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Did no one watch Jurassic Park? You can't put genetic alterations in the environment and expect them not to propagate. The idea that this is possible has been p

Did no one watch Jurassic Park? You can't put genetic alterations in the environment and expect them not to propagate. The idea that this is possible has been proven multiple times to be utterly and completely false. No matter what the level of care or control. You put it out there, and there is any possibility for it to proliferate... it will proliferate. Period. People don't learn they still think they are in control, you know that they are crazy. Just like you think anyone saying something like this is.

aprdm 7y ago
Whoa loved this reference to Jurassic park, watched the movie for the 100th time yesterday, "life finds a way" I believe is the quote.
cwp 7y ago
The only lessons to be learned from Jurassic Park are a) Michael Crichton is a better writer than people think b) Wow, this CGI thing is going to be huge! It's fiction. It did well because it tapped into the zeitgeist and gave form to people's fears. It is not evidence that those fears are justified.
- devoply 7y ago
  Damn I thought it was a documentary.
- moron4hire 7y ago
  The original Jurassic Park only used CG for the weird animated DNA stand. There dinosaurs were animatronic.
  - Robotbeat 7y ago
    No: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-cgi-works-in-jurassic-park-2014-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-cgi-works-in-jurassic-pa...
  - enkid 7y ago
    There were cgi dinos as well. Remember the First scene with the brontosauruses, or the stampede scene? Or the scene when the raptors jump on the Tyrannosaurus?
- pvaldes 7y ago
  > It is not evidence that those fears are justified. ... until now Crichton did not created his novel from zero. Was after talking with a lot of scientists, taking several scientific theories and facts, and using it (more or less embellished for literary and fiction purposes) to build the book. Only because it appears on Jurassic park does not mean that the subjacent idea is incorrect (neither the opposite of course). Gene drive or MGEs (comprising 50% of human genome, so there are probably plenty of it on mosquitoes also) aren't Crichton's ideas.
  - cwp 7y ago
    > ... until now Nope, it's still not evidence. The fears may well be justified, but simply appealing to the fear itself is not a good-faith argument. If you think Jurassic Park was based on solid science, fine. It shouldn't be hard to marshal it to make your case.
    - pvaldes 7y ago
      Maybe we are not discussing the same hypothesis. null hypothesis: "We can put genetic alterations in the environment and expect them not to propagate" or if you prefer: "Modified mosquitoes will never, ever escape and reproduce, because we are scientists, really smart, we know what we do, etc" (Modified mosquitoes escape and reproduce) Null Hypothesis is false, and Crichton is still a rich man. Next question.
      - cwp 7y ago
        I was discussing the comment I replied to - "Did no one watch Jurassic Park?" It's a good movie, but things that happen to imaginary scientists should not guide our decisions about real-world experiments. I think the hypothesis of the experiment was something like "these genetic modifications will prevent mosquitos from reproducing". We know that the mosquitos did reproduce because the scientists deliberately included other modifications that would be easy to detect, and monitored the mosquito population to see if those genes showed up. Contrary to your "we're so smart, we know what we're doing," caricature of the arrogant scientist, they made a hypothesis, carefully designed an experiment to disprove it, carefully gathered the data, and published a paper showing that their hypothesis was disproven. This is how science works. It doesn't mean that what they're trying to do is impossible, only that this approach didn't succeed.
StavrosK 7y ago
If you're citing Jurassic Park as your source, I'm not sure how persuasive the argument is.
- tyri_kai_psomi 7y ago
  The thing about human thought is it isn't as far fetched and disconnected from reality as we may first believe, even in the realm of fiction. The means in which the fiction is achieved can sometimes be practical methods we have available to us today! Outside some hallucinogenic escapades, most scenarios any one individual can imagine eventually faces an opportunity to become a reality, at least fiction from the past has shown us numerous examples where this is the case. The Jetsons introduced us to video phone calls in 1962, which people thought were so farfetched and deemed ridiculous. We now have Facetime, Facebook Portal, et all. Star Trek introduced us to the universal translator. We now have Google Translate and Google Assistant Interpreter Mode, and universal translators as consumer products. Marty McFly wore smart glasses and Doc wore a smart watch. We now have Smart Watches and Google Glass. In 1977 Dr Who had a robotic dog, K9, who beat its master in chess, and 20 years later computers can beat the world's best chess grandmasters with ease. I could think of some more examples, but you get the picture.
  - cgriswald 7y ago
    Since it’s Star Trek, I feel the need to be pedantic. The universal translator can translate languages it has never heard before, on the fly, to English and vice Versa. There are a few episodes, (*e.g. “Darmok” TNG) featuring failures of the universal translator. We have nothing remotely close to a universal translator. To your point, however, those are examples of fiction inspired successes, not cautionary tales that sadly came to pass.
  - kortilla 7y ago
    Those are tech predictions. Not unfounded “rules of nature”.
- asveikau 7y ago
  I believe that study was peer reviewed by Roger Ebert. Edit: off topic, but I just read that review from 1993 and it was pretty good - https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/jurassic-park-1993 https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/jurassic-park-1993
kortilla 7y ago
Jurassic Park was fiction. Behaviors of genetics can’t be gleaned from something made-up. Especially hard rules about what is possible or impossible.

aprdm 7y ago

Whoa loved this reference to Jurassic park, watched the movie for the 100th time yesterday, "life finds a way" I believe is the quote.

cwp 7y ago

The only lessons to be learned from Jurassic Park are a) Michael Crichton is a better writer than people think b) Wow, this CGI thing is going to be huge! It's fiction. It did well because it tapped into the zeitgeist and gave form to people's fears. It is not evidence that those fears are justified.

devoply 7y ago
Damn I thought it was a documentary.
moron4hire 7y ago
The original Jurassic Park only used CG for the weird animated DNA stand. There dinosaurs were animatronic.
- Robotbeat 7y ago
  No: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-cgi-works-in-jurassic-park-2014-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-cgi-works-in-jurassic-pa...
- enkid 7y ago
  There were cgi dinos as well. Remember the First scene with the brontosauruses, or the stampede scene? Or the scene when the raptors jump on the Tyrannosaurus?
pvaldes 7y ago
> It is not evidence that those fears are justified. ... until now Crichton did not created his novel from zero. Was after talking with a lot of scientists, taking several scientific theories and facts, and using it (more or less embellished for literary and fiction purposes) to build the book. Only because it appears on Jurassic park does not mean that the subjacent idea is incorrect (neither the opposite of course). Gene drive or MGEs (comprising 50% of human genome, so there are probably plenty of it on mosquitoes also) aren't Crichton's ideas.
- cwp 7y ago
  > ... until now Nope, it's still not evidence. The fears may well be justified, but simply appealing to the fear itself is not a good-faith argument. If you think Jurassic Park was based on solid science, fine. It shouldn't be hard to marshal it to make your case.
  - pvaldes 7y ago
    Maybe we are not discussing the same hypothesis. null hypothesis: "We can put genetic alterations in the environment and expect them not to propagate" or if you prefer: "Modified mosquitoes will never, ever escape and reproduce, because we are scientists, really smart, we know what we do, etc" (Modified mosquitoes escape and reproduce) Null Hypothesis is false, and Crichton is still a rich man. Next question.
    - cwp 7y ago
      I was discussing the comment I replied to - "Did no one watch Jurassic Park?" It's a good movie, but things that happen to imaginary scientists should not guide our decisions about real-world experiments. I think the hypothesis of the experiment was something like "these genetic modifications will prevent mosquitos from reproducing". We know that the mosquitos did reproduce because the scientists deliberately included other modifications that would be easy to detect, and monitored the mosquito population to see if those genes showed up. Contrary to your "we're so smart, we know what we're doing," caricature of the arrogant scientist, they made a hypothesis, carefully designed an experiment to disprove it, carefully gathered the data, and published a paper showing that their hypothesis was disproven. This is how science works. It doesn't mean that what they're trying to do is impossible, only that this approach didn't succeed.

StavrosK 7y ago

If you're citing Jurassic Park as your source, I'm not sure how persuasive the argument is.

tyri_kai_psomi 7y ago
The thing about human thought is it isn't as far fetched and disconnected from reality as we may first believe, even in the realm of fiction. The means in which the fiction is achieved can sometimes be practical methods we have available to us today! Outside some hallucinogenic escapades, most scenarios any one individual can imagine eventually faces an opportunity to become a reality, at least fiction from the past has shown us numerous examples where this is the case. The Jetsons introduced us to video phone calls in 1962, which people thought were so farfetched and deemed ridiculous. We now have Facetime, Facebook Portal, et all. Star Trek introduced us to the universal translator. We now have Google Translate and Google Assistant Interpreter Mode, and universal translators as consumer products. Marty McFly wore smart glasses and Doc wore a smart watch. We now have Smart Watches and Google Glass. In 1977 Dr Who had a robotic dog, K9, who beat its master in chess, and 20 years later computers can beat the world's best chess grandmasters with ease. I could think of some more examples, but you get the picture.
- cgriswald 7y ago
  Since it’s Star Trek, I feel the need to be pedantic. The universal translator can translate languages it has never heard before, on the fly, to English and vice Versa. There are a few episodes, (*e.g. “Darmok” TNG) featuring failures of the universal translator. We have nothing remotely close to a universal translator. To your point, however, those are examples of fiction inspired successes, not cautionary tales that sadly came to pass.
- kortilla 7y ago
  Those are tech predictions. Not unfounded “rules of nature”.
asveikau 7y ago
I believe that study was peer reviewed by Roger Ebert. Edit: off topic, but I just read that review from 1993 and it was pretty good - https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/jurassic-park-1993 https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/jurassic-park-1993

kortilla 7y ago

Jurassic Park was fiction. Behaviors of genetics can’t be gleaned from something made-up. Especially hard rules about what is possible or impossible.