THS product set in Kenya?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by tantric

Okay, no. The computer bit - the idea that a computer can take a genome then predict the adult organism is ludicrous. .

But the idea that it can be of equal or greater intelligence to a human is fine? If that was to be judged by current computers it would be ludicrous. Current state of the art produces computers with the real world/real time intelligence of insects or lizards.

A rather high degree of advancement in that SOTA is assumed both in real world predictions and Transhuman Space.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

But the idea that it can be of equal or greater intelligence to a human is fine? If that was to be judged by current computers it would be ludicrous. Current state of the art produces computers with the real world/real time intelligence of insects or lizards.

A rather high degree of advancement in that SOTA is assumed both in real world predictions and Transhuman Space.

Tantric is correct in that the complexity of simulating the exact effect of genetic changes in the zygote on the adult human organism is computationally untenable, but he seems to be confusing genefixing with genemodding. Technically, genefixing does modify a human genome, but so does the natural process of conjugation. Genefixing does not however introduce new genetic material, any more than conjugation, rather alleles (versions of a particular feature gene) are screened and some replaced. This is a bit like replacing one ancestor with another, and while it can produce bad results, so can natural conjugation and the unsimulatability of genetic changes is just as much of a problem there.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

And I think you are wrong about that. I see that you sliced off the ideological modifiers. I put those in there for a good reason. Leaving them out confuses matters a bit.

But then it looks like it's the ideological qualifiers that really count, and the WEIRDness is pretty much irrelevant. (And I suspect that virtually everyone on these boards is, technically speaking, WEIRD.)

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

But then it looks like it's the ideological qualifiers that really count, and the WEIRDness is pretty much irrelevant. (And I suspect that virtually everyone on these boards is, technically speaking, WEIRD.)

The ideologies in question exist/originate within a WEIRD context. But some have spread beyond the WEIRD world, and by no means do all WERIDs adhere to either leftist or libertarian ideologies. I stand by the combination as a broad but meaningful combination of demography and political analysis.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

Tantric is correct in that the complexity of simulating the exact effect of genetic changes in the zygote on the adult human organism is computationally untenable,.

Maybe if you're trying to "Visualize" things in Arisian mode but you don't do this without large quantities of real world data. You just don't obtain this data from unethical and semi-random exp0eriemnts.

You obtain it from normal medical treatment. For genefixing computer simulation may not be necessary. We can already identify some genes with really negative consequences like BRCA1 (strongly associated with breast cancer). We also know we can replace that one with benign copies genes at the same site that aren't associated with breast cancer.

They've found genes that appear to be associated with PTSD and a large number of other problems both congenital and appearing alter in life.

These can go quite a bit farther. If you can find any Tour de France athletes who don't abuse steroids you'll have a place where you can start looking for genes that could provide cardiovascular benefits and possibly even HT+1 along with Fit or extra FP.

Things like this will eventually reveal the human body's secrets even down to the genetic code and no vivisection or breeding of 3-eyed children will ever be involved. The computers won't be operating in God Mode but they will be quite useful in a more detail oriented framework answering questions such as "This gene _here_ codes for production of _this_ protein. How much of that protein do we want?".

Probably no one is operating in God Mode and it's al about a fantastic number of little things working together but that's not a bad definition of the human body.

[tantric]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

But the idea that it can be of equal or greater intelligence to a human is fine? If that was to be judged by current computers it would be ludicrous. Current state of the art produces computers with the real world/real time intelligence of insects or lizards.

A rather high degree of advancement in that SOTA is assumed both in real world predictions and Transhuman Space.

No, it's not. We know about exoplanets' meteorology than our own neurology. AI is part of the setting, and it's neat. Oh, there will be machines that past Turning tests, but I have no interest in that as a measure of intelligence. If you met a real alien, would it be able to flawlessly impersonate a human? Can a computer write poems that rip at your soul? Could a computer ever come up with mono no aware, or baseball or snuff-films?

Frankly, I don't buy AI at all. They might be *useful* and even smart, but not aware.

[tantric]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

Why is it good to let people keep catching malaria so they can be cheaply cured, but replacing the gene that allows malaria with one that grants immunity is bad? Who are you to decide which sort of suffering is preferable?

Actually, the entire pharmaceutical industry needs to die. Medical research should be funded by tax dollars, which the research gears towards helping the most people, not those that can pay the most. If the money that went into erectile dysfunction was used for malaria research, we'd have a *vaccine*. But people with malaria are poor, and horny old men are rich.

Do you know of sleeping sickness? The old drug was so terrible it killed 5% of the people and another 20% had permanent renal damage...until they stopped making it. Then someone invented a great new drug, that was much safer...but African's couldn't afford, so the pharms stopped making it....until it was noticed that it makes women's eyebrows grow. Yeah, the Brooke Shields stuff. People died in masses for decades, but hey, now they can get the drug because it makes eyebrows grow...now, do you take that as a benefit of the system or something horrid?

Who am I??? Seriously? You think people with ED suffer more than people with cerebral malaria? It doesn't take a genius, or a epidemiology doc drop out. Who are you to decide that ethnic cleansing is wrong? It's not YOUR culture...

--------------edit all apologies, I'm VERY grouchy today

[sir_pudding]

Response to something tantric said taken to the Sticky Thread of Doom.

[jeff_wilson]

Some relevant WP articles on hard-to-model biology like protein folding:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein...rotein_folding

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein...x_and_kinetics

If we take the Levinthal number given, 10E+143, and the year 1969 for our baseline, there have been 30 Moore's Law periods since then, so the number is equivalent to the not-particularly-less-intractible 10E+134 today.

Numbers of such magnitudes rise from combinations and permutations, which increase very rapidly, like how each ball added to a lottery drawing multiplies the odds against winning by 50. It's also why we are able to write numbers in the trillions with only twice as much effort as writing a number in the millions. However, writing *every* number in the trillions is very very time consuming, let along doing anything meaningful with it, even for computers.

I can digress into extremely technical detail if challenged; I've got a master's degree in computer science and I'm not afraid to use it!

[Keiko]

Originally Posted by tantric

Frankly, I don't buy AI at all. They might be *useful* and even smart, but not aware.

I find I lean in this direction more and more along with wondering even if we could create self aware machines should we?