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Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
- vikramkr 6y agoThis research is as terrific as it is terrifying. These are some terrific insights into the evolution of intelligence. I doubt that it was one gene alone that drove the whole thing, but as the article mentions, the ethical dilemmas already arise, and it's easy to see how scientifically valuable it would be to study the impact of the gene further by allowing the transgenic animals to be born. The ethical dilemmas cut both ways - research like this might be crucial to understanding Alzheimer's and other serious diseases. Complicated and difficult questions to be sure, but it's extraordinary and a testament to the power of science that we're even in a position to be asking those questions. Lets hope we answer them correctly.
- dogma1138 6y agoIsn’t that literally the plot of the Planet of the Apes remake?
- ampdepolymerase 6y agoMaybe it is time for continental and east asian arms and self defence legislation to add an exception for putting down runaway lab experiments. Standing your ground and castle doctrines are privileges unique to America.
- gwern 6y agoMirror: https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/editing/2020-heide.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/editing/2020-heide.pdf
- CyberRabbi 6y agoHmm doesn’t seem credible. Everyone knows that brain size has no effect on intelligence.
- Retric 6y agoYea, I was talking to a fruit fly yesterday... Wait no, that’s not accurate because while larger brains don’t inherently equate to more intelligence, there is a minimum size for any given level of intelligence. That said, this wasn’t a test of intelligence, just how cells grow in response to specific genetic alterations.
- busterarm 6y agoBut larger brains in monkeys do equate to larger social groups (dunbar's number. monkeyspheres) and could be a necessary precursor to civilization.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Retric 6y agoIt’s important to separate changes across evolutionary timescales with individual mutations. Brian’s have a metabolic cost which promotes efficiency over time, but efficiency is just one of many relevant factors. A whale has significantly less relative metabolic cost per Lb of brain than a mouse. Further, individual mutations may be a net negative.
- CyberRabbi 6y agoI didn’t realize that was scientific consensus. So that would imply that brains under a certain size are incapable of higher levels of intelligence? I don’t think that’s right... I thought the consensus was that brain size has no strong correlation with intelligence at all. That makes sense considering how neurons work, the connections they form seem like they would be more causal.
- SubiculumCode 6y agoIts a complicated question. Within the human species, the correlation is not that strong at all. In cross-species comparisons it tends to be quite strong, especially when considering brain to body weight ratios. Bird brains may be an interesting exception however, which I suspect can be quite intelligent, depending on how intelligence is measured.
- ende 6y agoThis is either going 28 Days Later or Planet of the Apes.
- adventured 6y agoHas anyone seen Marlon Brando lately?
- Jaruzel 6y agoYou were down-voted I think because people are not familiar with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_of_Dr._Moreau_(1996_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_of_Dr._Moreau_(1996...
- sixseven2000 6y agoSuper chimps A Meeting With Medusa Arthur C Clarke
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y agoAre they going to call him Caesar?
- agilob 6y agoOr Dr. Zaius
- OnlyMortal 6y agoA Simpsons episode comes to mind... https://youtu.be/M2E1m90YSpA https://youtu.be/M2E1m90YSpA
- derekhsu 6y agoIf only it was born out.
- tigerBL00D 6y agoDid anyone else think about "Planet of the Apes" after reading this?
- busterarm 6y ago"God damn you all to hell!"
- mark-r 6y agoLiterally as soon as I read the title.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- colechristensen 6y agoMore like the Island of Dr Moreau, more obscure and quite a bit more disturbing.
- T-A 6y agoOf course. Given the times, this in particular: https://vimeo.com/120831063 https://vimeo.com/120831063 Now I wonder what effect ARHGAP11B would have on a shark: https://youtu.be/oSz9MDN-iac?t=71 https://youtu.be/oSz9MDN-iac?t=71
- nwpk 6y agoThese are the old news. I have read about this research several month ago.
- soulofmischief 6y agoSubmit a recent article you think is interesting!
- Kosirich 6y ago"To let them come to be born, in my opinion, would have been irresponsible as a first step," emphasis on the "as a first step"
- SubiculumCode 6y agoIt is an interesting ethical decision because it highlights a lot of assumptions about what is and is not ethical and moral. For example, take those that firmly believe abortion is murder. For them. then aborting this evolved fetus would be considered (to the extent that this applies to mutant non-human primates) the unethical thing to do, NOT the ethical thing to do. However, if you don't believe fetuses have inherent rights, etc, then the most ethical thing to do is to destroy the fetus before it does begin to reach that threshold where thorny ethical implications emerge.
- zhrvoj 6y agoPersonally I don't believe that they destroyed fetus. And they give up of seeing end results?? C'mon...
- booleandilemma 6y agoThis is crucial in order to maintain ethical boundaries. After about 100 days after the fetus had been growing, the international team unanimously agreed to remove the fetus through a C-section I feel we’ve already entered into sensitive territory by aborting it.
- Geminidog 6y agoYeah, aborting in some circles is the same as murder so the "ethics" is a bit blurry here. The crossed the line by creating life and then they killed what could essentially be something that could have had the intelligence of a regular human being. I'm not an anti-abortionist but I can't deny that the ethics in this area is blurry. Even worse is when you're aborting genetically modified life.
- FriendlyNormie 6y agoToo late for an edit to save you, the reddit trannies found your comment where you didn’t blindly agree with what some faggot scientist said. Enjoy your downvotes
- treeman79 6y agoScientist: we’ve created the first new sapient species in the last million years. Oh now it’s extinct. Killing of inconvenient people is one level of messed up. This is just freaking insane.
- whimsicalism 6y ago> I can't deny that the ethics in this area is blurry If you don't like the ethics of aborting a monkey fetus because it is "like murder", you're going to hate what happens to lab monkeys they don't abort.
- lucb1e 6y ago> aborting in some circles is the same as murder so the "ethics" is a bit blurry here You give those circles too much credit, it's like the mythical flat-earthers. I don't know anyone who feels that way and would expect only countries like saudi arabia to have problems with abortion (though I recently learned it's also state-dependent in the USA). Probably takes some time to get the people of countries in various states of development to get used to the idea, similar to rights for black people, euthanasia, gay marriage, transgender acceptance, etc. Everyone being equal and aiming to decrease worldsuck is a process that takes time for some reason, and I don't know of a country that has moved the other direction for a significant amount of time (heck, an unexpectedly large majority of babies around the world get vaccinations nowadays) so we'll get there eventually.
- EugeneOZ 6y agoCan we improve our own brain this way? I mean, brain of our kind, not some already living person. What if we can create a creature smarter than us?
- colechristensen 6y agoSurely, but at what cost? Exploratory human experimentation... maybe you're testing and aborting half developed humans which already many people would have significant problems, but eventually you're going to have to produce adults and not every experiment is going to be a success. It's hard to think of a future of our species where self-modification is not part of our evolution, but it is a very powerful tool and like any power a lot of discipline has to go into not misusing it. Somebody call Dr Moreau
- strikelaserclaw 6y agoChina is probably working on it.
- qvrjuec 6y agoObviously, but the real issue would be figuring out how to tweak our genes to do so. Figuring out how to enlarge the brain of a monkey would've been much easier, because human genes provided a ready-made template for these researchers to use.
- SubiculumCode 6y agoNot to be funny, but our brains/skulls are already large enough to really make giving birth legitimately dangerous to mothers. Making the head even bigger would not be welcome.
- etiam 6y agoMore likely the poor thing's going to be severely epileptic or have other debilitating brain malfunctions, if it would be viable at all. People here are reading way too much positive functional consequences into this manipulation. In principle, of course genetic manipulation could be used as one tool to create a creature "smarter" than any human (whatever that means more specifically). In practice, until we start having a much more coherent theory of functional brain physiology, applying the tool to that end pretty much amounts to mucking around, with likely tragic consequences.
- riazrizvi 6y agoFrom an engineering perspective, when trying to explore a dynamic, you simplify the experiment to reduce extraneous variables. So along these lines, I’d be more interested in following experiments like these on say sea slugs. Give them a proto-amygdala/hippocampus or limbic system and test them for increased memory, adaptive behavior etc. This choice of monkey experiment seems to be more sensation and less investigation, on the spectrum.
- s1artibartfast 6y agounfortunately, the further you move generically from the human, the more extraneous variables you introduce and the lower the relevance of any result. There is a reason drugs and experiments are performed on primates. Any result you saw in say a sea slug would provide no insight into the human function. The ideal experiment would be to delete the gene from a human, but this is unethical for obvious reasons.
- coryrc 6y agoWe support women knowingly giving birth to trisomy fetuses. We're in trolley problem territory here.
- riazrizvi 6y agoI should have also said, I think it is premature to attempt genetic engineering of human brains for medical benefit. Intuitively I believe we are decades behind the amount of conceptual development and experimental validation we need to do to get a proper understanding of genetic brain engineering. So I think the ethics is spot on here, it's ethically wrong IMO because we don't know what we are doing. Ethically I don't see a problem messing with sea slugs, though no doubt some people might.
- s1artibartfast 6y agoAs far as I know, no scientist has attempted the genetic modification of human brains for medical benefit so it seems that nearly the whole world is aligned ethically. The whole world generally aligned that testing on non-human primates is OK if the fetus is not brought to term. There are companies that offer human embryo screening based on intelligence, but this is more selection that modification.
- bronzeage 6y agoWe've already had the plague this year, bring on the intelligent monkeys... Where do I buy tickets to an Elon Musk rocket now?
- phkahler 6y agoIs there a better source? I'd like to know what gene they added and if there is any reason to believe that could have been an evolutionary step. Gene's dont appear whole out of nowhere. Was it an extra copy of an existing gene? A mutation and duplication? Some weird replication error?
- carbocation 6y agoThe source is this article: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6503/546 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6503/546 The gene is ARHGAP11B under the control of its usual human-specific promoter.
- phkahler 6y agoI found another article that covers the origin of the gene here: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200618150301.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200618150301.h...
- shmageggy 6y agoI'm also curious about all the related morphological changes that must go along with increased brain size, such as different proportions of the skull and face and wider hips on females to accommodate birth. It seems unlikely one gene can modulate all of those, let alone yield the social structures required for increased rearing time.
- keithwhor 6y agoDevelopmental biology has a whole lot of plasticity and works primarily by self-organization of cell populations. It’s not a computer program where you have to allocate memory for skulls, eyes, ears and more — it’s actually more like a population of organisms that align themselves towards specific goals (“hey team, we need a hand — now time for fingers! You guys in the middle, die off!”) You can think of a gene for i.e. brain size just being an instruction that’s “you can press harder on the other populations to maximize your growth” and the other populations are likely to accommodate the stress during development, and change size and shape accordingly. There are of course harmful mutations that are unable to be compensated for and lead to failure to thrive, but when you see a successful morphological mutation it’s because the systems are very adept at integrating new stimulus during growth. (Similarly, social structures are emergent properties as well.)
- eugenhotaj 6y agoJoe Rogan joins the chat
- colechristensen 6y agoIf you want to know what science fiction thought of this kind of thing in 1896, read the Island of Dr Moreau -- an eccentric scientist in exile modifies animals into more human forms.
- davesque 6y agoDamnit, couldn't they have done this when Charlton Heston was still around to help out?
- grawprog 6y agoI find it hard to describe how I feel about this. These scientists essentially created what may have been a new species, that perhaps would have had similar sentience to us and had them terminated after 100 days. The cat's out of the bag with this research so to speak now. Someone's bound to do this again The part about whether they should have been born or not, which was the ethical thing is what tears at me. Is it right to create something that may be similar to us and then not even give it a chance to live? I mean whether creating such a being is right or not in general i'm sure is up for debate. I'm not religious, but if we're going to play god, shouldn't we take responsibility for the results of our creation? I dunno, I find a lot of genetic engineering research to be a bit unsettling. We're playing with things we barely understand that could have consequences we can't even imagine. Nature took a long long time to get to this point where life has come to a sort of balance. Assuming we can go in and just start blindly messing around and do better seems like an extreme level of arrogance that's going to end up blowing up in our faces. Our track record for messing around with the fundamental fabric of reality and life isn't so good. We've ended up with some pretty terrifying things.
- konart 6y ago>shouldn't we take responsibility for the results of our creation? "I gave you life, I will take it" - Taras Bulba.
- grawprog 6y agohttps://youtu.be/BpaRouocBes https://youtu.be/BpaRouocBes >You perceive, now, that these things are all impossible except in a dream. You perceive that they are pure and puerile insanities, the silly creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks—in a word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of it. Mark Twain
- nshm 6y agoOther piece of Russian literature is also relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_a_Dog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_a_Dog The story of turning dog into a man by transferring a part of the human brain
- tibbydudeza 6y agoSo "Planet of the Apes" was not so far fetched after all. Now somewhere someone will think ... hmmm why can't we replace all our complaining factory workers and their wages/healthcare/retirement plans with these "creatures" and only pay them peanuts and banana's.
- to11mtm 6y agoOddly, I came up with a pretty good plan for Enslaving Humanity without most of them noticing (and the software architecture that would power it) during a Sunday Drive today. I'll say that the concept I came up with was probably far far cheaper than gene therapy and could be reached in 5-10 years. So I wouldn't lose sleep over this
- wizzwizz4 6y agoUnless you can think of any steps to prevent your plan from working, try to forget about it. Somebody will re-invent it later, but that'll be later. We've created more of the readily-accessible good technology than the readily-accessible bad technology, and it'll take an active effort to keep it that way.
- chacha2 6y agoCurrently most of humanity is oblivious to it's enslavement, what does your strategy add?
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- 0-_-0 6y agoBrave New World had a similar idea
- bjelkeman-again 6y agoDavid Brin, Uplift Universe. Start with Startide rising. It covers this in a more interestingly ethical way I think.
- keithwhor 6y agoCharlton Heston would like a word with these scientists.
- fallingfrog 6y agoI think the ethical questions here mostly revolve around how the resulting animal would be treated. It wouldn’t have the legal status of a person- although it might be one. So we would probably use it for slave labor, as a pet, probably not as food although there are probably people who would do that too given the opportunity. Certainly that’s how we treat other nonhuman animals. Or they might escape and the gene might start to circulate in wild populations. There’s no good way this pans out.
- jbeard4 6y agoThis reminds me of "The Secret of NIMH" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084649/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084649/
- plutonorm 6y agoWhat a fabulous film that was. Never read the book.
- ThrowawayR2 6y agoThe book was better (naturally); as I recall, they used technology instead of a "magic amulet" to work their way out of the problem, in keeping with the theme of hyperintelligent mice.
- aaron695 6y agoThe sequels I thought were ok as well. By his daughter, my one exception to sequels not by the author.
- PIKAL 6y agoI am overwhelmed with curiosity about what the animal would have been like if it had been allowed to live. Imagine that it was smart enough to speak or resemble humans even more closely than monkeys already do... imagine how earth shattering that would be. An entire race of beings to reconcile with. I wish they had let it live.
- kypro 6y agoI wonder what political ramifications this would have. Say these monkeys were intelligent enough to have conversations with and they had thoughts and opinions on the world, but they weren't quite as smart as humans – they couldn't do advanced maths and were intellectually closer to young children – would we deny them the right to vote? Would we deny them employment rights? Etc... If we did on what grounds would we do so? Lower average intelligence? How exactly could we do that while granting similar rights to humans with equivalently low IQs? It's hard to imagine that this wouldn't destroy modern liberal societies. We would either grant them equal rights at a huge societal cost, or start denying rights based on intelligence which would come at a huge ethical cost. I think about this a lot in regards to extinct human species. I often wonder what would happen if we found Neanderthals hiding out on an island somewhere. What rights would we give them? Would we allow them to bred with humans? It seems every answer is wrong.
- king07828 6y agoRights can already taken away from people who are declared legally incompetent [1]. Similar procedures could be used to give rights to monkeys that can prove mental competence (e.g., are able to meaningfully communicate and show an understanding of money and property). [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/incompetence#content https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/incompetence#content
- newsbinator 6y agoThe default is for humans to have rights, and in extreme cases those rights can be taken away. It's very, very rare for a human to have to prove mental competence for any reason. We let mentally incompetent people grocery shop and drive cars and vote, knowing full well they're a danger (or at least not a net benefit). Every town in every country contains well-known incompetent citizens. What's the default for intelligent non-humans? Does each one have to prove mental competence? At what level: that of an average human, or that of the lowest competent human? Is the default to assume they are competent, and have all the rights and privileges of a human, or is the default to assume they aren't competent and don't have those rights? Personally, it makes sense to me to err on the side of "any being who tells me plainly that they want a vote gets to vote".
- hyperpallium2 6y agoI have a theory that intelligence, consciousness, free will are very easy to evolve (we just haven't worked out how to do it yet - like many cellular processes). What is difficult is harnessing that free will to the evolutionary success of the organism. The large brain is necessary as a harness, to control the intelligence, and enslave it to evolutionarily beneficial ends. Probably not just hardwired instincts, but also learns - probably, similar to animal intelligence. Like a giant finite state machine, that prevents a turing machine from running certain programs that never halt. Of course, it can't catch all such programs, and a turing machine can transcend any such bound, but lowering the probability of running one is good enough. Note that turing equivalence, the highest possible computational power, emerges from even the slightest complexity (apart from the infinite tape part). Thus "intelligence" has appeared in countless individual animals: mammals, birds, spiders, perhaps plants too and bacteria (and is still so appearing), but it doesn't confer a survival advantage, so disappears. Many such creatures just sit there discerning patterns instead of surviving. Others do survive but by instinct, so the intelligence makes no difference. The difficulty is putting freewill in the driver's seat.
- chmod775 6y ago> intelligence, consciousness, free will Monkeys and many, many other animals already have the first two, and whether there is such a thing as "free will" hasn't even been settled for humans. In fact it's pretty hard to prove an animal doesn't have consciousness, and we just keep and keep adding to the list of animals that have consciousness and experience human-like emotions. We humans really aren't so special in that regard. The next level is a bit more interesting, which is the question of which animals are able to develop a theory of mind, for which you need both consciousness and some intelligence.
- major505 6y agoyou want planet of the apes? Because, this is how you get planet of the apes!
- pelasaco 6y agoPlanet of the Apes 2020
- tiku 6y agoAs long as no one takes a monkey home we should be okay.
- ummonk 6y agoWhat the hell?!? There is no pro-choice argument for killing the fetus here - the mother monkey is not sapient and was not consulted as to whether she wished to carry the potentially sapient baby to term or not. This is straight up feticide.
- erickj 6y ago+1 to "There is no pro-choice argument for killing the fetus here" There is no pro-choice analogy to make here. As for the rest of your comment about feticide... I think there is room for discussion here.
- modzu 6y agothe island of dr moreau
- oscargrouch 6y agoI feel this is a moon-landing like historical event without all the fireworks.
- ativzzz 6y agoSo what exactly is inherently unethical about letting this engineered organism live? Is it a violation of "Christian" ethics of playing God? If so, we've already gone way past that point with modern medicine and things like genetic engineering of mosquitoes. If it's a fear of how society reacts to the organism surviving and causing an upheaval of life philosophy, isn't all science then unethical?
- BurningFrog 6y agoThe "science ethics" system looks uncomfortably like an awkward religion to me. People will claim that certain things "are unethical", as if that is a simple uncomplicated fact.
- procgen 6y agoI think it's less about any societal reaction and more about the organism's experience. It would be more useful to perform similar genetic experiments on human beings, in any case. But I imagine that you would be opposed to that?
- ativzzz 6y agoI mean we've collectively decided that we do not care about the experience of mice and rats as we kill and perform all kinds of experiments on them in the lab, not to mention the meat industry. I'm not anti-meat or anything, just pointing out that we've chosen that certain living beings do not have the right to a good life. Why would this science experiment be treated differently? And no, I wouldn't be opposed to human testing if there were humans who were willing to sign up for it, but it could be worrisome to take care that vulnerable people are not taken advantage of.
- john_minsk 6y agoWhy would you be opposed to that?
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- eplanit 6y agoPlanet of the Apes + Bladerunner.
- AlchemistCamp 6y agoWhat could possibly go wrong?
- jacquesm 6y agoThis is simply unethical.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoAs a fan of the Planet of the Apes franchise, I like this article. Next: give apes human-like hands suitable for tools.
- sigzero 6y agoNo...they didn't. That's not how it works at all. smh
- zxcvbn4038 6y agoI’m pretty sure I saw this movie - had Charlton Heston in it. You know someone is going to grow this to maturity, either an individual researcher looking for fame or a sovereign state looking for prestige, then of course we’ll have to know if the mutations are propagated.
- jassany 6y agoThe fact they didn't let the fetus grow really fucking sucks. Sure, ethics most definitely has its name etched on the science stone. But people WILL without a shred of doubt recreate this experiment, and they most likely won't be as ethically inclined as the nice folks behind this paper. The point am trying to make here is that we need to be prepared to deal with how a discovery like could influence our future. The best way to do that is to know what expect with enough time ahead to react. And yeah sure people will say this is just an excuse for morbidly curious people like me to simply see what happens, and while I'm literally brimming in desire to know myself, theres a bigger picture, bearing witness is just a perk:)
- derangedHorse 6y agoKilling animals off after a sufficient time period is common in lab testing (and even enforced). They probably had to get approval for the 100 days and most likely wouldn’t be allowed to make any decisions regarding the matter themselves. That being said, most labs in the US have to abide by the same guidelines and if this does happen again in a setting where the scientists can choose an arbitrary age to let the fetus live it probably won’t be in the US I have no idea what the process is for other countries like Germany in Japan but I’d like to think they’re similar.
- dogcomplex 6y agoLet's all just agree that if that lil smart monkey was born, nobody's allowed to kill it until it dies a ripe old age of natural causes, and we hopefully teach it to play Winston in Overwatch. Otherwise, that's way too close to murder - thank you very much.
- idebug 6y agoSo, we are trying to make Planet of the Apes happen IRL?
- linuxftw 6y agoPeople think AI is going to be silicon based. No, it's going to be genetically engineered primate brains.
- babesh 6y agoPlanet of the Apes
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- NKosmatos 6y agoTerrifying and terrific news, awesome finding with tremendous ethical questions and dilemmas. For sure we’re living in an interesting era and more similar topics (AI, gene editing, implants, nano/bio alterations...) are going to appear more often. To lighten up the discussion and with fear of getting downvoted, two funny thoughts that came to my mind while reading about these news. - They surely picked the wrong year/time period to make this announcement. - Our technology has allowed us to increase brains of monkeys but we still don’t have the technology needed for a properly working windows update service.
- vncecartersknee 6y agoIf they tried allowing the fetus to grow indefinitely would they have to figure out how to make the skull bigger or would the skull naturally grow along with the brain? My understanding was that human babies have relatively flexible skulls at a young age?
- bamboozled 6y agoHad the same question, how can the brain get bigger without having a bigger head?
- racl101 6y agoJoe Rogan entered the chat.
- Ericson2314 6y agoResearch ethics can so miopic... just delaying the inevitable. (Maybe to stretch research over multiple papers muahahaha.) I agree with the other commenter that we should blue the human intelligence boundary as much as possible to trash human exceptionalism.
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- vs2 6y ago[off topic] I hate the mobile web! This site is another example of how I hate it. An ad wall that required me to scroll before I could accept and then after a few seconds a pop up to sign up for a newsletter. It’s awful...
- musicale 6y agoGorilla Grod approves. (disclaimer: Grod is actually an ape not a monkey.)
- hairytrog 6y agoThe fetus would probably not have3 survived. You can't just make the brain bigger and expect everything else to work out. Example problems: skull too small, eyes and everything around the brain would have to be reconfigured, heart/blood supply would have to be reconfigured, etc etc. Some examples of how this goes wrong in humans (graphic): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anencephaly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anencephaly
- JumpCrisscross 6y agoThis describes a lot of human anatomy. Head too big for mother’s’ hips. Spine warped for upright posture. Constantly choking for having a bent throat.
- xwdv 6y agoWish someone would try this with actual humans. Imagine the possibilities. Super genius.
- porknubbins 6y agoI’m pretty sure Dean Koontz has written half a dozen sci-fi thrillers that explore the ramifications of creating super intelligent animals like this but I never thought it would be possible. Now I guess I don’t have to feel like I need to suspend disbelief to enjoy the story anymore.
- halturing 6y agoI await their contributions to Hacker News with bated breath.
- spiritplumber 6y ago"My gift to industry is the genetically engineered worker, or Genejack. Specially designed for labor, the Genejack's muscles and nerves are ideal for his task, and the cerebral cortex has been atrophied so that he can desire nothing except to perform his duties. Tyranny, you say? How can you tyrannize someone who cannot feel pain?"
- Balgair 6y agohttps://alphacentauri.gamepedia.com/Sheng-Ji_Yang https://alphacentauri.gamepedia.com/Sheng-Ji_Yang God, AC was a great game! My favorite quote was: "I sit in my cubicle, here on the motherworld. When I die, they will put my body in a box and dispose of it in the cold ground. And in all the million ages to come, I will never breathe, or laugh, or twitch again. So won't you run and play with me here among the teeming mass of humanity? The universe has spared us this moment." Anonymous, Datalinks Accompanies the Habitation Dome facility https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sid_Meier%27s_Alpha_Centauri https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sid_Meier%27s_Alpha_Centauri
- spiritplumber 6y agohttps://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/ https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/ You'll love this, then. Bryan Reynolds even showed up to clarify a couple of things in the comments, even!
- peter303 6y agoA larger brain may not have been solely for intelligence, but to make humans into better running animals. It can help dissipate heat better.
- zepearl 6y agoMy instantaneous thought: ethics. I'm no extremist of any kind (not in politics nor religion nor technology, maybe a bit regarding what is related to the environment) but experiments related to "growing brains" are an absolute no-go for me. Just when I thought that "2020" could not spawn any more surprises... :(
- hyko 6y agoThis should never have gotten past ethical review. It’s the sort of shit that gives the word science a bad name. And the payoff was...what, exactly? We already knew that ARHGAP11B would promote a bigger brain size and neocortex folding, so the theoretical benefit is really zero. We’re precisely no closer to understanding the history of human evolution. So what practical use is creating monkeys with more human like brains? Winning a research grant? An award? Cheap labour? How big does your brain have to be before you can see that this is a terrible idea?
- gyvastis 6y agoIt doesn't seem to be related to understanding "the history of human evolution" anymore.
- yeetman21 6y agoI find it funny that some of the same people who are more than willing to abort (kill in some peoples opinion) actual humans, but are unwilling to kill a few animals for the advancement of humanity
- baloney1 6y agoI know that Hacker News is a place of serious discussion only, but is nobody going to mention that the first picture of a "brain" looks more like my own small ding dong?
- patfla 6y agoThe article says ARHGAP11B promotes the growth of upper-layer neurons. Jeff Hawkins has this intriguing idea that the transition is all about the runaway growth of, in particular, grid cells which is slightly confusing in that the major place grid cells have been found is in the entorhinal cortex. If they're responsible for a vast amplification of the neocortex I'd expect them to be all over the neocortex. Whatever the case, I wonder if the two relate and, in particular, just what upper-layer neurons do that lends them to such a vast array of applications? Clearly though there was runaway brain growth at a particular point in time and I wonder how that worked in terms of Darwinian development? It's a striking change for what one assumes is a relatively brief period of time. Punctuated equilibrium, right?
- ngcc_hk 6y agoJapan and German ... the two axis countries like pure race and better race. I am not sure it is better cf with those experiments in communist china. May be a bit as they will give birth there. Interesting engineering is nothing interesting and it is not about engineering. Good luck human.
- fjfaase 6y agoThe interesting thing about gene ARHGAP11B is that it is a truncated version of ARHGAP11A, meaning that it was caused by a degenerative mutation, which goes totally against creationist arguments that degenerative mutations can never lead to improvements, let alone the development of new species. This should be mentioned in every textbook about evolution to counter the arguments of creationists.
- for_i_in_range 6y agoCreationists are convinced by stories, not facts.
- yread 6y agoI don't get your argument about degenerative mutations. All nonsilent mutations change a perfectly fine working protain so they are all 'degenerative'? Conversely, insertion of random garbage in the middle of a an exon does not delete anything so it's not 'degenerative'?
- fjfaase 6y agoSome creationist are reasoning that because mutations in genes usually have a negative effect, evolution can not lead to improvements. Here we have an example of a gene that became shorter (probably due to a mutation (deletion, change or insertion) in the middle causeing a stop to be encoded) and lead to a significant improvement, even to the extend that it resulted in a new species. Even if creationist accept that evolution is possible to some extend like we see in dogs, they argue that it cannot lead to the development of new species. Now some people, especially those from pro-life camps who usually support the idea of evolution, are having ethical problems, because they feel that due to a generative mutation a new species of ape has been created.
- yread 6y agoOh you want to argue science with creationists? We could just point them to oncogenes then - genes that are a bit "broken" normally, so they don't get expressed or don't make a viable protein but a mutation can "fix" them so that they can perform their "normal" function. Unfortunately, that normal function causes cancer.
- for_i_in_range 6y agoWhile a profound breakthrough, we’ll be creating, with luck, an animal that is what we are: one with consciousness. Which also means one with a lot of mental health issues, and other issues. (Disoriented, seeking identification, cognitive biases, ignorant yet certain, etc). Not bad, just is what it is. I think it’s important, though, for nature, to let it struggle for life like the rest of us, and care for it and learn from it. It, after all, is a part of life. If we’re in the ballpark that nature created sapiens, and we are thus a part of nature, and thus nature had a hand in this. The ethical thing to do is to let it become part of our “Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom library of life” sooner, rather than later. After all, as many have already said, it’s inevitable. And I agree.
- 0xUser 6y ago> we’ll be creating, with luck, an animal that is what we are: one with consciousnes You seem to be assuming that, right now, humans are the only animal with consciousness. I doubt that's the case. Far from it.
- for_i_in_range 6y agoInteresting, you’re right I’ve assumed that and actually have never thought about that.
- ohgreatwtf 6y agofor a long time i have felt this was a serious problem. However, it didn't seem to me that they would get this far, this soon. Someone's bound to take the next step. The philosophical hunger for other sentient species, the egotistical ambition to be a creator, and the pervasive desire to tinker will lead to progressively more and more amoral research projects, in whatever timeframe the researchers believe the public will accept. It starts with experimental fetuses. It will ultimately mean research subjects. It starts with a few genes here and there. It will ultimately mean trying to fully unlock what genes lead to what traits via transplanting them. It presently merely means the monkey would be more intelligent.ultimately, however, they would be capable of and likely willing to experiment with human-animal chimeras. They will tell us this will expand our sources of surrugate organ donors. They will tell us this will help us understand our own genome. What they wont do is accept moral culpability for academic consequences. The research will be proliferated and each laboratory will go a little bit further. Eventually we will see genetic engineering taken too far. And it's not just research on the genetic origins of mammal traits. We'll see scientists who want to create synthetic life. Who may want to modify nature so that it is more efficient, which is to say, loses the survival bonus conferred by millions of years of evolution in favor of a streamlined metabolism oriented to anthropocene conditions. They will want to engineer species and to engineer species extinction. This will likely eventually mean a loss of species diversity and the destruction of entire ecological systems, every time it happens, sooner or later. Today it is mosquitos. Tomorrow the corporate morality may serve a different, but equally wealthy and powerful authority, one with less scruples and a more pragmatic, selfish perspective. Tomorrow it may be flies, or even wild rabbits. Whatever exists to the detriment of man, man will eventually justify the destruction of. Whatever exists to the benefit of man, eventually, the temptation of power and influence may yet bring about, as undavoidably and unstoppably as death and taxes. And scientists, no matter how ethical they are today about publishing their research findings and their methods, will eventually make their learning known as it becomes commonplace. Each new landmark finding will become wikipedia articles at the same time the competitors discover the effect, because nobody wants to miss out on the fame and fortune. Any attempt to censor, classify, or restrict the publication of research that might prove dangerous will ultimately only delay, not prevent the opening of pandoras box. The era of custom-tailored biological weapons of viral, fungal, bacterial, and parasitical origins, capable of things far more terrifying than anything cobbled up in an imaginary video game, for sale to, or even created by, various governments, seperationist movements, and terrorist organizations- even down to single individuals- is not a fantasy. The experts are concerned, but can do nothing. The wheel of progress turns, no matter who stands with their shoulder against it. We have, maybe a decade, maybe two. Eventually the kind of people you do not want conceiving of genocidal and maniacal schemes will have reasonable materials, a great swath of research materials, and a plentitude of futuristic methods in their arsenal. They'll make the kind of pathogen that makes smallpox, ebola, and anthrax look like harmless little playthings for drunken grad students. It is not a matter of if- it is merely a matter of when. All of these things are merely a matter of when, not if. It may soon be time for the butlerian revolution of the genome. For a luddism of the soul. I will stand by and watch only so long. If required, I plan to take a side. I will likely be siding with those who would burn these hallowed halls of academie to the ground, regardless of what great remorse and lacrimonious wailing it produces in my soul. I hope you understand. It would be better, of course, if we could just move all this research offworld where it would be safe and we could control what portions of it enter our realm via a worldwide watchdog network based on the moon. We shall see. It shall certainly come in our lifetimes.
- danbmil99 6y agoThis can't possibly go wrong...
- JuliusPullo 6y ago"To let them come to be born, in my opinion, would have been irresponsible as a first step, because you don't know what kind of behavioral change you'll get." is code for "Do you think if we had done this we would tell you?"
- coldelectrons 6y agoThis is still 2020. Are we really flirting with a Planet of the Apes scenario right now?
- nbzso 6y agohttps://www.amazon.de/Future-Shock-Alvin-Toffler/dp/0553277375/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_de_DE=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&crid=2RSI408GVAT9S&dchild=1&keywords=alvin+toffler+the+future+shock&qid=1605544542&sprefix=alvin+to%2Caps%2C209&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.de/Future-Shock-Alvin-Toffler/dp/05532773...
- jschlatt 6y agofuck these nigger monkeys they can die i dont care about them they smell like shit .
- jschlatt 6y agofuck your nigger moneys