I don't think that ethics are even vaguely nonarbitrary, so that's easy for me. There is a relatively consistent class of things that I treat as persons, and another which I don't. But that's beside the point.
Let me return to what you said.
I think the real issue here, which no one seems to have raised, is that this kind of experimentation makes it clear that genetic engineering ethics exist on a gradient. By which I mean, there is no clear point at which it stops being "animal" g.e. and becomes "human" g.e. Most people would deplore the latter, even if they find the former acceptable.
There is no reason why this gradient should be mirrored in anyone's judgements of what is acceptable vs. deplorable genetic engineering - why any possible biological continuity between "animal" and "human" necessarily implies that there cannot be, or should not be, a discontinuity in the acceptability of g.e. It is just a natural aspect of moral judgements that they can turn on arbitrary distinctions - for example, I don't see pigs and cows as different, at least not in terms of whether it is moral to eat them, but an orthodox Jew does. Who is wrong? Similarly, I might differentiate mammals with yellow hair as the things which must not be tainted by g.e., and the fact that this class of beings is arbitrary to you does not mean that I cannot perfectly reasonably distinguish them (there ARE clear, non-arbitrary objective differences between mammals with yellow hair and everything else) and even treat them differently or expect them to be treated differently (just as I might have different opinions about eating pork than you do). If I argued for an objective basis for morality, I would have to not only back up the coherence of the class of mammals with yellow hair, but also to explain why that class merits special moral consideration. Since I don't argue that way, it is enough to note that there is a coherent class.
With respect to people who do think that there are objective bases for morality, I have never heard of considering people on the basis of how many human cells are in them. Rather, the only things I can imagine being important (and the things which probably match up well with my unrationalized reactions) are related to function. What if you sculpted a mouse entirely out of human cells? Well, it would be a mouse - it would look like a mouse and act like a mouse. Similar for a person who had mouse cells - the heritage of his cells is only a loose correlate of his own function. A person with a pig's cornea or a baboon's heart is still 100% a person. That isn't a species judgement - a martian who acted like a person and, say, looked like a person with big bushy eyebrows and red skin would probably be recognized as a person too, by most people anyway. If the martian instead grew out of the ground and only swayed in the wind, he would be very creepy but would really only be a weird person shaped tree, not a person. It's entirely possible to think that personhood has to do with percentage of cells descended from a member of Homo sapiens sapiens, but I don't think that matches up with what a lot of people think, and it doesn't match up very well with the things I look at as human.
Re:pretty empty article
on
Cringely on P2P
·
· Score: -1, Troll
I didn't learn anything new from this, but I might as well detail the contents of my bowels, since you guys enjoy comments so much.
Personally I find leftover leg of lamb to be passing into my colon. I can search my small intestine for lumps of organic matter, and if they are digestible, I turn them into so much unidentifiable food mush.
A similar service, Fandango, works just great and seems pretty healthy (almost all of the theatres around here use it). I have to admit that it's just extra effort 95% of the time - you're going to the theatre anyway, so why is it preferable to spend 2 minutes buying tickets at home as opposed to 2 minutes buying tickets at the theatre?
"Pro-abortion" implies unconditional support for abortions. But the fighting about abortion is between people who want people to be able to have abortions and people who don't want anyone to be able to have abortions legally. Thanks for bringing in the totally unrelated flamebait, though.
I assume that transgenic mice will be kept in relatively sanitary labs as they have in the past. Meanwhile, people all over the world live and swap flu with chickens and pigs, no human interference required. The only reason this idea sounds so scary is that you aren't even thinking of the natural horrors that you shrug off every day, and which might someday kill most of us.
"Either way you look at it there are still some negative implications "... implies only two possible opinions, both of which are yours. Problem: "having human cells in a mouse is bad because God says so" and "having human cells in a mouse is bad because they didn't evolve to be there" are not the only viable points of view. It is entirely possible to think that there's nothing bad about it at all. Even if the person who thinks so is very strange or immoral to you. It's totally irrelevant what you (let alone I) actually think, because the erroneous statement is that there are only two valid positions and that they both say there is something wrong with having human cells in a mouse.
Evolution itself dictates no belief about the properness of human cells being grown in mice. I brought up the reasons why we and mice are not the same population, not out of a desire to show off, but because you say "there is a reason why humans didn't evolve into Mice and vice versa if you believe in evolution" as the first step in your argument that evolution compels wariness of the research. If that reason is moral (it's the best way for things to be), as you imply, then you get your argument. But that reason isn't moral, it's factual. People aren't mice and mice aren't people, but evolution doesn't even say anything about whether it would be good if they were. In fact, if we had balls-out mouse and dog people (which actually has nothing to do with the article, but what the hell), evolution would only say anything about genetic change in those mouse and dog people created by the differences in their lifespans, abilities to breed, etc.
I really do think that your argument that research involving animals is not productive is based on a (perhaps earnest) lack of knowledge about what has been done with medical research using animals. What made me angry is that you didn't have any pause stating that medical research using animals was pointless despite any real lack of evidence. Instead, you cited a general failure to come up with a cure for the common cold. Not only does that have nothing directly to do with animal research (no one supposes that animal research, of all things, is a magic bullet for finding a cure for the common cold), but it relies on a silly assumption - that if animal research had done anything of value, it would have also fixed the common cold. That's why I said that the common cold isn't an easy problem to fix (that and my basic biology textbook knowledge that the common cold is actually a quickly changing and diverse population of virii, making it a moving target). In fact, the common cold doesn't even matter at all to the argument. If animal research (for whatever bizarre reason) were uniquely responsible for a cure for the common cold, that is no indication that it was or was not useful for other things. Try http://www.ohsu.edu/about/breakthroughs.shtml. Clearly it's your decision whether you think research with animals is *morally* OK, but there are real results which have nothing to do with the common cold.
"Pretty soon, as outlandish as it sounds, it not to far fetched to think that we'll have to include amendments in our constitution for civil rights for our pet dog Rover." This is a non sequitur because A) the article is about mice and not dogs B) the article is not about pets, but lab animals C) the article is about human cells kept in mice, not whole human brains being grown in super smart mice who act like people, a thing which no one really has any interest in doing. Certainly if the article were about people literally wanting to make mice into mouse-people you would be more justified to extrapolate out to dogs, and then to saying that we will need to include dogs in the constitution (if we are at all moral). But you've gotten so far from the article or what anyone is talking about that it's really completely absurd. The article is about some human cells in mice. These human cells are not themselves human, and they do not make the mice human unless you think that one is a person or not dependent merely on there DNA (which wouldn't be very consistent with the implication you set up that you believe in God).
FWIW, I don't think that you are stupid, rather too happy to piss on things you haven't bothered to find out much of anything about. Part of what is infuriating to me about it is that the knowledge involved is just simple stuff you'd get from paying attention in introductory (high school or college) biology. For example, it's a very basic thing about evolution that it's not spiritual or moral, but basically just the observation that some animals have more babies than others, and that some of this has to do with what was passed down from those animals' parents, with the result that stuff that works poorly tends to breed out over generations. The fact that you don't understand this suggests basic lack of experience, laziness, or an annoying persistence in misdefining evolution despite abundant correct definitions and attempts to explain it.
I'm more inclined to agree about hardware support a few years ago, which was tedious to work with.
I think you just hit a streak of bad luck, but it might be that our buying habits are different. I don't do anything special about looking up parts for compatibility. Every now and then I contend with something silly (recently I was trying to get my cheap Kyro2 working with more modes in X. But it wasn't so bad when I looked it up, and the board is barely supported in windows anyway).
Not like it matters to me if you use linux or not, I just haven't had much trouble since 1996.
Of the above, I've only had problems with DVD players, inkjets, and a lack of useful software for MIDI setups. These are all part of a chicken-and-egg problem, though: without widespread consumption of Linux, people don't write the proprietary drivers and apps for Linux. Without certain apps, some people won't be able to get much they need out of Linux.
However, what I can tell you is that there are people out there with no scruples.
Like child-molesting religious leaders. (Hey, why not trade one ridiculous stereotype for another - the mad, completely unethical scientist for the child-molesting priest?)
Only problem is that genetic scientists seems to be missing the fact that DNA is just data.
Actually it's deoxyribonucleic acid, a material and not data, but who's paying attention?
The actual code that processess the data lives somewhere else. Inside the living cells.
I knew those biologists had forgotten something! The living cells!
Genetic science can change the maps, models and textures easy but they haven't even started playing with the server code. until they do they're just taking shots in the dark. They can make some changes but they don't really know the full effects of thier changes or why the work the way they do.
It definitely sounds to me like you know enough about genetics to shout about the ignorance of everyone working in that field.
They are bringing products to market and they understand very little about how the whole system works. Never mind that they seem to think that they can solve problems in a few years that the very powerful genetic algorithm couldn't solve in millions of years.
Genetic algorithms are horribly slow. Especially when the length of the reproductive lifespan is many years. Note that they have no ability to predict or look ahead, either. If red tails got birds killed yesterday, there won't be many today even if they're now the best thing ever.
Humans are way to carried away with their own importance.
Someone is, anyway. But you go on telling genetics why it's all wrong without any evidence that you know what it's even about.
I would really like to hear that I am wrong but I want good reasons;)
I'm inclined to think it's a developmental problem, but that's just speculation.
Either way you look at it there are still some negative implications as well as positive possibilities to this research.
You obviously don't look at it from my point of view, which doesn't fall into the dichotomy you set up.
I can't think of any positive side to this spiritually. Probably because there isn't any.
I suppose that, for many religious people, there is no inherent (e.g., spiritual) value to alleviating human suffering. That's completely immoral, so forgive me if I don't care about their opinions.
As far as Mother Nature and Evolution, there is a reason why humans didn't evolve into Mice and vice versa if you believe in evolution.
The reasons you allude to are just facts - initial differences in genotype and persistent differences in selection pressures and niches occupied by the two species.
Pretty soon, as outlandish as it sounds, it not to far fetched to think that we'll have to include amendments in our constitution for civil rights for our pet dog Rover.
No. It is too far fetched. In fact, it doesn't even follow from what you just said. It's a complete non sequitur, and you are babbling.
One could hope that a cure for cancer could come from this, but as many years as we have been doing animal testing we still haven't come with a simple cure for the common cold.
The common cold isn't an easy problem to fix. But I can't expect you to know that any more than I can expect you to know that research using animals isn't the same as animal testing, or that it yields a continuous stream of new knowledge about biology, medicine, disease, drug abuse, hunger, and other topics that bear directly on human suffering. But you cross the line when you fail to distinguish your own ignorance from everyone else's.
You assume that moral personhood relies on some biological judgement (number of human cells - whatever that means, percent human DNA - whatever that means, etc.) It's clear to me that it doesn't.
There might be hard questions related to cloning, but those aren't hard questions.
A cloned human being is a human being and has all of the rights of a human being born as a twin or via in vitro fertilization. If they are born malformed, that's not a new situation, it's the same problem as when someone gives birth to a naturally malformed baby.
None of the issues you brought up are even remotely new. Don't forget that we already have genetically identical people (e.g., twins).
Slashdot Mirror
Constant orgasms actually sound somewhat unpleasant.
Maybe Ray Kurzweil is a nutcase.
Let me return to what you said.
There is no reason why this gradient should be mirrored in anyone's judgements of what is acceptable vs. deplorable genetic engineering - why any possible biological continuity between "animal" and "human" necessarily implies that there cannot be, or should not be, a discontinuity in the acceptability of g.e. It is just a natural aspect of moral judgements that they can turn on arbitrary distinctions - for example, I don't see pigs and cows as different, at least not in terms of whether it is moral to eat them, but an orthodox Jew does. Who is wrong? Similarly, I might differentiate mammals with yellow hair as the things which must not be tainted by g.e., and the fact that this class of beings is arbitrary to you does not mean that I cannot perfectly reasonably distinguish them (there ARE clear, non-arbitrary objective differences between mammals with yellow hair and everything else) and even treat them differently or expect them to be treated differently (just as I might have different opinions about eating pork than you do). If I argued for an objective basis for morality, I would have to not only back up the coherence of the class of mammals with yellow hair, but also to explain why that class merits special moral consideration. Since I don't argue that way, it is enough to note that there is a coherent class.
With respect to people who do think that there are objective bases for morality, I have never heard of considering people on the basis of how many human cells are in them. Rather, the only things I can imagine being important (and the things which probably match up well with my unrationalized reactions) are related to function. What if you sculpted a mouse entirely out of human cells? Well, it would be a mouse - it would look like a mouse and act like a mouse. Similar for a person who had mouse cells - the heritage of his cells is only a loose correlate of his own function. A person with a pig's cornea or a baboon's heart is still 100% a person. That isn't a species judgement - a martian who acted like a person and, say, looked like a person with big bushy eyebrows and red skin would probably be recognized as a person too, by most people anyway. If the martian instead grew out of the ground and only swayed in the wind, he would be very creepy but would really only be a weird person shaped tree, not a person. It's entirely possible to think that personhood has to do with percentage of cells descended from a member of Homo sapiens sapiens, but I don't think that matches up with what a lot of people think, and it doesn't match up very well with the things I look at as human.
I didn't learn anything new from this, but I might as well detail the contents of my bowels, since you guys enjoy comments so much.
Personally I find leftover leg of lamb to be passing into my colon. I can search my small intestine for lumps of organic matter, and if they are digestible, I turn them into so much unidentifiable food mush.
So what's the problem, and why are you here?
Much better.
What is this about "interesting" slashdot posters? I only read the comments for the trolls.
A similar service, Fandango, works just great and seems pretty healthy (almost all of the theatres around here use it). I have to admit that it's just extra effort 95% of the time - you're going to the theatre anyway, so why is it preferable to spend 2 minutes buying tickets at home as opposed to 2 minutes buying tickets at the theatre?
"Pro-abortion" implies unconditional support for abortions. But the fighting about abortion is between people who want people to be able to have abortions and people who don't want anyone to be able to have abortions legally. Thanks for bringing in the totally unrelated flamebait, though.
We don't have long enough sight to see what kinds of effects our NOT mucking around can have on other things in the future, either.
I assume that transgenic mice will be kept in relatively sanitary labs as they have in the past. Meanwhile, people all over the world live and swap flu with chickens and pigs, no human interference required. The only reason this idea sounds so scary is that you aren't even thinking of the natural horrors that you shrug off every day, and which might someday kill most of us.
Certainly if the article were about people literally wanting to make mice into mouse-people you would be more justified to extrapolate out to dogs, and then to saying that we will need to include dogs in the constitution (if we are at all moral). But you've gotten so far from the article or what anyone is talking about that it's really completely absurd. The article is about some human cells in mice. These human cells are not themselves human, and they do not make the mice human unless you think that one is a person or not dependent merely on there DNA (which wouldn't be very consistent with the implication you set up that you believe in God).
I'm more inclined to agree about hardware support a few years ago, which was tedious to work with.
I think you just hit a streak of bad luck, but it might be that our buying habits are different. I don't do anything special about looking up parts for compatibility. Every now and then I contend with something silly (recently I was trying to get my cheap Kyro2 working with more modes in X. But it wasn't so bad when I looked it up, and the board is barely supported in windows anyway).
Not like it matters to me if you use linux or not, I just haven't had much trouble since 1996.
Of the above, I've only had problems with DVD players, inkjets, and a lack of useful software for MIDI setups. These are all part of a chicken-and-egg problem, though: without widespread consumption of Linux, people don't write the proprietary drivers and apps for Linux. Without certain apps, some people won't be able to get much they need out of Linux.
You assume that moral personhood relies on some biological judgement (number of human cells - whatever that means, percent human DNA - whatever that means, etc.) It's clear to me that it doesn't.
There might be hard questions related to cloning, but those aren't hard questions.
A cloned human being is a human being and has all of the rights of a human being born as a twin or via in vitro fertilization. If they are born malformed, that's not a new situation, it's the same problem as when someone gives birth to a naturally malformed baby.
None of the issues you brought up are even remotely new. Don't forget that we already have genetically identical people (e.g., twins).