Human cloning. Agree, disagree?

[DigitalEcho]

Should we clone humans? Obviously it could open doors to several medical breakthroughs but is it ethical or legal?

Personally I wouldn't be an advocate of human cloning but what do you think?

[Wolfgang of Borg]

Absolutely, we should try to understand as much about biology as possible. Ideally, even if there were no foreseeable therapeutic benefits we would still seek to be able to clone primates just as a matter of principle.

>is it ethical
For random tissue samples and embrios yes -- why wouldn't it be? -- and raising transgenic animals for transplants actually seems less morally questionable than growing livestock for food.

Entire human bodies for experiment should be pithed or preferably have neural tissue (certainly the neocortex) removed entirely, or prevented from developing. I presume this is the bit you wouldn't be keen on? Personally i'd be happy to know drugs could be more thoroughly tested and surgeons better trained.

Cloning actual people is little different from in vitro fertilization, undoubtedly more dangerous, and cruel if that rumor about Dolly's telomeres is true (tho i'm certain telomere repair techniques will be developed eventually as part of the fight against aging). We should definitely perfect chimp cloning first.

>or legal
Irrelevant due to medical tourism. Rich people are certainly willing to pay for guaranteed-no-rejection no-waiting-list organs (just look at Steve Jobs).

[SliceOfDog]

I've added a poll for this, with 5 choices, of varying degrees of support. Please remember to include a Poll in the Polling Station (The name is the clue )
Also, I'll make this very clear now:
We are happy for members to have discussions like these, but please keep it civil. No flaming or breaking rules, even in a topic as potentially controversial as this.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I should state before I start that I am completely against any form of testing on a sentient being. I am however perfectly fine with non-sentient testing; I have no qualms with stem cell research (Assuming it has been gained through ethical means, such as donors or afterbirths etc), in fact I support it. But if something is conscious, no matter what species it is, it has the right not to be tested on.

Certainly, in the past Animal Testing has done more good than it did bad, and would perhaps continue to do so. However, that alone is not justificiation for an act. Testing on the homeless would be massively beneficial; They don't actively contribute to society, take up space, food and money, it would provide more accurate information than testing on animals, unused organs and matter could be used in transplants, and clearing the streets of beggers would increase morale of regular citizens. In the light of this, should we test on the homeless? Absolutely not, it's an abhorant idea. Likewise, I feel, we should not test on animals. Yes, it's probable that people will suffer in the short term, and possibly the long term, but while masses of funding are going into animal testing and other such things, sciences such as stem cell are not getting the attention they need to become a viable, morally justified alternative.

As well as this, I feel cloning in itself is a little pointless. Perhaps cloning of bodies that never had conscious thought, though I wouldn't like the idea of it (How could you ensure, for example, that these bodies did indeed never have conscious thought, and would everyone actually adhere to these rules?) could be beneficial, but I'll open this one up to the floor:

I have yet to hear a real reason why cloning of conscious living humans would be a good idea. Lemme hear it!
Any suggestions welcome, because I have honestly never heard an arguement that persuades me on this. I feel, at the moment, that human cloning is pointless.

[Dusty]

The cloning of individual organs and tissues is really the only logical path for dealing with the every growing transplant list.. Now for cloning full human beings, I'm pretty sure there are methods out there that are less ethically charged and considerably more efficient then cloning cadavers to practice surgery on.

[Wolfgang of Borg]

Yeah sorry i was just trying to think of a really extreme example, it occurred to me that cadaver dissection can teach anatomy, but people learning things like heart valve replacement would probably benefit from practice on live models. Another possibility that occurred to me was for women wanting a child, but not to carry the pregnancy or hire a surrogate, making use of a cloned womb.

[Samantha Arrow]

We need to practice cloning if we want a chance to have actual furries walking around ^^

As George Bush would say "Man-animal hybrids" lulz

[DigitalEcho]

[QUOTE=SliceOfDog;9392]I have yet to hear a real reason why cloning of conscious living humans would be a good idea. Lemme hear it!
Any suggestions welcome, because I have honestly never heard an arguement that persuades me on this. I feel, at the moment, that human cloning is pointless.[/QUOTE

I second that. *points above* I wouldn't like waking up in the morning to see myself standing next to the bedside. but the furry idea sounds good

[Wolfgang of Borg]

Sorry Slice i only just saw your post

I should state before I start that I am completely against any form of testing on a sentient being. I am however perfectly fine with non-sentient testing; I have no qualms with stem cell research (Assuming it has been gained through ethical means, such as donors or afterbirths etc), in fact I support it. But if something is conscious, no matter what species it is, it has the right not to be tested on.

I think i disagree that all animals have the right not to be experimented with, any more than they have the right not to be eaten in the wild. Obviously we should be as humane as possible, tho sadly there's no way to guarantee this. Going back to the cloning, this is part of the reason this tech should be developed with public money and oversight: there's so much demand that it's development is inevitable, and leaving that to industry is just asking for ethics abuses (and patenting, but that's a whole other rant).

Certainly, in the past Animal Testing has done more good than it did bad, and would perhaps continue to do so. However, that alone is not justificiation for an act. Testing on the homeless would be massively beneficial; They don't actively contribute to society, take up space, food and money, it would provide more accurate information than testing on animals, unused organs and matter could be used in transplants, and clearing the streets of beggers would increase morale of regular citizens. In the light of this, should we test on the homeless? Absolutely not, it's an abhorant idea. Likewise, I feel, we should not test on animals. Yes, it's probable that people will suffer in the short term, and possibly the long term, but while masses of funding are going into animal testing and other such things, sciences such as stem cell are not getting the attention they need to become a viable, morally justified alternative.

But in abusing the homeless the pros obviously don't outweigh the cons, otherwise it would be a good idea. (Unless you're using a slippery slope argument, that any animal experimentation is bad because adult humans are animals, which i doubt?) With cloning / animal experimentation i think they do.
Assuming you accept that abortion is not murder, how is cloning (which would at first lead to a lot of spontaneous abortions) any different?

Also i disagree that animal research necessarily reduces funding for stem cells, but i could well be wrong.

My own view is that doing anything other than learning as much as possible as rapidly as possible is insane. (Yes, admittedly, i am also insane.)

As well as this, I feel cloning in itself is a little pointless. Perhaps cloning of bodies that never had conscious thought, though I wouldn't like the idea of it (How could you ensure, for example, that these bodies did indeed never have conscious thought, and would everyone actually adhere to these rules?) could be beneficial, but I'll open this one up to the floor

Liked i said, remove the tissue that would become the neocortex from the embryo, and preferably as much brain as possible while still allowing correct endocrine system function. You'd be left with a human body with *just* enough brain matter to breath and maintain a heartbeat. Course then there's the problem of exercising it... hmm i linked to a story about this just the other day,.. maybe you could stimulate muscular contraction with electricity or something?

I have yet to hear a real reason why cloning of conscious living humans would be a good idea. Lemme hear it!
Any suggestions welcome, because I have honestly never heard an arguement that persuades me on this. I feel, at the moment, that human cloning is pointless.

Meaning the clone would be conscious? I can't think of one, unless you were really really keen on meeting the identical twin of Jesus/Hitler/Elvis/etc. Or there was someone so brilliant that you *had* to make more of them. Or some rich dude was just insanely narcissistic. (Ok that last one scares me slightly, sociopathy is popular among CEOs and leaving behind genetically identical progeny has gotta be the best strategy for spreading one's genes ever. Hopefully however it would not feel like that enough to the paleomammalian complex of such persons to tear them away from the usual promiscuity + rape strategies employed to that end.)

The big danger would be shoddy clone-farms not bothering to properly de-brain their charges, but when you consider the total cost of raising a human body from germ cell to adult the cost of a bit of pre-natal brain surgery is trifling. Plus of course the brain burns 20% of calories consumed, so it would be significantly in their interest that clones not even have the meat necessary for self-awareness.

I may have misunderstood Echo's original question. Pressing a button and making a copy of yourself, with your memories etc, not just an infant identical twin (or ideally just the organ/limb you need) will not be possible until we have mind uploading, which is a distinctly post-Singularity tech and therefore unreasonaboutable. (I'm all in favour.)

[Rys]

I voted "no strong opinion", but I actually have two conflicting relatively strong opinions. On the one hand, the ability to clone particularly useful people and the knowledge gained from experimenting with such things would be very useful. On the other, I think that any sophont being experimented on should consent to being experimented on; this is no problem if we "debrain" the clones or do not let the embryos develop, but if we try to make sentient clones we will face the problem that by the time the experiments are intelligent enough to give consent they will already have been experimented on. I am not sure how to solve this problem.

[SliceOfDog]

I think i disagree that all animals have the right not to be experimented with, any more than they have the right not to be eaten in the wild. Obviously we should be as humane as possible

I don't want to dwell too much on this, because it's a different debate entirely, but being eaten in the wild is a natural occurance. The animals being eaten (More often than not at least) have a chance to escape, and also the pain/death is relatively short (Again, more often than not), and the animal doing the eating does so directly to survive. You may suggest that animal testing assists life, or prevents some death, but it is not integral to all human life in the way consuming food is. We do not need to test on animals to survive, and the animals being tested on have no chance of escape: They exist only to die in an experiment.
Also, I would ask why we need to be as humane as possible? If, as you go on to say, "doing anything other than learning as much as possible as rapidly as possible is insane", why do we need to uphold moral boundaries? What is their use in a purely scientific approach?

But in abusing the homeless the pros obviously don't outweigh the cons, otherwise it would be a good idea. (Unless you're using a slippery slope argument, that any animal experimentation is bad because adult humans are animals, which i doubt?) With cloning / animal experimentation i think they do.

Again, not quite on topic so this will probably be the last mention I make of this kind of thing, but I don't understand how animal experimentation can outweigh the cons when they do not in experimentation of humans who do not contribute to society. If you aknowledge that animals feel pain, and that, as you said earlier, this should be prevented to the best of our abilities when doing experimentations, what seperates animals from humans? In this case neither consent, but using humans will be more accurate and save money, and also it is humans that will benefit, whereas animals are not even being used for the benefit of their own species. As such it seems logical, unless all rights of sentient beings should be preserved, that the pros of testing on humans greatly outweighs the cons, unless you factor in media backlash and funding issues... o_0

You'd be left with a human body with *just* enough brain matter to breath and maintain a heartbeat [....] The big danger would be shoddy clone-farms not bothering to properly de-brain their charges

This is the fine line that would worry me with cloning unconscious beings. We are only just discovering that people can be conscious in long periods of a comatose state, so when you get low-rate doctors trying to make a name for themselves, most likely in other countries with a less rigid healthcare system, playing with immobile but living bodies is a very horror-esque concept.

I may have misunderstood Echo's original question.

Either way your points are valid; I hadn't considered cloning of unconscious bodies before, and it's a decent arguement. However, I had taken the question to mean conscious clones. Not neccessarily with the same memories etc, but simply beings identical in genes. This is what I was claiming had no real use, and it appears that you agree with saying "I can't think of one, unless you were really really keen on meeting the identical twin of Jesus/Hitler/Elvis/etc".

In answer to Rys:

On the one hand, the ability to clone particularly useful people and the knowledge gained from experimenting with such things would be very useful.

But who decides who counts as "useful people"? You would get dictators cloning themselves, regimes using them to mass-produce armies of their strongest men. You need to consider the application outside of the United States and other 'civilised' countries, and consider how new technologies might be used by despots, tyrants or terrorist cells.

[Wolfgang of Borg]

(Sorry for dwelling, but this discussion is interesting -- never before met someone advocating the outright banning of animal research. I think topic drift is no great evil if it leads to interesting areas. I'll drop it now.)

You're right that my position is inconsistent (hey i said i was crazy) but that's unavoidable: an amoral ubermensch with my goal of understanding everything would be unrestricted in their actions. But we aren't like that -- the Golden Rule of reciprocity is hardwired in our brains, we cannot witness or contemplate suffering without empathizing (admittedly yes there's schadenfreude, and sometimes the mental wiring goes screwy and you get sadomasochism, but in general people don't enjoy seeing pain). This's what's behind my speciesism: i want the knowledge that animal experimentation provides, but not enough to harm fellow sapient creatures -- pure utilitarianism is impossible for (non-psycho) humans.

Also i don't see how raising animals for study is any worse than raising them for food. Being eaten by predators isn't any more nor less a "natural occurrence" than being killed for science.

I certainly agree now that making clones that grow up to be people is a can of worms we shouldn't open, attractive as the prospect of a research department crammed with Feynmans is. Honestly your question took me totally by surprise; the only group i've ever heard of seriously advocating reproductive cloning are clear nutjobs.

Drifting further off-topic: Rys's point about consent is interesting, particularly re AI research, since it looks like the only way we're ever going to get AIs is to evolve them... with all the suffering and death that process implies, any transhuman minds we create will quite possibly see us as sadistic savages.

Back on topic: an interesting looking fantasy novel about memory-clones is David Brin's Kiln People, wherein it is possible to create a perfect mental clone cheaply but it only lives for a short time.

[Rick Canaan]

I voted "No" on this one.

The reason? Already, our world is starting to suffer from over-population, and global climate change due to the phenomenal rate at which our vast population is consuming resources.

If we began cloning, we would greatly increase this already staggering population.

Cloning, I think, is something that needs to wait until after man has reached the stars and has begun colonizing other planets - where the human population would be able to grow unchecked without the worry of further strain on Earth's already beleaguered ecosystem.

[Brome Teks]

I voted Yes to advance medicine. I'm not looking for sentient clones, that's a problem. However, we could do wonders to saving the people on the donor list, and making thinks like growth hormones, Insulin, etc. by simply cloning human bodies to make the required parts.

[Wolfgang of Borg]

I voted "No" on this one.

The reason? Already, our world is starting to suffer from over-population, and global climate change due to the phenomenal rate at which our vast population is consuming resources.

If we began cloning, we would greatly increase this already staggering population.

Cloning, I think, is something that needs to wait until after man has reached the stars and has begun colonizing other planets - where the human population would be able to grow unchecked without the worry of further strain on Earth's already beleaguered ecosystem.

Wouldn't overpopulation be better dealt with by reducing the birth rate? Deliberately not researching something because it might make people live longer seems wrong.

I doubt humans (in present form) will ever reach the stars. Anything able to travel that far would be unrecognizable, and probably not even need planets for colonization.

[Rick Canaan]

Wouldn't overpopulation be better dealt with by reducing the birth rate? Deliberately not researching something because it might make people live longer seems wrong.

I doubt humans (in present form) will ever reach the stars. Anything able to travel that far would be unrecognizable, and probably not even need planets for colonization.

I don't think "right" or "wrong" is the issue. One of the reasons that our species has populated as much as it has, is because of prolonged lifespans. People are living longer, therefore there are fewer people dying off to make room for all of the new people who are being born.

On the question of ethics, I think the same could be said for controlling birth rates. Who has the right to say who cannot have children? We would have the same lack of rights to say who can be born, as saying that people can't live as long because of our planet's population issues.

Death is a fundamental fact of our existence. We have figured out ways to prolong life, yes, but not make it last forever. Being afraid of dying, resenting it, or hoping that it won't happen will never change the fact of it. But to continue to come up with new ways to prolong life, is only going to serve to increase our planet's population problems.

Population-control is a question theorists, philosophers, religious leaders, medical scientists and anthropologists have been wrestling with for centuries - even more-so recently because of the explosion in our species' continual rise in overpopulation. Before we try to prolong life, we need to address our population. Science is good. But if we start running out of food to eat, air to breathe, fresh water to drink, and just as importantly, industrial resources (such as fossil fuels), medical science and any questions of cloning is going to take a very hard backseat.

[Wolfgang of Borg]

I thought places with long life expectancies had the lowest population growths (aside from AIDS overrun areas) -- most of Western Europe would actually have declining populations if not for immigration.

Lowering the birth rate doesn't have to mean draconian mandatory sterilization. I saw a show on telly last year about India, where it's been discovered that literacy negatively correlates with pop. growth: educate girls well and they put off having children.

I also disagree that death from aging is inevitable. There's no reason medicine will not eventually be able to repair all age-related cell damage.

Anyway sorry to be so contradictory. I saw this great video the other week, you might enjoy it:

"Arithmetic, Population, and Energy" by Dr. Albert A. Bartlett. Eight parts, 75 minutes, all about the policy implications of steady growth.

[Rick Canaan]

I thought places with long life expectancies had the lowest population growths (aside from AIDS overrun areas) -- most of Western Europe would actually have declining populations if not for immigration.

Yes, but population-growth is a global issue, not one confined to just certain regions. Oil, for instance, comes out of one Earth; there is only one source of it. It doesn't matter, then, which country is consuming the most of it or which country is consuming less, the oil is still being consumed. Those countries which consume less, will still be out of oil once it has all been consumed.

The same holds true for coal, for food, and every other exhaustible resource on the planet.

Lowering the birth rate doesn't have to mean draconian mandatory sterilization. I saw a show on telly last year about India, where it's been discovered that literacy negatively correlates with pop. growth: educate girls well and they put off having children.

Draconian or not, the institution of higher education or not, something has to be done. The human population simply cannot continue to expand the way it is now. And coming back to cloning - whether it be for medical research, supplying the needs of medical replacements or just to outright clone people, our population just simply cannot sustain the kind of population-growth that application of this science would create.

I also disagree that death from aging is inevitable. There's no reason medicine will not eventually be able to repair all age-related cell damage.

We better hope someone doesn't come up with something like this - at least not until we have worked out overpopulation and the rate at which our exponentially expanding growth is consuming resources. We may think all of our previous wars were horrific. Just wait until you have every superpower on the globe fighting for our last remaining resources. That will be a war which will consume the planet, itself. Treaties don't mean much when your populace doesn't have any food to eat, or fuel to power their industry.

Anyway sorry to be so contradictory. I saw this great video the other week, you might enjoy it:

(Video not included in quote)

"Arithmetic, Population, and Energy" by Dr. Albert A. Bartlett. Eight parts, 75 minutes, all about the policy implications of steady growth.

Contradict me? Heh, the video you presented lends weight to everything I have been saying. We are consuming resources at an exponentially increasing rate. If we don't do something to address our continually rising population, we aren't going to have electricity to power the science of cloning - or any other science at all!

[DigitalEcho]

I agree with the fact that one day medicine will be able to repair all age related damage but that puts into question the moral perspectives of who that person could be, while such medicine could make great people live longer it also could do the same for bad and living forever has probably more disadvantages that advantages.

[Wolfgang of Borg]

Rick: Heh no i meant sorry for disagreeing with you repeatedly, the video was meant as a peace offering. I agree that overpopulation is a potential problem, and that we need to end dependence on fossil oil for energy, but nuclear fission and biofuels seem perfectly workable, and the fix for overpopulation is something that's desirable anyway, namely industrializing the third world (assuming that can be done without worsening the climate change).

[Rys]

But who decides who counts as "useful people"? You would get dictators cloning themselves, regimes using them to mass-produce armies of their strongest men. You need to consider the application outside of the United States and other 'civilised' countries, and consider how new technologies might be used by despots, tyrants or terrorist cells.

Good point. Unfortunately, if the technology exists at all those people will probably try to use it for such things regardless of legality.

[Rick Canaan]

Rick: Heh no i meant sorry for disagreeing with you repeatedly, the video was meant as a peace offering. I agree that overpopulation is a potential problem, and that we need to end dependence on fossil oil for energy, but nuclear fission and biofuels seem perfectly workable, and the fix for overpopulation is something that's desirable anyway, namely industrializing the third world (assuming that can be done without worsening the climate change).

Oh! No problem at all, Borg! A friendly debate between a couple of friendly guys is always fun! And you're quite the friendly guy!

[DigitalEcho]

Good point. Unfortunately, if the technology exists at all those people will probably try to use it for such things regardless of legality.

That's what scares me about the developing science world, as technologies become more advanced (like human cloning) there are always people who will use it for ill benefit or foul gains.

[themnax]

as long as humans live on only one overcrowded planet, mass human cloning would seem, everything else aside, somewhat illogical.

[Legacy350]

No technology worth gaining in the cost of losing our own humanity. . .

so I voted no.

But still I do support cloning some non-conscious individual human parts though. for the sake of our medications advances.

[Stargazer Bleu]

Don't think this would be good.
As said by Legacy I can see it in parts maybe.

An entire person is just going to far I think
Even if it is just a clone for experiments. He/she (it?) would still be a living thing.

[karakris]

I do NOT agree with Cloning of Humans on Earth

We already have a population problem - which with its endless demand for more food is actually destroying Environments and ensuring the CERTAIN Extinction of Native Species.
Added to that - over-exploitation is gonna destroy even more species.
Estimates are that in ten years there will be NO Tuna alive on this Earth.
The only Tuna will be the ones which the Japanese are storing away in deep freeze - to sell for gazillions of dollars, when there are NO MORE left alive.

I am an Enviromentalist - a "Geen" sort of, and damn near a Buddhist, in my attitudes to ALL lifeforms.

End of Rant

However - if we ever get out into Space ( Real Space ), with something like FTL Drives.
Then we will be Colonising other Systems, other Planets.
In that case - Cloning individual Humans by Modified Cloning, that is biologically "tweaked" to produce individuals who can interbreed, without "species crash" from accumulated and duplicated genetic faults.
That I DO believe in - Individuals who can grow up as People.
Incidentally, in that future - we could also "tweak out" genetic things like high susceptibility to Cancer, weak hearts, exczema, tendency to arthritis, tendency to diabetes, asthma, colour blindness, extreme long vision, extreme short vision, deafness, genetic blindness, tendencies to all manner of medical problems.

In that future I would go further -
If we could fully and completely store and restore complete and entire Human memories - then no one would ever need to die. New bodies could be cloned from their individual stored DNA Records - and their memories completely restored. Then we would have NIRVANA - Immortality, without unacceptible old age.

In my Sci Fi Universe - we have that. The Repository Project - which stores
ALL DNA Records of everyone, and ALL Memory Records of everyone.
With Cloning Facilities and Bio Labs.
However - we only Update all Memory Records every 6 Months. This was
intended to ensure Species Survival if we every get hit VERY HARD by the
nasty evil Aliens. However, the population have voted to use this to
Resurrect every person who ever dies.
There is also a Repository Ship ( space ) holding all of this Data, and equipped to undertake all of the "Resurection" - which is 'hiding' in an empty System.

This Project also includes DNA Records of 95% of Native Life-Forms from our Home Systems as well - so we could build our eco-system again from scratch, on a new World in necessary.

This will raise some controversy - I am sure.

Best wishes - from Kris

[Wolfgang of Borg]

How do we have a population problem? If we had a population problem we'd be seeing diebacks, what we have is a *demographic* problem, too many old ppl (and in the case of China and India, too many young men), plus a total failure to plan long-term (largely the fault of current political and economic systems). But yes it's true in general that we need to stop having so many damn children. Thankfully this issue seems set to take care of itself as birth rates tend to decline naturally following industrialization and the attainment of sexual equality and universal literacy, as women are then free to do more than just raise kids all the time. The Baby Boomers are merely a blip, stressful times make humans get sexy.

(Pointless Bonus Fact: the entire population of Earth could reside within the bounds of Texas, if Texas were populated as densly as New York.)

Totally with you on the ecology front, priority #1 imho should be archiving as many germlines as we can get our hands on, so hopefully someday us or our (more competent) descendents can fix the mess we've made.
(BTW i'd be leery of dubbing yourself an eco-terrorist/-warrior, those terms were invented by those in power to marginalise / demonise ppl who oppose current policy.)

Re: your Repository Project: you might want to look into the ideas of Frank Tipler, if you haven't already.

Meh why wait for space colonisation, if the tech is possible why not use it here? We're never going to achieve biological immortality if we insist on sticking to these Savanna Ape bodies, which are as you point out defective in numerous ways and quite maladaptive for modern living (biologically programmed as they are to think e.g. that sugar and salt and fat and meat are rare and delicious treats, that the best response to being shocked is an adrenaline surge, that tribes never number more than about a hundred individuals, that strangers and outsiders and foreigners are automatically suspect, that the macroscopic world is the "normal" way to perceive reality and the quantum world is weird, that any number of mental shortcuts are valid ways to reason, etc).

And it's not like we're going to be forcing this on everyone, baseline humans will still be around should the whole experiment crash and burn. Eugenics should work by promoting positive traits, not seeking to eliminate "negative" ones -- in the past it's just been used as an excuse for racism but if you can look past that history you see a fairly sensible idea: we already know we can modify the inherited traits of an organism through selective breeding, why not do so to ourselves? Cloning is just a more rapid way to the same end: we want more ppl to be e.g. long-lived or not prone to vision problems or Einstein- or Shakespeare- or Bach-level creative so why not just increase the number of ppl in the population with those traits? Seems safer than "tweaking" the genome directly, where we really don't know wtf we're doing -- down that road lie birth defects. Run the whole thing as a Science Conspiracy so psychopathic politicians don't take over. What could possibly go wrong?

(sorry for being long-winded, i've been drinking coffee all morning >:P
hopefully i said something interesting in there somewhere)

[karakris]

@ borg-dog

Lot of good points there

So

1) let's all live in giant Cities - and visit the countryside when we feel the need to.
2) Hand back a lot of the Environment to the other Creatures who have a right to space on Earth.
3) The Biggest Issue - Cut down on GREED and Wastage - we should be able to still produce enough Food for Everyone.
4) Agreed - aim to get the Birth Rate down to something like average 2.1 per couple in all parts of the world - whilst reducing death rate from all causes to equivalent 0.1 per family per year. Net result Zero Growth Rate.
5) Welll - in a FUTURE Scenario, "tweaking" to eliminate defects would be possible, fully researched and understood
6) Archiving Germlines would be ideal - BUT we are reaching a stupid stage where we are actually causing Extinctons of some Species - before we have Researched, or even Discovered them. The Amazon Rainforest is the most obvious case in point. Sea Life is the other area - dynamiting Reefs to get Fish to catch, insane !!
7) Unfortunately - it is sometimes the people WITHOUT Ensteinian Traits who may reproduce the most. Honestly, is it sensible to leave it to People to decide who should be having the most children ? However - it is VEEERRRREEEY Dodgy to let The State decide - so is there an anwer ?

Larry Niven proposed a future where you have to have a LICENCE to Breed, to have Children - and people with Defects don't get one. The Planetary Police go on regular "baby hunts" to find Illegal children - who are taken from Parents and put into Orphanages - and the Parents get Fined or Imprisoned.
Genuises get Unlimited Licences - and have potential Partners queueing-up to mate with them. Then to cover the slight shortfall - they have the Birthright Lottery, where you could "win" a Licence to have a Baby.
That was one of his postulated futures.

Agreed - "Eco Warrior" is a bad term to use. More accurately - "voice crying in the wilderness" - cause I have no political or other influence, just opinions, and lots of On-line Friends who agree with me.

Thanks for an understanding consideration

[Wolfgang of Borg]

I'm not so sure megacities are the way to go (unless they're arcologies and even them i'm iffy) -- centralisation means a need to travel between places, which means cars, which are unsustainable and smelly and noisy and dirty and *extremely* dangerous. I'd much rather everyone lived in towns and villages connected by free high-speed internet (provided as a public utility, like sewers and roads are now), traveled mostly on foot, socialised mostly online, and probably grew most of their own food (i read a fascinating thing the other day (this isn't it but it's the closest i can google up atm) about the collapse of the U.S.S.R. and how the U.S. will fare once the oil runs out (assuming no biodiesel etc). Turns out a family can successfully feed itself on only 100 square metres of land). Growing your own food would avoid the need for agribusiness, and plus processed foods are unnatural and therefore probably unhealthy (in a few thousand years time i'm sure we'll all thrive on E-numbered additives but right now they're mostly carcinogenic (like most else everything is, admittedly (i'm pale-skinned and think all sunbathers must be insane))). If somewhere is too hot or dry or cold for growing your own food (even with like solar desalination plants and indoor hydroponics etc) then humans should not be living there (wtf, Las Vegas).

Personally i very much like the idea of building houses underground and growing food on the roofs, it's much less expensive to regulate temperature that way than using heaters / air-conditioning, which should pay for the cost of the initial digging eventually, and it's less messy. Plus i like caves. And we're going to have to get used to living underground eventually anyway, assuming we want to settle other planets.

(Obviously we'll still have a few cities to act as cultural melting-pots and specialised art-creation centres but it will be understood that they are an extravagance, not the norm.)

Most ppl will work from home, tele-commuting. Industry and manufacturing will be almost entirely automated, hopefully cheap robot labour will render sweatshops redundant.
Long-distance transport will be mostly via helium-filled robo-airship, the helium being a side-product of the fusion power industry. Or possibly hydrogen since they're usually unmanned. Shorter distance travel is via subway train in evacuuated tunnel. Local deliveries are handled by robot fliers or land vehicles (like Google's robocars).

2. Totally, ideally wildlife preserves will gradually expand until they cover the land.

3. This is indeed the big one, that damn primate competitive consumption mentality that leads ppl to display status by showing off how much they can afford to waste. *Hopefully* living in smaller communities will curtail this. Pretty much every madness in history, from Chinese foot binding and excessively long fingernails (effectively crippling ppl just to show that they can afford to not labour) to Easter Island statuary and subsequent ecological catastrophe ("ooh look at us, we can afford to build effigies of gods" -- for which they cut down all the trees in order to move the rocks to erect the statues) come down to this one thing.

5. In the Far Future yes, right now i don't like the idea. Comparing biology to computing machinery we're right now at the abacus stage and speculating about how cogs or relays might work. Reliable programming is still miles off. Cloning otoh is fairly simple, and ethically sound so long as you remember that these are possible ppl you're dealing with, which is hardly any more difficult to handle than issues arising from from in-vitro fertilization and child adoption today.

6. Hadn't heard of the dynamiting thing before (until now i thought that the biggest threat to reefs was increased UV-B light resulting from our unintentional fucking with the lower stratosphere) but wow that's just lazy. Primary school education about the actual size of the world (not just "it's big and diverse" but "it looks big but is in fact finite, here's exactly how big, n.b. that it's the only one" might help?).
The bulldozing of Rainforests to make room for attempted agriculture is something i first heard about as a kid and i agree it's totally insane -- the trophic structure of those places is such that the soil is actually really poor, all the energy is locked up in the ecosystem above it.. kill that and you have like next to nothing left to build on.

7. This is the argument made by the opening to Idiocracy . I don't buy it, but assuming it's true that dumb ppl are idle and so breed more: the trick is to not *force* ppl to have less kids but to change the world so that they don't want or need to. My proposed solution is to try make something like the current North European middle-class socio-economic situation the new norm, by industrialising the third world and imposing our values (equality and secularism and universal rights to free education and healthcare) on them, which stinks of cultural imperialism i know but i just can't see any other way to avoid the Grim Meathook Future we currently face. No idea how to accomplish this, possibly try rational argument for once? ("unless we do this, all our children are probably doomed" + lead by example?)

Birth Lotteries would be one solution, but are (like many of Niven's ideas about society) more than a little creepy.

> cause I have no political or other influence, just opinions

I'm constantly startled by the pandemic corruption and failure of the current political system to do what i want, for a while with Obama i was optimistic but then the whole healthcare thing blew my mind -- poor ppl campaigning *against* the establishment of an NHS-equivalent system‽ Manipulated into doing so by rich ppl working for the insurance industry i guess but still it just seems so bizarre.

Also yes with the internet you've got to be wary of echo-chamber effects, it's usually very easy to find ppl you already agree with but that leads you to ignore any valid arguments the opposition may have, and sometimes (like with the healthcare thing or the recent Canadian election results) not even be able to understand wtf the majority are thinking.

[Samantha Arrow]

xD love our poll.

It seems we overall love science!

Remember, you can donate one or all of your vital organs for the Aperture Science Self Esteem Fund for Girls? It's true!