With the advent of genetic design and designer babies, I don't see how ethics alone can prevent "soldier" and "assassin" specialists from being born that have all sorts of enhancements.
It would take at least several years of development to create one vaguely effective venomous human assassin, with probably over a decade of development until the human developed vaguely enough dexterity to actually assassinate people. Unless we figure out a way to make humans grow faster at scale? I’ve always felt that enhancing human genetics to make them into weapons strikes me as more expensive and less scalable than inventing machinery that humans can use as weapons.
What would be more scalable- a human born venomous or the ability to install a venom gland in a human sinus, replacing at least one tooth?
Looking at it purely from an efficiency perspective, encouraging biological weapon development in humans at a rapid pace - possibly through retroviral techniques - may be more effective than technological devices, if the former is less detectable than the latter, and especially if the former has a lower price point than the latter.
There are multiple variables in play here, and that's not even getting into the ethical considerations.
Well, to put it another way, why would you devote time towards a hypothetical violent emission of kinetic force from an explosive device when you could more immediately benefit from removing an intelligent obstacle by applying force with a blunt object?
E.g. - why research a gun when you could brain someone with a big rock?
Seriously, not trying to be condescending here - if you could probably do a thing more effectively down the road with one path, why would you choose a more immediate path?
Biting people isn't particularly discreet, and a person that gets captured can't dispose of a gland. A similarly deadly poison in the tip of a mundane item that a person might reasonably be carrying seems much more practical, much more likely to succeed, and much more likely to remain undetected
Poisoned dentures sounds a lot like the fake/apocryphal joke about pens during the space race:
> During the height of the space race in the 1960s, legend has it, NASA scientists realized that pens could not function in space. They needed to figure out another way for the astronauts to write things down. So they spent years and millions of taxpayer dollars to develop a pen that could put ink to paper without gravity. But their crafty Soviet counterparts, so the story goes, simply handed their cosmonauts pencils.
The soviets? They just gave their agents poisoned dentures and called it a day.
I think we'll be fine as long as nobody names one of them Khan Noonien Singh. But seriously, I agree, someone will do it and then it'll be another multi-armed race.
Animals are pretty resilient, compared to robots. Most animals aren't anywhere near as picky about their fuel source or when they receive it as robots are, especially over weeks-length periods of time. Minor-damage is self-servicable and self-repairing. Even the smartest robots are barely at the intelligence level of the dumbest animals. And some of the more intelligent animals are self-adapting to new, out-of-spec scenarios.
There are tradeoffs, and in many situations machines have a clear advantage over biological organisms.
In aviation and space, there are serious issues in keeping biological organisms alive due to oxygen levels, pressure changes, and G forces. A purely autonomous system would be able to be more maneuverable in more environments than any system that also needs to keep a meat bag alive.
The other thing machines are great at is patience. Land mines can remain operational for decades, just waiting for their opportunity to detonate. Biological organisms have much higher passive maintenance costs.
Human 'soldiers' are really only going to be useful in the near future for infiltrating and disrupting social systems, not for dispensing physical violence.
I think you are both way off, we can't get a robot to flip a burger[0] it's going to be a long time for a robot to replace a special forces solider. They aren't just dumb manpower, we are talking a strategist, weapons specialist, paratrooper, negotiator plus a dozen other roles all in a 6 foot tall, 200 pound package that can go into a country and forage off the land for months while waiting for the perfect opportunity to complete it's mission.
[0] I know you can find something on Youtube but if it really worked at scale McDonalds would be rolling them out yesterday.
Not everyone wants a purpose, many people who have purposes imposed on them by parents or other authority figures later reject them, and not everybody who does want a purpose thinks of it as a search.
Purposes are tools humans use to give their own lives meaning, if they desire. Purposes should serve humans, not the other way around.
There's no indication that someone's genetically-specialized vocation would be something that that person would personally be interested in pursuing. There are numerous counterexamples of a person's choices in life being orthogonal or even entirely opposed to their parents' hopes and desires for their life.
I wouldn't be that into assassination as a vocation even if I had superpowers that made me an extremely good assassin, for example.
It sounds like you are very much in the party of nurture over nature. Either could result in a person "being into" something. You are taking your genetics and your upbringing and projecting them onto future scientific possibilities, and I don't think that makes much sense.
What if you sequence the great computer scientists and average ones and find some genes that really make a difference? What if you sequence sociopaths and discover a series of genes that correlate heavily with it? Sexuality, flight or flight responses, physical aptitude, mental aptitude.
We've spent millennia doing a less advanced form of this on dogs, can you honestly say a lot of these dogs we've bred for specific jobs aren't "into them"?
> It sounds like you are very much in the party of nurture over nature.
No, this entirely different to that. I'm saying that a person's physical attributes are orthogonal to that person's personality. I'm not discussing if their personality is a result of nature or nuture, just the fact that if you're, for example, physically predisposed to, say, being able to grow large muscles, that has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not you are personally interested in, say, competitive weightlifting (regardless of whether or not that personal interest (or lack thereof) is a result of nature or nuture).
The fact that you are predisposed to be able to grow large muscles is obviously nature; the circumstances surrounding whether or not you actually do grow large muscles is open to the nature/nurture debate, as well as the psychological manifestations that might lead one to engage in (or avoid) bodybuilding, competition, et c.
There's no real conclusive science for what you're proposing. The body could be impacting the mind and altering one's personality but we haven't learned enough about the brain to really know for certain. Opinions on this topic are likely from anecdotal experiences and not real science.
I've thought about it and there are for sure small physical things I'd love to change from birth to benefit my sport/hobbies.
But the problem is parents would be making that decision. Or in this case a dictator's military haha.
There are already hover parents living vicariously through sports, music, chess whatever.
I can imagine this going to extremes with parents making these forever physical decisions.
Elite athletes can chose to endanger their health for the sport they love.
But I'm not sure about the ethics of a parent deciding to say give lower resting heart rates/higher vo2 max with cycling in mind, even though it could be deadly slow.
What if they aren't interested in, or worse, resent their "purpose," but can't change it due to some societal and genetic pigeon-holing? That sounds worse than searching for a purpose for myself, tbh.
Almost nobody does, at least today. Some offtopic. The reverse side of the dollar bill depicts a small pyramid with an eye on it. This symbol is a pretty clever summary of our civilization. The eye means the human mind that connects a small upward facing triangle at the top - the spirit, with a heavy structure at the bottom - the matter. The upper triangle is small because today people barely recognize its existence. The mind tries to figure out which side it belongs too and often it gives up and identifies oneself with the matter. The "purpose" from the comment above is the pinnacle of this thinking: the mind decides that "since I really belong to this two legged biomachine, my purpose must be same with that machine's".
The only way to weaponize humans is the Red Queen's Race:
Make your children better than theirs. Smarter? Less likely to get diseases? Who knows. The point is, now your side has the edge, so they have to keep up. Maybe they get the edge next, so you have to innovate. And so on. Assuming there's sufficient "headroom" to build up these genetic transhumans, and we don't run into some no-free-lunch scenario where improvement is either impossible or comes with unavoidable nasty side-effects, you can't just sit still. You have to continue to improve or you can no longer pretend that all people are created equal in certain important respects. Morally equal, yes, but "morally equal" doesn't get you a leadership position.
There's no free lunch. Every significant enhancement comes with a corresponding disadvantage. Otherwise millions of years of evolution would have produced something better already.
For example, partial genetic immunity to malaria carries an increased risk of syckle cell anemia. Most traits are like that to an extent.
Humans can imagine and create things that never had the appropriate conditions under which they could evolve. The possibility space has not been fully explored.
> There's no free lunch. Every significant enhancement comes with a corresponding disadvantage. Otherwise millions of years of evolution would have produced something better already.
And yet the nerve to my retina is still installed backwards.
Yeah, obvious clickbait. An animal is venomous, the venom is toxic (a toxin). I wouldn't call a cobra "toxic" unless it was constantly starting flamewars on Facebook.
I mean, it would be a lot less useful in _battle_, but as a natural defense being toxic isn't that bad... as long as there have been enough of you for a long enough time and you are recognizable / memorable enough for your predator to know "not that one".
I don't think there's a good enough understanding of genetics to know how many generations. I'm guessing the estimate of a few thousand years was a complete guess. Many things impact the timing and these systems are chaotic. Even selective breeding is fairly uncertain. I don't know if geneticists could predict how many generations it would take if we selectively breed gray wolves to look like pugs.
This assumes mice would gain an evolutionary advantage by being venomous.
Mice survive as a species by reproducing fast and hiding, not by biting other animals to teach them a lesson. In order to exploit venom's potential they would need to undo their risk-averse behavior around other animals, which may not be in their best interest as a species.
But who could be more venomous than Cesare Borgia and the Borgia family whom reportedly had rings for poisoning (and assassinating) their enemies? Attending social functions has, in some past eras, been a wholly more perilous game than today, even with Covid.
Here I was listening to a Warhammer 40k podcast about the Astartes and how they have venom glands, and I was thinking "man this is some really bad fan fiction nonsense"
The good news is, they weren't born that way and they can change.
Debatable. See https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600451 and particularly the supplementary materials about age distribution. I held the same opinion as you and was quite surprised by these results.
That's some very interesting research! I still think that people are innately selfish, but can learn to share. I also believe that self-sacrifice is best for the greater good, leading to a more equitable society.
The graphical representation of optimism, pessimism, envy, and trust is really fascinating.
>Scientists have found the genetic foundation needed for oral venom to evolve is present in both reptiles and mammals, and said their study shows the first concrete evidence of a link between venom glands in snakes and salivary glands in mammals.
You're talking about oral bacteria. Article is talking about actual venom.
Yes. Mouth bacteria and viruses in human mouths are the factors. Not something I'd be super worried about in general. (That being said, I was bitten by a psycho when I was 8 and didn't die so that's cool.)
Yeah, if you get bitten by a homeless individual (or any individual), you need to be rushed to the ER to ensure you don’t get dangerous bacteria in your bloodstream running free.
Edit: there appears to be debate over my wording but just please don’t miss the lesson here: seek medical attention if bitten.
Referencing the realities and plight of homeless folks is not shaming. Should we instead not talk about the fact that they don't have running water to brush their teeth with?
When you brush aside the truth in order to be politically correct it only hurts those who are most vulnerable. Our sensibilities will survive, but in the meantime an absessed tooth can absolutely prove fatal to anyone not willing or able to seek treatment (guess who).
Being homeless comes with a lot of bad things, and one of those things is exposure to diseases that are passed upon skin contact. Pretending that homeless folks are just "normal folks like the rest of us" truly does them a disservice. They need help, and by pretending that they don't (or rather, by shunning such conversations out of "politeness") we are hurting them for the benefit of our own conscience. We are only being polite to our own sensibilities when we ignore the plight of homeless people, and pretend to put them on equal footing when they are truly nowhere close. Instead of taking personal offense to the statement I just made, think about them instead. It's become very tiring to see people "stand up" for others, when they are really only standing up to make themselves feel better about mostly ignoring the problem.
I was homeless for 9 years, bucko. Running water at gyms, gas stations, and starbucks. Gimmie a break. You don't know what being homeless is like, yuppie.
I'm glad that gyms, gas stations and Starbucks have running water, but how does that change that fact that homeless people don't? Are you arguing that because homeless people can walk to a water source that they have running water? Because no, in that case you ran to the water, not vice versa.
There are lots of good ways to advocate for homeless people. Statements assuming they are all, without exception, clearly and obviously sicker (and "ickier") than all other people, without exception, due to being homeless is not one of them.
Many (possibly most) homeless people pass for normal much of the time. It's the obviously highly homeless that get recognized as homeless and become the face of homelessness.
Perpetuating that stereotype as if it is accurate does a disservice to everyone.
I spent nearly six years homeless. I was routinely mistaken for a tourist and I sometimes got panhandled by other homeless people who would then ask me "How do you stay so clean??" when I would tell them "Sorry. I've got nothing to spare. I'm also homeless."
> Statements assuming they are all, without exception, clearly and obviously sicker (and "ickier") than all other people, without exception, due to being homeless is not one of them.
It was not my intent to cast people experiencing homelessness in a bad light, but I won't apologize for my words just because they weren't received in the spirit I intended them (I know you didn't ask for an apology, just throwing it out there). My point was that by definition homeless folks don't have equal access to facilities that non-homeless folk do, and have greater exposure to specific health risks. I didn't say this to be mean or hateful, I stated my current understanding of the situation many people find themselves in. Understanding a situation is the first step towards improving it. That requires talking about things that might make some people uncomfortable.
I strongly disagree with the manner in which jimbob45 was immediately shut down (and subsequently accused of casting homeless folks as "subhuman") for making a statement that quite frankly, wasn't wrong. Not only was his advice not wrong, but it could save lives if someone didn't know any better. It upsets me to see people get beat up over innocent comments that other people take offense to because they assume maliciousness. I saw zero maliciousness in his comment, and in fact it appeared as someone simply giving sound advice.
No malice aforethought is required for careless words to perpetuate harmful and ignorant stereotypes that help make already hard problems all the more intractable for people whose lives already suck.
When your words are not received in the spirit you intended in a text only environment, working on finding the right words is typically the most effective approach to remedying the matter.
I wrote what I wrote previously because I'm on your side and a writer by trade. I still blog about homelessness at times. Searching for the right words to adequately convey meaning is something I spend a lot of time on and put a lot of work into.
Except it’s true, and could save someone’s life. If a homeless person with bad dental hygiene were to bite you deep enough to sink their teeth into a blood vessel you might not live happily ever after, you’re almost certainly looking at an infection if left untreated.
If any person were to bite you. I'm not aware of data that suggests significant variance in mouth bacteria among impoverished vs affluent, i.e. if Bezos were to bite me right now, I'd still go to the ER. Anyway, I'd guess biting is more common among preschoolers than homeless people.
more with a simple google query like 'oral health among homeless'.
overall point : homeless people are less likely to have a 'dental home', or access to the items and services needed to facilitate good oral health.
The problems of access seem to correlate to an increase in oral-health-related issues like sensitive teeth, broken teeth, and ulcers.
It's not a fashionable subject, and it's tough to say in such a way that is sensitive to those people who are undergoing such strife, but the data tends to point towards worse oral health in those without access -- which, in my opinion, is an obvious outcome of destitution and homelessness.
Dental health care is also on average worse in communities of color.
How do you feel about saying "if a black person (or any individual) were to bite you..."?
From the perspective of sepsis the oral health of the person has no impact on how dangerous a bite is. Every human being has enough bacteria in their mouth to cause a deadly infection and having a higher level is not significant.
The original poster mentioned the homeless because that's what he thinks of when the idea of unclean mouths comes up.
I’m not sure they’d even need to evolve, it’s already illegal to bite people. It probably wouldn’t even need to be made more illegal than it already is.
Some police departments already classify body parts as 'personal weapons'. I recall a case in california a few years ago where a pre-teen was mistakenly arrested over an alleged-but-not-remotely-plausible resemblance to a burglary suspect.
I can't remember the exact location or details sufficiently well to look it up but I remember the bit about personal weapons as an odd fact that jumped out at me from a copy of the arrest report.
