Ask Slashdot: What Are the Most Dangerous Lines of Scientific Inquiry? 456
gbrumfiel writes "The battle over whether to publish research into mutant bird flu got editors over at Nature News thinking about other potentially dangerous lines of scientific inquiry. They came up with a non-definitive list of four technologies with the potential to do great good or great harm:
Laser isotope enrichment: great for making medical isotopes or nuclear weapons. Brain scanning: can help locked-in patients to communicate or a police state to read minds. Geoengineering: could lessen the effects of climate change or undermine the political will to fight it. Genetic screening of embryos: could spot genetic disorders in the womb or lead to a brave new world of baby selection.
What would Slashdotters add to the list?"
Nanotechnology (Score:3, Informative)
Can you say Gray Goo?
LHC (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Don't worry, we'll get rid of your gray goo with our black hole ;-)
Ah, but what about black hole goo....
Re: (Score:3)
Don't worry, we'll get rid of your gray goo with our black hole ;-)
That is a whole science fiction short story in 13 words (14 including the title). Well done.
Re:Nanotechnology (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you say Gray Goo?
I can say it, but I'm not too worried about it -- most of the available niches for miniature self-reproducing machines are already filled... by miniature self-reproducing machines that are much more aggressive and effective than anything technology is likely to come up with.
In other words... (Score:4, Informative)
Ask Slashdot: What's your favorite Sci-Fi apocalypse?
Re:In other words... (Score:5, Interesting)
Speaking of Sci-Fi, the lead female character (Mira) in the book "Evolution's Darling [kirkusreviews.com]" is an assassin who targets scientists that have been judged by Mira's AI-overlords as being too close to making undesirable discoveries.
For instance, one of her past targets included a researcher working on teleportation (which they calculate will lead to the collapse of civilization), and much of the story involves her mission to assassinate a rogue AI who has developed a method of making perfect copies of AI minds. All for the protection of society of course.
Re: (Score:2)
Why would teleportation lead to the collapse of civilization? All the bridges rusting, maybe (see: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/83804749/Niven_-Larry---All-The-Bridges-Rusting [docstoc.com]) but it is not like developing psi powers or perfect memories.
Re:In other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would teleportation lead to the collapse of civilization?
...he asked, oblivious to the nuclear bomb that had materialized on his coffee table.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You never played the original C&C Red Alert, have you? I double dog dare you to teleport a nuclear weapon with the chronosphere. Don't blame me when it blows up in your face however.
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Ummm...so why are new copies of this book priced at $146? I'm guessing it is out of print.
Screening embryos already happens (Score:5, Interesting)
Where I live, certain ethnic minorities (actually, taken together they are actually a majority) are notorious for screening embryos for gender. Then they abort the females until a male is born first. It's become such an issue that it's now illegal to specify an embryo's gender until the window for legal abortion has passed (I don't remember how many weeks/months that is).
If you're white, the doctor will still tell you if you ask though.
Re:Screening embryos already happens (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a conundrum, though. If abortion is legal, it has to be legal for everyone, for all reasons. Perhaps more effort should be made to make sure certain immigrants know that around these here parts, we appreciate our daughters.
But if it continues, well, it can't coninue for more than a generation or two. What's a sure-fire way to make sure your son abandons your sexist culture and marries someone from a different background who wont abort her female fetuses? Create a lack of women in your culture for them to date.
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It's a conundrum, though. If abortion is legal, it has to be legal for everyone, for all reasons.
Why does it have to be "for all reasons"? In the UK abortion is only legal if there are medical grounds for it, and that can include things like psychological harm to the mother due to extreme poverty or having been raped etc. Merely not wanting a girl isn't enough though.
Would you want to be born to a mother that doesn't want you? Not being able to provide an excuse acceptable to uninvolved parties isn't (in my mind) adequate reason to force an unwanted child into being.
This is bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
All forms of scientific inquiry have "dual use"
You may as well try to go back in time and stop Og or Urgh from figuring out how to make fire.
Fuck this shit.
--
BMO
Here comes the flame war... (Score:5, Funny)
Og may have been first to file, but it was Urgh who invented the method.
Re: (Score:2)
All forms of scientific inquiry have "dual use"
Yeah, knowledge isn't good or bad and by itself it's useless. The application of that knowledge can take countless forms, any of which might be judged good or bad depending on your perspective. To say some line of research is dangerous is merely saying you think there are uses you consider bad.
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To say some line of research is dangerous is merely saying you think there are uses you consider bad.
It's like the people who find sexual images in the advertising of crackers by connecting the dots in the crackers in the ad.
If you have an evil mind, you will find evil.
--
BMO
Re:Sex (Score:4, Funny)
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"there is no bad science", well, yes, there is.
I think you're conflating "bad" with "incompetent".
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Re:This is bullshit. (Score:5, Funny)
What's the dual use for the theory of gravity?
defenestration
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What's the dual use for the theory of gravity?
defenestration
Such a great and underused word, well done. Although I suppose people going out of windows is not that common in most people's experience.
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Unless said Death Ray can be narrowly focused on a pinpoint target to attack cancer cells in a body, thus eliminating the cancer from the patient...
Re:This is bullshit. (Score:4, Funny)
CO2 abstinence only? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Geoengineering: could lessen the effects of climate change or undermine the political will to fight it."
Isn't this a bit like the whole "teaching condoms in school is dangerous because then teens will have massive amounts of sex"? You're omitting a valid (even if imperfect) solution that may help stave off tragedy if people choose a particular path in order to defend and mandate that your "morally superior path" is the only option presented.
Re:CO2 abstinence only? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, one obvious difference is that condoms work and are available right now, while geoengineering is entirely hypothethical at this point. So condoms actually do solve the problems they're meant to - disease transmission and unwanted pregnancies - while geoengineering is simply an excuse to not do anything. So no, they're not really a tiniest bit similar situations.
Not that global warming can be stopped at this point, since renewables are a joke and anti-nuclear hysteria has kept us from building clean power plants, so it's not like it matters much. It's gonna be interesting, seeing who'll still be standing when the dust settles.
Re:CO2 abstinence only? (Score:4, Insightful)
Taking an objective viewpoint, I don't think....
This is probably the dumbest thing I've said all day. I sure hope so.
Re: (Score:3)
Every once in a while you'll see a Liberal Dystropian story show up like 1984, THX-1138, Atlas Shrugged or the newer hunger games.
Nothing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Exactly. If you outlaw research into weaponized virii then only criminals will have them and we won't even know how they work.
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Well, more along the lines of other countries, and if necessary, hidden labs / boats in international waters. No Department of Defense is going to shutdown research into biological warfare, and with good reason -> they will probably need those results at some point, and it's the DoD's job to be (within reason, and then some) paranoid about national security. These are the people who have protocols, on the books, for every scenario they can think of, including, might I add, a chance meeting with extraterr
Re:Nothing... (Score:4, Insightful)
And in any case, any information you try to blacklist will eventually get out. Of course, I suppose there's a limit to that too - if we arrive at a point where a scientific discovery can lead to virtually anyone creating a WMD at low cost and with readily available materials, then there is a problem. But we're not there yet and anyway, at that point, there's no easy solution (though I personally believe a 'solution' should then be more along the lines of changing the root of the issue: why those people would want to create WMD to begin with).
I think the key is making humanity's morality improve faster than the rate of scientific progression. If you don't do that, it's not going to end well.
Re:Nothing... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Nothing... (Score:4, Insightful)
If technological advancement leads to greater and greater destructive powers, and destructive powers are much more easy to develop and implement than constructive powers, then how to do explain the human population explosion? It seems to me that the constructive sciences have far outstripped the destructive ones - at least, so far.
I think destructive power is asymptotic, meaning that you can approach 100% destructiveness but never quite reach it. Remember, human populations have been pushed towards extremely low numbers in the past and we have continued to thrive as a species. In part, this is due to our adaptability as a species. In fact, I would argue that science has made us more resilient to seasonal variations and natural afflictions, but is also making us less resilient to rapid climate change and virulent strains that target monocrops or humans directly. However, even if a disaster strikes, I think there will be some humans who will survive - the question is would they thrive, or would we die off as a new dominant species out competes us.
Re:Nothing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nonsense. They typically have better (more evolved, dirty word, I know) ethics than the general populace.
"They seem to think "let's take the worst virus possible and make it even badder and then publish the results" is an okay line of thought to go down." -> And at no point did they say "Let's release it."
"Sometimes an adult needs to step in, slap down the geeks, and take away their toys." -> Why yes, we've seen how well that's worked. The "adults" tend to be politicians with scruples that...well, they don't have any. Which is why the geeks get to keep their toys, and the "adults," as well as the butterboobs who voted them in get to go sit in the time out corner. Because it's safer.
One need only go through most of the writings from various scientists to realize they worried and wrestled with many of the implications of their work. I doubt you will readily find such refined, and lengthy, writings among the general populace, let alone those who want the job of 'ethics counselor.'
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I think you could convince a pharmaceutical company that creating multiple strains of an existing virus could be worthwhile, if justified by a large potential for creating more efficient vaccines or remedies that are also likely to be effective against future natural mutations of a virus.
Wasn't this the reason why the mutant bird flu was developed? The goal was to create a strain to understand the biomolecular aspects of infection. If you can engineer a more virulent stain and analyze the differences, see how and where it interacts to the cells, the more likely you are to construct a binding agent to its receptor sites that will negate the infectious nature of the disease. True, you have the potential to release a nasty superbug if it gets weaponized - but if you assume that is the only
it's not predictable. the only answer is to (Score:2)
support human rights in and of themselves, and take charge of the state actors that tend to use these things horribly.
einstein and his friends were simply discussing the universe, and what would happen if you shined a light while riding on a superfast train. they had no 'intention' of investigating nuclear weapons, but that is where E=mc^2 eventually led.
lets look at the computerized lists used to help perform the holocaust. they began as census taking machines.
the attempt to cure disease was later used in
that is true but im looking at (Score:2)
bombings like the Cole, Khobar Towers, Pan Am over Lockerbee, etc etc etc.
promoting a good police force is sort of part of the human rights agenda. rights activists are usually not asking for the end of the state, they are asking for the rule of law, and equal protection under the law.
which means for example that if a government murders a bunch of people with a research weapon, it should be held responsible. and maybe some of the Unit 731 people should not have their graves in honored places in Japanese cem
Time Travel (Score:2)
There are none. (Score:2)
n/t
Space elevator construction tech (Score:2)
This, or more generally, large-scale carbon fiber construction.
I'd say being an Iranian nuclear scientist tops th (Score:2)
Just sayin'.
Cybernetics/AI/Transhumanism (Score:3)
Sapient artificial species which don't die of natural causes and can live virtually will more radically threaten our culture, society and civilization than any other change in technology.
For all of human history we've been adapting to the same species using different technology. We've never in history dealt with the fundamental nature of man changing before.
Steal a baby from 2,000 BCE and it'll probably grow up like any other human. Steal a baby from 2,500 AD and it will most likely be a new species.
Re: (Score:2)
You say that like it's a bad thing.
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Rather than happening all at once, it's more likely that the average human life span will gradually increase as medical technology improves in an iterative fashion. That's been the case for decades now and we're already having to deal with the consequences of an aging population. On the way to figuring out how to forestall indefinitely, we'll have to figure out how to forestall it for a really long time, which will entail making many of the same adjustments to society. These adjustments can also be made gra
Physics (Score:2)
Everything else just make the danger slightly more efficient. Genetically engineered bird flu might be scary, but a few blankets with small pox
I think it's rather clear... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. It s sort of like the Tower of Babel. No two people speaking exactly the same language and left with massive confusion.
Religious experiments (Score:4, Funny)
are banned in advanced technical civilizations, for good reasons.
Suppose scientific experimentation confirms the existence of the soul, and that we all end up in Hell (or some very unpleasant equivalent), but the older you are when you die, the more painful it becomes? Or, that afterlife is extremely pleasant, better than anything you've ever experienced on earth, and the scientists build a machine that can give you a brief preview of this?
That's right, mass suicides. The population of an entire planet disappeared this way.
Re:Religious experiments (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
That's right, mass suicides. The population of an entire planet disappeared this way.
If there truly is an afterlife, and it's pleasant if you die, suicide and death don't matter as much, do they?
It's all up to the people employing it. (Score:3, Insightful)
First: Everything man has ever created has been used for such negative things as murder and war. For that matter, every thing we ever will create will also be used for such things until such point as mankind has surpassed the need and desire for such negative activities.
Second: Once a thing has been done, it will be done again. Once it is known by anyone that something is actually possible (as opposed to theoretically possible or even believed impossible) it becomes capable of being repeated. Just look at nuclear proliferation for an example. It was believed that splitting the atom was impossible. Once it was demonstrated to be possible, many others repeated the discovery despite the best attempts at others to prevent that from happening.
The only thing they are really doing by blocking research from those in that field is to waste resources duplicating effort, and reducing or eliminating potential benefit from that knowledge while failing to prevent it's eventual and inevitable misuse. I would even hazard to say that such censorship increases the devastation that will be caused by such inhumane uses by limiting if not eliminating the positive research and understanding that comes from shared research and peer review.
Only a moron, a paranoid, or a politician could come up with such a stupid and counterproductive scheme as censoring research.
Pretty sure (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure there's a "political science" joke here somewhere, but I can't seem to make it work. Anybody else want to take a shot?
And the biggest scientific taboo of all is... (Score:2)
... eugenics.
Did I just manage to invoke Godwin's Law without using a certain historical name? (Never mind that said person didn't invent or implement it first.)
Re: (Score:3)
Eugenics is widely practiced, even if we happen to call it "genetic screening", "genetic therapy" or "designer babies". You still end up deciding certain genetic lines should not exist. Forced sterilization is also practiced in many countries (including highly civilized ones).
So the taboo is really only in discussing the ethics of such practices and where the lines should be drawn. It is extremely arguable that allowing a child to be born with a genetic disease that will likely be terminal in a relatively s
Artificial Wombs and eggs cloned from adult cells: (Score:2)
They could be quite a boon. They could give more women with reproductive problems the chance to have a genetic descendant child. You might even be able to correct dominant genetic problems (Huntington's Disease comes to mind) before implantation.
They could also be terribly abused.
Before, you had to convince/coerce a woman to get pregnant and carry a child to term. This put at least some practical limits (physical ones in the case of coercing, moral and persuasive ones in the case of convincing) on creating
Re: (Score:2)
There is better technology coming on line the keeping a child alive until its' old enough to have useful organs.
OTOH, you could create something without a brain, and then get a head transplant ever 20 or so years.
I'm up for that!
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, the idea of creating anencephalics for that purpose has been thought of.
However it has complications. For many parts of the body to develop normally they have to be used. A digestive tract that has never processed food or muscles that have never moved are not going to be normal. You would have to have enough brain function to run those processes during growth. Or, alternatively, you would have to be able to interface a control system to the brain stem to take over that function.
The Evil Overlord way to
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Mad Science (Score:2)
The Mad Science is the most dangerous form. Yes, the volcano fortress is cool, but eventually James Bond comes around and blows the place up.
The things that already exist. (Score:3)
Pure and innocent Scientific Inquiry in the pursuit of knowledge generally hits a pretty thick wall pretty quickly as soon as it steps into the realm of things that already being researched, with the qualification that they are things the military is researching, or has researched within the past decade.
Even now, just to use the results of certain types of this research -- such as very accurate nuclear interaction cross-sections (discovered for the purposes of nuclear weapons, but) used for the purposes of cancer treatment -- puts you under the watchful eye of the FBI.
Yes, not everything falls under this category, and no, nobody needs to be reminded of the benefits of such research like how our microwave ovens defeated the germans, but just think about some of the examples we DO know about:
WWII to Cold war era: Nuclear Science
Cryptography (Government mandated PGP backdoor, anyone?)
Sources:
MCNP:
http://mcnpx.lanl.gov/ [lanl.gov]
PGP:
http://books.google.com/books?id=cSe_0OnZqjAC&pg=PA352&lpg=PA352&dq=pgp+government+mandated+backdoor&source=bl&ots=cVtmm3vwYK&sig=fwjn6mfbXVWngTS0pgHIFWFV9bE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=5OyZT8_pLsXUgAf3gNX1DQ&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=pgp%20government%20mandated%20backdoor&f=false [google.com])
Life Extension (Score:2)
Because you know the only people who can get it will be Dick Cheneys.
that's entirely the wrong perspective (Score:3)
Each of those four items are the potential subject of nightmares and downfalls, but each and every one of them is a guarantee -- all eight.
Imagine the year 2150. Distant to any human life, not at all distant to government, mediocre to construction (some city construction projects take 70 years), and eons to technology.
In your 2150, can we spot genetic defects before birth? Of course. Can we select babies for the life that we want? As in can I choose the embryo with athletic skills over the embryo with mathematic skils? I'd sure hope so. It sounds dangerous today, but it's only dangerous in advance, like everything. By the time it's ubiquitous, it's just another form of choosing your child's academic goals. It just starts even earlier.
Same goes for the other six in your 2150. I'd sure as hell hope that we can read minds to some extent by then. But just like the polygraph didn't destroy interrogations, and the mouse didn't destroy the keyboard, and television didn't kill radio, and the plane didn't kill the car, it won't be the only form of communication.
As for police states reading minds, that's the ethical equivalent of humane execution. It's already a police state, it's already killing people, I'm not worried about the mind reading.
Geoengineering is absolutely required in order to live anywhere but terrestrial land. Period. So it's guaranteed to happen. And it'll happen quite suddenly the day before it's required. And by the time it can be used to "undermind the political will to fight it" it'll be so easy to do that it'll be a part of normal construction.
Nuclear weapons don't kill people. People's mistakes kill people. But people don't kill asteroids. Nuclear weapons kill asteroids. That's another period, by the way.
I like how bird flu wasn't one of the top four, having inspired the thing in the first place. But that's the same concept. Of course we're going to have a major outbreak of something. We've had it before. Everyone's so worried that this time, with common means of global transportation, it'll be much worse. I think that they forget one thing. In probably under an hour, every airport and every border can instantly have screeners for whatever the current outbreak is. We have TSA and border and customs security everywhere nowadays. It'd be easy to suddenly, and globally, halt anyone displaying symptoms, or quickly test everyone as a part of transportation procedures.
My point is that, as a civilization, we can't not have those things. Being scared of the research in advance is stupid. Focus on being scared of the initially flawed execution of that research. Work on that while the research is underway. We have M.A.D. for nuclear weapons. That's already worked a few times. It's dumb, but it worked. I'm stunned, but it worked. That's the sort of thing that we need for the rest of them. A Nash equillibrium for each one.
Re: (Score:2)
The worst of worst-case outcomes (Score:4, Interesting)
There would be ethical and humanitarian applications for it, but mere death and pain would be hard pressed to compete with the potential damage of perfect propaganda. If some combination of psychology, hypnosis, drugs in the water, drugs in the drugs, or whatnot made it possible to get people to believe anything you said, that could be the end of all freedom forever.
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Targetable nanotechnology (Score:2)
Any kind of nanotechnology is in general bad news, because it'll be hard to control in the wild. Once you can make a lot of them, you can let them loose on a subject population and well, at least they'll wear out after a while.
Because they're so small you pretty much need a trigger nanobot/signal to activate it ie: in the the presence of bot A bot B starts its thing, like disassembling RNA.
There's not a lot you could do against these things, except stay out of the way. The good thing is that they probably w
Final Exam (The Outer Limits) (Score:2)
In it a student simply uncovers that fusion is a trivial to access. It is simply asymmetric. Power corrupts, what will happen if more power is easily available. As geeks we see that in the power given to us by computers such that kids can conceivably launch denial of service attacks.
Nanorobots and Artificial Intelligence. (Score:2)
UI Design (Score:2)
Aka figuring out the best text editor, whether it be vim, or notepad.exe.
Two sides to nearly every coin (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I'm sorry, but as I remember it, both the French and the Russians died in larger numbers than the British, and neither country's troops were under his command.
Wow, you're really old.
Planetary Motion (Score:4, Insightful)
If people start studying how the planets move, it could lead to heresy yet also make sense, thereby undermining people's respect for authority.
Most dangereous lines of inquiry? (Score:3)
Koran flammability
Corporate misdeeds
Police brutality
Oh, you didn't mean dangerous to the researcher?
race and iq (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe not. First thing to pop into my head.
This is ridiculous (Score:4, Insightful)
Next we'll be wondering "Which are the most dangerous books to write?", or "What are the most dangerous sentences to say?". I reject the premise.
If I were to pick at all, almost none of that would be on the list. Only things that had the potential to create society ending things that are not stoppable by individual action. Diseases, for example, fall into that category. But I find even that highly suspect.
skynet or wopr (Score:3)
Don't let systems get to smart and don't hook them up to nukes.
Weapons experts (Score:3)
If your in the UK and working on chem, bio "protection" try not to get too stressed.
It seems "suicide" is catching.....
Data Base Management (Score:4, Insightful)
Free societies have always worked in part because when stupid laws are inevitably enacted, a lot of people ignore them with impunity. There has been freedom in anonymity. But face recognition technology is improving, surveillance cameras are proliferating, and other things like cell phones and debit cards make it trivially easy to see where people are and what they're doing. The only real safeguard of a free society, the inability of corporations and governments to deal with the vast sea of data, is coming to an end. And never mind actual laws. Kids who demonstrated against oil drilling in national parks when they were 13 will find themselves explaining to a job interviewer why they hate capitalism when they graduate from college.
So my vote for major danger...at least to a free society...would be quantum computing as it affects D-base management.
Moving Asteroids (Score:3)
Carl Sagan mentioned this in one of his books. The same technology that could be used to detect asteroids then reach them and divert their orbits away from the Earth could also be used to divert them towards the Earth.
The Most Dangerous Field of Study... (Score:5, Insightful)
is advertising. Perfect persuasion trumps everything else.
Re: (Score:2)
But, once in a while the results from science is a black swan events.
Such as?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Except it's disturbing instead of erotic due to her chicken skin hallucinations.
Yes, but it's Natalie Portman in a leotard. And did I mention a lesbian sex scene?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
White people have rarely been minorities but we know all about being discriminated against. Like when you make a statement completely unrelated to race and it magically makes you a racist, not because of what you said, but because you are white.
Re:Black Swan events (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly you've never been to Western Australia, where the black swan is more common than the white!
They're only black on one side. Always facing potential enemies with their black side is a strong survival trait, and why modern Australian swans are almost never killed by drop bears.
Re:Win win? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the theory is, that geoengineering is unlikely to succeed in the long term and so it's just kicking the problem into the long grass. I see your point, though, that kind of statement is playing into the hands of AGW deniers by implying that the only reason to worry about AGW is because we have an ulterior motive for making people panic over nothing.
geoengineering (Score:3)
it's also possible that geoengineering doesn't fix the problem the way the problem happens to be.
Adding aerosols (the only reasonably feasible geoengineering project) doesn't counteract the specific problems of excess greenhouse very well.
More aerosols is a whole lot like lowering the incoming solar flux. Problem is that it will make more of a difference in the tropics and in daytime, but the greenhouse effect is making more of a difference in the polar regions and at night.
And that's because the physics o
Re:Boom! (Score:5, Funny)
I always thought it went along the lines of "...so what would happen if we turned this thing loose downtown?"
Tasp... (Score:5, Interesting)
Successfully making a tasp or droud [wikimedia.org] would probably lead to the end of humanity in a generation or so. At least the end of any non-stone-age parts.
Re: (Score:3)
Much more dangerous [youtube.com], and this seems less than functional [amazon.com].
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Go ahead and admit it, Green Reaper. You can hardly wait to write it up for Flayrah whichever way it goes! ;)
It's just old stuck in the muds like Kage standing in your way.
Oh, what the heck. I'd probably end up helping you out by locking Kage in a box. ;)
Really, though, that has no more or less intrinsic moral problem than any major elective germ line modification does. If you can resolve the moral questions for one, you can do it for the other. But even in the less radical case, they are formidable ethical
Re: (Score:2)
The reality is that we are nowhere near it yet, and perhaps will not be in our lifetimes - and it'll probably turn out differently than we now imagine. Still, a norn can dream!
Re:The Singularity (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
"That also includes the bread in your kitchen"
Thank you for this insight! Ergot leads to ergotism which can lead to psychedelic experience which might lead to questioning authority.
Bread should become a controlled substance.
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The "radical" anti-abortionists (ones who picket abortion clinics) that I've known are unlikely to reverse their stance just because of that.
It's a position based on the belief that the soul joins with the body at conception. To them, it would be just as much murder as any other abortion. A newborn or a fetus has committed no "sin".
Any prior justification for aborting wouldn't be applicable to anything they could object to.
A newborn baby may be potentially homosexual based on genetics, but how could homosex
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"1) human behaviour modification"
You mean like school?
Very dangerous (see Orwell), but it already exists.
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Is that like turning junk mortgages into gold?
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Is it Godwinning to point out that the Nazis produced very useful data related to the survival of ditched aircrews in the North Sea by destructively testing some of their prisoners in icy cold water to determine how long they really survive? Interestingly, the results were that even in the starved condition that they were in, the subjects survived much longer than were expected.
Mengele's experimentation was crap, but most was very good, if you ignore that the subjects were human. I understand that the Jap