To Be Born in a Bag
press.asimov.com
press.asimov.com
Now imagine the thousands of factors that happen during pregnancy that probably influence the neurodevelopment of a human and which artifical womb doesn't take into account. Simple things such as: hearing and feeling the heartbeat of the mother, feeling the environment, heat, cold, being carried through life and so on.
There’s no evidence that says formula is detrimental, especially compared to not eating enough at all.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2LCTSD4k9bNDn6i8DzLv9r?si=D...
We are in casual conversation here.
As far as I know, there's no (direct, retrograde) transfer of pathogens from the child to the mother through the breast. But if the child has an infection, there is often a higher chance for the mother to get ill as well (due to close body contact, aerosol particles, etc.) and to develop a "mature immune response", which could lead to a (delayed) positive secondary effect on the child through passive immunity.
But this includes risk factors, too.
E.g., IIRC there's research into how certain stressors on the mother during pregnancy increase the likelihood of things like anxiety and depression for their offspring.
On the other hand, these things can probably be studied and identified. There is an organ shortage for transplantation, which historically peaks in times of peace. One idea is to genetically modify animals to make them more immunologically compatible. I could see a world where being able to control every aspect of the development process allows for more suitable organs (less risk of infection, etc).
That sounds unlikely to be true. I’m curious where you’re getting that from?
The stated case for this is premature birth, were the choice is between an artificial womb, the traditional setting, or letting the newborn die.
Preferring to offer death rather than your straw-man argument is probably more unethical.
(Make absurd statements, get absurd replies)
If you don't want to donate organs, just say so it's fine. Don't make up some BS ethical dilemma.
Have you thought through the consequences of NOT receiving an organ? They're pretty horrific as well.
To be clear, what you're outlining is: "For my conscience, I'd prefer people die outright than live to potentially reject an organ." I think you analysis of the ethics here could use a more thorough review.
Folks like this don’t aim at some point and then achieve it and stay there. They aim higher, land where they do, and continue to target the higher point. It’s how it is.
You can tell because how many of the rest of the people who would have stopped and not have lab-grown the child? Precisely zero.
I think I see where you're coming from, but this is a mighty perverse thing to say about people currently dying of organ failure who have expressed a desire to not die of organ failure. This isn't hypothetical, you can reach out to them and ask them how they feel directly. Not paying attention to that is a lack of diligence on your part, not a lack of expression on theirs.
Contrast that with an unborn child who literally cannot express a preference. Proving a desire to be born is a very different problem.
What's more likely to come first is artificially created sperm, from a sample of any cells - first by converting them to stem cells, then differentiating those to sperm-producing cells. It's already been trialed in the lab. I expect it's only a matter of time before this becomes a widely available reproductive technology, like IVF is now. Perhaps a few decades, if that.
The most interesting thing about this is it can be done with female cells to make "female sperm", both in the sense that it comes from a female individual and that every sperm cell will be X chromosomed (thus producing only daughters).
At that point, men will be effectively obsolete, and will gradually diminish in population, as each successive generation will be skewed more towards female.
It will be interesting to see how society adapts to being female-centered instead of male-dominated.
See Nursing for the dynamics of a female-dominated world. As a cis-male who was able to pierce into this space, it has its moments.
There’s a lot of clique-ines, eating of the young and crabs-in-a-bucket mentality. I don’t know if this is because Nursing is historically subservient to medicine, and horizontal trauma is a manifestation of being unable to act out on higher ranking members of the hierarchy. Also, career stagnation - many nurses are lifers in one clinical area and are secretly unsatisfied.
Fortunately, there is hope in pockets of the profession, typically in more cognitively-demanding areas with more “ownership” of patients (intensive care, NPs in primary care).
However, it’s hard to transfer culture between clinical areas, as the ones who are capable have already left toxic areas. The ones that don’t leave are the ones on power trips and don’t want to lose their little fiefdom.
Philosophical and ethical challenges aside
The common case seem much more straightforward, such as laws to prevent a hospital/creche from early-terminating a 9-month lease on Uterine Replicator #123 for non-payment, different fields on "birth certificate", some case-law around, er, "miscarriage" events, etc.
But I see them as being perhaps a somewhat more distant future possibility to fully replace a real womb due to the all of challenges.
When I think about the long term future of humanity and human development, I can't help but assume that things like artificial intelligence and simulation will have a significant role. In other words, trans-human and post-humanism.
Many techno-optimists like myself already anticipate superhuman artificial intelligence in less than 10 years. We might eventually (some decades further down the road) arrive at the point where it is easier to produce a "son" or "daughter" with the exact qualities we desire by 3d printing and model/knowledge configuration.
Sadly it seems that modern liberal societies that don’t enslave their women seem to not achieve sufficient fertility rates to avoid going extinct. Artificial wombs would be a huge advance toward fixing that problem.
Looking at the average state of parenting in the US today, it seems like a potentially huge improvement.
From a sheer economic standpoint, sharing the breadwinning and parenting duties might allow the children to get more hours of hands-on parent time. There might be economies of scale in sharing and handing down equipment, clothing, toys, or even provisioning services (if you have 10 families loving together, maybe at that point keeping a pediatrician or tutors on retainer might work?)
There might also be benefits in a more diverse set of ideas in the shared house-- when the kid reaches an age where they develop more complex interests and questions, more "parents" means a better chance they have someone with the appropriate knowledge or skills to help their development.
So yeah, theoretically having 6-20 adults all living together and sleeping with each other sounds fantastic when looking at resource-sharing and time management, but when you think about potential personality clashes it seems impossible to me unfortunately.
Some context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz_communal_child_rearing...
"Collective education can be regarded as a failure. The family as the basic social unit has not been abolished in kibbutzim. On the contrary, familistic trends have become stronger than ever, and kibbutz parents have reclaimed their rights to care for their own children. Collective education has not produced a new type of human being, and any differences found between adults raised on and off the kibbutz have been minimal."Which modern liberal societies do you know? Only societies I know in the western world are the ones that enslave men and women for resource extraction by the ultra wealthy, leaving them poor and tired and helpless and hopeless in the process. Taking their hard earned money and shoving propaganda at them every waking moment. Which is the fundamental reason as to why people aren’t having children. Has nothing to do with “not enslaving women.”
I think you can look at the potential trajectories for technology and humanity in different ways depending on your perspective. The most dramatic changes are totally speculative. Of course I am not hoping for real humans to become extinct.
It was extra interesting to see how the technology was adopted by different cultures and what a massive impact it had.
Axolotl tanks in Dune might be the darkest version of this by book five.
Bottle of mine, it's you I've always wanted!
Bottle of mine, why was I ever decanted?
Skies are blue inside of you
The weather's always fine;
For
There ain't no Bottle in all the world
Like that dear little Bottle of mine.If that baby is Japanese, they can literally refer to their mom as ofukuro, for ironic effect.
The hard truth that many don’t want to face about prematurity is that the odds of survival at 24 or even 23 weeks are actually quite high, IF the baby is lucky enough to be born in the right facility. The odds at 22 weeks and even 21 weeks are not a lock but actually much better than you’d think.
We don’t actually need new science to radically improve prematurity outcomes. We just need to invest money in equipping and training more NICUs.
My son was born at 26 weeks, luckily in New York City where the standard of care is excellent (level 3 on a scale of 1-4) at even the second-tier NICUs, and where the highest possible standard of care is never more than a short ambulance ride away.
To put it bluntly: in NYC, a 26-weeker is 90% likely to survive to term. In some areas of the country a 26-weeker is 90% likely to die. The averages cited here flatten out this reality and make the problem seem more scientific and less social than it actually is.
This is probably because of a shortage of highly competent medical personnel, especially in rural areas where no top medical school graduate in her right mind would want to work, just like they probably wouldn't want to live and work in someplace like Iran.
I don't really see any way to fix this. Getting excellent medical care means having excellent medical professionals living and working in proximity to you, and since they're humans with free choice, they tend to move to places that are nice for them to live in, which not surprisingly usually doesn't include economic backwaters.
It is true that there are fewer economic opportunities in the country. Cities are a labor market, after all. But there are hospitals everywhere, so if you work in medicine, you have the opportunity to work in the country and still earn good pay.
What worries me though, we still don't know so much about the intricacies of the baby development and birth process itself. For example, there is ongoing scientific discussion of (possible) negative consequences of C-section vs natural childbirth. And seeding human microbiome during that process. And many other aspects. To fully achieve artificial wombs all those unknown spots in medicine should be researched well and in depth.
I dunno, at least for primates and mice, pregnancy is a carefully balanced fight between rejection by the mother and cancerous parasitism by the embryo [0], complete with mind control drugs.
[0] https://aeon.co/essays/why-pregnancy-is-a-biological-war-bet...
That's an interesting idea, but it would also mean that all we know about human history is either made-up, or happened within the Matrix, because a world of humans that never sleep would look very different. It would also mean everything we know about other mammals is wrong too, since they all sleep too. Still, this seems more interesting than the idea that humanity peaked in 1999 and then sometime after that the machines took over and built the matrix and humans are somehow energy producers. But looking back, the idea that humanity peaked around 1999 doesn't seem too far-fetched...
So non-avian reptiles are forced into the niche of ambush predators (snakes, crocodiles), or they have to stay small and rely on stealth (lizards).
The Gorn would like a word with you.
Because there are certain similarities between the homeothermy of birds and that of mammals that seem less likely to be coincidences, there exists an alternative hypothesis, that homeothermy and fast metabolism has already evolved in the ancestor of all amniotes.
Later, in the ancestors of crocodyles, of turtles and in that of lizards and snakes (both etymologically and cladistically, it would be better to apply the term "reptiles" only to lizards and snakes), poikilothermy and slow metabolism have evolved as an adaptation that allows the reptiles to live using much less food than needed by birds and mammals.
This reversal appears especially likely for crocodiles, whose ancestors were terrestrial and agile.
Such a reversal is also consistent with the fact that reptiles need a high body temperature for a normal activity, unlike the amphibians, for which there is no doubt that they did not have an ancestor with homeothermy. To reach their required body temperature, reptiles need to use external sources, e.g. basking in sun light. Because of their dependence on external sources of heat, reptiles become rare or completely absent in colder climates, where amphibians are still abundant.
Reptiles are just as evolved as mammals. So their metabolism is not primitive, it's just not high-intensive.
> Because there are certain similarities between the homeothermy of birds and that of mammals that seem less likely to be coincidences, there exists an alternative hypothesis, that homeothermy and fast metabolism has already evolved in the ancestor of all amniotes.
Nope. Warm-blooded metabolism is not that hard to evolve, it's just that the intermediate stages are not viable in the presence of very adapted mammals with which you'll have to compete.
For example, tegu lizards are optionally endothermic. They can raise their body temperature by more than 10C, they use that during the mating season.
> Later, in the ancestors of crocodyles, of turtles and in that of lizards and snakes
Crocodiles and snakes are just as [un]related as birds and mammals. If you want to separate birds from crocodiles, then you need to include mammals into reptiles.
There are mammals that lay eggs, for example, the platypus [1].
ISWYDT, nice one
Babies certainly did not evolve to waste valuable time and resources on crying nonstop for no good reason, they likely do so only because something is not quite right. A more optimistic take is that they do it to develop the pipes, and the nonstop crying will pay off later with a great voice.
And there are sources of colic that have nothing to do with digestion - a quick perusal of WebMD lists noise/light sensitivity, nervous system misfires, and baby migraines (poor babies)!
Colic certainly might be an indicator that something is not quite right, but that doesn't mean there's always something you can do about it. As I write this with my exhausted newborn son sleeping in my arms, sometimes you just have to wait for them to grow out of it.
EDIT: I looked into this a little more since I'm pinned by a sleepy baby and as with everything with babies it's complicated. Here's a study that shows that formula-fed babies cry more at 2 weeks than breast-fed babies, but less at 6 weeks: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10193923/
This is probably also hindered by the fact that "colic" is an imprecise term - all babies cry, but at a certain point if they cry enough you call it "colic".
It's equivalent to moving to eggs, and getting morally immature individuals immediately get a full grown body. I might be mistaken, but it feels like reversing the whole evolutionary process that brought humans, when as a species we're currently pretty well adjusted to our earth environment. I don't think "nature" or evolution should be seen in a positive way just for the sake of it, but our whole history has consistently extended the childhood period, and we're still pointing at young adults as immature.
It's of course a different story if you're planning on dominating earth with an army of clones, or dominating space with a fleet of soldiers.
The whole issue with restricting abortion is no one is entitled to the use of my body, even if they need it to live. However if they don't require another person's body and could instead survive outside the body, I think abortion becomes morally worse than allowing it to come to term in an artificial womb.
From the "we cease to be humans" phrase i would assume that you have some more extra ideas on what is a "proper" human and what isn't.
Humanity is something you are, not how you were made, or the circumstances of your birth.
Of course nobody would like it and nobody would want to pay for it. The pro-choice people don't think it's necessary and the anti-abortion people would react to it in a knee-jerk aesthetic way because it's weird and artificial. (I also don't think the anti-abortion people really care about what they say they care about, but that's another matter.)
So what happens if one parent drops off the baby without the other parent's consent (which is technically child abduction)?
Probably through the form of "discounts" for having vasectomies or tubal litigation. We'll probably develop better extraction methods so having physical BC becomes less of a stigma because you'll still be able to get the gametes.
As it is now, people ‘adopt’ babies before they’re born, all the time.
Mother wants to give baby up for adoption. Couple is matched up with the mother and they help the mother during the pregnancy, physically, emotionally and financially. I’ve known several people involved in adoption.
Anyway, I see more cautious interest for artificial wombs by anti-abortion advocates than by pro-abortion advocates.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/2579952/anti-abortio...
> “The term ‘artificial wombs’ is misleading about this technology,” Catholic policy expert Leah Libresco Sargeant told the Washington Examiner. “A [neonatial intensive care unit] incubator is already a kind of artificial womb, trying to provide some of the support the baby would have otherwise gotten from his or her mother. If we’re able to provide better support to extremely premature babies, I’m all for it.”
While my feeling currently is that pro-phoicers see it as a “threat to abortion rights”, because it challenges the viability standard. That alone makes pro-lifers want to embrace it! See a typical discussion here among pro-lifers:
https://www.reddit.com/r/prolife/comments/1886k8z/abortion_i...
> Artificial wombs are the easiest way to test if someone actually views abortion as simply ending a pregnancy or ending a life. Most of the time, PC don’t want to admit they support the ending a life because it contradicts all their arguments that abortion is simply ending a pregnancy.
> It’s the most pro-choice thing ever for us to give them a solution that should be a compromise between our viewpoints, and them to still whine about wanting to kill their babies instead.