get with a Tesla coil on a small scale (run a coil somewhere, then go a few yards away and ground a coil tuned to the same frequency and receive power) is by radiation, so the amount of power drops off as the square of the distance. Not practical at all. But still fun.
Besides, the receiver can force the sender to wait simply by responding slowly, no need to change the protocol.
I think that instead we should all just run programs that scan all incoming mail for URLs and then load the referenced page, and spider the website, including all linked images, etc. So when spammer sends out 1,000,000 messages, and the 1% of people running this spider receive the message, spammers website, his host gets hit by 100,000 download request over and over. Not enough to be considered a DOS when considering a single user, but enough to destroy the server when everybody does it. Bandwidth costs will force spammers out of business.
Tell me: how does my daughter control how other people react to what she wears?
She doesn't. She has a measure of control by choosing what it is she wears in the first place, though.
I don't disagree. My point is that it is silly for people to make judgments based on how much and what skin one chooses to expose. I'm not disputing what is, I'm making a statment about the absurdity of the way it is.
In the US, its pretty much acceptable (to varying degrees) to a woman to expose her entire body, excepting areola or labia. Even a standard bikini type bathing suit is little more than token coverage.
The point is that it has nothing to do with attitude toward the human body, and everything to do with helping other people respect you.
What, I have to be capable of putting on a shirt and pants to get your respect? What kind of measure is that?
I couldn't care less what most people think of me, and the ones that I do care about are not so shallow as to believe that clothing has even the slightest impact on my personality.
Now, I'm not suggesting that meeting new clients in a ratty t-shirt that says 'Fark You' on the front is a good idea, but if I want to be naked at the beach, I don't see why that should be considered 'indecent'. If we can cite a beautiful woman for indecent exposure for not covering her breasts, we sure as hell ought to cite morbidly obese guys for wearing speedos.
For the most part, you are correct. The frightening part is when things become extremely disassociated, and you can no longer recognized common objects, a shirt for example. While you intellectually *know* that its a shirt, you simply cannot recognize any of its features (ie, its a floppy tangle of loops of substance with a number of various sized holes, and the whole thing has a vague quality of shirtness to it). Similar things happen to campfires and rock ledges. Unfamilar things have properties that are facinating, but unrecognized. Large drop-offs can look completely non-threating because the associations with large drop-offs, falling and dying are broken.
Large doses of LSD or other psycoactives is a bad idea without a sitter.
And you can use that 'rubber hose' plausable deniability software to keep your data safe, and for the truely paranoid, install a small amount of shaped explosive charge in the PC card bay below the harddrive. Its *very* difficult to extract data from a shattered drive platter, and the amount of explosive required isn't enough to do serious damange to anything nearby. Just don't try to take it on the plane with you.
When I was in school, thats what we did, on Apple machines. I swear, I never could figure out why I couldn't get my score to go over 100%, even when I answered them all right.
Because you learn social interaction, and school teaches you how to learn.
Hmm, I was a typial smart geek type in elementary school. School taught me 1) geeks make good dodge-ball targets, and 2) teachers spout boring, obvious information.
I still remember in 2nd grade the art teacher standing in front of the class holding her ring up to the light, sqinting through it with one eye, telling us how round it was, and that our construction paper circles should be just like that. I was thinking 'no shit, but how am I supposed to cut like that with these damned blunt lefty kid-sissors?'
The employer's representative had a meeting with her and they let her know in no uncertain terms that, under the law, while they couldn't prevent her from bringing her weapon to work, there were lots of reasons to fire people.
If they were in Texas, they didn't need a reason to fire her. Employment is at will, and either employee or employer can sever employment at any time, for any or no reason.
Course, a fired employee can sue and claim to have been let go for an illegal reason, but its alot of trouble, and easy to defend against.
The law says if you put to much alcohol in your body and your out in public or if you shoot up with heroin or use crack that they can lock you up or fine you, or both.
Many of those types of laws are in place to prevent abuse of addictive substances, which can strongly effect the users freedom to choose not to do them. I don't have a big problem with these laws (although I think there are better solutions than total prohibition).
I do agree with you in principle, I'm not advocating total freedom for people to modify them selves in any way they like. We should first be addressing problems like disease and quality of life and longevity. I'd then expect things like bringing up basic intelligence levels and physical capabilities. Things that would help to eliminate lazy, stupid people who take advantage of walfare systems and generally don't contribute to society.
Of course this would take many generations, and this is good. GM changes that don't address immediate medical problems should be phased in over the long term, to give society time to adapt.
Likewise, it would not be a good idea to make a bunch of people who are relative supermen. Thats just begging for the problems of an elite group trying to control everybody else.
You are absolutly correct about it becoming big business. Perhaps it is possible that non-medical GM (ie, enhancements rather than corrections) could be government controlled and provided to those most in need, to provide maximum benefit to society with the least risk of elitism.
Like you said, it will take many experts many years to get it right, it shouldn't be rushed, but neither should it be avoided. Prohibition would simply result in it being done underground without controls, and that would almost certainly lead to the kinds of impact to society we have been warned about.
Where do you stop when you augment your genetic structure?
Wherever you like, or when you reach the limits of technology, just as it is now with body modification. My body is mine to do with as a please.
How high of a cost will you pay (not just in your own physical or financial situation, but socially as well)?
Whatever I deem to be the right price, this is a highly personal limit, and everyone should be free to choose their own limit.
Will you lose your identity to pursue "perfection"? I'm not just talking about modifying my genetic structure to resist an obesity gene. I'm talking about changing your genetic structure so that you "augment" yourself so much that mentally and physically that your persona is completely changed.
Again, its my perogative. If I want to transform my body and personality, I should be free to do so.
If we reached that point, instead of dealing with personal issues we could just modify our genetic structure instead of dealing with what life brings us.
We deal with what life brings us because, for now, thats the only choice.
What happens when the people with the resources become "superhuman" in physical and mental abilities while those without the resources are left as imperfect? Would those who are imperfect become inferior?[...] Would they lose rights to those who are genetically superior? Would genetically inferior people live in fear, intimidation, and distrust of genetically superior people?
This is what I mean about losing our humanity
Your not talking about 'humanity' you are talking about equality. Numerous scifi writers have issued warnings about this for decades. Hopefully we will have the wisdom to address these issues as the come onto the horizon. We should not avoid exploring the potentially huge benefits of human GM because of fear of these issues. Likewise we shouldn't rush into modifying people just because we can.
Perhaps we can start by making people more suitable for space exploration, eliminating the problems with extended zero G living, high radiation levels and low atmospheric pressures. Inerhited modifications should probably be limited to medical fixes until people are more comfortable with GM, and we know more about the consequences.
There are many people not in high density locations [...]
Agreed, a naturally occuring plague is probably unlikely to wipe out enough of the population to cause the extinction of the human race. However, a very serious event or series of events could easily destroy or set back centuries our existing civilization.
Also, your original statement was that GM should only be used in the event that it was evident that human civilization would cease. I'm not sure that by the time people realized that fact there would be enough time left to do any kind of engineering, particularly since that would probably mean that a very large portion of the population would already be dead, including many of the people who know how to do this kind of very specialized research.
I never mention anything against learning how to GM humans.
And how exactly would you test any modifications? As I'm sure you are aware, GM research involves hundreds or thouands of trials to achieve any success. Learning how to apply this kind of technology (for the forseeable future) can only be done by doing it. Particularly if you are betting the survival of the species on it. You wouldn't write a complex in-memory patch for a computer program and then apply it to a mission-critical server without testing it.
What's to say that your example super virus isn't a product of the GM research
It certainly could be. And if genetic manipulation technology ever becomes as easy to use as a computer, you can bet that kind of virus will start appearing. Imagine how much fun a bio-virus writer could have with a network connected genetic CAD-CAM system in the country of his choice.
Why can't we use a way to genetically alter existing humans
I suppose it depends on the nature of the changes one wishes to make. It would probably not be practical to reengineer an existing person to add additional senses or sense receptors, or to make fundamental changes in brain structure to enhance nomral mental abilities or add new abilities (some sort of integrated networking for instance). Existing brains would probably be very difficult to rewire in these fundamental ways. The rest of the body could probably be made to do pretty much anything, as long as the sensory and motor control interface remains reasonably similar.
Changes of that nature probably are not what you are thinking of though, since they probably would not be necessary for survival of the species in the event of some kind of plague. I'd guess that those kinds of changes would be to the immune system mostly.
I personally believe that there is nothing sacred about the current human form or mentality, and so I have no problem with modifying it. There are perhaps some ethical consideratins about creating experimental kids who would end up being lab rats. Probably any inheriteable transformations should be gradual things that don't set people apart physically. Adults would be allowed more freedom in modification.
Anyway, my basic point is that I don't see any serious ethical roadblocks to GM of humans.
Re:Higher levels of natural selection at play
on
The Rights of GM Humans
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
On the topic of GM-humans, I can see using this IF AND ONLY IF human existence would cease without it
So.. your saying that we should not attempt to GM humans until some super virus comes along and starts decimating the population, and *then* we should start trying to get some GM babies going? Whos going to take care of them after everybody dies?
We should all use networked Windows boxes too, until someone releases a super-worm for which we have no defense. AFter that happens, then we can get started working on a new operating system. Oh, wait, what will we use to write it on?
The last major occurance of natural selection in humans that I recall was during the Black Plague in Europe.
While selection pressures are different now than they were centuries ago, humans are as subject to natural selection as any animal.
Also, I recall reading somewhere that there is a small portion of the population that is naturally resistant to HIV, due to having a different protein on their cells. If true, it wouldn't be suprising to see the populations some of the countries suffering from very high AIDS related death rates become resistant in a few generations.
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What's the point of a hydrogen fuel cell plant when we'll need a conventional power plant sitting beside the electrolysis facility?
Many people just don't get hydrogen power. Hydrogen is not a power source, its an energy storage medium.
If we were to run out of oil and had to use coal to power everything, it would be much easier to have a coal-fired power plant producing hydrogen to use as fuel for cars than it would be to design cars that run on coal.
Just think of hydrogen as an abstraction layer, a simple interface between two independent processes.
Sure seems like bunker-buster bombs should focus more on penetration power than raw explosive power. I mean, what good is a megaton bunker buster if the bunker to be busted is in downtown Bagdad?
I don't have a big problem with nuclear weapons research, mostly because I don't think that we've seen the last of small countries developing them. I would like to see our military tools developed in such a way that we would never need to deploy nuclear weapons, but the psycological effect of there existence should not be discounted. 'The Bomb' has been the ultimate weapon for so long that I can imagine some country thinking that since the US(*NB) does not have 'The Bomb' that if they did, they would be invincible on the battlefield. They would not of course, because the US would have superiour strategy, equipment and soldiers. But if the goal is to prevent deployment of nuclear weapons (and prevent the associated risks), its best if the US plays the game in such a way as to prevent anyone from developing new nuclear weapons.
It might seem silly to try to prevent the development of nuclear weapons by developing nuclear weapons, but when theres only one super-power, its probably an effective stratagy.
The game changes if another super-power emerges and it is no longer clear to either side who would win in an all-out battle. In this case cooperation would be a much better solution.
But then I don't know much about game theory, and I don't thing Bush Jr. does either. Maybe the US govenment needs a Department of Game Theory or something to advise them on given situations. Because they sure make some dumb-assed foriegn policy decisions sometimes.
*NB: I'm just using 'the US' to mean the dominant military power, it could be anyone.
it takes 6 truckloads of paper bags to deliver one equivalent truckload of plastic bags
Not here at the local Wal-mart. Most of the checkers load each plastic bag with two items. And I'm not talking milk here. Often I'll get home and find 50 bags each containing something like a can of beans and two envelopes of kool-aid. No kidding.
Occasionally I'll run into a checker that makes an attempt to fill bags more optimally. One would even use that 6 bag turntable thing they use to hold 6 partially full bags, turning it around to fill bags reasonably (eg, tall stuff in the same bag, canned goods seperate from the bread, etc). They are few and far between.
astronauts have pulled off some damn complex assembly operations on orbit - like, for example, assembling the space station they're living in. It's just a matter of giving them the right procedures.
And paying them to practice those procedures here on Earth over and over and over and over, for months on end, tying up very expensive training facilities and lots of support people, etc. Astronauts are about the most expensive labor you can get.
Most of the spam I get doesn't contain any email addresses, presumably to avoid mail bombing and complaints. Usually its just a web address where you can place an order for the product.
How many different ways does the government have to tax the exact same transaction before it becomes too much
As many as it takes to make the individual amounts of the taxes look small enough to the average consumer.
I tend to favor something like whatfairtax proposes, particularly if there is a per person rebait (to keep the 'poor people' from paying too much tax on the basics), and a very explicit 'no exceptions' rule so nobody can pay congress to exempt their products (and to tax other products more for thus-and-such reason, etc).
Book-keeping for multitudes of taxes on hundreds of millions of people is a rediculious thing to even attempt, it would cost way to much to make it work properly. It would be a much better idea to design the system to require minimal bookkeeping and spend the effort on something more worthwhile.
Find a business that has had seven false alarms within 12 months
Find one? Screw that, we can make our own. An entire strip mall with a false alarm per day per store for a month ought to do it.
have you noticed where a lot of fast food eateries are? In low income or rural areas
There are a log of fast food places everywhere I've never noticed any kind of income bias, except for the people that work there.
X10 is also extremely slow. Without data compression you can max out at less than 8 bytes per second;
X10 transmits only during the zero crossing of the AC powerline. If memory serves its a 10kHz signal for 1mS. One bit every 1/60th of a second, less framing and retransmissions (X10 includes some redundancy to reduce errors). Effective data rate even with compression would probably be less than 4 bytes per second.
You should check out Tesla's work. He was broadcasting electricity ages ago
Pratical Note: faraday shield for the computer will be required.
Technical Note: Tesla wanted to transmit power wirelessly by conduction, possibly using the planet's atmosphere as a giant resonant cavity running around 8Hz. While Tesla was quite a genious, this probably would not have worked very well, and if it had worked, the effect on the environment would probably not have been good. Not to mention the economic issues associated with providing free power to anyone on the planet with a receiver.
The wireless power one can get with a Tesla coil on a small scale (run a coil somewhere, then go a few yards away and ground a coil tuned to the same frequency and receive power) is by radiation, so the amount of power drops off as the square of the distance. Not practical at all. But still fun.
There are too many installations to change.
Besides, the receiver can force the sender to wait simply by responding slowly, no need to change the protocol.
I think that instead we should all just run programs that scan all incoming mail for URLs and then load the referenced page, and spider the website, including all linked images, etc. So when spammer sends out 1,000,000 messages, and the 1% of people running this spider receive the message, spammers website, his host gets hit by 100,000 download request over and over. Not enough to be considered a DOS when considering a single user, but enough to destroy the server when everybody does it. Bandwidth costs will force spammers out of business.
Tell me: how does my daughter control how other people react to what she wears?
She doesn't. She has a measure of control by choosing what it is she wears in the first place, though.
I don't disagree. My point is that it is silly for people to make judgments based on how much and what skin one chooses to expose. I'm not disputing what is, I'm making a statment about the absurdity of the way it is.
In the US, its pretty much acceptable (to varying degrees) to a woman to expose her entire body, excepting areola or labia. Even a standard bikini type bathing suit is little more than token coverage.
The point is that it has nothing to do with attitude toward the human body, and everything to do with helping other people respect you.
What, I have to be capable of putting on a shirt and pants to get your respect? What kind of measure is that?
I couldn't care less what most people think of me, and the ones that I do care about are not so shallow as to believe that clothing has even the slightest impact on my personality.
Now, I'm not suggesting that meeting new clients in a ratty t-shirt that says 'Fark You' on the front is a good idea, but if I want to be naked at the beach, I don't see why that should be considered 'indecent'. If we can cite a beautiful woman for indecent exposure for not covering her breasts, we sure as hell ought to cite morbidly obese guys for wearing speedos.
I do. And I agree with the parent post, it is not possible for clothing to be degrading. The way other people react to it can be degrading to them.
Americans have farked up attitudes about their bodies.
You know why I'm a big SG-1 fan?
Its Sci-Fi that doesn't take itself too seriously, but isn't so slapstic (ie, Lexx) that I'm embarrased to watch it.
Not knowing anything about music, my obvious question is: how can B natural be notationally incorrect?
For the most part, you are correct. The frightening part is when things become extremely disassociated, and you can no longer recognized common objects, a shirt for example. While you intellectually *know* that its a shirt, you simply cannot recognize any of its features (ie, its a floppy tangle of loops of substance with a number of various sized holes, and the whole thing has a vague quality of shirtness to it). Similar things happen to campfires and rock ledges. Unfamilar things have properties that are facinating, but unrecognized. Large drop-offs can look completely non-threating because the associations with large drop-offs, falling and dying are broken.
Large doses of LSD or other psycoactives is a bad idea without a sitter.
And you can use that 'rubber hose' plausable deniability software to keep your data safe, and for the truely paranoid, install a small amount of shaped explosive charge in the PC card bay below the harddrive. Its *very* difficult to extract data from a shattered drive platter, and the amount of explosive required isn't enough to do serious damange to anything nearby. Just don't try to take it on the plane with you.
A computer game could do these [math] drills
When I was in school, thats what we did, on Apple machines. I swear, I never could figure out why I couldn't get my score to go over 100%, even when I answered them all right.
Because you learn social interaction, and school teaches you how to learn.
Hmm, I was a typial smart geek type in elementary school. School taught me 1) geeks make good dodge-ball targets, and 2) teachers spout boring, obvious information.
I still remember in 2nd grade the art teacher standing in front of the class holding her ring up to the light, sqinting through it with one eye, telling us how round it was, and that our construction paper circles should be just like that. I was thinking 'no shit, but how am I supposed to cut like that with these damned blunt lefty kid-sissors?'
The employer's representative had a meeting with her and they let her know in no uncertain terms that, under the law, while they couldn't prevent her from bringing her weapon to work, there were lots of reasons to fire people.
If they were in Texas, they didn't need a reason to fire her. Employment is at will, and either employee or employer can sever employment at any time, for any or no reason.
Course, a fired employee can sue and claim to have been let go for an illegal reason, but its alot of trouble, and easy to defend against.
My body is mine to do with as a please.
Not according to the law (U.S., IANAL).
The law says if you put to much alcohol in your body and your out in public or if you shoot up with heroin or use crack that they can lock you up or fine you, or both.
Many of those types of laws are in place to prevent abuse of addictive substances, which can strongly effect the users freedom to choose not to do them. I don't have a big problem with these laws (although I think there are better solutions than total prohibition).
I do agree with you in principle, I'm not advocating total freedom for people to modify them selves in any way they like. We should first be addressing problems like disease and quality of life and longevity. I'd then expect things like bringing up basic intelligence levels and physical capabilities. Things that would help to eliminate lazy, stupid people who take advantage of walfare systems and generally don't contribute to society.
Of course this would take many generations, and this is good. GM changes that don't address immediate medical problems should be phased in over the long term, to give society time to adapt.
Likewise, it would not be a good idea to make a bunch of people who are relative supermen. Thats just begging for the problems of an elite group trying to control everybody else.
You are absolutly correct about it becoming big business. Perhaps it is possible that non-medical GM (ie, enhancements rather than corrections) could be government controlled and provided to those most in need, to provide maximum benefit to society with the least risk of elitism.
Like you said, it will take many experts many years to get it right, it shouldn't be rushed, but neither should it be avoided. Prohibition would simply result in it being done underground without controls, and that would almost certainly lead to the kinds of impact to society we have been warned about.
Wherever you like, or when you reach the limits of technology, just as it is now with body modification. My body is mine to do with as a please.
How high of a cost will you pay (not just in your own physical or financial situation, but socially as well)?
Whatever I deem to be the right price, this is a highly personal limit, and everyone should be free to choose their own limit.
Will you lose your identity to pursue "perfection"? I'm not just talking about modifying my genetic structure to resist an obesity gene. I'm talking about changing your genetic structure so that you "augment" yourself so much that mentally and physically that your persona is completely changed.
Again, its my perogative. If I want to transform my body and personality, I should be free to do so.
If we reached that point, instead of dealing with personal issues we could just modify our genetic structure instead of dealing with what life brings us.
We deal with what life brings us because, for now, thats the only choice.
What happens when the people with the resources become "superhuman" in physical and mental abilities while those without the resources are left as imperfect? Would those who are imperfect become inferior?[...] Would they lose rights to those who are genetically superior? Would genetically inferior people live in fear, intimidation, and distrust of genetically superior people?
This is what I mean about losing our humanity
Your not talking about 'humanity' you are talking about equality. Numerous scifi writers have issued warnings about this for decades. Hopefully we will have the wisdom to address these issues as the come onto the horizon. We should not avoid exploring the potentially huge benefits of human GM because of fear of these issues. Likewise we shouldn't rush into modifying people just because we can.
Perhaps we can start by making people more suitable for space exploration, eliminating the problems with extended zero G living, high radiation levels and low atmospheric pressures. Inerhited modifications should probably be limited to medical fixes until people are more comfortable with GM, and we know more about the consequences.
There are many people not in high density locations [...]
Agreed, a naturally occuring plague is probably unlikely to wipe out enough of the population to cause the extinction of the human race. However, a very serious event or series of events could easily destroy or set back centuries our existing civilization.
Also, your original statement was that GM should only be used in the event that it was evident that human civilization would cease. I'm not sure that by the time people realized that fact there would be enough time left to do any kind of engineering, particularly since that would probably mean that a very large portion of the population would already be dead, including many of the people who know how to do this kind of very specialized research.
I never mention anything against learning how to GM humans.
And how exactly would you test any modifications? As I'm sure you are aware, GM research involves hundreds or thouands of trials to achieve any success. Learning how to apply this kind of technology (for the forseeable future) can only be done by doing it. Particularly if you are betting the survival of the species on it. You wouldn't write a complex in-memory patch for a computer program and then apply it to a mission-critical server without testing it.
What's to say that your example super virus isn't a product of the GM research
It certainly could be. And if genetic manipulation technology ever becomes as easy to use as a computer, you can bet that kind of virus will start appearing. Imagine how much fun a bio-virus writer could have with a network connected genetic CAD-CAM system in the country of his choice.
Why can't we use a way to genetically alter existing humans
I suppose it depends on the nature of the changes one wishes to make. It would probably not be practical to reengineer an existing person to add additional senses or sense receptors, or to make fundamental changes in brain structure to enhance nomral mental abilities or add new abilities (some sort of integrated networking for instance). Existing brains would probably be very difficult to rewire in these fundamental ways. The rest of the body could probably be made to do pretty much anything, as long as the sensory and motor control interface remains reasonably similar.
Changes of that nature probably are not what you are thinking of though, since they probably would not be necessary for survival of the species in the event of some kind of plague. I'd guess that those kinds of changes would be to the immune system mostly.
I personally believe that there is nothing sacred about the current human form or mentality, and so I have no problem with modifying it. There are perhaps some ethical consideratins about creating experimental kids who would end up being lab rats. Probably any inheriteable transformations should be gradual things that don't set people apart physically. Adults would be allowed more freedom in modification.
Anyway, my basic point is that I don't see any serious ethical roadblocks to GM of humans.
On the topic of GM-humans, I can see using this IF AND ONLY IF human existence would cease without it
So.. your saying that we should not attempt to GM humans until some super virus comes along and starts decimating the population, and *then* we should start trying to get some GM babies going? Whos going to take care of them after everybody dies?
We should all use networked Windows boxes too, until someone releases a super-worm for which we have no defense. AFter that happens, then we can get started working on a new operating system. Oh, wait, what will we use to write it on?
The last major occurance of natural selection in humans that I recall was during the Black Plague in Europe.
While selection pressures are different now than they were centuries ago, humans are as subject to natural selection as any animal.
Also, I recall reading somewhere that there is a small portion of the population that is naturally resistant to HIV, due to having a different protein on their cells. If true, it wouldn't be suprising to see the populations some of the countries suffering from very high AIDS related death rates become resistant in a few generations.