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Comment by dualogy | Hacker News Reader

Do we really want smarter rodents?

(Then again, think if we could secretly outsource loads of PHP SQL-CRUD projects to them..)

They might get some of the bad human traits. Consider religious wars over brands of cheese or colors of automotive electrical wires.

That is a brilliant idea for keeping the world wide mouse population under control!

Being that many religions frown on birth control, being gay, and instead focus on having lots of babies... I don't think that would have the population control effect you are looking for.

This is a good question. HGTG-scenarios aside, what if they become sentient? Do they deserve the same moral weight humans have now?

Aren't they sentient? They are able to perceive and feel things.

People often mix the words sentience and sapience to mean the same thing. Mice clearly can perceive and feel things but they do not show the intelligence we call sapience.

On the topic of AIs, not mice, but very relevant to the questions you mentioned: http://lesswrong.com/lw/x7/cant_unbirth_a_child/

This was my immediate reaction. Pain experiments, as described in the article, are a necessary "evil" in many animal experiments. Human trials have the same conditions, with both the pain of treatment and the suffering of being in the "control" group and having false hopes; however, participants have consented to the experiment.

We empathize much more strongly with animals that behave in human ways. Couple this with the "cuteness factor," which I use to mean that we are sensitive and protective of things that we find to be cute (babies, kittens, Yoda, puppies, etc.) and we have a very irrational, visceral response to the idea of torturing cute, smart, affectionate, best-dog-I-ever-had, animals.

It's not inherently bad but it clouds our judgment on what is right and wrong in terms of our treatment of these animals and the ends that justify this treatment. We (as a species) kill and eat whales, which most of the developed world has agreed to be unacceptable.

I don't know if this is moving in a "Rats of NIMH" or "Planet of the Apes" direction, but the philosophical ramifications of sentience are likely to be explored as a result of this type of "improvement".

We have a huge body of sci-fi, speculation, religion, and thought-experiments regarding sentient non-human forms, including what defines "life" and "personhood". It will be an interesting test of humanity to see how we deal with any positive results of this type of exploration.

I for one welcome our new rodent overlords.

You don't know if they are already posting in HN now :-) singularity is near....

Imagine if you could grow yourself a huge brain. I'm finding more and more that the biggest bottleneck in my awesome plans is me.

Or maybe you could grow a second brain and switch them out while one sleeps/defrags.

How would you keep those brains in sync?

Dropbox perhaps could have a service tier for cerebral cortices.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_Carbon.

It'll be a problem when someone synched to the service forgets something which removes everyone else's memory of it too.

A cloud brain might be easier, just a good BCI and a connection to the internet would be all that's needed to get started.

Instead of two hemispheres, split your brain into quadrants with high bandwidth and referential locality for task memory.

Also, try to figure out a way to harness hormonal "intelligence" for general purpose cognition.

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