Toxic people could become a reality, scientists researching snake venom say
irishexaminer.com
irishexaminer.com
I want a prehensile tail and feet. Maybe some gene therapy can make that happen to grow and remodel existing tissue?
I wouldn't be that into assassination as a vocation even if I had superpowers that made me an extremely good assassin, for example.
Obligatory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World
What if you sequence the great computer scientists and average ones and find some genes that really make a difference? What if you sequence sociopaths and discover a series of genes that correlate heavily with it? Sexuality, flight or flight responses, physical aptitude, mental aptitude.
We've spent millennia doing a less advanced form of this on dogs, can you honestly say a lot of these dogs we've bred for specific jobs aren't "into them"?
No, this entirely different to that. I'm saying that a person's physical attributes are orthogonal to that person's personality. I'm not discussing if their personality is a result of nature or nuture, just the fact that if you're, for example, physically predisposed to, say, being able to grow large muscles, that has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not you are personally interested in, say, competitive weightlifting (regardless of whether or not that personal interest (or lack thereof) is a result of nature or nuture).
The fact that you are predisposed to be able to grow large muscles is obviously nature; the circumstances surrounding whether or not you actually do grow large muscles is open to the nature/nurture debate, as well as the psychological manifestations that might lead one to engage in (or avoid) bodybuilding, competition, et c.
Purposes are tools humans use to give their own lives meaning, if they desire. Purposes should serve humans, not the other way around.
But the problem is parents would be making that decision. Or in this case a dictator's military haha.
There are already hover parents living vicariously through sports, music, chess whatever.
I can imagine this going to extremes with parents making these forever physical decisions.
Elite athletes can chose to endanger their health for the sport they love.
But I'm not sure about the ethics of a parent deciding to say give lower resting heart rates/higher vo2 max with cycling in mind, even though it could be deadly slow.
What would be more scalable- a human born venomous or the ability to install a venom gland in a human sinus, replacing at least one tooth?
> During the height of the space race in the 1960s, legend has it, NASA scientists realized that pens could not function in space. They needed to figure out another way for the astronauts to write things down. So they spent years and millions of taxpayer dollars to develop a pen that could put ink to paper without gravity. But their crafty Soviet counterparts, so the story goes, simply handed their cosmonauts pencils.
The soviets? They just gave their agents poisoned dentures and called it a day.
Looking at it purely from an efficiency perspective, encouraging biological weapon development in humans at a rapid pace - possibly through retroviral techniques - may be more effective than technological devices, if the former is less detectable than the latter, and especially if the former has a lower price point than the latter.
There are multiple variables in play here, and that's not even getting into the ethical considerations.
E.g. - why research a gun when you could brain someone with a big rock?
Seriously, not trying to be condescending here - if you could probably do a thing more effectively down the road with one path, why would you choose a more immediate path?
Why bother building killer robots and drones when you can simulate the outcome of a battle without having to fight it in meat space.
Whoever loses has to line up at the suicide booths.
Human 'soldiers' are really only going to be useful in the near future for infiltrating and disrupting social systems, not for dispensing physical violence.
[0] I know you can find something on Youtube but if it really worked at scale McDonalds would be rolling them out yesterday.
In aviation and space, there are serious issues in keeping biological organisms alive due to oxygen levels, pressure changes, and G forces. A purely autonomous system would be able to be more maneuverable in more environments than any system that also needs to keep a meat bag alive.
The other thing machines are great at is patience. Land mines can remain operational for decades, just waiting for their opportunity to detonate. Biological organisms have much higher passive maintenance costs.
Make your children better than theirs. Smarter? Less likely to get diseases? Who knows. The point is, now your side has the edge, so they have to keep up. Maybe they get the edge next, so you have to innovate. And so on. Assuming there's sufficient "headroom" to build up these genetic transhumans, and we don't run into some no-free-lunch scenario where improvement is either impossible or comes with unavoidable nasty side-effects, you can't just sit still. You have to continue to improve or you can no longer pretend that all people are created equal in certain important respects. Morally equal, yes, but "morally equal" doesn't get you a leadership position.
For example, partial genetic immunity to malaria carries an increased risk of syckle cell anemia. Most traits are like that to an extent.
And yet the nerve to my retina is still installed backwards.
> “...then in a few thousand years, we might encounter venomous mice.”
A female mouse can give birth at the age of two and a half months. In a few thousand years, you can have some 10 000 generations.
Would it really take 10 000 generations for mice to become venomous?
Mice survive as a species by reproducing fast and hiding, not by biting other animals to teach them a lesson. In order to exploit venom's potential they would need to undo their risk-averse behavior around other animals, which may not be in their best interest as a species.
But who could be more venomous than Cesare Borgia and the Borgia family whom reportedly had rings for poisoning (and assassinating) their enemies? Attending social functions has, in some past eras, been a wholly more perilous game than today, even with Covid.
And now ten minutes later I see this
Coincidentally, there was a posting today about it earlier.
The good news is, they weren't born that way and they can change.
Debatable. See https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600451 and particularly the supplementary materials about age distribution. I held the same opinion as you and was quite surprised by these results.
The graphical representation of optimism, pessimism, envy, and trust is really fascinating.
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/2/8/e160045...
https://www.mayoclinic.org/first-aid/first-aid-human-bites/b....
Edit: there appears to be debate over my wording but just please don’t miss the lesson here: seek medical attention if bitten.
Don't single out homeless people: one can have bad dental hygiene without being homeless.
(speaking about toxic language...)
there is plenty of data about the subject.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2906228/
https://www.mchoralhealth.org/PDFs/OHHomelessfactsheet.pdf
more with a simple google query like 'oral health among homeless'.
overall point : homeless people are less likely to have a 'dental home', or access to the items and services needed to facilitate good oral health.
The problems of access seem to correlate to an increase in oral-health-related issues like sensitive teeth, broken teeth, and ulcers.
It's not a fashionable subject, and it's tough to say in such a way that is sensitive to those people who are undergoing such strife, but the data tends to point towards worse oral health in those without access -- which, in my opinion, is an obvious outcome of destitution and homelessness.
How do you feel about saying "if a black person (or any individual) were to bite you..."?
From the perspective of sepsis the oral health of the person has no impact on how dangerous a bite is. Every human being has enough bacteria in their mouth to cause a deadly infection and having a higher level is not significant.
The original poster mentioned the homeless because that's what he thinks of when the idea of unclean mouths comes up.
When you brush aside the truth in order to be politically correct it only hurts those who are most vulnerable. Our sensibilities will survive, but in the meantime an absessed tooth can absolutely prove fatal to anyone not willing or able to seek treatment (guess who).
Being homeless comes with a lot of bad things, and one of those things is exposure to diseases that are passed upon skin contact. Pretending that homeless folks are just "normal folks like the rest of us" truly does them a disservice. They need help, and by pretending that they don't (or rather, by shunning such conversations out of "politeness") we are hurting them for the benefit of our own conscience. We are only being polite to our own sensibilities when we ignore the plight of homeless people, and pretend to put them on equal footing when they are truly nowhere close. Instead of taking personal offense to the statement I just made, think about them instead. It's become very tiring to see people "stand up" for others, when they are really only standing up to make themselves feel better about mostly ignoring the problem.
Many (possibly most) homeless people pass for normal much of the time. It's the obviously highly homeless that get recognized as homeless and become the face of homelessness.
Perpetuating that stereotype as if it is accurate does a disservice to everyone.
I spent nearly six years homeless. I was routinely mistaken for a tourist and I sometimes got panhandled by other homeless people who would then ask me "How do you stay so clean??" when I would tell them "Sorry. I've got nothing to spare. I'm also homeless."
It was not my intent to cast people experiencing homelessness in a bad light, but I won't apologize for my words just because they weren't received in the spirit I intended them (I know you didn't ask for an apology, just throwing it out there). My point was that by definition homeless folks don't have equal access to facilities that non-homeless folk do, and have greater exposure to specific health risks. I didn't say this to be mean or hateful, I stated my current understanding of the situation many people find themselves in. Understanding a situation is the first step towards improving it. That requires talking about things that might make some people uncomfortable.
I strongly disagree with the manner in which jimbob45 was immediately shut down (and subsequently accused of casting homeless folks as "subhuman") for making a statement that quite frankly, wasn't wrong. Not only was his advice not wrong, but it could save lives if someone didn't know any better. It upsets me to see people get beat up over innocent comments that other people take offense to because they assume maliciousness. I saw zero maliciousness in his comment, and in fact it appeared as someone simply giving sound advice.
When your words are not received in the spirit you intended in a text only environment, working on finding the right words is typically the most effective approach to remedying the matter.
I wrote what I wrote previously because I'm on your side and a writer by trade. I still blog about homelessness at times. Searching for the right words to adequately convey meaning is something I spend a lot of time on and put a lot of work into.
I think that's quite a bad remark. I believe you can do better.
Our mouths are quite dirty in general.
You're talking about oral bacteria. Article is talking about actual venom.
Probably yes. Forced collection of blood samples for substance testing and cheek swabs for DNA collection.
Edit: SMH. I end up spraying more than I say.
I can't remember the exact location or details sufficiently well to look it up but I remember the bit about personal weapons as an odd fact that jumped out at me from a copy of the arrest report.