4 ms·

I don’t have the faintest idea of what your scheme is supposed to accomplish? Edit, after turning off strict mode: if you’re thinking of a doctor performing fe

I don’t have the faintest idea of what your scheme is supposed to accomplish? Edit, after turning off strict mode: if you’re thinking of a doctor performing fertility treatments trying to hide their experiments with CRISPR: that’s trivial. Just don’t tell anyone. Stealing babies from mothers after birth to then leave them at hospital doorsteps would actually seem to be ... counterproductive? Edit 2, after consulting my equally puzzled dog: you do realize these babies weren’t actually created in a test tube, right? As in: there were still a womb and the person attached involved in the process.

imglorp 8y ago
If you wanted to introduce a gene into a population without it being identified as intentional, and by whom. Here's an example for your next scifi thriller: a docility bomb. Identify a few dominant genes that intensify the social conformity bias--it's already hardwired into humans to varying degrees--and make 1000 babies with those adjustments. Leave them on 1000 doorsteps across your opponent's country. If each baby grows and has two children, that's about 3000 in one generation, 9000 in the next, etc. At some point you're affecting the population's voting, working, and revolting tendencies. After what we've seen in long-game US politics lately, this kind of thing is more plausible than reality.
- ryanwaggoner 8y ago
  To my (very) untrained mind, it does sound like a scifi thriller plot: that is, extremely implausible. First, the logistics of doing gene modifications for 1000 babies and then leaving them on 1000 doorsteps across the a country like the US without getting caught or anyone catching on seems....challenging. Second, each baby won't have two children, at least not in any developed country. The birth rate per woman in the US is at like 1.8 and likely to fall further by the time these babies are able to procreate. This is well below the replacement rate, so even if you select the first generation to only be girls, the second generation would only be ~half girls and it'll shrink from there. So if the birth rate falls to 1.5 and remains constant, the second generation would be 1500, but only 750 girls. The next generation would be 1125, but only 562 girls, etc. Third, even if the birth rate was higher, this would still take forever to have any noticeable effect. Like centuries. Fourth, how do you ensure that these mutations don't migrate into your country? Especially over that kind of time span. Fifth, would these mutations even be stable or predictable over time? No idea, not my field, but I'd be curious. Also, it seems like there's a very good chance they'd be detected with future technology and genetic screening. Finally, this kind of centuries-long quest would compete with a lot of more time-tested ways to destabilize a country. Why not just go to war, use biological weapons, propaganda, economics warfare, cyber warfare, etc, etc? So much easier and you get your results in a decade instead of 300 years.
  - arethuza 8y ago
    An even better thriller plot would be for there to be some completely unpredicted positive benefit of the change - e.g. that the modified kids are far more intelligent or immune to heart disease or <something>.
- dwighttk 8y ago
  "... this kind of thing is more plausible than reality." what does that mean?
  - imglorp 8y ago
    Some crazy long-term thinking is going on. Ten years ago, if you had proposed a bunch of the US govt was taking mountains cash to represent overtly foreign interests, that social media has been largely co-opted in order to influence elections, etc etc.. it would have been preposterous. Truth is stranger than fiction.
- jayalpha 8y ago
  Yeah, a mutagenic chain reaction would be a great start: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6233/442 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6233/442 Make {Jews, Muslims, Blacks, Gypsies or whatever} sterile in the long term. I am sure, both governments and individuals have thought about this. Or maybe I believe that my genes are better than your and I want to spread them?
  - jcul 8y ago
    On of my favourite shows, utopia, is based around this. Unfortunately that's a bit of a spoiler in itself.
- jcranmer 8y ago
  Genes don't work like that. Popular conception has it that DNA is like source code, but the reality of how genes and biological systems work requires a few addenda: * The source code is completely undocumented and is written in a variant of Malbolge. * We don't actually have a reference for that variant of Malbolge, so we're guessing what half the instructions actually do. * The compiler is buggy and will only rarely compile your code correctly. * The code itself is not modularized in any sane way. The code for left-pad, for example, also contains code that scans for bitcoin-stealing attacks and automatically removes them when run. Any sort of idea such as "edit genes to make people taller [or more docile]" is well beyond our ability to understand, especially since a fair amount of those phenotypes are not driven by actual changes in DNA (welcome to epigenetics).
  - spdionis 8y ago
    I think the idea is that eventually we will be able to reverse engineer it though. If you think about what advances we've had in the last centuries, this could definitely be possible a few decades/centuries down the road.

imglorp 8y ago

If you wanted to introduce a gene into a population without it being identified as intentional, and by whom. Here's an example for your next scifi thriller: a docility bomb. Identify a few dominant genes that intensify the social conformity bias--it's already hardwired into humans to varying degrees--and make 1000 babies with those adjustments. Leave them on 1000 doorsteps across your opponent's country. If each baby grows and has two children, that's about 3000 in one generation, 9000 in the next, etc. At some point you're affecting the population's voting, working, and revolting tendencies. After what we've seen in long-game US politics lately, this kind of thing is more plausible than reality.

ryanwaggoner 8y ago
To my (very) untrained mind, it does sound like a scifi thriller plot: that is, extremely implausible. First, the logistics of doing gene modifications for 1000 babies and then leaving them on 1000 doorsteps across the a country like the US without getting caught or anyone catching on seems....challenging. Second, each baby won't have two children, at least not in any developed country. The birth rate per woman in the US is at like 1.8 and likely to fall further by the time these babies are able to procreate. This is well below the replacement rate, so even if you select the first generation to only be girls, the second generation would only be ~half girls and it'll shrink from there. So if the birth rate falls to 1.5 and remains constant, the second generation would be 1500, but only 750 girls. The next generation would be 1125, but only 562 girls, etc. Third, even if the birth rate was higher, this would still take forever to have any noticeable effect. Like centuries. Fourth, how do you ensure that these mutations don't migrate into your country? Especially over that kind of time span. Fifth, would these mutations even be stable or predictable over time? No idea, not my field, but I'd be curious. Also, it seems like there's a very good chance they'd be detected with future technology and genetic screening. Finally, this kind of centuries-long quest would compete with a lot of more time-tested ways to destabilize a country. Why not just go to war, use biological weapons, propaganda, economics warfare, cyber warfare, etc, etc? So much easier and you get your results in a decade instead of 300 years.
- arethuza 8y ago
  An even better thriller plot would be for there to be some completely unpredicted positive benefit of the change - e.g. that the modified kids are far more intelligent or immune to heart disease or <something>.
dwighttk 8y ago
"... this kind of thing is more plausible than reality." what does that mean?
- imglorp 8y ago
  Some crazy long-term thinking is going on. Ten years ago, if you had proposed a bunch of the US govt was taking mountains cash to represent overtly foreign interests, that social media has been largely co-opted in order to influence elections, etc etc.. it would have been preposterous. Truth is stranger than fiction.
jayalpha 8y ago
Yeah, a mutagenic chain reaction would be a great start: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6233/442 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6233/442 Make {Jews, Muslims, Blacks, Gypsies or whatever} sterile in the long term. I am sure, both governments and individuals have thought about this. Or maybe I believe that my genes are better than your and I want to spread them?
- jcul 8y ago
  On of my favourite shows, utopia, is based around this. Unfortunately that's a bit of a spoiler in itself.
jcranmer 8y ago
Genes don't work like that. Popular conception has it that DNA is like source code, but the reality of how genes and biological systems work requires a few addenda: * The source code is completely undocumented and is written in a variant of Malbolge. * We don't actually have a reference for that variant of Malbolge, so we're guessing what half the instructions actually do. * The compiler is buggy and will only rarely compile your code correctly. * The code itself is not modularized in any sane way. The code for left-pad, for example, also contains code that scans for bitcoin-stealing attacks and automatically removes them when run. Any sort of idea such as "edit genes to make people taller [or more docile]" is well beyond our ability to understand, especially since a fair amount of those phenotypes are not driven by actual changes in DNA (welcome to epigenetics).
- spdionis 8y ago
  I think the idea is that eventually we will be able to reverse engineer it though. If you think about what advances we've had in the last centuries, this could definitely be possible a few decades/centuries down the road.