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Imagine if women would once be able to have children without getting pregnant. On the dark side, millions of mass manufactured soldiers without families to gri

Imagine if women would once be able to have children without getting pregnant. On the dark side, millions of mass manufactured soldiers without families to grieve for them will undo the last seal on unrestricted warfare. And those would probably be generically tweaked supersoldiers without pain, and remorse too.

carmen_sandiego 6y ago
I think you can go bigger than that for potential positives. Imagine growing clones (presumably without a [fully-]functioning brain) for use in organ donation, for example.
- tener 6y ago
  Brain is kind of critical though. Might be easier and more efficient to just grow single targeted organs.
  - carmen_sandiego 6y ago
    Sure, but presumably only the lower functions? So below some threshold that makes us feel less 'icky'.
    - hinkley 6y ago
      That line moves all the time. Be careful what you start.
      - carmen_sandiego 6y ago
        The line of what's required to make organs grow seems way lower than the level of consciousness that people are happy factory farming when it comes to animals. I'm not sure that will change much. People find humans extra 'icky', I'll concede. But abstracted in the above terms, I don't find it really worrisome. Politically difficult, sure, but that's a different question.
      - tablespoon 6y ago
        > That line moves all the time. Be careful what you start. Yeah. It's probably easier and more efficient to just raise the clones with intact brains, and just indoctrinate them to believe that dying so their organs can be harvested is their purpose and is noble and right. Then the organs can take care of themselves while they grow, requiring less staff. Any moral qualms the rest of the world may have could be addressed with some lie about how the clones have had done to them to make them subhuman. Seriously considering the idea of cloning people for organs is just inviting a nightmarish crime against humanity.
  - at_a_remove 6y ago
    Eh, not really. There was a very funny old sci-fi story about scientists on some kind of space colony who just ... wanted fresh milk. And the point of the story was just how much of the actual cow they had to replicate (in semi-isolated containers) to end up making that milk. So you want an organ, sure, but you're going to need something like blood flowing through it so it doesn't just flat up die. That means that it is going to need oxygen -- so you're stuck replicating some kind of pulmonary system, and then you're going to need to put various nutrients in it, and then you're going to need to remove waste products, so you're definitely getting a liver and a kidney out of that ... and then just making the red blood cells requires bone marrow ... My guess is that anacephalacy would be studied and replicated to grow humans with only a minimal brainstem, with probably a nubbin of various hormonal systems tacked on. We could get to that a lot faster, I think, than single organs.
    - tener 6y ago
      Sounds difficult if you want to replicate organs 1-1, but what makes sense for human/animal bodies isn't necessarily the best way for labs. Maybe a single large biochemical reactor can solve half of those issues? There are already well established procedures for growing cell cultures and multiple startups that want to grow muscles (meat) or other organs. I don't know details - not my field - but pretty sure a large part of those seemingly hard problems are already solved/worked around.
    - bitwize 6y ago
      All you want is a banana, but you end up getting the gorilla holding the banana and the entire jungle...
- NoOneNew 6y ago
  Um... you mean a bigger dystopian horror, right? The idea of mass manufacturing humans simply to harvest their organs, even as meat sacks, is a bit of a moral and ethical... uh... dumpster fire.
  - carmen_sandiego 6y ago
    Depends what you think makes someone human. It's just different first principles, same as the abortion issue.
    - NoOneNew 6y ago
      Pretty sure the, "depends what you think makes us human" line was used by quite a few folks to justify enslaving and slaughtering various ethnic groups throughout history. Since they were lesser or sub human.
      - carmen_sandiego 6y ago
        'Slippery slope' is a pretty poor argument. I could just as well say the same arguments were made against a ton of medical progress we take for granted today. People argue that stem cells are genocide, even. So what?
        NoOneNew 6y ago
        And pure "logic" is a fallacy within itself. Mass starvation and pandemic deaths are extremely to justify the moment you believe human life is worth zero. Vaccines are the enemy because the planet will have a net positive with the death of millions of humans. Genocide solves climate change, diminishing land resources and unemployment. And dont excuse my language because it is appropriate, how in the fuck do people still not understand the dangers to slippery slope? How incredibly stupid are you? The events leading up to the Holocaust are the modern textbook example of philosophies and laws that ramp to mass evil action. Pick any murderous tyrant in history and every time, they take inch by inch to erode a society into a wasteland. No, it's not a poor argument. You're ignorant.
- tablespoon 6y ago
  > I think you can go bigger than that for potential positives. Imagine growing clones (presumably without a [fully-]functioning brain) for use in organ donation, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_Let_Me_Go_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_Let_Me_Go_(novel)
  - carmen_sandiego 6y ago
    Ah, I was aware it was vaguely about cloning but I haven't read it yet. Sounds like I'll enjoy it then.
martin-adams 6y ago
I genuinely think that we'll have robot soldiers trained with an advancement of machine learning.
- jkinudsjknds 6y ago
  We will (already do) have robotic weapons. Building robotic soldiers would be pretty pointless. A prime example of trying to remake a process with new tech rather than redesigning the process.
jkinudsjknds 6y ago
The cost of manufacturing millions of soldiers would be incomprehensibly expensive, require decades of prep time, and have so many possible points of catastrophic failure that you'd have to wonder why you bothered in the first place. I'd bet heavily on the nation that chooses to build millions of explosive drones instead.
March172021 6y ago
I would imagine the situation with divorces and forced child support would improve drastically.
hackeraccount 6y ago
It's at least questionable if you want your super soldier to not be able to feel pain. I've read about genetic conditions that cause reduced pain sensitivity and the effects are odd. Pain makes learning possible, we see that everyday in things like don't touch a hot stove but it goes deeper. Think about learning how to walk. Or pick things up. And that's just physical. Imagine trying to teach something to a person who felt no remorse or guilt or shame - what would motivate such a person? I'd like my super soldier to be super sensitive. I'll get them to do the terrible things I want them to and then they can live with the consequences after the fact. It'll be harder on them (after the fact) but easier for me (getting them ready for the fact)
- hackinthebochs 6y ago
  Not all cases of pain insensitivity lead to these kinds of deficits: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-case-of-a-woman-who-feels-almost-no-pain-leads-scientists-to-a-new-gene-mutation/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-case-of-a-wom...
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  I can imagine hacking someone's personal biology so that they, in normal situation, feel pain and remorse and guilt like anyone else, but can switch it off with simple drugs and without debilitating side effects like morphine dependency. That said, this does not seem to be the future of the military. Robots can do things that humans cannot (e.g. fly, move around in asphyxiating gas), they do not have to be trained, can be produced much faster etc.
  - hackeraccount 6y ago
    Maybe. I understand there are physical side effect from morphine and such but imagine if you were designed such that water would remove from your mind doubt, remorse and guilt. I can't speak for you but for me I think they might have to lock up the water. I'm not saying that your suggestion wouldn't work but if you could turn off those things with a switch - even if you had to rely on someone else to flip the switch - I think that would create some problems. :-) That remind me of Catch-22. Where Yossarian is arguing with a nurse about the utility of pain. Yossarian says it's stupid - "why don't we have a neon sign on our forehead that says "ouch" in big red letters." The nurse believes it has utility. As it develops they're both atheists but Yossarian doesn't believe in a cruel malevolent God while the nurse doesn't believe in a good, kind and just God.
cblconfederate 6y ago
> women would once be able to have children men too
EvanAnderson 6y ago
Artificial wombs are interesting to me for the colonization of space angle. It's an old trope-- the ship full of frozen embryos lumbering across space at a fraction of c-- but the idea is really exciting to me. For all I dislike about humans and human nature I'd love for our species to spread beyond our single solar system.
- throwaway316943 6y ago
  The ethics of that approach are as questionable as clone soldiers or slaves. Life is difficult enough when you are born into this world but at least you usually have one or two parents to care for you along with the company of the rest of human civilization. Being born on an empty world with only an AI or worse a dumb machine as your parent with only your equally orphaned siblings as companions would make fate seem cruel indeed.
  - ArtDev 6y ago
    They wouldn't be lonely though because they would have each other. It seems like an amazing way to grow up!
HappySweeney 6y ago
An army of super soldiers would still take somewhere around 20 years to produce, and would cost a substantial amount of money. Said army would certainly not come as a surprise to anyone.
m00x 6y ago
Robotic advancements are much faster than this and humans have to be trained, fed, etc. It would be a fools gambit to try to achieve such a goal instead of just making a robotic army where they can easily be manufactured and immediately ready for combat.
nonameiguess 6y ago
All time hilarity if the most accurate prediction of the future ends up being Star Wars Episode II.
maxwoj 6y ago
Imagine world, where a man would be free to start a family, without the need to be dependent on a woman to exercise his reproductive rights. Without the fear that a woman will use the so called “justice system” as a weapon to take his kids and possessions away anytime she find suitable

carmen_sandiego 6y ago

I think you can go bigger than that for potential positives. Imagine growing clones (presumably without a [fully-]functioning brain) for use in organ donation, for example.

tener 6y ago
Brain is kind of critical though. Might be easier and more efficient to just grow single targeted organs.
- carmen_sandiego 6y ago
  Sure, but presumably only the lower functions? So below some threshold that makes us feel less 'icky'.
  - hinkley 6y ago
    That line moves all the time. Be careful what you start.
    - carmen_sandiego 6y ago
      The line of what's required to make organs grow seems way lower than the level of consciousness that people are happy factory farming when it comes to animals. I'm not sure that will change much. People find humans extra 'icky', I'll concede. But abstracted in the above terms, I don't find it really worrisome. Politically difficult, sure, but that's a different question.
    - tablespoon 6y ago
      > That line moves all the time. Be careful what you start. Yeah. It's probably easier and more efficient to just raise the clones with intact brains, and just indoctrinate them to believe that dying so their organs can be harvested is their purpose and is noble and right. Then the organs can take care of themselves while they grow, requiring less staff. Any moral qualms the rest of the world may have could be addressed with some lie about how the clones have had done to them to make them subhuman. Seriously considering the idea of cloning people for organs is just inviting a nightmarish crime against humanity.
- at_a_remove 6y ago
  Eh, not really. There was a very funny old sci-fi story about scientists on some kind of space colony who just ... wanted fresh milk. And the point of the story was just how much of the actual cow they had to replicate (in semi-isolated containers) to end up making that milk. So you want an organ, sure, but you're going to need something like blood flowing through it so it doesn't just flat up die. That means that it is going to need oxygen -- so you're stuck replicating some kind of pulmonary system, and then you're going to need to put various nutrients in it, and then you're going to need to remove waste products, so you're definitely getting a liver and a kidney out of that ... and then just making the red blood cells requires bone marrow ... My guess is that anacephalacy would be studied and replicated to grow humans with only a minimal brainstem, with probably a nubbin of various hormonal systems tacked on. We could get to that a lot faster, I think, than single organs.
  - tener 6y ago
    Sounds difficult if you want to replicate organs 1-1, but what makes sense for human/animal bodies isn't necessarily the best way for labs. Maybe a single large biochemical reactor can solve half of those issues? There are already well established procedures for growing cell cultures and multiple startups that want to grow muscles (meat) or other organs. I don't know details - not my field - but pretty sure a large part of those seemingly hard problems are already solved/worked around.
  - bitwize 6y ago
    All you want is a banana, but you end up getting the gorilla holding the banana and the entire jungle...
NoOneNew 6y ago
Um... you mean a bigger dystopian horror, right? The idea of mass manufacturing humans simply to harvest their organs, even as meat sacks, is a bit of a moral and ethical... uh... dumpster fire.
- carmen_sandiego 6y ago
  Depends what you think makes someone human. It's just different first principles, same as the abortion issue.
  - NoOneNew 6y ago
    Pretty sure the, "depends what you think makes us human" line was used by quite a few folks to justify enslaving and slaughtering various ethnic groups throughout history. Since they were lesser or sub human.
    - carmen_sandiego 6y ago
      'Slippery slope' is a pretty poor argument. I could just as well say the same arguments were made against a ton of medical progress we take for granted today. People argue that stem cells are genocide, even. So what?
      - NoOneNew 6y ago
        And pure "logic" is a fallacy within itself. Mass starvation and pandemic deaths are extremely to justify the moment you believe human life is worth zero. Vaccines are the enemy because the planet will have a net positive with the death of millions of humans. Genocide solves climate change, diminishing land resources and unemployment. And dont excuse my language because it is appropriate, how in the fuck do people still not understand the dangers to slippery slope? How incredibly stupid are you? The events leading up to the Holocaust are the modern textbook example of philosophies and laws that ramp to mass evil action. Pick any murderous tyrant in history and every time, they take inch by inch to erode a society into a wasteland. No, it's not a poor argument. You're ignorant.
tablespoon 6y ago
> I think you can go bigger than that for potential positives. Imagine growing clones (presumably without a [fully-]functioning brain) for use in organ donation, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_Let_Me_Go_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_Let_Me_Go_(novel)
- carmen_sandiego 6y ago
  Ah, I was aware it was vaguely about cloning but I haven't read it yet. Sounds like I'll enjoy it then.

martin-adams 6y ago

I genuinely think that we'll have robot soldiers trained with an advancement of machine learning.

jkinudsjknds 6y ago
We will (already do) have robotic weapons. Building robotic soldiers would be pretty pointless. A prime example of trying to remake a process with new tech rather than redesigning the process.

jkinudsjknds 6y ago

The cost of manufacturing millions of soldiers would be incomprehensibly expensive, require decades of prep time, and have so many possible points of catastrophic failure that you'd have to wonder why you bothered in the first place. I'd bet heavily on the nation that chooses to build millions of explosive drones instead.

March172021 6y ago

I would imagine the situation with divorces and forced child support would improve drastically.

hackeraccount 6y ago

It's at least questionable if you want your super soldier to not be able to feel pain. I've read about genetic conditions that cause reduced pain sensitivity and the effects are odd. Pain makes learning possible, we see that everyday in things like don't touch a hot stove but it goes deeper. Think about learning how to walk. Or pick things up. And that's just physical. Imagine trying to teach something to a person who felt no remorse or guilt or shame - what would motivate such a person? I'd like my super soldier to be super sensitive. I'll get them to do the terrible things I want them to and then they can live with the consequences after the fact. It'll be harder on them (after the fact) but easier for me (getting them ready for the fact)

hackinthebochs 6y ago
Not all cases of pain insensitivity lead to these kinds of deficits: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-case-of-a-woman-who-feels-almost-no-pain-leads-scientists-to-a-new-gene-mutation/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-case-of-a-wom...
inglor_cz 6y ago
I can imagine hacking someone's personal biology so that they, in normal situation, feel pain and remorse and guilt like anyone else, but can switch it off with simple drugs and without debilitating side effects like morphine dependency. That said, this does not seem to be the future of the military. Robots can do things that humans cannot (e.g. fly, move around in asphyxiating gas), they do not have to be trained, can be produced much faster etc.
- hackeraccount 6y ago
  Maybe. I understand there are physical side effect from morphine and such but imagine if you were designed such that water would remove from your mind doubt, remorse and guilt. I can't speak for you but for me I think they might have to lock up the water. I'm not saying that your suggestion wouldn't work but if you could turn off those things with a switch - even if you had to rely on someone else to flip the switch - I think that would create some problems. :-) That remind me of Catch-22. Where Yossarian is arguing with a nurse about the utility of pain. Yossarian says it's stupid - "why don't we have a neon sign on our forehead that says "ouch" in big red letters." The nurse believes it has utility. As it develops they're both atheists but Yossarian doesn't believe in a cruel malevolent God while the nurse doesn't believe in a good, kind and just God.

cblconfederate 6y ago

> women would once be able to have children men too

EvanAnderson 6y ago

Artificial wombs are interesting to me for the colonization of space angle. It's an old trope-- the ship full of frozen embryos lumbering across space at a fraction of c-- but the idea is really exciting to me. For all I dislike about humans and human nature I'd love for our species to spread beyond our single solar system.

throwaway316943 6y ago
The ethics of that approach are as questionable as clone soldiers or slaves. Life is difficult enough when you are born into this world but at least you usually have one or two parents to care for you along with the company of the rest of human civilization. Being born on an empty world with only an AI or worse a dumb machine as your parent with only your equally orphaned siblings as companions would make fate seem cruel indeed.
- ArtDev 6y ago
  They wouldn't be lonely though because they would have each other. It seems like an amazing way to grow up!

HappySweeney 6y ago

An army of super soldiers would still take somewhere around 20 years to produce, and would cost a substantial amount of money. Said army would certainly not come as a surprise to anyone.

m00x 6y ago

Robotic advancements are much faster than this and humans have to be trained, fed, etc. It would be a fools gambit to try to achieve such a goal instead of just making a robotic army where they can easily be manufactured and immediately ready for combat.

nonameiguess 6y ago

All time hilarity if the most accurate prediction of the future ends up being Star Wars Episode II.

maxwoj 6y ago

Imagine world, where a man would be free to start a family, without the need to be dependent on a woman to exercise his reproductive rights. Without the fear that a woman will use the so called “justice system” as a weapon to take his kids and possessions away anytime she find suitable