Artificial life???
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We must be careful about restricting inquiry in areas of dubious utility. Yes, it is a double edged sword.
Sometimes the answers to legitimate needs come from these areas.And I have personal reservations/ prejudices on what can be considered valid inquiry.
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Why do people always want to invent artificial life? Does it have benefits? You can't clone a human and then harvest his organs. A cloned human would be a human just as a regular-born human would.
What's wrong with natural life anyway? Is it not precious enough?
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@unknownuser said:
Why do people always want to invent artificial life? Does it have benefits? You can't clone a human and then harvest his organs. A cloned human would be a human just as a regular-born human would.
What's wrong with natural life anyway? Is it not precious enough?
I gather from the reports that "all" they have done (and I mean to delineate and not demean the achievement) is to create a bacterial chromosome from scratch that when injected into a matching bacterial cell will allow the cell to function as it would regularly. What is meant by "synthetic" may mean they built up the chromosome, including all the correct genes, from DNA or RNA bases. (But these bases could have been derived from organisms, I don't know, as the enzymes used in the process were probably derived from life).
I think the reason they would follow this research is to have more ability to manipulate organisms into doing the work we want and not only a Frankenstein fantasy. Some would say just as we do with breeding, GMO, and many genetic manipulations already for food and medicine. Ultimately they might use this research to augment gene therapy for humans who are sick. But the debate continues, is this really an extension of something like plant breeding or going too far. I am personally very much pro- organic food, farming, and so forth but frankly I am still watching GMO debate skeptically, having a degree in biology. On the face of it, it is basic science, but there seem to be big problems, and not necessarily related to anything wrong with the organisms themselves.
Congratulations on your modeling win, Martha.
Peter
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@unknownuser said:
Why do people always want to invent artificial life? Does it have benefits?
/quote]
Curiosity - to see if they understand enough about the makeup of the genome and chemical synthesis to be able to do it. Financial reasons - someone paid them to try, and/or they think they see a way of making organisms with properties not available in the currently known natural state. To piss off religionauts.@unknownuser said:
You can't clone a human and then harvest his organs. A cloned human would be a human just as a regular-born human would.
I can almost guarantee that if cloning (which this work was not an instance of) a human were shown to be viable the religionauts would shriek and wail about how this clone had no soul and could not be a proper human and on and on. Then some of the more avaricious ones would realise that this gave them the perfect excuse to return to slave owning.
@unknownuser said:
What's wrong with natural life anyway? Is it not precious enough?
Precious? Have you not noticed how life treast life? Not seen how pretty much every plant, fungus and animal eats other living things without pity?
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@tig said:
I'd put 'artificial-life' in the first category - we didn't have it and we didn't need it, but we now have it but don't need it - we'll now have to spend time and effort in sorting it out...
Come on TIG, no one actually knows what'll come out of this, so surely its a little premature to say we dont need it.
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Remus
I know that 'no one knows what may come of it' - but we could always make many many things, but we choose not to do so - because we instinctively feel we shouldn't do them - like 'incest and morris-dancing' - to quote somebody else... Who knows what might come of such 'concepts' - many of us think, 'insufficient good'...
You shouldn't simply do something because you can: you should do it only after some deliberation.
Seems to me that no one asked 'us', 'Should we create artificial life ?' - they just did it.
OK, perhaps it will be the 'best idea any one ever had' - and I don't really bracket it with 'incest' - BUT we have managed pretty much to screw up the earth's life and ecology we already had, ready-made for us, so I hold out little hope for us doing anything better with this new set...
Wouldn't our limited resources have been better directed towards using and resolving what we already had - life/ecology/biology/health/etc/etc rather than something additional that [initially at least] offers us nothing immediately, but which could produce untold new problems, when we are struggling to cope with the myriad problems we already have ?
I am not against new ideas or advances in science - leave that to the 'fundamentalists' on all sides... BUT seems to me that this latest idea is akin to the middle-ages experts debating 'how may angels could fit on the head of a pin' whilst civilization/common-sense crumbled around them....
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@tig said:
You shouldn't simply do something because you can: you should do it only after some deliberation.
Seems to me that no one asked 'us', 'Should we create artificial life ?' - they just did it.
OK, perhaps it will be the 'best idea any one ever had' - and I don't really bracket it with 'incest' - BUT we have managed pretty much to screw up the earth's life and ecology we already had, ready-made for us, so I hold out little hope for us doing anything better with this new set...I highly doubt that humankind has the capacity to sort out the problems we have created for ourself with the current body of knowledge, so we may as well keeping pushing forward
(hows that for a weak argument!)@unknownuser said:
Wouldn't our limited resources have been better directed towards using and resolving what we already had - life/ecology/biology/health/etc/etc rather than something additional that [initially at least] offers us nothing immediately, but which could produce untold new problems, when we are struggling to cope with the myriad problems we already have ?
I disagree. I dont think the pursuit of knowledge is ever a bad thing in itself, and at this time that is all it is. Speculating about the possible problems and/or benefits caused by something that is years away from existence is a waste of time in my opinion, we have nothing to base our opinions on, we are just imagining.
Secondly, why stop pushing the boundaries just because problems that have always plagued humankind continue to do so? We havnet been able to solve these problems so far, and i highly doubt its due to a lack of investment in those areas.
@unknownuser said:
I am not against new ideas or advances in science - leave that to the 'fundamentalists' on all sides... BUT seems to me that this latest idea is akin to the middle-ages experts debating 'how may angels could fit on the head of a pin' whilst civilization/common-sense crumbled around them....
Last time i looked out the window the world was still in pretty good nick, all things considered.
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@tig said:
Seems to me that no one asked 'us', 'Should we create artificial life ?' - they just did it.
In which aspects are you (both specifically you and the plural 'you' inferred by the plural 'us') qualified to have any sort of opinion?
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@tim said:
@tig said:
Seems to me that no one asked 'us', 'Should we create artificial life ?' - they just did it.
In which aspects are you (both specifically you and the plural 'you' inferred by the plural 'us') qualified to have any sort of opinion?
Anyone can have an 'opinion' about anything - no qualifications are necessary - in fact making a qualification a prerequisite of having an opinion pretty much rules out you having one - as you'd never be able to get beyond the starting-gate - who'd decide what those qualifications need to be? If it's the proponents of the idea who set them then they could instantly exclude anyone who might disagree with it. Whether or not an opinion is valid is irrelevant. An opinion is just that = 'an opinion' - no matter had ill-informed or uninformed it might be. An opinion is not a belief, or a statement of provable fact.
The simple fact that I/we live in this world and now someone has done something to it that might turn out to be ill-advised without any [or at least sufficient] prior consultation with 'us' [laymen] - although seemingly with some substantive prior ethical 'peer-review' by another team of scientists, over ten years ago when the theoretical idea of doing it was being discussed, and then with US government departments who were thinking about classifying it - i.e. not should we be doing it at all ! It can't now be undone - Pandora's Box is open for business.
At the simplest level the scientists' opinion must have been that making 'artificial-life' was a "good idea", and my/our counter opinion might be that it is "perhaps not a good idea" - but unfortunately once they have done it it can't be undone - at least if our opinion had dominated and it had not been done then that course of action would have at least been undo-able later - it could always have been done in the future had there have been sufficient strength of argument mustered in its favor. It's too late now.
The scientists have lots more information than I/we do [hopefully!], it has been discussed 'within their community', but by leaving 'laymen' uninformed of their intentions until they had actually already done it gave little chance for a constructive dialog as to whether it should be done or for anyone to lobby against it.
I know that we can't make every such decision 'democratically' [most of the world works without 'consultation'], but when something as significant as this is about to be done then at least some public debate might be in order before it happens.
As an example - I am working on a new GM virus that might 'cure cancer', BUT also just might wipe out all of the world's food-crops [<0.0001% chance], then some might think that there should be considerable debate and some checks and balances on my work before it is done, not after is is finished, and therefore no longer undo-able.
However - I make a new ExtrudeEdgesByRails tool for Sketchup - which no one asked for, I consulted no one beforehand - I just made it and published it - the difference there is that it isn't going to hurt anyone and most of the world will never know it exists as it isn't going to escape and cause havoc - the few who do find it useful [I hope].
I am not a Luddite or a technophobe, or against the appropriate use of science in every field of human endeavor - I support stem-cell research for example, whilst many are against it on moral grounds I feel the benefits outweigh the qualms and there are checks in place. However, in this case I am concerned that something has been done with perhaps insufficient forethought, and it is something that is so momentous that it should not be done so lightly. I hope that it will result in good things... but the US government's early interest in it worries me - militarization of science rarely has a pleasing outcome...
But that's just my opinion...
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@tig said:
An opinion is not a belief, or a statement of provable fact.
I'm going to have to disagree with you somewhat. First, I think an opinion is in fact a belief about the way things are. Apparently the etymology of 'opinion' actually go back to Old French 'opinari' meaning 'think, believe'. Certainly in colloquial use most people appear to hold an opinion as strongly as a religious belief, and usually at least as noisily and obnoxiously. This leads to point the second - most people think their opinions are in fact proven fact - after all they're their opinions, dammit! This may be one of the major causes of war.
But the real problem is that reality is not decided on the American Idol model, no matter how dearly one holds to the ideals of democracy. Facts are not up for a vote, fortunately. To return a bit closer to the current topic, I know a little of biology and genetics, so my opinion is of small but positive worth. Most of my neighbours know just about nothing germane to the matter and so their opinions are worth pretty much nothing. One particular neighbour is a retired professor of a biology department, which might make you think his opinion would be very valuable, except that he is a wingnut, religionist and thinks the Plimer book on climate change is the complete and utter truth. Guess how valuable I'd rate his opinion?
I would love to live in a world where most people had opinions based on sound education, careful thought, polite debate and wisdom. Ain't gonna happen any time soon. That's my opinion, anyway.
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The very reason we have two words - 'opinion' and 'belief' is that they do mean subtly different things - although there usage does overlap in daily speech...
An 'opinion' is a subjective statement about an issue, that is either an emotional response or a personal interpretation of some information. An opinion may be supported by arguments or facts, although people might draw opposing opinions from the same facts. Opinions can change when new arguments are presented. It can be argued that one opinion is better supported by the facts than another, by analyzing the supporting facts.
A 'belief', on the other hand, is a mental acceptance of a claim to truth regardless of the lack of supporting empirical evidence or facts. A belief will normally be kept despite facts being offered that counter it robustly.
Either way, you do not need 'qualifications' to hold opinions or to have beliefs. You can shape people's opinions by rational argument [e.g. 'Synthetic life is good because...'], but you cannot readily change their beliefs [e.g. 'There is no God because...'].
Ironically, 'to be opinionated' has negative connotations, but 'to believe' in something is often seen as positive [unless in 'blindly believe...']...
Any opinion is an opinion, in my opinion.
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