For me “How long could I get away with driving like an ABSOLUTE ASSHOLE all the time before I lost my licence or had an accident.” Speed limits, red lights, stop signs… forget them all. Every day I have to drive sensibly and obey the law because without my licence I dont have a job, and every day I see at least one person driving like an absolute moron and I wonder…
Isolate a bunch of babies together, with food etc, and see how they develop their own language and society.
Not exactly the same, but suggests probably it would not turn out well. https://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/capsules/histoire_bleu06.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_deprivation_experiments
I already knew about Psamtik’s experiment but I thought I had a bigger memory of it than what I was able to find quickly. There’s a good starting place if you want to look deeper but I’m not that interested
I silently lament that this experiment cannot be done at least once every couple weeks. I think it would be the most fascinating experiment to observe. Watching a new language develop naturally in real time!
Really interesting idea.
It may not be possible, but I want to gradually replace a person’s brain piece-by-piece with the same areas from other brains and see if they retain their sense of self when none of the original brain remains.
The brain of Theseus!
How would you know if your sense of self is changing? Surely you always feel like yourself else you wouldn’t be you…?
Surely you always feel like yourself
This is disproven by considering dysphoria exists
We can satisfy this curiosity with a fair amount of scientific evidence.
Of course, most regions of the brain are so densely and variably interconnected that the technical difficulty of “replacing parts” precedes the ethical consideration by many, many years. But we do have a great deal of evidence for how our subjective sense of self is affected by “losing/removing parts” of the brain. Patients are often unaware of change unless evidence for it is overwhelming, and even then are adept at healing/reconciling instinctively. It appears that this is just something brains have evolved to do.
So while the technology (and sheer artistry) required to match and “stitch” these networks is quite staggering, basically magic, it is theoretically possible that a patient could have every part replaced without recognizing any continuity errors in the chimeric stages, until one day they wake up as a completely different person.
And keep the old pieces, in the end assemble them back together and see what the differences are
I’d want to know how many people would continue eating meat if they had to kill the animal themselves after getting trained how to do it. Or as an alternative instead of doing the killing yourself being physically present while someone else does it for you and you have to watch, smell, and hear them prepare it for you.
Is it really unethical though?
Raise a kid in a sensory deprivation chamber, with one exception: a monitor that only shows gen alpha brainrot videos. When they’re like 14 drop them off in a populated area and see what happens
They wouldn’t be able to walk at all because of floating in water for their entire life.
Realistically would just end up a developmentally stunted invalid. There was an example from some book, I don’t remember which, where there was a SE Asian woman who lived with her family and had a baby.
The family was ashamed, so they forced the girl to keep the baby by itself in the attic. She would go to work most of the day, and come back to take care of it when home. That was the total extent of interaction and stimulation the baby got. It ended up being severely stunted and never learned to talk.
Essentially young children need human interaction which includes warmth and constant validation, caring for, etc
If you interrupt that in any way, you end up with a feral child who is permanently stunted.
Developing a wireless brain-electronic interface. I believe it will be not so bad if the development is non intrusive.
What happens when we reverse Earth’s rotation.
While interesting I feel that one is more “Hilarously impractical” than anything else.
I’m pretty sure an experiment that kills everyone would be considered immoral but we’d have to ask the IRB to be sure ;)
Lois Lane gets rescued.
I’m fairly certain that there’s a What If video on this by the XKCD guy, Randall Munroe.
Eugenics. Not the racist BS that was done in the past, but really pushing the limit to see if we can breed super humans. Genetic editing to make humans immune to cancer or disease. Increased lifespan. Resistance to radiation. Smarter. Stronger. Better.
Arguably, this kind of thing is actually somewhat of a necessity if we ever want to explore the stars. We are far too fragile in our current bodies to survive the difficulties and vastness of space.
Honestly, I’d be super stoked if we could just get rid of all the actual serious defects, just, whack a few moles that really super suck for anyone who gets the short end of the genealogical stick.
And by that I mean like
- Huntington’s Disease
- Early onset and regular non early onset Arthritis
- My entire family bloodline is prone to heart issues/cancer type beat
- Crohn’s
Cloning is the first one that comes to mind for me. If you could somehow avoid the horrors of the process of learning a reliable methodology the result wouldn’t necessarily be unethical.
We can do sheep. And thus pretty much know how that would go for humans.
What happens if you put a lightbulb in your ass
Nothing of note until you try to take it out
Nothing until you start rubbing your feet on the carpet to generate current to light it up.
How far can you strip down the human body until it can’t survive anymore. Assisted feeding and breathing is okay. Adjustable room temperature too.
Arms, Legs? Gone. Can we get rid of the skin? Probably, if the room is the right temperature? Bones? Most of them aren’t needed, are they? Some organs surely can go too.
Basically, what is the bare minimum needed so the body and the mind still more or less work.
Yo, same what I was gonna to comment.
It would be fascinating to see if we could archive a “brain in a jar” by this.
Even more when considering that a big bunch of non-brain neurons are in the belly-area. So would it affect how we think?Hey! Somebody figured out the plot of the seminal sci-fi novel, “Don’t create the torment Nexus”!
For this you don’t need a human, Can start with monkeys.
Disclaimer: I don’t want this experiment to happen.
You should watch Johnny Got His Gun if you haven’t. Not quite as extreme but kind of similar theme.
That’s what the video to One by Metallica is based on, isn’t it?
Correct, they bought the rights to the movie to not have to continually pay royalties for it.
No, that’s a landmine victim. ‘One’ is an antiwar song.
“Landmine has taken my sight, taken my speech, taken my hearing…”
I guess someone forgot to tell Metallica when they were writing the song that it wasn’t about a landmine.
And I guess someone previously forgot to tell Dalton Trumbo when he wrote Johnny Got His Gun that it wasn’t an anti-war novel.
And then they forgot to tell him again thirty-two years later when he directed the movie adaptation, Johnny Got His Gun.
And then, worst of all, they forgot to tell the directors of the music video that “One” was anti-war and Johnny Got His Gun was about a landmine and that using scenes from the film in the music video wouldn’t be thematically appropriate.
Damn, there were a lot of missteps! Good thing you set it all straight!
This was the topic of an episode of the podcast That’s Absurd, Please Elaborate, which I highly recommend. Unfortunately I can’t find the episode right now. https://thatsabsurdshow.com/
So, firstly, may I suggest you check youtube for one of the now many ‘Adventures of Torso’ type videos done in Kenshi.
But as far as keeping a ‘minimum viable’ human actually alive?
You could remove limbs, but you would still have to have a method for them to eat and urinate and deficate.
You… almost certainly could not remove all skin and keep someone alive for very long.
For starters, they’d bleed to death. Secondly, the pain of existing without skin would probably literally kill them or drive them to try to kill themselves. Thirdly: Skin prevents infections, you’d have to keep them in basically a totally hermetically sealed room or container.
Bones? A de-boned human?
Well there’s almost certainly not a way to remove all of your spinal bones and skull without causing death or immensely serious paralysis and/or brain damage.
Sure you could remain alive without all your limbs if you have caretakers, you can survive without your lower jaw as well… You can maybe? survive with the loss of a certain high percentage of your ribcage, but probably not with the entirety of it and your sternum removed.
Organs? Well, brain, heart and liver are almost certainly mandatory.
Though you can remove portions of your liver and it can still function and regrow to some extent…
…and portions of your brain… though you’ll lose cognitive abilities, memories and basically become braindead but still technically alive at some point.
Assuming we are just removing things and maybe hooking you up to various kinds if life support tubes and not replacing organs with some kind of mechanical or genetically engineered equivalent:
I think you can survive without any kidneys if you are constantly on dialysis, but its far better to have at least one.
Similarly: Lungs, you need at least one.
You can have your stomach and intestines and bladder partially removed or reshaped, but not entirely.
You can survive without eyes… and a gallbladder and a thymus and a spleen and an appendix and your tonsils… and your adenoids, and your sex organs, but you’re gonna need a great deal of monitoring and bloodwork and hormone balancing and what not.
How do I unimagine that?
I’ve broken traffic laws most of my life, and I still have a driver’s license. So, you can drive like a partially reasonable asshole indefinitely if you have the skill to pull it off.
I’d like to see GMO humans. I want to see how far we can elevate our species using science. It’s completely unethical, but there it is.
Oh I’m no saint. I set my cruise control at 10km/h over the speed limit, I punch it through orange lights and I sometimes roll through stop signs.
I’m talking about full blown fast and furious wannabe swerving lanes, running reds and racing literally everywhere.
This describes my brother in law. Granted, he’s better than he used to be about 10 years ago, but he grew up in a small town, got to know all the cops pretty quickly, did a little jail time here and there but still has his license. He’s totalled many vehicles, spent some time in ICU and still drives like a bat out of hell.
The movie gattaca does this well. No murder or cleansing. But you can have a natural birth or IVF with the Impurities stripped out. “The best of you.”
“Dirty” people were limited to shit like janitors and all high paying jobs would sneak a test in to filter out anyone “un-pure”
Gattica is a great movie, and a compelling story about the power of determination.
How is that unethical? If anything i say it’s unethical to let us languish in these horrible bodies when we can work towards something better.
Most people are very opposed to eugenics and genetic modification of humans. There is infinite opportunity for unexpected disasters along the way to perfection, and it’s extremely apathetic to be okay with subjecting a sentient creature to the possible ramifications of unexpected outcomes.
Most people are only opposed to eugenics (as you’re using the word) because of a very narrow application. A rare few get genetic engineering and capitalism mixed up, which at least makes sense, i wouldn’t want musk choosing who gets a generic upgrade or how an augmentation is implemented.
And i find it abhorrent that people are just fine with letting our entire species suffer the nightmare of random chance that is our bodies. Sure it’s surprisingly good for a system that only selects for whatever fucks the most, but we can and should eventually do better.
Cyborg-like implants. I want titanium joints and UV vision and magnetic field sensors and charging my phone by laying it on my belly. Uncap each finger to reveal a small tool: screwdriver, USB key, cutting blade, etc.
Note that none of that includes or requires a constant connection to a network/internet. I want to augment my interactions with the real world, not replace them with a virtual world.
Biohackers have been toying with very primitive versions of this for over a decade.
Things like implanting RFID capsules in their hands or fingers to act as credit cards or key fobs… lots of fun infections.
I am fairly sure the movement has basically died out since bluetooth became widespread.
On the other hand, you can always sign up as a test subject for neuralink rofl.
It’s still a thing
What would power these implants?
Giant Qi charging pad on your bed.
Linux, most likely.
The power of SCIENCE!
I’ve looked forward to this most of my life, but given how things have changed, I would never do it. There’s no way these implants wouldn’t be subscription based, and spy on everything you do. Oh, you forgot to pay your enhanced eyeball subscription? Now you’re blind, motherfucker!
Oh boy do I have an 80’s cartoon for you…
Go-go-gadget…
Eugenics taken to their logical conclusion.
As the parent of a child on the spectrum that is very aware of what such practices would mean for him, I would never agree with it in real life. But I do have a fascination with what we could do if we just said the hell with ethics and started trying to breed “perfect” people.
Like, ok, let’s try to breed the perfect person–fine. But do we have to kill everyone else? Why is genocide seemingly always on the agenda? Lol
Eugenics doesn’t mean killing anyone, just improve the genetic qualities of humans.
You could do selective breeding, incentivized breeding (entice the right candidates with whatever) ,gene manipulations, etc…
But I understand that proponents of eugenics usually have extreme right wing views, and why you would come to that conclusion.
The movie gattaca does this well. No murder or cleansing. But you can have a natural birth or IVF with the Impurities stripped out. “The best of you.”
“Dirty” people were limited to shit like janitors and all high paying jobs would sneak a test in to filter out anyone “un-pure”
Nice, thanks for the movie recommendation. Gonna have to check that one out.
Gorillas on steroids. How bulky can these magnificent already bulky beasts get?
Oh, I like this one.
Mind you Ive seen a cranky Silverback at the zoo, one with an extra gram of test and tren a day would be utterly fucking terrifying, also the roadrage would be something to behold… dibs not being the poor fucker giving it its shots.
Look up a shaved silverback… them mofos are scary.
Most big animals that are already properly scary with fur dont improve when shaved.
Roid rage comes from excess estrogen production, not from testosterone. I’d assume that a managed steroid treatment for a gorilla would include estrogen blockers.
Yeah, and if you want to climb in there and take his bloods and administer the androgen blockers you are welcome to.
I’d like an extensive dietary breakdown of the potential benefits or harms of eating the flesh and organs of humans with net worths of over 10 million, 100 million, 1 billion, 10 billion, 100 billion dollars.
That would need to be a wide ranging study with a very large sample size, just to be sure we get the most robust dataset we can. Better to use all of them than just a small sample.
