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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 a

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.
      - tacocataco 6y ago
        Can't you make your point without the personal attacks?
      - carmen_sandiego 6y ago
        Slippery slope is considered a fallacy because not all things vaguely similar to previous paths to X result in X, obviously. Nobody looks at a well-run public rail schedule and thinks 'uh-oh, Fascism is just around the corner' [1]. You're conflating your personal strongly held beliefs about it with imagined inevitable consequences. We don't agree that they're inevitable at all. [1] Popular myth nature of this quip aside.
        hntrader 6y ago
        No, it's not true that slippery slopes are automatically fallacious, that's a misunderstanding of the fallacy. The fallacy pertains to people who argue that a causal chain will necessarily play out, or that a particularly implausible chain will play out with high probability. The fallacy does not assert that slippery slopes don't exist, and the mere act of arguing that a plausible slippery slope has a nontrivial chance of occurring is certainly not the Slippery Slope Fallacy as it's formally defined. Saying that slippery slopes are inherently fallacious may be aptly labelled the "Slippery Slope Fallacy Fallacy".
        carmen_sandiego 6y ago
        > The fallacy pertains to people who argue that a causal chain will necessarily play out, or that a particularly implausible chain will play out with high probability. Isn't this exactly what I described in that comment? I'm confused. Or maybe I was just not clear in my writing. Re-emphasized: > not all things vaguely similar to previous paths to X result in X, obviously [=> even though some things do] Also, I didn't really introduce slippery slope as a strict logical fallacy. I said they were making a poor argument and identified it as being of slippery slope form. They responded to that talking about logical fallacies so we went on that tangent, but really I just found their specific instance not credibly inevitable.
    - hackeraccount 6y ago
      We are trying to be better not worse right? I mean if there was no gain at all we wouldn't do any of it but we're willing to do things that have plausible arguments against them because of the value they bring. I _think_ that's better then just saying we can't see any objections at all. Maybe.
  - ericb 6y ago
    Yes, and autopsy and anatomical study of cadavers was once considered immoral. Just because our lizard-brain has a "that's gross" reaction, it doesn't mean it's the right reaction. Millions and millions of people are alive because of what we learned studying dead bodies. We are ok unplugging life support if someone is well and truly braindead because they aren't a sentient, thinking self-aware being at that point. How is this different? Show your work. :-)
- snicker7 6y ago
  "Those who look/think differently than me aren't human." Who does and doesn't count as a human/person are questions that we should avoid if at all possible. The moral costs of a false negative are tremendous. Also, regardless of your political or moral beliefs on abortion, the unborn are certainly "human".
  - carmen_sandiego 6y ago
    > "Those who look/think differently than me aren't human." Sure, if by "think differently" you mean "don't think at all". There's a big difference between "eh, Jewish brains are not developed like ours" and actual rigor. I'm comfortable with the latter. > Also, regardless of your political or moral beliefs on abortion, the unborn are certainly "human". Well, I think you're manoeuvring around the point here. Clearly some combination of life and humanity is what matters, depending on what definitions people are glossing over at the time. Most people aren't upset by autopsies or cadaver work.
  - krastanov 6y ago
    I am pretty comfortable calling a body without a head or brain "not human" (this was what the OP suggested). > ... the unborn are certainly "human". You would be surprised how many people would disagree with you about that. I personally definitely would not call a freshly-fertilized egg in a womb a human. I would agree that the fetus just before birth is human. I do not have an answer for how far back you have to rewind for the unborn fetus to not be human (no one has a universal answer to this).
    - FooBarBizBazz 6y ago
      More radically, you can also go in the opposite direction. Infants have no memories for the first year or two. They see upside-down at first. Brain development is clearly continuing after birth. So you might be able to justify infanticide for some time after birth. I don't recommend this, of course.
      - krastanov 6y ago
- trasz 6y ago
  What makes someone human, or what makes them a person? It's the mental aspects of humans which matter, not the genome; we wouldn't deny human rights to a conscious space alien, while we commonly do deny them to non-conscious (and not capable of being conscious) beings with human DNA, such as zygotes or molar pregnancies.
- Sporktacular 6y ago
  Again, since you don't know the answer to this, and since I don't know, why don't we just avoid going down a path that we DO know creates pain and misery.
- FooBarBizBazz 6y ago
  It is literally the same thing as the abortion issue. You'd merely be aborting a cerebrum, to bring about brain-death before brain-life can begin. If abortion isn't killing, then neither is this. If you want to support abortion but oppose this, then you need to say that a fetus is alive -- is a person with some rights -- but that those rights are superseded by a woman's absolute bodily autonomy. This would be a stronger position: Rather than saying that fetuses aren't alive, you'd be saying that women have a right to kill in certain circumstances. We don't even need mechanical wombs to bring these clones to term. A woman could gestate her own braindead clone to provide organs for herself later in life, or a man could work with a female partner or paid surrogate. The only missing technology is that needed to allow the braindead body to develop from a baby into an adult. We already have life support technologies that seem applicable, but they've never been applied in this way. Possibly certain hormone injections would also be needed, to transition through puberty. This is all so logically clear, and the stakes so high -- immortality? -- that I'm a little surprised nobody has been ruthless enough to attempt it yet. There used to be Forbidden Cities with water-clocks to track the ovulation of concubines. The ancients could ruthlessly apply logic. Moderns seem not to. I guess it's about avoiding retaliation.
  - carmen_sandiego 6y ago
    I'm not sure it's quite immortality but yes, the stakes are pretty high. It seems likely that you'd not go public if you did this, though, so it's possible someone has already tried. There are probably people ruthless enough and resourced enough that they might just grow a perfectly normal (i.e. full brain development) human and harvest them anyway. If you're rich through (say) organized crime already, what's the difference when it's your life at stake? Ostensibly the only issues for those people are lead time (they'd need to plan ahead of critical illness) and sustaining a minor conspiracy (paying off the medical team and surrogate, managing trust, or just cleaning up loose ends).
    - recuter 6y ago
      You could just bribe yourself unto an organ donors list in some country. This isn't anywhere close to immortality it just conceivably makes the line shorter for some surgeries.
krastanov 6y ago
I think you missed the "without a brain" part of that sentence. Growing a headless or brainless copy of myself for spare parts seems like a great idea without ethical issues.
- dnautics 6y ago
  how about we split the difference and grow headless clones and put an electrical brain inside of them as hordes of cyborg soldiers?
  - krastanov 6y ago
    Actually, if you get that electrical brain to run a simulation of my mortal biological brain, I would totally sign up for this at the age of 50 or 60 (coupled with euthanasia of the biological brain, and solving some legal questions about the humanity of the electrical simulation of my biological brain).
    - tmccrary55 6y ago
      Nice try, Neuromancer.
- throwaway316943 6y ago
  If replacement parts are the goal then the best course would be to learn how cells decide to develop into those specific organs and then apply that knowledge to produce the part needed without attaching a whole human to it. It would conceivably be faster, less wasteful, and perhaps easier than figuring out how to ethically produce a consciousness free human.
hpoe 6y ago
You mean like China is doing to the Uighers right now...
- carmen_sandiego 6y ago
  Intentional attempt to court controversy aside, I'm not sure it matches up to this discussion thread. Even if you believe China is harvesting the organs of what they consider undesirables, the parallel accusation is that they are _reducing_ the Uyghur birth rate, not _breeding_ them for the purpose. Also, strictly speaking, the organ harvesting conspiracy theory is more about Falun Gong than the Uyghurs.
s1artibartfast 6y ago
You might be interested in reading about the existing practice of "Savior siblings" where Embryos are genetically selected based on their donation compatibility with other children and then then born into the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savior_sibling#:~:text=A%20savior%20baby%20or%20savior,conceived%20through%20in%20vitro%20fertilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savior_sibling#:~:text=A%20sav....

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.
    - tacocataco 6y ago
      Can't you make your point without the personal attacks?
    - carmen_sandiego 6y ago
      Slippery slope is considered a fallacy because not all things vaguely similar to previous paths to X result in X, obviously. Nobody looks at a well-run public rail schedule and thinks 'uh-oh, Fascism is just around the corner' [1]. You're conflating your personal strongly held beliefs about it with imagined inevitable consequences. We don't agree that they're inevitable at all. [1] Popular myth nature of this quip aside.
      - hntrader 6y ago
        No, it's not true that slippery slopes are automatically fallacious, that's a misunderstanding of the fallacy. The fallacy pertains to people who argue that a causal chain will necessarily play out, or that a particularly implausible chain will play out with high probability. The fallacy does not assert that slippery slopes don't exist, and the mere act of arguing that a plausible slippery slope has a nontrivial chance of occurring is certainly not the Slippery Slope Fallacy as it's formally defined. Saying that slippery slopes are inherently fallacious may be aptly labelled the "Slippery Slope Fallacy Fallacy".
        carmen_sandiego 6y ago
        > The fallacy pertains to people who argue that a causal chain will necessarily play out, or that a particularly implausible chain will play out with high probability. Isn't this exactly what I described in that comment? I'm confused. Or maybe I was just not clear in my writing. Re-emphasized: > not all things vaguely similar to previous paths to X result in X, obviously [=> even though some things do] Also, I didn't really introduce slippery slope as a strict logical fallacy. I said they were making a poor argument and identified it as being of slippery slope form. They responded to that talking about logical fallacies so we went on that tangent, but really I just found their specific instance not credibly inevitable.
  - hackeraccount 6y ago
    We are trying to be better not worse right? I mean if there was no gain at all we wouldn't do any of it but we're willing to do things that have plausible arguments against them because of the value they bring. I _think_ that's better then just saying we can't see any objections at all. Maybe.
- ericb 6y ago
  Yes, and autopsy and anatomical study of cadavers was once considered immoral. Just because our lizard-brain has a "that's gross" reaction, it doesn't mean it's the right reaction. Millions and millions of people are alive because of what we learned studying dead bodies. We are ok unplugging life support if someone is well and truly braindead because they aren't a sentient, thinking self-aware being at that point. How is this different? Show your work. :-)
snicker7 6y ago
"Those who look/think differently than me aren't human." Who does and doesn't count as a human/person are questions that we should avoid if at all possible. The moral costs of a false negative are tremendous. Also, regardless of your political or moral beliefs on abortion, the unborn are certainly "human".
- carmen_sandiego 6y ago
  > "Those who look/think differently than me aren't human." Sure, if by "think differently" you mean "don't think at all". There's a big difference between "eh, Jewish brains are not developed like ours" and actual rigor. I'm comfortable with the latter. > Also, regardless of your political or moral beliefs on abortion, the unborn are certainly "human". Well, I think you're manoeuvring around the point here. Clearly some combination of life and humanity is what matters, depending on what definitions people are glossing over at the time. Most people aren't upset by autopsies or cadaver work.
- krastanov 6y ago
  I am pretty comfortable calling a body without a head or brain "not human" (this was what the OP suggested). > ... the unborn are certainly "human". You would be surprised how many people would disagree with you about that. I personally definitely would not call a freshly-fertilized egg in a womb a human. I would agree that the fetus just before birth is human. I do not have an answer for how far back you have to rewind for the unborn fetus to not be human (no one has a universal answer to this).
  - FooBarBizBazz 6y ago
    More radically, you can also go in the opposite direction. Infants have no memories for the first year or two. They see upside-down at first. Brain development is clearly continuing after birth. So you might be able to justify infanticide for some time after birth. I don't recommend this, of course.
    - krastanov 6y ago
trasz 6y ago
What makes someone human, or what makes them a person? It's the mental aspects of humans which matter, not the genome; we wouldn't deny human rights to a conscious space alien, while we commonly do deny them to non-conscious (and not capable of being conscious) beings with human DNA, such as zygotes or molar pregnancies.
Sporktacular 6y ago
Again, since you don't know the answer to this, and since I don't know, why don't we just avoid going down a path that we DO know creates pain and misery.
FooBarBizBazz 6y ago
It is literally the same thing as the abortion issue. You'd merely be aborting a cerebrum, to bring about brain-death before brain-life can begin. If abortion isn't killing, then neither is this. If you want to support abortion but oppose this, then you need to say that a fetus is alive -- is a person with some rights -- but that those rights are superseded by a woman's absolute bodily autonomy. This would be a stronger position: Rather than saying that fetuses aren't alive, you'd be saying that women have a right to kill in certain circumstances. We don't even need mechanical wombs to bring these clones to term. A woman could gestate her own braindead clone to provide organs for herself later in life, or a man could work with a female partner or paid surrogate. The only missing technology is that needed to allow the braindead body to develop from a baby into an adult. We already have life support technologies that seem applicable, but they've never been applied in this way. Possibly certain hormone injections would also be needed, to transition through puberty. This is all so logically clear, and the stakes so high -- immortality? -- that I'm a little surprised nobody has been ruthless enough to attempt it yet. There used to be Forbidden Cities with water-clocks to track the ovulation of concubines. The ancients could ruthlessly apply logic. Moderns seem not to. I guess it's about avoiding retaliation.
- carmen_sandiego 6y ago
  I'm not sure it's quite immortality but yes, the stakes are pretty high. It seems likely that you'd not go public if you did this, though, so it's possible someone has already tried. There are probably people ruthless enough and resourced enough that they might just grow a perfectly normal (i.e. full brain development) human and harvest them anyway. If you're rich through (say) organized crime already, what's the difference when it's your life at stake? Ostensibly the only issues for those people are lead time (they'd need to plan ahead of critical illness) and sustaining a minor conspiracy (paying off the medical team and surrogate, managing trust, or just cleaning up loose ends).
  - recuter 6y ago
    You could just bribe yourself unto an organ donors list in some country. This isn't anywhere close to immortality it just conceivably makes the line shorter for some surgeries.

krastanov 6y ago

I think you missed the "without a brain" part of that sentence. Growing a headless or brainless copy of myself for spare parts seems like a great idea without ethical issues.

dnautics 6y ago
how about we split the difference and grow headless clones and put an electrical brain inside of them as hordes of cyborg soldiers?
- krastanov 6y ago
  Actually, if you get that electrical brain to run a simulation of my mortal biological brain, I would totally sign up for this at the age of 50 or 60 (coupled with euthanasia of the biological brain, and solving some legal questions about the humanity of the electrical simulation of my biological brain).
  - tmccrary55 6y ago
    Nice try, Neuromancer.
throwaway316943 6y ago
If replacement parts are the goal then the best course would be to learn how cells decide to develop into those specific organs and then apply that knowledge to produce the part needed without attaching a whole human to it. It would conceivably be faster, less wasteful, and perhaps easier than figuring out how to ethically produce a consciousness free human.

hpoe 6y ago

You mean like China is doing to the Uighers right now...

carmen_sandiego 6y ago
Intentional attempt to court controversy aside, I'm not sure it matches up to this discussion thread. Even if you believe China is harvesting the organs of what they consider undesirables, the parallel accusation is that they are _reducing_ the Uyghur birth rate, not _breeding_ them for the purpose. Also, strictly speaking, the organ harvesting conspiracy theory is more about Falun Gong than the Uyghurs.

s1artibartfast 6y ago

You might be interested in reading about the existing practice of "Savior siblings" where Embryos are genetically selected based on their donation compatibility with other children and then then born into the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savior_sibling#:~:text=A%20savior%20baby%20or%20savior,conceived%20through%20in%20vitro%20fertilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savior_sibling#:~:text=A%20sav....