5 ms·
What Cockroaches with Backpacks Can Do
- dang 12y agoAlso https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9144771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9144771.
- cowardlydragon 12y agoYeah, to go into collapse earthquake buildings. Right.
- acadien 12y agoIt cracks me up how that is the go to 'application' for all robots, drones and swarm-bots. It is used so often it has become a cliche.
- amphibean 12y agoWell, what else can you do with a bionic cockroach? An organic competitor to the Roomba?
- altcognito 12y agoStrap spy equipment and bio/chemical weapons to them.
- mjn 12y agoI think interest in that application is partly driven by a DARPA competition for disaster-response robotics: http://www.theroboticschallenge.org/ http://www.theroboticschallenge.org/
- sliverstorm 12y agoIt was extremely apropos for a little while after Fukushima, especially because the bots that were sent into the reactors were insufficient.
- berberous 12y agoHonestly, if I was stuck in some building after an earthquake, I think the only way my day could get worse was if I was then crawled upon by cyborg roaches.
- ceejayoz 12y agoYeah, somehow I imagine the likely use case being more scoping out uncollapsed buildings before they experience an... anthropogenic "earthquake".
- s73v3r 12y agoPut off college for a year going to Europe to "find themselves"?
- orthecreedence 12y agoWhy stop at roaches? We could do this to dogs or small children! There's sometimes a tightrope between science and ethics, and this is just plain unethical. I'll start with the argument just about everyone can relate to. We all know this isn't going to actually help people in collapsed buildings or find lost wedding rings. It's going to be used by government spy agencies and military goons to control people in one way or another. Secondly, "it's just a cockroach" doesn't work for me. At what point do we say it's ok to essentially torture a living being into doing what we want? You could argue a cockroach doesn't have feelings or consciousness, but I could also argue that I am the only living being with feelings or consciousness. "I have no way of telling if another person or creature has feelings, therefor they must not." Third, for those who don't give a shit about anybody but humans, how long until this is used in humans? They are sending signals directly into a living being's brain that controls its motor functions. Could that tech not be applied to a person eventually? Why put people in prisons when we can just force them into building signs all day? Why give soldiers a battle plan when you can just safely control them with a joystick from 3000 miles away? This isn't just about making a cockroach do simple things. We're trading our humanity for science that will only do us harm.
- jff 12y ago> Third, for those who don't give a shit about anybody but humans, how long until this is used in humans? I hear people are eating chickens and even cattle! How long until this is done to humans?!?!
- orthecreedence 12y agoWhy eat people when we have chicken already? Good question. Why control people as automatons when we already have cockroaches? Because of the reasons I listed above.
- scrollaway 12y ago> Why eat people when we have chicken already? Good question. Why eat cattle, horses, fish and fruit when we have chicken already? Your original argument is nothing but a slippery slope fallacy.
- trhway 12y ago>What Cockroaches with Backpacks Can Do well, they can slowly introduce people to the acceptance of the idea of physical abuse and torture of another live being. With meat plants being hidden from public view and with nicely packaged meat in the stores not causing any association with horrors of how that meat was produced, the human species may start to lose the taste for abuse and torture.
- aravan 12y agoblue-cross on the way. Never felt pity on cockroaches until today, it was really heavy, overweight.