For me “How long could I get away with driving like an ABSOLUTE ASSHOLE all the time before I lost my licence or had an accident.” Speed limits, red lights, stop signs… forget them all. Every day I have to drive sensibly and obey the law because without my licence I dont have a job, and every day I see at least one person driving like an absolute moron and I wonder…
A bit contemporary, but I’d like to have studied what it takes to break someone of illusions that were fed and forced on them externally, e.g. schooling, TV, social media and other forms of cultural imprinting and propaganda.
We’ve all had that “what would it take to get this person to realize how far off base they are?” question, it would be fascinating, in a no-holds barred experiment testing various solutions and combinations to find out which is the most effective.
E.g. someone believes climate change isn’t real because (x,y,z irrelevant). No amount of written evidence is effective to people who don’t understand the scientific method, so would it be videos, traveling to acutely affected places, having polar bears removed from all zoos, baseball bats on their knuckles when they make a logical fallacy?
It would be interesting to then categorize the types of delusions or illusions and then prescribe treatment based on these results.
I think this one could be done ethically, even make a good TV show.
Parts of it could be done, but it would always stop at “the subject is uncomfortable”, which is the whole point of why changing someone’s mind against delusions, illusions and propaganda is hard. They don’t want to, so without some treatment experiments that would certainly not meet today’s medical and/or psychological standards, we wouldn’t get an answer to many questions.
You could make a TV show sure, but all the wrong people would tune in.
You would need volunteers, but let them witness the experiments that disprove chemtrails or flat earth bullshit themselves and in person allow them to inspect the equipment and so on.
See which ones of them are willing to actually take whats presented to them and see with their own eyes and re-evaluate their position.
deleted by creator
The movie gattaca does this well. No murder or cleansing. But you can have a natural birth or IVF with the Impurities stripped out. “The best of you.”
“Dirty” people were limited to shit like janitors and all high paying jobs would sneak a test in to filter out anyone “un-pure”
deleted by creator
Oh I’m no saint. I set my cruise control at 10km/h over the speed limit, I punch it through orange lights and I sometimes roll through stop signs.
I’m talking about full blown fast and furious wannabe swerving lanes, running reds and racing literally everywhere.
This describes my brother in law. Granted, he’s better than he used to be about 10 years ago, but he grew up in a small town, got to know all the cops pretty quickly, did a little jail time here and there but still has his license. He’s totalled many vehicles, spent some time in ICU and still drives like a bat out of hell.
How is that unethical? If anything i say it’s unethical to let us languish in these horrible bodies when we can work towards something better.
deleted by creator
Most people are only opposed to eugenics (as you’re using the word) because of a very narrow application. A rare few get genetic engineering and capitalism mixed up, which at least makes sense, i wouldn’t want musk choosing who gets a generic upgrade or how an augmentation is implemented.
And i find it abhorrent that people are just fine with letting our entire species suffer the nightmare of random chance that is our bodies. Sure it’s surprisingly good for a system that only selects for whatever fucks the most, but we can and should eventually do better.
removed by mod
How many clowns can you fit inside an unmodified VW Bug if survivability is no longer a concern.
Probably seeing what amount of pain each asshole driver can suffer before they die. Hope you’re at least a 9, OP!
Eugenics. Not the racist BS that was done in the past, but really pushing the limit to see if we can breed super humans. Genetic editing to make humans immune to cancer or disease. Increased lifespan. Resistance to radiation. Smarter. Stronger. Better.
Arguably, this kind of thing is actually somewhat of a necessity if we ever want to explore the stars. We are far too fragile in our current bodies to survive the difficulties and vastness of space.
Honestly, I’d be super stoked if we could just get rid of all the actual serious defects, just, whack a few moles that really super suck for anyone who gets the short end of the genealogical stick.
And by that I mean like
- Huntington’s Disease
- Early onset and regular non early onset Arthritis
- My entire family bloodline is prone to heart issues/cancer type beat
- Crohn’s
Nice try Elon
Isolate a bunch of babies together, with food etc, and see how they develop their own language and society.
Really interesting idea.
I silently lament that this experiment cannot be done at least once every couple weeks. I think it would be the most fascinating experiment to observe. Watching a new language develop naturally in real time!
Not exactly the same, but suggests probably it would not turn out well. https://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/capsules/histoire_bleu06.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_deprivation_experiments
I already knew about Psamtik’s experiment but I thought I had a bigger memory of it than what I was able to find quickly. There’s a good starting place if you want to look deeper but I’m not that interested
Realistically would just end up a developmentally stunted invalid. There was an example from some book, I don’t remember which, where there was a SE Asian woman who lived with her family and had a baby.
The family was ashamed, so they forced the girl to keep the baby by itself in the attic. She would go to work most of the day, and come back to take care of it when home. That was the total extent of interaction and stimulation the baby got. It ended up being severely stunted and never learned to talk.
Essentially young children need human interaction which includes warmth and constant validation, caring for, etc
If you interrupt that in any way, you end up with a feral child who is permanently stunted.
Genetic engineering. We have the technology at this, point. What’s getting in the way are some very dated ideas of ethics.
How far can you strip down the human body until it can’t survive anymore. Assisted feeding and breathing is okay. Adjustable room temperature too.
Arms, Legs? Gone. Can we get rid of the skin? Probably, if the room is the right temperature? Bones? Most of them aren’t needed, are they? Some organs surely can go too.
Basically, what is the bare minimum needed so the body and the mind still more or less work.
So, firstly, may I suggest you check youtube for one of the now many ‘Adventures of Torso’ type videos done in Kenshi.
But as far as keeping a ‘minimum viable’ human actually alive?
You could remove limbs, but you would still have to have a method for them to eat and urinate and deficate.
You… almost certainly could not remove all skin and keep someone alive for very long.
For starters, they’d bleed to death. Secondly, the pain of existing without skin would probably literally kill them or drive them to try to kill themselves. Thirdly: Skin prevents infections, you’d have to keep them in basically a totally hermetically sealed room or container.
Bones? A de-boned human?
Well there’s almost certainly not a way to remove all of your spinal bones and skull without causing death or immensely serious paralysis and/or brain damage.
Sure you could remain alive without all your limbs if you have caretakers, you can survive without your lower jaw as well… You can maybe? survive with the loss of a certain high percentage of your ribcage, but probably not with the entirety of it and your sternum removed.
Organs? Well, brain, heart and liver are almost certainly mandatory.
Though you can remove portions of your liver and it can still function and regrow to some extent…
…and portions of your brain… though you’ll lose cognitive abilities, memories and basically become braindead but still technically alive at some point.
Assuming we are just removing things and maybe hooking you up to various kinds if life support tubes and not replacing organs with some kind of mechanical or genetically engineered equivalent:
I think you can survive without any kidneys if you are constantly on dialysis, but its far better to have at least one.
Similarly: Lungs, you need at least one.
You can have your stomach and intestines and bladder partially removed or reshaped, but not entirely.
You can survive without eyes… and a gallbladder and a thymus and a spleen and an appendix and your tonsils… and your adenoids, and your sex organs, but you’re gonna need a great deal of monitoring and bloodwork and hormone balancing and what not.
How do I unimagine that?
You should watch Johnny Got His Gun if you haven’t. Not quite as extreme but kind of similar theme.
That’s what the video to One by Metallica is based on, isn’t it?
No, that’s a landmine victim. ‘One’ is an antiwar song.
“Landmine has taken my sight, taken my speech, taken my hearing…”
I guess someone forgot to tell Metallica when they were writing the song that it wasn’t about a landmine.
And I guess someone previously forgot to tell Dalton Trumbo when he wrote Johnny Got His Gun that it wasn’t an anti-war novel.
And then they forgot to tell him again thirty-two years later when he directed the movie adaptation, Johnny Got His Gun.
And then, worst of all, they forgot to tell the directors of the music video that “One” was anti-war and Johnny Got His Gun was about a landmine and that using scenes from the film in the music video wouldn’t be thematically appropriate.
Damn, there were a lot of missteps! Good thing you set it all straight!
Correct, they bought the rights to the movie to not have to continually pay royalties for it.
Hey! Somebody figured out the plot of the seminal sci-fi novel, “Don’t create the torment Nexus”!
This was the topic of an episode of the podcast That’s Absurd, Please Elaborate, which I highly recommend. Unfortunately I can’t find the episode right now. https://thatsabsurdshow.com/
For this you don’t need a human, Can start with monkeys.
Disclaimer: I don’t want this experiment to happen.
What happens when we reverse Earth’s rotation.
Lois Lane gets rescued.
While interesting I feel that one is more “Hilarously impractical” than anything else.
I’m pretty sure an experiment that kills everyone would be considered immoral but we’d have to ask the IRB to be sure ;)
Gorillas on steroids. How bulky can these magnificent already bulky beasts get?
Oh, I like this one.
Mind you Ive seen a cranky Silverback at the zoo, one with an extra gram of test and tren a day would be utterly fucking terrifying, also the roadrage would be something to behold… dibs not being the poor fucker giving it its shots.
Look up a shaved silverback… them mofos are scary.
Most big animals that are already properly scary with fur dont improve when shaved.
deleted by creator
Yeah, and if you want to climb in there and take his bloods and administer the androgen blockers you are welcome to.
I’d want to know how many people would continue eating meat if they had to kill the animal themselves after getting trained how to do it. Or as an alternative instead of doing the killing yourself being physically present while someone else does it for you and you have to watch, smell, and hear them prepare it for you.
Is it really unethical though?
