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Post by BiologicalSomething on Dec 2, 2017 18:38:10 GMT
Just a thread that people can discuss if something's morally right or not, bringing back extinct species and such.
How's this gonna (theoretically) work?
Quite simple- Moral question is put forward, people have a nice (un)civilised debate, rinse and repeat.
When the current question has been discussed enough, and everybody's bored, someone can put forward another question and this post will be updated.
Why?
Why not. Perhaps it might bring some activity back to the forum, I dunno.
Will this actually be an active thread?
Probably not. We'll see.
Have fun, kids (or adults, which I'm sure the majority are). And remember- Don't say swears.
I'll try a question-
Say we have the technology to create life, throw together a couple of carbon, phosphorus, whatever works, and we've mastered it. Would it be A-Okay to put it to use? And if so, what for?
P.S-Thanks for all the discussers for actually allowing this to work!
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Post by Aquos on Dec 2, 2017 18:57:45 GMT
I don't think it's morally right to use it. It my might be because of my religious bias, but I don't think we should tamper with nature too much.
Just for clarification, I don't think God will punish us for doing genetical experiments or anything. In fact, I honestly believe that He couldn't care less about it (assuming He exists, of course). I just think we shouldn't act like we are gods. I don't know if you guys have this idiom in English, but in Dutch we have an idiom that explains my view on this pretty well 'Hubris comes before the fall'.
(No offense to anyone who thinks we should use it, of course. This is just my opinion, and I'm not going to hate you for thinking otherwise about it.)
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Post by lordclassyus on Dec 2, 2017 20:25:13 GMT
I don't think we should use it to create life. We have plenty of that as it is. We could create some microscopic life for specific tasks, more on that later.
I do however think we could use this same technology to create limbs and organs. We currently don't have enough organ donors to keep up with demand.
If we could just create custom made limbs and organs for people with lack of those, that would make the world a better place.
We could also use it to make some sort bacteria or something else to make medicines or some sort of biological water/air filters.
Other than that we also could quickly plant some plants (a great quote) in less than habitable places. Or to regrow some damaged forests.
I just don't think we should make animals or the like, but plants or micro-organisms could be very useful for us and the environment.
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Post by BiologicalSomething on Dec 2, 2017 21:03:05 GMT
(Forgot to actually post my view)
In my personal opinion, it would be quite useful, given that the right people use it.
As stated by lordclassyus, we could use it for medical uses, such as artificial limb growth or medicinal development.
However, if the wrong people use it, it could be used for war creatures, extremely destructive weaponised viral strains, etc.
The only sort of use I can think of for developing animals are for environmentally-friendly means of transportation (better than cars, anyway), or even domestic animals.
Plants could be used for terraforming (as yet again stated by lordclassyus), but if we alter them correctly they should (should being in almost perfectly horizontal italics here) be able to act as solar panels, provided we could somehow utilise the energy provided by photosynthesis.
Overall, it's ok, but only if used for the better of humanity and the earth.
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Post by blackink on Dec 3, 2017 7:13:49 GMT
I, personally, don't think using that kind of technology would be wise for creating atleast, you could use it to give more randomization in a gene pool to help bring back endangered species.
Creating a species however would probably end up becoming either a sub efficient species and be consumed by the environment or become an invasive species and cause some extinctions. My point is the actual ecosystem is a very balanced system based on multiple interactions that we have not yet fully understood, and at the same time it is very delicate, creating for the sake of creating would probably only be detrimental for native creatures.
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Post by February Steam of Foushoo on Dec 3, 2017 9:15:24 GMT
This is one reason why we shouldn't blatantly create life specifically for human gains:  yuk! |
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Post by Omicron on Dec 3, 2017 9:39:45 GMT
I think that, while we shouldn't try to create animals to just throw in the environment to, taking lordclassyus 's example, create a lot of trees quickly or something, as the ecosystem will probably not like it. However, I do think we should try to create one or two actual creatures, purely "FOR SCIENCE". We should just try not to have them cause damage if they escape. This can be done by just giving it a couple major flaws (I.E. give them horrible endurance so they can't run from predators, or make sure that they can't digest unprocessed food or something). Also, I agree with using it for medical stuff Last of all, I also think we should use it for our food supply. taking February Steam of Foushoo 's example, I don't think this is a badd thing, as the meat production these days create a lot of pollution, and that could probably be solved by bio-engineering a couple creatures that efficiently create food (without doing trivial things like moving) |
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Post by lordclassyus on Dec 3, 2017 10:17:41 GMT
Omicron , you are right about the ecosystem now that I think about it. However we could use it to regrow some forests that are endangered or are incapable of regrowing themselves. Or just grow/create trees for the lumber industry. If they can get plenty of lumber in their lumber camps, the need to cut down natural forests would decrease. Which eventually would safe large chunks of the environment and local ecosystems. I do agree however that we shouldn't plant trees and plants willy nilly. As for 'food creatures', I don't think that's how we will do it. If we could just make bio matter, we could just pump the required ingredients into a machine and out comes something resembling chicken meat (or your other prefered type of meat). This would be both cleaner and more efficient, because we wouldn't need to feed the food creatures and they wouldn't need to suffer. They don't look very happy existing. The meat industry is indeed a huge polluter, but with this synthetic meat, the need for actual animals would drop. Turning real meat into a luxary item. This is a good thing, because the amount of barn animals would decrease (less pollution) and because they are with less, they could get a higher standard of life. With a bit of luck this could eliminate the need for things such as battery farms. February Steam of Foushoo , were did you get that image? It looks like early 90s sci-fi. I could be wrong about the time. It could also be 80s, because that was the decenia of grimdark futures and sci-fi.
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Post by serialkiller🌴 on Dec 3, 2017 12:52:24 GMT
Omicron Animals breeds created via selective breeding that just exist to produce as much meat / milk / eggs as possible usually suffer their whole life. You can only imagine the pain creations like those on foushoos image would have to go through . Considering that meat isn't even necessary and definitely not the solution for our growing population , there is absolutely no reason to be that cruel .
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Post by Omicron on Dec 3, 2017 13:25:36 GMT
Alright, quick rephrase: I don't think we should try to replicate the example (which was clearly made to have the food creatures seem as sad as possible (also, we don't even know if they are even capable of suffering, so maybe they aren't even that sad after all)) step by step, but I merely thought creating creatures purely for food isn't bad. They probably don't even need brains, just a kind of cancer-like blob of bacon important nutrients that keeps growing and which you can just cut slabs of meat off of. Also, lordclassyus , while I still think trying to rebuild forests using genetically engineered trees is a bad idea, as even a couple seeds escaping can have it sprout in another ecosystem and cause the extinction of other species, I do think your idea of using it for lumber mills is a pretty good idea. We could probably add a kind of way where they can only reproduce when helped by humans or something to stop it from escaping. |
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Post by lordclassyus on Dec 3, 2017 14:02:53 GMT
I don't think that the food creatures are that useful. If we could just create organic matter, we can just cut out the middleman.
With this theoretical technology, we could just 'make' meats, fruits and vegetables. Instead of cutting down forests or wait to grow crops, we could just make healthy, 'biological' and cheap meals to feed the world.
We would just have a load of factories making organic produce instead of farms.
Also I looked the image up myself and am proud to have a correct guess. It's the 'man after man' from Dougal Dixon and it was from 1990.
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Post by BiologicalSomething on Dec 3, 2017 14:54:31 GMT
Alright, sorry for the interruption, but when everybody's bored of discussing this question, feel free to put forward another one.
Thread starty thing will be updated with both the new question (when it arrives) and this information.
Continue discussion. Or don't. Your choice.
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Post by crodnu on Dec 3, 2017 15:28:00 GMT
I imagine creating meat would be more expensive than creating inanimate animals maybe?
Also those animals could also produce leather, wool, ivory and other valuable goodies.
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Post by BiologicalSomething on Dec 3, 2017 15:47:30 GMT
I imagine creating meat would be more expensive than creating inanimate animals maybe? Also those animals could also produce leather, wool, ivory and other valuable goodies. I never even thought of that. We could grow animals that develop luxuries. Sure, some people would complain, but it stops us killing off elephants and such. |
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Post by lordclassyus on Dec 3, 2017 16:05:18 GMT
But you wouldn't need to feed the animals, slaughter the animals and keep the animals healthy.
With this power we wouldn't need animals to produce anything anymore. They could just retire or live happily in a petting zoo.
But it also very much depends on how much energy this tech costs. If we knew how much it costs, then we can compare the requirments for how much it is to keep a single cow alive and healthy for a couple of years and how much it would cost to let a machine churn out a cow worth of beef.
At the very least the 'food factories' would be incredibly fast compared to farms. Instead of raising animals for a couple of years to wait for crops to grow, we just press a few buttons and hey presto, we have some meals.
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Post by BiologicalSomething on Dec 3, 2017 16:10:24 GMT
The whole idea of it is to combine the molecules required for life into organisms.
So, you'd have to A. Gain the necessary amount of resources and 2. Develop the organisms cell by cell.
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Post by Omicron on Dec 4, 2017 12:57:53 GMT
The whole idea of it is to combine the molecules required for life into organisms. So, you'd have to A. Gain the necessary amount of resources and 2. Develop the organisms cell by cell. 2. would probably be way more difficult than it needs to be. As the DNA will already have to exist, we can create simpler creatures (I.E. sponges, which are just a pile of cells), or we can just program in how the creature will develop from an initial couple cells for more complex ones |
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Post by BiologicalSomething on Dec 4, 2017 17:14:46 GMT
The whole idea of it is to combine the molecules required for life into organisms. So, you'd have to A. Gain the necessary amount of resources and 2. Develop the organisms cell by cell. 2. would probably be way more difficult than it needs to be. As the DNA will already have to exist, we can create simpler creatures (I.E. sponges, which are just a pile of cells), or we can just program in how the creature will develop from an initial couple cells for more complex ones Hmm, true. Still, it's still going to consume a lot of resources. Not to mention the cost. |
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Post by Omicron on Dec 4, 2017 17:32:26 GMT
2. would probably be way more difficult than it needs to be. As the DNA will already have to exist, we can create simpler creatures (I.E. sponges, which are just a pile of cells), or we can just program in how the creature will develop from an initial couple cells for more complex ones Hmm, true. Still, it's still going to consume a lot of resources. Not to mention the cost. Would probably still consume less resources than having it be done by massive creatures that waste energy by doing useless activities, such as walking |
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Post by BiologicalSomething on Dec 7, 2017 21:09:21 GMT
This thread's either dead or hibernating, and I sincerely hope it's the latter.
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