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Comment by champagnois | Hacker News Reader

I don't think what I am talking about is quite the same thing. Perhaps it would be more diplomatic to call my stance here to be in favor of applied genetics. DNA the molecule of genetics was not yet discovered. I do think there is a lot of potential in the idea of, say, cloning someone like Einstein from samples that have been preserved. It would be very interesting to me if a nation state cloned such people and set them to work on modern problems of quantum physics. What could such people accomplish in their lifetime starting in the present with our current knowledge and proofs and technologies.

well Einstein was against this idea of, you know, German pseudoscience, where they had these men going through mountains in the Middle East and measuring skulls and what have you, I do think applied genetics is a very different science.

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> Einstein... It would be very interesting to me if a nation state cloned such people and set them to work on modern problems of quantum physics.

This thread just keeps getting better. Do you... I mean... you do know why this is funny, right?

To be honest, no. No, I do not know why you find this so funny.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohr%E2%80%93Einstein_debates

You keep evoking Einstein in contexts that would have him rolling in his grave. Imagine raising Einstein from the dead to tell him that he's the standard bearer of eugenics and a version of quantum mechanics that was not in his image. It's humorous.

You seem to know very little about science or its history but are quick to evoke scientism in defense of ideas that in actuality have very little to do with science.

>>Wiki

Fun read and all.

Thanks for that link.

Very cool.

>>You seem to know very little about science

Einstein the person, the history of his life, etc are fully separate from contributions to science. Science is, generally, not about cults of personality, history, or any of that.

I have a great appreciation, respect, gratefulness, passion, and enthusiasm for science, progress, and advancement of the species.

One does not have to study the trivialities of how Einstein took his coffee or tea in 1938 in order to appreciate the genius and scientific contributions.

>>You

This side thread with you seems fallacious in a way, but that is okay. I respect you and think there is definitely a place in the world for people who do well in their careers and also worship their idols from history.

You know, all of that said, don't you think it would be cool and maybe beneficial to the species if cloning technologies were perfected and experiments were done where genes like those responsible for the entity you know as Einstein were cloned, given new names, new lives, and such? I wonder what would happen. It would seem such experiments are indeed coming in the future, and I do not think the historical trivialities of one's life have much to do with this scientific curiousity that many a biologist wants to explore.

> fallacious

This entire thread is an aside about an anecdote about how one guy's wife decided not to have kids and therefore there's a Great Replacement of the Mensa Members By The Non-Mensa Members.

Anyways.

What exactly were we talking about again?

Oh. Right. A really stupid paper.

Want to stay on topic? Reply to this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29798887

As he is a hero of sorts to you, here is EINSTEIN on the, to him, obvious difference in value between the stupid and the brilliant:

>>In 1918 he was asked by the mother of a brilliant German biology student to dissuade her son from joining the front in the First World War. Einstein complied and wrote: “Can this post of yours out there not be filled by an unimaginative average person of the type that come 12 to the dozen? Is it not more important than all that big scuffle out there that valuable people stay alive?”

>>And in 1922, Einstein told his close friend, the physicist Paul Ehrenfest, whose 4-year-old son had recently been diagnosed with Down syndrome, that he agreed with his decision to institutionalize his son rather than care for him himself, because “valuable people should not be sacrificed for causes without any prospects, not even in this case.”

Source: https://time.com/5314704/einstein-diaries-racism/

Einstein can be seen above quoted as saying things that are very similar to my own writings. Regardless, I just found this interesting today and thought you'd enjoy it.

There's nothing similar between those quotes and your writing about how Einstein should be cloned and then made to work on quantum physics.

As an aside, those quotes come from earlier in his life. It's uncertain if he held the same opinions as he grew older and matured. People's views do change over time, as we can see with Einstein's rueful feelings over the a-bomb.

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