If you owned the knowledge that can make a superhuman, how would you use it?
We are all, to one degree or another, aware of the steroids in sports stories. Chemists found they could create substances that can make people stronger--and they keep finding new ones that are better and undetectable with whatever the current drug test regime is. There is so much money to be made if you can increase a body's strength and reaction time.
OK, what if there have been (during those same years that steroids evolved) chemists, owned by our giant pharma corporations, creating drugs and/or genetically engineering DNA that make new babies 50 or 100 or 200 points higher in IQ? When and how will we find out?
If you owned the knowledge that can make a superhuman, how would you use it?
OK, what if there have been (during those same years that steroids evolved) chemists, owned by our giant pharma corporations, creating drugs and/or genetically engineering DNA that make new babies 50 or 100 or 200 points higher in IQ? When and how will we find out?
If you owned the knowledge that can make a superhuman, how would you use it?
Comments
I'm with cyclo, I think I'd fear the consequences.
You should be and are instinctively wary. We (me) are talking mostly about intelligence. All the other things would follow. But think about how compassionate we are towards chimpanzees and that should give you an idea of how important our lives would be to animals far more aware and intelligent than we are. And those changes, for the first time we know of, will come from our own re-engineering of our DNA and come all at once--what took aprox 4 million years (when the two lines split from our common ancestors) will happen in one generation. And then we will be number two.
And, unlike all the Star Trek episodes where the Federation (USA 1965) always tricks the more advanced and dangerous species, we will have no way to defend ourselves from THEM, we can only hope they have large, well appointed Zoos.
Looking backward, evolution is a spectacularly unfolding puzzle. But looking forward, evolution is a spectacularly dangerous certainty that can not be stopped.
The upside for me is, whenever I witness the insanity of how we treat one another, I realize we are just a link in a chain and all these seemingly intractable human traits will soon fade into insignificance.
One should and can never underestimate the extent to which they are ignorant.
So.. IQ 175, that and a buck anna half will get you a cup of coffee.
To me, your contentment with personal pursuits of internal happiness is way, way intelligent. Even your passion for facebook games pushes the communication evolution. There is nothing we can do but wait for the post humans to arrive. All my compulsive reading about perception and consciousness and genetics leads me to believe that the most advanced studies of genetics are going on in secret--some here, but most in countries that have no problems with religion's fear of playing "God", like S. Korea and China and (irony of ironies) Israel.
It is all Trivia Pursuit.
I studied Matrix Algebra.
But, did you address the question? What if we could fix the genetics that make us sick?
OK, accidents will still happen. There will be be the piano falling from the plane or the drive-by shooting.
But, there would be a lot of older farts watching TV and talking politics because the expected illnesses were programmed out.
Kind of like us doing what we're doing right now. But, 'now' would last much longer (OK, not forever,) but a lot longer.
I'm asking; Is long life something you desire?
Why have doctors and research to cure cancer if we just get older and more frail?
Is it desirable to be 100 years old?
John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, might have written a lot more songs - or, maybe they were done then.
pancreas and replace the love handles with a six pack. It is a fact that every thing wears down - even the Toyota with its 240Kmiles.
So, I definitely await for the research to bring us something we can install. It might take a while - along with getting the new processor, Ram, and hard drive. Mine might be developing some segmentation errors and require some Smartdrive pills.
Meanwhile, I'll be putting in the order for an astronomical infrared radar detector that will tell me when the Intergalactic Highway will begin it's installation. Maybe there will be enough time to find the wormhole to the original Galactica. I wonder if Google can tell me who has one in stock.
We save for tomorrow when we will be to old to work. And most of all, we constantly plan for the future. Without the certainty of death all our attitudes would change. Add much more awareness about what is "out there" and it reaches too far over the horizon to see. The end of the death of consciousness will change everything about living.
If we could get new bodies, why not new brains with the latest program having all the painting hand-eye co-ordination, piano playing fingers, massive line-backer shoulders, etc. We'd all look like a magazine ad. We'd all look the same until the Goths got involved. I guess there would still be variation. But, would it matter what you looked like or could do?
For you to be happy about life and in life you must not worry about the inevitable.
You may not be able to download muscle memory, but knowledge, things like language and how to fix things, you will be able do instantly access. Eg, you have a malfunction in one of your bionic legs. You do not go to a technician, you just access the design knowledge base and pull out your Swiss Army Knife and fix it. Before you can think "how" you will know how.
I want to enter Pro Tennis when I am 105 and be no. 1 by 2060.
Artificial muscle fibers have been invented that are hundreds of time stronger than human muscle fiber. They have not yet been able to get this new muscle to react as fast as our yet, but when they do we will probably actually see someone crush a baseball. Crush as in "turn to dust".
Perhaps HIV is part of some grander solution and our obsession with seeing it as a scourge is a delusion?
Isn't the TRUE answer to the eternal question of "why?"...simply -"because!"?-
I'm still waiting for the first "How do I fix this broken computer question."
That was the original reason I came here. I caught a virus and couldn't get back on the air.
Would it be better if we had a more dedicated goal? It would be interesting to solve
those computer problems. It felt good to help someone out...
In Star Trek, they had evolved past accumulating money and power. They were more interested in art and science. But, that still kinda left
us all in a lurch. The crew of the Enterprise still had the human frailties of ego and competition. Maybe not money, but, having power
and respect was still something they were all striving for.
I think we'd still find ways of killing each other. We've had a long history of war and beating the other guy. The have-nots still fight to become the haves.