Mr Skeptic

I think they would find that a hard pill to swallow.

mihail, what you call the "will to survive" is perhaps better described as the tendency of living things to maintain homeostasis. A critter "tries" to maintain its internal environment. A lot of this is just a big complicated feedback loop. One example is how a chain of reactions driven by enzymes is inhibited (slowed down) by the presence of large quantities of the final product. So when the amount of that product is lowered, the rate of production for it goes up. All automatic, no thought involved.

No, that's not how recessive traits work. The gene will remain, but will not be visible unless there are two recessive genes. If you have two copies of the recessive gene, it will be used instead of the dominant gene (which won't be there). No, you can't as a rule make recessive genes dominant, because of how the dominant genes work. For example, if a dominant gene makes a pigment, whereas the recessive gene doesn't, then the pigment will be visible even with just one copy of the dominant gene -- the only way to not have the pigment would be to deactivate the dominant gene that makes it. Well, there are genes that code for various attributes, but for something complicated like intelligence, there are many many genes, and some combinations of them work better than others. Animal studies show that intelligence comes as a tradeoff, eg with higher energy requirements. It's not like there is an intelligence gene, many factors work together for that. It may eventually be possible to make a gene that increases intelligence with little or no drawback, but we are not close to there yet.

Now that would be an interesting and profitable scientific experiment.

I side with yourdadonapogos on this one. If the ants were as intelligent, sentient, etc, as any other (human) person, I think killing them would qualify as murder. Even if they are a separate species. Though I would also say that species membership is also relevant to the same degree that I am biased in favor of my closest kin over more distant kin (those of a different species are extremely distant kin, compared to other humans).

Lucaspa, as a biologist, surely you must be aware of how exponential decay works. The breakdown of medicines in the body, for example. There is no "keeping track" of anything going on -- they continuously have exactly the same probability of breaking down within a certain time. The difference here is that there is an explanation for the breakdown of chemicals, but none for the decay of nuclei.

Apparently GM has already been done on human embyos. Zev Rosenwaks and Nikica Zaninovic used a virus to give an (apparently non-viable) embyo the genes for fluorescent protein. That was done to study embryo development. However, it seems the technique is pretty much the same as for doing GM on mice.

No, zero point energy is energy that is there, but when you remove it it is removed. We do know how to extract it, and those of us who are sane know that the scammers who say it can be done easily or profitably are lying. For the vaccuum energy via the casimir effect, we can extract it by moving two plates close together in a vaccuum. But you can't move the plates appart again without inputing as much or more energy. Just like you can't use a water wheel to pump water up and spin the water wheel. Perhaps an analogy will help you: the earth has gravitational potential energy. When you drop something, you gain energy from the gravitational potential. But the thing you drop doesn't just keep falling. When it hits the ground, you either have to expend energy to lift it again, or get something else to drop. Now you could say that if we could only keep dropping things we would get infinite energy from it, but since you understand gravity you probably know that that can't be done.

To some extent, yes. That could result in an arms race of frivolous GM for beauty. That seems like it could cause some serious trouble.

A cute table, but it looks like they just took chunks off the periodic table and spaced them out... same information, slightly clearer grouping, but less space efficient (and the table is already a monster for size).

I believe that animals that freeze and thaw themselves dehydrate themselves a bit before freezing to make up for the expansion. The formation of large crystals is also very harmful, and they have some kind of antifreeze. It is possible to freeze and thaw mammalian tissue without killing it; this has been done with mouse kidneys and ovaries (resulting in pregnancy). Of course with stuff like sperm it is very easy. I'd imagine it would be much harder to do with a larger organ or a whole organism though.

Well, I was thinking some simpler GM could be done on humans within maybe two or three decades, if politically allowed. Most of it would be in medicine. For beauty, probably the first GM would only target something relatively simple like obesity which also has medical concerns. Much of the progress I expect would require computer power to keep increasing, or better models for protein folding. Otherwise it will be almost like alchemy, and require insane animal testing for decades before it could be used.

The trick of course is that "negative" traits show that you are fit enough to survive despite them. Being easy to spot means you have to outrun more predators, so if you're still alive you're probably faster/more agile/better endurance than others. This is similar to how guys tend to do risky/"stupid" things to impress the girls. In the case of birds, doesn't the male plumage also serve to distract a predator from the female and the nest?

Well, some types that could be called zero point energy actually do work. The casimir effect, for example exists ... but how might it be used? It will give you energy when you allow two plates to come together, but then to pull the plates apart again requires energy. If you made disposable plates, maybe, but that would not be easy. The idea of making an electron fall into the nucleus can be done ... in a neutron star. Not very practical. Just like fusion can and has been done, it still is difficult and can't be done economically. Unlike fusion, they have some probably insurmountable problems. And then of course there is all the BS and crazy people. Which composes the vast majority of the ZPE crowd, along with scammers and their victims.

I think that you seriously overestimate space station computers ... they are built for extreme reliability, not computing power.

I've previously said that atheism is a religion. After thinking about that a bit, I feel that I should take that back and refine it some more. Atheism, in general, includes anyone who doesn't believe in a god or gods. As such, it encompasses several religions, such as Reincarnation, some Buddhists, some pagans, Jains, some Confucians, etc -- anyone that does not believe in a god or gods, including those of some religions. So the term atheist is too broad to call a religion. (Thanks to iNow for his various comparisons with the "non-believers in unicorns" for my new view.) A more specific belief system, Strong Atheism (the belief that gods definitely don't exist), would still qualify as a religious belief in my opinion. It is a metaphysical belief that is founded on faith (after all, science cannot disprove gods in general). From definition #1 above, the belief implies that the cause of the universe was natural laws (possibly different from the ones in our own universe), the nature of the universe is that it follows the laws of physics, and the purpose of the universe that it has none. Of course, it can also be argued that Strong Atheism isn't a religion also. The only belief about gods that I would consider unarguably not a religion is Weak Atheism or Weak Agnosticism, which basically says that they know of no evidence that a god exists, but could be convinced otherwise if there were some evidence. Most people who call themselves atheists would probably fall in this category. Also, there are a few metaphysical beliefs that probably don't count as religion. The belief that there are parallel universes, or that the universe extends beyond the limit of observation, would both qualify for that.

That would technically be true (except for religion, because people of any race/group can convert). But I think you will find that due to our very long generation times, our ability to rapidly move throughout the globe, and that people of different races actually do mate with each other even when socially condemned, no such groups are likely to remain separate long enough to become genetically incompatible. Remember that species can merge, and that even a rather small amount of gene flow can prevent speciation.

No. Science has almost never been shown to be wrong, though some scientific theories were shown to be incomplete, unnecessary, or inaccurate. The scientific method and proper formulation of theories including error margins and confidence values allows scientists to make true statements even if they are very confused. Observations, after all, aren't wrong, even if what appears to be the best explanation for them are. Consider: the earth may not be flat, but any small enough section of the earth is approximately flat. The sun does go around the earth, from earth's rotating reference frame. Newtonian mechanics is correct, at the speeds and measurement error margins that were available at the time. Statistical analysis of various types have been "wrong", but they have confidence values for that. Etc... Fraud, of course, is wrong, but that is lying, not science.

No? How old are you? Unless my faith in human ingenuity is badly misplaced, we will be able to start doing some GM on people within a few decades. Sure, I'll be old, but still alive, hence it will be our problem (since most of us internet folks are young, we should still be alive).

A true nerd! I bet you're glad to have the internet so you don't need to talk to people face to face. I don't remember how old I was when I first started with computer games, but it was with DOS and I think was before I could write properly, other than the appropriate DOS commands to get a game of course.

Yes, in the current state, GM is far from the point where it could effectively be used on humans. First we need to figure out how to use it properly in animals. As to the "problem" of a superior human... well, that's the point. Make humanity better. And yes, it will start with the rich, but it can pass along more easily than be created. I mean, it can't be that hard to get some sperm from a rich kid. In any case, all superior genes should eventually be passed down to everyone after a few generations, even without intentionally trying to get them.

I've always thought that school should teach more of life skills instead of focusing so much on academics. If they spent a little time nurturing a healthy love of learning, then maybe the kids would have something more worthwhile to do than play computer games and watch TV all day. Anyhow, I learned a bunch of physics and other science during leisure reading, and even learned calculus. However, I study much slower on my own, and the education is less formal. However, it would be interesting if there were good online textbooks.

I still have 3 days of finals left. Why am I goofing off on SFN instead of studying, you ask? Wish I knew

Most chemical reactions produce heat as a result. Sometimes it is a small quantity, and sometimes the reaction is endothermic... but usually it is exothermic.

I have a pretty bad weakness too, I'll post it later though. --- My biggest weakness seems to be procrastination, or a lack of initiative to do uninteresting things.