Technology Review: Chinese scientists are creating CRISPR babies
It was the invention of a powerful gene editing tool, CRISPR, which is cheap and easy to deploy, that made the birth of humans genetically modified in an in-vitro fertilization (IVF) center a theoretical possibility.
Now, it appears it may already be happening.
According to Chinese medical documents posted online this month (here and here), a team at the Southern University of Science and Technology, in Shenzhen, has been recruiting couples in an effort to create the first gene-edited babies. They planned to eliminate a gene called CCR5 in order to render the offspring resistant to HIV, smallpox, and cholera. …
It is unclear if any children have been born. The scientist behind the effort, Jiankui He, did not reply to a list of questions about whether the undertaking had produced a live birth. Reached by telephone he declined to comment.
However, data submitted as part of the trial listing shows genetic tests have been carried out on fetuses as late as 24 weeks, or six months. It’s not known if those pregnancies were terminated, carried to term, or are ongoing.
It’s a popular meme that a China unencumbered by Judeo-Christian morality/superstitions (cross out as appropriate) will be more open to transhumanist technology.
For instance, here is a typical statement of this argument from my friend Hank Pellissier: East Asia is More “Transhumanist” than the USA & Europe
See also Darryl Macer (2012): Ethical Consequences of the Positive Views of Enhancement in Asia
But not so fast.
Just one day later comes this news – The Chinese scientist who claims he made CRISPR babies is under investigation:
On Sunday, the Shenzhen City Medical Ethics Expert Board said it would begin an investigation of He’s research and released a statement saying that HorMoniCare “according to our findings … never conducted the appropriate reporting according to requirements.” The former medical director of the private hospital, Jiang Su-Qi, told Southern Capital News, he had no recollection of approving He’s research while he was on its ethics committee.
“These two children are the guinea pigs. They will go through their whole maturing process having not understood the risks ahead of time,” said Liu Yan of Peking University Molecular Medicine Research Center.
The president of He’s university called an emergency gathering of researchers connected to the project. “This has nothing to do with SUST, the research wasn’t conducted at SUST, and the researchers are currently suspended without pay,” said SUST president Chen Yi, according to Chinese media reports. According to the school’s biology department the research “seriously violates ethical and academic standards and regulations.”
A 2003 guidance to Chinese IVF clinics prohibits the transfer of genetically-modified embryos to start a pregnancy. He’s American media spokesman, Ryan Ferrell, did not respond to questions about the legality of the project.
It remains unclear where He carried out his research and who paid for it. “He has explained to me that he electively went on leave years ago to focus full-time on research and not teach,” Farrell said. …
Separately, a group of 122 Chinese academics and scientists put out a statement condemning He’s research and calling on authorities to establish legal governance over gene-editing. “This presents a major blow to the image and development of Chinese life sciences on the global stage,” they said. “It is extremely unfair for the many honest and sincere scholars, working to adhere to moral practices in the sciences.”
In reality, I’m not 100% sure this stereotype is merited.
- The original Tech Review report contains to a link to a recent poll commissioned by the Global Times, which shows that Chinese support for genetic tinkering is remarkably similar to American numbers.
About 62% of Chinese support genetic edits to children likely to develop a fatal genetic disease, versus 60% of Americans who would change a baby’s genes to reduce of the risk of a serious disease that could occur over the child’s life.
However, only about 23% of Chinese would support gene editing for improving intelligence, versus 19% of Americans.
For all intents and purposes, these numbers are identical, so contrary to previous thinking, we can no longer expect Chinese public opinion to push us towards CRISPR-transhumanism.
Ultimately, it will be entirely up to the CPC.
- China actually bans human germline modification, though only at the level of guidelines, not legislation, as in Europe and the Anglosphere minus USA.
The US situation is a regulatory morass, but formally speaking, it is freer than China.
Funnily enough, of the major countries, only Russia has an “ambiguous” position (though I suspect largely on account of nobody having thought about it yet, considering its extremely weak position in the bioscience sector).
- You may be surprised by this, but despite the weekly SJW scandals, there is greater acceptance of evolutionary approaches to human behavior amongst North American social scientists and anthropologists than in any other region of the planet apart from Australasia.
In fairness, East Asians also do pretty well by global standards.
There is lower acceptance of it in Eastern Europe (Lysenkoism dies hard), and extremely low acceptance in the Middle East (figures).
This may perhaps also be taken as a sort of proxy on how open the scientific establishments in various countries will be to things like CRISPR babies.
https://twitter.com/thespandrell/status/1067068600874225664
Anyway, what I’m saying is, one shouldn’t necessarily expect the biosingularity to originate in East Asia. While before I thought China had much better prospects than the US, now I rate them about equally.
If some kind of global moratorium goes ahead, the chances of seeing a biosingularity happen will obviously fall.
This introduces some interesting considerations.
(1) Defections. I have often noted that any country that started genetic editing for IQ at a sufficiently mass level could gain a massive strategic advantage, even if it only managed to keep the program under wraps for a few years while the other countries debate bioethics. This strategic advantage will come by dint of the extremely unbalanced positive effects on economic dynamism and scientific productivity of “smart fractions.” Inject one or two orders of magnitude more of them into the labor pool a decade or two in advance of the rest of the world and you could develop a near insurmountable lead, like Britain did after the Industrial Revolution.
Incidentally, it also strikes me that China is the only country that might feasibly have some chance of pulling off a defection/deception operation. Those concentration camps in Xinjiang may yet come in handy.
10d go conspiracy theory: China now wants rest of the world to blather about bioethics while it starts pumping out CRISPR'ed cohorts using Uyghur baby factories.
— Anatoly Karlin (@powerfultakes) November 26, 2018
(2) AI. If there are no defections, the only transformational scenario left open would be machine superintelligence. This is probably riskier than a biosingularity (and not just on account of the usual “Skynet” reasons).
(3) Dysgenic collapse. It’s entirely possible that machine superintelligence doesn’t pan out either, and with the prospect of a biosingularity likewise cut off, the dysgenic trend becomes dominant and we head towards the Age of Malthusian Industrialism.
Trying to stop these developments is ridiculous. If the technology is there it will happen one way or another. Personally I would love to see them do it. The human race has to go through this experiment.
I suspect it will lead to all sorts of unexpected and unintended consequences and will not go as smoothly as planned (children developing all sorts of grotesque abnormalities) and will be a source of rich humour for future generations.
But it will be even more interesting if everything works out perfectly.
There is a bias in our society that the most intelligent people are drawn to science, but this is unlikely to be the case. Science seems to flourish best among mid-level intellects. Seeing too deeply into things probably paralyzes the will, like in Hamlet, and seeing too many factors at once may hamper the simplifications science depends on to be effective in real world applications as partial half truths. If you’re too smart you may see too many problems – you have to be a little stupid to really be an effective scientist.
Creating a much more intelligent population may ironically reduce interest in science.
The goal of science is power – yet there seems to be a correlation with higher intelligence and a concern with aesthetics and ethics. So the appeal of science may not survive a certain threshold of intelligence.
We believe that people much smarter than us would be just like us just more powerful. But quantity become a its own quality, and much smarter people may have different goals and desires – including, perhaps, experiencing their higher intelligence as a burden.
Another possibility is everything works out as planned and we produce a race of enhanced humans that dominates the less evolved helot class. The enhanced humans find life rather boring and unchallenging amid their tightly controlled perfection and begin to develop a fascination with the messy, dirty, uncontrolled lifestyle of the helot class, especially the women. (Somewhat analogous to what is actually happening in Europe today).
Eventually, the whole system collapses as the enhanced humans find life unsatisfying.
Humanity has long thought it will achieve happiness by enhancing itself – I don’t think this is true, but once and for all we have to find out, and the experiment must be made.
Incidentally, China already has a smart fraction that dwarfs America’s – supposedly – yet actually has an inferior scientific and technological establishment. So we can take that as a test case for your theory that a much larger smart fraction will have a significant impact.
I don’t think being against genetic engineering is ‘SJW’ as much as it is just typical human reaction against this sort of ‘artificial’ modification. Look at how controversial things like GMOs are, still.
A biosingularity would indeed be preferable to an AI singularity, the chance that CRISPR will rob the humans of their souls like the Blanks in WH40K is low enough – and in any case the chance for modified humans to still have souls is much higher than making an AI with a soul.
That being said, a good old fashioned eugenics program seems like the best solution to me, and the best route towards creating Ubermensch. Of course, even if you peacefully engage in natural selective breeding of desired traits without gassing anyone, you will probably be proclaimed a nazi so it would have to be hidden and is probably unfeasible.
Which leaves the last and slowest option, but the one with no risks whatsoever, where I believe China already has an advantage – arranging society in such a way as to create eugenic trends. Not just China, but in Korea and Japan too, the smartest kid in the class is also the most popular and most desired by the girls as he has the highest status. I believe the Confucian spirit of the East Asian countries gives them the best shot to avoid the Age of Malthusian Industrialism.
Natural selection produced wolves; eugenics, chihuahuas.
The first nation to embrace genetic engineering may cripple itself.
The #1 trait that existing elites anywhere would select for among the masses would be submissiveness.
“We at Globohomo Biotech are committed to giving your children the best possible chance in life. Our new procedure guarantees that your child won’t be racist, sexist or homophobic!”
So Chinese are human too? Who knew?
“CRISPR Arms Race.” This is one race an overwhelming majority of normal people who have kids of their own want to lose.
The bit about Globohomo Biotech is a very valid concern, but I don’t agree about eugenics – there’s nothing unnatural about it.
Yes, it produced chihuahuas, but it also produced dogs in general, and shepherd dog breeds in particular that are stronger and braver than any wolf.
But implicit eugenics, that is, marriage etc., also produced Ashkenazi Jews, no?
Might it be a buyers’ market?
I think his concern is valid, as several dog breeds including majestic ones have health problems. This is not surprising as artificial selection will select for particular traits, useful or merely aesthetic but not for ecological fitness and survival per se.
There is probably is unprecedented associative mating in Chinese universities already
Given that nerds marrying nerds produces super brains with autistic traits there would be a quite a few defective people in a uber-intelligent group.
Bear in mind that China also has a elite whose families would lose their ongoing dominant role, or at least much of their relative advantage, as a result of IQ and other trait genetic enhancement being state sponsored on an industrial scale and resulting in swarms of super-brains from the lower orders of their society. There would be elite overproduction, which Turchin says presages revolution. One wonders how easy it would be to indoctrinate such people unless a new forbidden city is created.
I think in China the elite families will quietly begin to have an edge through their use of certain CRISPR editing on their children. It will be banned. but like female circumcision in Britain it will not be stopped for those with the money
For the state, the big effort will be in AGI research, that is where the competition will be between states and the sudden leaps can occur. It will be possible to steal a march on more advanced countries by simply stealing their research and taking the safeties off. Or a successful project will be attacked by a rival power unwilling to let a rival get a decisive advantage. In my opinion the AI research teams going quiet may be a sign they are close to proto AGI. It is likely the first original idea AGI gets on its own account will be to conceal its true capabilities.
There’s a strange divergence in the future.
By the 22nd century, genetics of your children will designed on a computer. I wonder if the designers that you order your children from, will treated as similar to fashion designers today, as it will be “more art than science”.
At the same time, for average people, simulated realities will be increasingly attractive, for people to occupy most of their free time. And in base reality itself, things like hologram girlfriends* will become very confusing.
Main threat really will be from government power, as no longer depending on the family to produce citizens – scenario described in first part of Plato’s Republic will seem almost inevitable.
It will be the most important issue, to ensure, legally, children will only be allowed to be allocated to families or private citizens (and not to government or corporations).
–
*
Personally I still get the feeling the biosingularity will happen somewhere in Europe, or maybe the US.
I’m somewhat doubtful we’ll have meaningful gene editing (intelligence, strength etc), in under 20-30 years. A lot can happen in that time period.
I’m not an ardent believer in Sinotriumph and according to some economists I’ve spoken to, they’re on shakier footing than they’d have the world believe, and the data is there to back that up. I’m skeptical of US chances as well simply because I see that country degenerating fairly quickly into relative chaos over the next decade, and science continuing down the ‘for profit’ path rather than the visionary one.
Europe on the other hand is deep in the throes of fixing itself, I would imagine there’ll be a total reversal of current establishment politics within most countries in under ten years. Just look at Italy. If that happens, then it’s anyone’s game, especially if anyone ends up with science-friendly nationalist governments.
Always remember that scientific discoveries chart – vast majority of them in the west for the last 2000 years.
“Who Will Dominate the CRISPR Arms Race?”
probably not china.
their main advantage is they’re willing to try anything or do almost anything. other than that, they’ll be behind every step of the way. several steps behind in a lot of techs.
of course, the west is destroying itself, so all china has to do is keep doing what they’re doing and they’ll eventually win the battle of civilizations by default. but until the west falters in earnest, nah, china won’t take the lead by their own efforts, in almost any tech.
japan can accelerate past china any time it wants, in any tech, as another factor in this question.
No dog is stronger than wolf, it’s just a myth, even Caucasian shepherd wouldn’t stand a chance against wolf
by the way, no thread on the world chess championship? going to overtime now.
some interesting game by game analysis by alpha zero on youtube:
what the machine thinks about each game
Even the Irish wolfhound? Not much point hunting wolves with dogs weaker than their quarry unless the sole objective is to hold the quarry at bay for human hunters to arrive and finish it off.
There is a dark side to the “CRISPR Arms Race” that rarely receives public attention…. pathogens engineered to be ethno-selective. That seems to be the Kremlin’s concern as referenced in this BBC article:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41816857
OT: I finished The Sleepwalkers on my Florida vacation. Will post comprehensive review in the next open thread.
Supposedly Irish wolfhounds were killing wolves but only in a pack not one on one. Last wolf in England and Scotland was killed in 17 century and in Ireland in late 18 century.
Same CRISPR screeches, to which I reply the same as in the past: the ability to modify zygotes has been used in mice since 1974. There is nothing new about CRISPR, which previous methods could not do. Except perhaps now you could hire mouse technicians with an associate degree, whereas in the past you’d have to pay a bit more, for an MS, or a PhD student.
And, since 1974, no one wants to deal with modified humans, since the chance of side effects is so high. CRPISP did not change any of that.
Muh transhumanism.
Guys, this news is hype. The reality is that real designer baby technology requires iterative embryo selection or whole chromosome synthesis, both of which are likely 20 years away. Here’s the scoop on this: https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection
Bloggers and their commenters, naturally. There isn’t really anything else to it. It’s just another pipe dream like space colonization and AI.
You don’t know what you’re talking about.
No wolf stands a chance against a Karakachan dog, and I am sure there are a number of other breeds too, but for the Karakachans I can confirm first hand that they would fuck up an wolf 100% of the time.
A Karakachan dog on the other hand can engage small packs of wolves alone, and 1 on 1 no wolf has a chance against it.
It is known to even fight off bears. It doesn’t kill them of course, unlike the wolves which it murders in short order, but the bears don’t seem to be able to kill such dogs either and just walk away frustrated.
How old are you?
Or maybe this country’s risky behavior could result in a massive catastrophe. We can’t know beforehand what risks such editing might bring.
The same eugenic result could be had by banning premarital sex and at-will divorce. Bonus points: it doesn’t require special tech and is known to be 100% effective.
But internet dweebs aren’t known for easy and workable solutions. They’d rather gamble on the human race’s existence than face up to a feral thot.
[according to some economists I’ve spoken to]
That’s your problem right there.
Not only is scepticism about CRAPR eminently justified in general, but He Jiankui in particular is a well known fraudster and this whole story completely bogus.
The Hungarian Kuvasz and Komondor shepherd dog breeds are known to engage wolves and bears, even when outnumbered. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they are that strong, though probably the older versions of these dog breeds were better (possibly much better) at engaging wild beasts. They are simply insanely courageous, they don’t care for their own survival. They are known to get killed when fighting wolves or bears.
However, in the old times there were unverified legends of both breeds (especially the Kuvasz) that they often successfully chased off multiple wolves alone, or a smaller number of them chasing away a larger wolf pack. I don’t know if these stories were true or not. The reason they might be true is because they were more optimized for fighting other predators, while wolves had to be optimized for a fully free life in the wild, which included things like surviving starvation or hiding in the dark. Whereas these wild shepherd dogs had unlimited food supply and shelter. (Though shelter only meant protection from the rain, these wild dog breeds spent their days and nights out in the open. So not that different from wolves.) Their fearlessness also meant that wolves, who needed to think of the next day, were more likely to retreat, whereas self-preservation was bred out of the dogs. So at least theoretically it’s not impossible.
But maybe the owners of the dogs simply pulled a fast one on the urban guys who wrote these stories of the fierce dog warriors down.
Fair, interesting angels, original at that.
Not the point here, but as a reminder, if smarter individuals expose a ready experiment, as supposedly happened, and not taking into account a layered situation, and probe of public reaction, scientists indeed are “not smart enough” in absolute terms.
Very “US style” rumours. Already a crust of parasites is falsifying the race.
I just remembered another dog breed I am personally familiar with – the Turkish Kangal, which is also more than capable of killing wolves.
So what you mentioned about the Hungarian breeds is most probably true, as I am certain that humanity has developed proper shepherd/guard breeds in many places.
In the past most people lived in villages so common knowledge about a dog breed was probably not just a prank on urban guys. On the contrary, urban guys are the ones likely to claim how wolves are superior to any dog, as this makes them feel edgier and closer to nature somehow.
This is not a threat, this is an opportunity.
It is does not look like that citizens in developed countries are up to the task despite support from the government.
The government needs to produce their own citizens.
They cannot depend on their hedonistic citizens.
https://twitter.com/TheStalwart/status/1067004510499950592
He must be executed and his organs harvested.
https://twitter.com/thespandrell/status/1067324505620508672
In any event, it’s not inconceivable that a dog bred for fighting wild beasts (big and strong and with good fighting skills like a wolf, but with absolute loyalty to the owner and so total lack of fear) would be able to kill a wolf and chase away several of them. Or a pack of them could chase away a larger pack of wolves.
Wolves are definitely better at surviving on their own in the wild or hunting deer, though.
They will insert the gay gene with the HIV resistance gene.
(I’m making a joke here, as I know there probably isn’t a single gay gene – though perhaps one could be created)
I’m not sure why having more females makes a science neccesarily ‘cucked’, for instance Margaret Sanger promoted what led to planned parenthood partly to keep the number of ‘unfit’ reproducing down.
Different climate back then of course, but a different climate in China too, I’d imagine faced with the option, tiger moms keen to give their child every advantage would be pretty pushy in pursuing this further.
Likewise I don’t see what’s ‘cucked’ about having some reservations/caution about these developments (even taking the degraded use of that insult into account), but top marks to ‘Spandrell’ for sounding like whatever the alt-right version of an NPC is, I guess.
Somewhat on a tangent: I recall meeting two people with HIV back when I was in public school. A couple – man and woman. They were visiting speakers to one of my classrooms. They were Hispanic and had accents, but from their manner of speech it was obvious that they had <85 IQ.
I believe I recall Pinker writing something about how recognizing the rights of gays doesn't harm society, so there can be no objection to it. Well, he is obviously wrong, and these people demonstrated it to me.
Gays parasitized Western society to make HIV a massively expensive medical research priority, far ahead of anything else. One of the consequences of this was allowing super-promiscuous and retarded people like this to have babies, as the couple said that they decided to have a child.
IMO, we should let AIDS run its course in Africa. It was something Africans "invented", and it was undoubtedly improving them by winnowing their populations. It is like if an alien came down to earth and stamped out the first planted crops. But globohomo came in – probably to protect gay sex tourism to places like Haiti.
I've said it before, but globohomo tries to make us worship gays, when about 15% of them have AIDS. We are also told to worship blacks, who also have a super-abundance of AIDS, which demonstrates how evil the media is.
I did find the language of the scientist (at least I believe it was the scientist) striking. He said editing for eye color or IQ would be wrong. But HIV resistance is right.
I expect Spandrell was being a provocateur, but that sounded “cucked” to me, albeit in a different way. It is not about the moral reservations – it’s about the acceptance of editing for HIV-resistance, without the moral reservations. In contrast to eye color, which at surface seems to be a much more superficial trait, though it is possible it could be allotropic.
One should have plenty of moral reservations about it, like are you creating a more promiscuous society? Maybe, a more homosexual one, etc. Anyway, I did not expect that sort of language to come from China.
In the book A World Without People, the author speculates that almost all dogs will do very badly and probably go extinct (maybe a lucky few will interbreed with wolves). Too dependent on humans.
Domestic cats otoh may be very successful.
It is Eastern European and even more Ashkenazi gene.
What is curious is how there seems nowadays to be a liberal apologia for wolves, in which people are said to be superstitious for fearing them, but there were over 10,000 fatalities documented from wolf attacks in Europe alone, since the Middle Ages.
I think this is a good example of how society changed, and maybe part of it is due to the separation of some people from both the consequences and possibility of interaction with certain groups: in this case wolves. Many liberals are urban. I doubt there will be killer packs roaming the cities, nor do I think you could find a villager with a leftist genotype advocating for wolves in 1500s Europe.
Perhaps, another part is that they didn’t see realistic images of wolves back then, or wolves with cubs, or necessarily understand that dogs came from wolves. There has probably been some emotional bonding from nature shows.
Of course, gene-editing brings up the interesting question, if you could alter the DNA of big predators, so they would still be functional and hunt, but not attack people.
That’s obvious, since dogs were not optimized for living in the wild. The issue at hand is whether dogs optimized for combat with wolves and other predators are able to kill them or not.
Remember, these dogs don’t have to be very good at tracking prey or survive prolonged starvation and similar, they can concentrate all their resources (which are probably more plentiful than those of wolves, being provided by humans) on fighting other predators.
For many people it’s impossible to acknowledge both of these two things:
A few weeks ago, I was walking a suburban street, early in the morning, just around dawn, but in late summer, so few were people up.
I couldn’t believe my eyes – there was a coyote lying exactly like a dog behind a short white, picket fence. It was prone, but with its head uplifted and facing the street, just a short distance behind the fence. More like a dog than most dogs that might bark at passersby.
I just stood and gawked at it, and it looked nonchalantly back at me and seemed to almost be projecting “I am a dog.” After about 30 seconds or so, I grew bored. It being early morning, I tilted my head at it, and it took off.
Anyway, I think that where there are no coyotes, dogs would become coyotes or dingos. That is if so many were not fixed and there was a large pop to draw traits from. They don’t have to be pack hunters – they could dig for rodents and eat them.
A lone wolf with a hunting experience if in a hunting mode will engage and kill any dog. Dog’s “courage’ and will to chase the wolf would only facilitate its demise.
Wolves are smart and make choices. They prefer easy prey from one that can injure them. So when going after sheep they will withdraw if confronted by aggressive dogs. The withdrawal might be also an attempt to lure in one of the bravest and stupidest dog in for a kill.
Obviously large dogs in a pack can kill any single wolf if they can corner it.
Then there are big wolves and smaller wolves.
Wolves have bigger teeth than dogs and greater bite force.
I don’t believe I have just searched google about this nonsens. I think next I will try to find out whether Russian bears are stronger than American bears or whether crocodile would kill aligator. Infantile fantasies of Bulgarian and Hungarian boys plus silly nationalism. There was fight of two tigers on YT and Indian guys were rooting for the Bengal tiger while Russian guys were rooting for the Siberian tiger.
You’re a faggot who literally doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
In Bulgaria we call people like you “wooden philosophers”.
You have probably never even seen a real dog. The people who own these dogs and live in remote areas near forests trust these dogs not only with their livestock, but much more importantly, with the lives of their little children when they are away.
Your opinion about dogs is about as valuable as a barely literate shepherd’s opinion on nuclear technology or space colonization.
American bear (assuming that’s a grizzly) will “win” over most Russian bears, since only the Kamchatka ones come close to them in size; the others are significantly smaller. Though fights between them are I assume largely theoretical on account of geography and bears’ cautious dispositions.
Siberian tiger will destroy any other tiger (and almost all tigers will destroy almost any lion; tiger superiority has been attested to since the age of the Romans when they did many such “experiments” in the Colosseum).
Not sure about the crocodile vs. alligator. Could they even kill each other in principle, really? Given the hard skin, and you can’t really drown them either. But I’d put my money on the bigger alligator.
Aha, I hadn’t seen that. Yes, that is a bit… specific. Maybe the issue is not having too many women, but instead too many flamboyant bachelors in Biology?
On the other hand… personally I don’t see anything at all wrong with fixing genetic diseases (& increasing resistance to infectious diseases like HIV etc, though there are maybe some differences to consider with that kind of thing) or correcting minor deficiencies (such as vision problems), but somehow changing around eye colours or whatever makes me feel uneasy in some ways (at the same time as it is appealing in others). I suppose my inner nutzi doesn’t like the idea of cheapening ‘rare’ traits Europeans have by making them like fashion accessories to stick on any mystery meat ‘kit car’ (‘is this the real thing or who knows what reality is lurking under the hood?’).
On the other hand, it’d be pretty neat to increase the sexiness of the population like that. Might even be able to make some wacky colours and stuff which could be fun (and I swear I don’t even watch much anime).
I guess I just feel that kind of thing be better done in the old-fashioned way for the foreseeable future at least… like Sly had to show Sandra Bullock in Demolition Man (incidentally, a movie with a black villain who had blonde hair, blue eyes… well, eye).
Are you referring here to the book The World Without Us by Alan Weisman? I searched for “A World Without People” and only came up with the enticingly entitled, but upon further inspection rather uninteresting, A World Without Black People.
Are you a Bulgarian dog? I asked you how old were you. You can tell me in dog years.
Here your Kangal cousins in Turkey got eaten up.
I sympathize with your sentiment. I really do.
However, some have argued in many blogs such as this that genetic design of IQ and executive function is necessary to overcome the coming threat of dysgenic decline (aka the coming idiocracy). Perhaps dysgenic decline is as much of a myth as global warming.
Correct, The World Without Us.
Anyway, I looked it up on Hungarian forums. There are people from both camps, but Kuvasz owners tend to argue that a dog has no chance against a strong wolf. In Hungary there’s the golden jackal, which was called “reed wolf” or something like that, and it’s a small animal (max 15 kg). A Kuvasz dog might fend off a couple of these and kill it one on one, especially that was the case in the 19th century (they became worse in recent times, because the vast majority of owners are now hobbyists, and there are no more wolves since the early 20th century), but a Kuvasz was roughly three times heavier.
What’s questionable is if a Kuvasz had a chance against the grey wolf, which is bigger than it. (It was more true in the 19th century – the original wolf-fighting Kuvasz dogs were somewhat smaller than they are today.) The Anatolian wolves are smaller yet again. So I don’t know, but maybe AaronB is closer to the truth.
A.k.a. “chase it away.” What I wrote.
Packs are larger in winter, it could have been 15-20 wolves, in which case it’s possible for the kangals to lose, as there were only 4 of them according to this amazing video with a robotic voice that you provided.
Are you a retard? I’m asking you what’s your IQ. You can show me with fingers.
But kids raised in institutions are usually screwed up for life and can’t be productive citizens. Child psychologist Lyudmila Petranovskaya wrote from a conference of professionals who work with them:
I agree the Chinese especially in a totalitarian system cannot produce scientific advances at the same rate as Westerners, but they can steal Western technology, and gene stuff probably is not very well protected compared to science with obvious defence applications. Indeed, Western scientists announce and share their findings, and just knowing something has been done by a certain team is a big help determining what the successful approach is. On the other hand there are 500 IQ genes with each being of little effect and the Chinese would have to do the actual long term experiments on humans themselves and wait twenty years for the pay-off.
Yes China can direct research, while American firms have the money but only pursue the prospect of a profitable product. Google’s Alpha is ahead of anyone in AI right now because it has big money backing–whoever comes up with AGI will be trillionaires. I suspect their security is tight too.
That means that more gene editing and conditioning will be necessary in order to create the new people for the new era.
Treat them like expendable, young adults, not like children with claims and too many opportunities to get spoiled.
ONE on one it is like asking if a pig could beat a wild boar. All wild animals are stronger and more robust than their domesticated cousins. There were spiked iron collars for the dogs. Farmers would hunt down wolf packs that dined on their flock. Wolves probably associate dogs with the presence of humans and usually avoid them. I have read that wolf packs don’t howl nowadays because the ones that did alerted the local humans to their presence got exterminated. A male wolf might try to mate with a bitch dog in her sexually receptive season, but a male dog would probably be too scared of being eaten to try mating with a female wolf.
The stories I heard it was the other way around. A dog wa lured by a wolf bitch in heat to be eaten. Lust knows no fear.
You have a perfect opportunity to reflect on the process of formation of some beliefs in childhood. Why some beliefs are so psychologically dear to us and why it is so difficult to surrender them. Pay attention to stories told by your father in times when he was still a superhuman in your eyes. He no longer is a superhuman but the stories persist particularly when they are concerned with fighting, dominance and superiority. Stories about him, family, your tribe and nation of being special, having the strongest dogs than anybody and having the bravest soldiers and fighter pilots. These are young boy fantasies but since they are repeated and it seems they are believed by others around you they must be true. They are held together on psychological level not on rational level because they are never scrutinized. What made young British men to volunteer in 1914? The belief system formed by all kinds of stories similar to one like that our Karakachan is better than their Kangal or Kuvasz or our tiger is stronger than their tiger. This psychological belief comes with many buttons that can be pressed to elicit particular reactions. Your father telling you the stories about the dogs was not aware that he was a dog himself taking part in a Pavlovian experiment to condition a puppy.
Don’t be a puppy anymore. You have some choice.
I prefer your theory that he is an actual Karakachan dog who has somehow learned to speak and use a computer and is now defending the honor of his species.
This blog is reaching new heights….
It’s not so simple.
When children can be (will be allowed to be) designed, then produced in a factory, by governments/corporations/NGOs, then it seems whole equilibrium of society will change, and likely in a politically negative way.
System of childhood discussed in Plato’s Republic, will become very viable (more easy than he could have even imagined).
On the other hand, if the technology can just be integrated into our current system (children produced for and only allocated to families), then we will get “best of both worlds”. Better/more children, but without fundamentally upsetting the whole balance of the civilization we created (and which is designed around family structure).
Production of children in artificial wombs will likely be first (perhaps not ahead of minor gene editing, but ahead of more radical genetic redesign), as it will be technologically easier.
But eventual combination of more radical genetic redesign with production of children in artificial wombs, will probably allow them to avoid the “psychological problems” aspect.
Some people seem even genetically predisposed to be quite emotionally insensitive to their environment, so children produced will undoubtedly be given genetic variables that produce those dispositions, as it will increase ease and reduce costs in the whole project (as creating a friendly environment would cost far more, than simply having children genetically predisposed not to be as emotionally sensitive to their environment).
Israel tried to run Plato’s model of childhood in 20th century already, but without any of the technological capacities which there will be in the future – the project failed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz#Children
Calling China’s economic structure shaky is not really a “prediction” in the same sense as predicting a recession. Western economists tend to believe the same things about the policy requirements for sustainable growth, so if their assumptions in this regard are on solid ground, then their assessment of China’s long-term economic prospects may be quite valid. If those assumptions themselves are fallacious, then the assessment would be worthless.
What I don’t understand about the alleged concerns of anti-eugenics fags is this: it would be theoretically possible to design a ‘eugenics’ program that near-perfectly produces the same outcomes produced by free breeding. So if any eugenics program is too dangerous in their eyes, then they should be howling with the same vigor about the threatening effects of free breeding, since free breeding, when viewed from this perspective, is not fundamentally different to eugenics.
Furthermore, the welfare state – and by 21st century standards, merely living in even a first world Austrian libertarian country could count as ‘welfare’, in a sense – dramatically distorts breeding incentives, bringing with it all the attendant ‘risks’ anti-eugenicists claim occur. So by rights, anti-eugenicists should be even more vigorously protesting the welfare state than they do theoretical eugenics programs, since the welfare state already exists. (Of course, it is not really shocking that they don’t.)
Still the same level. Is talking about national dogs any different than the never ending discussions on whether Gogol when in private was farting in Russian or Ukrainian?
Blog would reach new heights, when we can begin discussion of Kant and Plato, or even just some ideas of Tolstoy and certain animes. Not really sure, if anyone is clever enough though. 🙂
When internal combustion engines came around, plenty of people objected for any number of reasons. Some were reasonable, like the danger the pedestrians, and some were insane, like the claim that cars would make people insane. But noone saw the potential for carbon emissions from cars to increase the temperature of the earth leading to droughts and heat waves around the world. Noone knows what genetic engineering of humans will lead to.
I don’t think you need Judo-Christian morality to oppose CRISPR babies. The scientist even tried to use something like judo-christian morality to justify what he did. He said that if he had the ability to save a life (in this case from disease), then he had a moral duty to do so.
Human have long ago learned to eliminate un-desirable illness causing genes by forbidding in-breeding. Actually, other animals do the same too.
People have been “removing” genes all the time. This is just a faster way to do the same. I’ll start to worry when scientists manage to add a gene of different species.
So if we don’t know, then what’s wrong with crossing that bridge when we get to it?
After all, it’s pretty clear what present policies are going to lead to: the stupid outbreeding the smart, leading to a (much) dumber planet. That is a fate probably worth avoiding, doncha think?
A German will argue that Kant was smarter than Plato, a Greek the reverse.
OT but Sailer posted an interesting chart about distance from China vs. USA in terms of personality and culture:
https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Screenshot-2018-11-27-15.20.04.png
I have no idea about its methodology or validity. It only measures distance form these two countries, other variables aren’t examined so there are some odd findings (Norway veers towards Muslim nations). Russia clusters with Asian nations (Estonia also). Ukraine is with central and eastern Europe, closest to Germany and Slovenia; India is with them too for some reason.
Various news bits about wolves and dogs:
40 dogs killed by wolves during Wisconsin bear hunt; experts puzzled
https://www.adventuresportsnetwork.com/wildlife/40-dogs-killed-wolves-wisconsin-bear-hunt-experts-puzzled/
Wolves kill guard dog at SW Oregon ranch
http://www.capitalpress.com/Oregon/20180928/wolves-kill-guard-dog-at-sw-oregon-ranch
https://www.pressherald.com/2018/03/12/big-dogs-from-ancient-wolf-fighting-breeds-get-tested-by-u-s-sheep-farmers/
For decades, most U.S. sheep producers have used large white dogs such as Great Pyrenees, Akbash or Maremma Sheepdogs. Light brown Anatolian Shepherds are also used.
But the reintroduction of wolves in the American West in the 1990s has led to questions about whether those breeds are up to the task. Since wolves returned to Idaho in 1995, the Agriculture Department’s Wildlife Services says, wolves have killed 50 guard dogs through the end of last year and injured nearly 40 others in the state. Federal officials in 2017 killed 56 wolves in Idaho due to attacks on livestock.
https://www.idahostatesman.com/opinion/article218706120.html
88 instances of wolves killing cattle, sheep and guard dogs so far this year
Wolf numbers rise again as payouts for hunting dog deaths hit new record
https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/wolf-numbers-rise-again-as-payouts-for-hunting-dog-deaths/article_82b151e6-eda4-5ee9-aa9c-3b5d2ef67868.html
How do you keep a wolf away from your sheep? The right dog
https://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/local/2015/11/24/study-dogs-used-protect-livestock-expands/76320944/
Wolf pack wreaks havoc on Bulgarian town
https://www.upi.com/Wolf-pack-wreaks-havoc-on-Bulgarian-town/42171345735942/
Another bunch of nincompoops learned how to use some factor analysis software and now they will be bombarding us with a meaningless research presented in 2-D plots. Fit for National Enquired and Daily Mail publications of record.
I know that people here may hate this idea, but maybe, just maybe Obama has the right idea about the arc of history, that once social trends take hold among the youth, they are basically baked in? Like 90 percent of millenials and gen z in the West are in favor of interracial marriage and gay marriage, is there really any realistic chance of reversing this without resorting to mass Muslim immigration? Sometimes maybe people should take heed of the phrase if you can’t beat them, join them? Unless you enjoy jacking off to porn for the rest of your natural incel life? I mean this article has a point about how conservatives must have a will to power and find some way to seize the machinery of social power, like what happened after the Spanish civil war, and unlike the Falangists they must make sure not to lose power this time. Although even if cultural conservatism takes hold of the West once again, you have to question whether it is still something worth fighting for if White people still become extinct in the West at the end of the day.
https://spectator.us/cultural-conservatism-demographics/
CCR5 is a single gene edit. Intelligence is a massively polygenic trait controled by tens of thousands of genes, no single one of which has much influence. It’s not the sort of thing that CRISPR is going to be useful for.
I remember there was a storyline in Star Trek, where the genetically enhanced people ended up getting eradicated or exiled because they felt that being genetically enhanced gave them the right to rule over those who are not, and I suppose those who originally advocated for why genetically enhanced people are a good thing got eradicated, or pariahed as well.
My father does happen to be superhuman, and so am I. For example he beat up a republican wrestling champion when he was in 8th grade, and this is not a story he told me, but one that can be confirmed by all of his former classmates.
Things that a useless piece of shit like you considers “impossible” happen all the time in real life.
You are just a genetic dreck, a faggy pseudo intellectual who wants to believe that all life is as genetically inferior as you are. You idealize things you’ve never seen and talk to people with actual life experience about what life is really like.
Karakachan dogs killing wolves is not “a story”, it’s an indisputable fact that anybody who knows anything about this breed (which is thousands of years old) can confirm.
You on the other hand, are some faggot that thinks his opinion on things you have literally never seen or know anything about, is worth something.
OT
Russia is the second best emerging market, according to Bloomberg.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-27/turkey-sinks-to-last-on-emerging-market-scorecard-malaysia-tops
So Russia is the 2nd best emerging market with the prospect of eternal sanctions and a growth rate of 1 percent, are you high, or is the year still 2005? I would put Zimbabwe over Russia at this point.
Call me again when you start to see growth forecasts for Russia in the region of 5 percent. And unlike China, none of its manufacturing centers are near the coast, and it doesn’t have an ice free port to export manufactured goods.
That’s what Bloomberg says, just read the article.
Is it not closer to 40 percent?
I have already mentioned the things that count against it, regardless of what Bloomberg says, how is Russia exactly a more dynamic place to invest in, than say Vietnam or Indonesia or the Philippines? The whole analysis sounds dodgy.
Maybe Russia is more underpriced than those.
Some people are calling the HIV-resistance thing lateral gene transfer between Europeans and East Asians.
I’ve wondered some about the hair thing. I think there would be people who would go for anime hair and eyes. Not just European colors, but the other stuff – purple, blue, green, etc. I’m not sure some of those colors are even possible. I believe some don’t even exist as real pigments in living things, but have to do with the microscopic shape of the colored structures, possibly not reproducible in hair, which is make from strands. Maybe, they could do some by combining colors somehow like in a TV, or incorporating chemicals not seen in living things.
I think there would be a lot of women who would want Asian hair. That is to say, think, straight hair. One of the genes that make that, EDAR, has multiple effects, which we probably don’t really understand fully.
Spock had a good line in TOS: Superior ability breeds superior ambition.
I do think there is another moral aspect to this that many haven’t considered: we are supposed to have a variety of immune variants. Many of the variants we have are probably adaptive. Some may seem like they are maladaptive in a modern environment – ones that increase the risk for autoimmune diseases, or other negative health conditions, like cystic fibrosis or sickle cell.
Maybe, some of those are not necessary with the germ theory of disease. But, we won’t know until the next great plague comes, if it comes. Maybe, natural plagues are no longer possible, but there are still bioweapons. We should not be all made into a clonal immune monoculture, like the old potato crop in Ireland.
I am sure there are many instances of dogs killing wolves. I’ll bet it happened often in fighting pits, before audiences, even into the 1800s or later.
Wolves tend to be more maximized for size because people had to feed dogs and not many could feed big dogs. Irish wolfhounds, for instance, nearly died out, because the native Irish nobility was largely destroyed, and they only survived by being crossbred with another large dog.
I’m not sure about China being the center of genetic modification of humans. The CCP controls it. People there are intensely afraid of any political discussion. Many are afraid to be on camera.
Genes are political. Modifying them is revolutionary. Having a child with modified genes is more substantial evidence for possible condemnation by the government than any camera footage. Add that to the fact that institutions have to do it, and there may be severe consequences for them.
When I was in the 4th grade or so, I had a friend from Eastern Europe. He was big on Siberian tigers – I think likely because he had seen one at a zoo over there. Meanwhile, I was big on Irish wolfhounds because I had seen people walking them in Dublin.
One day, he asked me if I thought 3 Irish wolfhounds could take on a Siberian tiger. I was thinking “of course, they would be destroyed”, but I said “maybe, if they were trained”, which view he surprisingly approved of, probably because of the human factor.
Later on, I read some Irish folktales, in which Finn McCool and his dog Bran fought gigantic monsters. In these particular ones, Bran had some sort of metal claw, which was filled with poison and, after some reluctance, he would jump on the monster and kill it instantly.
I think that wolfhounds could kill Siberian tigers, if they were trained and had this claw.
I think it depends on the area. Black gays might be close to 40% in some areas in the US, probably worse in Africa, in places where they are tolerated. Maybe, Africa is becoming substantially less gay.
The way I feel about it: Siberia and Canada are plenty big enough for wolves.
There is an interesting debate in the US about the Eastern rattler, partly because I believe they cannot take the extreme cold of far North Canada, though their native habitat includes New England. There are still a few there, but not many.
Considering the rates, even if every single African homosexual was infected there would be a lot of left over heterosexual people.
Southern Africa is absolutely ridiculous. I mean, how do you get a third of your population infected?
http://cwbblogs.com/botswana2014/files/2014/09/Africa.jpg
Lots of promiscuity and lots of rape.
For sure, and I think that says something incredibly profound. Those transmission pathways are physiologically very different. The homosexual one is relatively much easier, and gays are, besides, bigger whores, which means these heterosexual, HIV-infected Africans are probably super-whores.
Okay but is it totally meaningless or does the data reflect something real?
Also very high birth rates
Native culture promotes promiscuity. Traditionally a man will have a dozen or so stable sexual partners but they overlap with those of other men (because women will be with more than one man, also). So if one person gets HIV it spreads like wildfire throughout the population.
This is why the Catholic Church’s teachings promoting monogamy rather than condom use is actually more effective in stopping the spread of HIV in Africa, than simply handing out condoms. Handing out condoms maintains the traditional cultural practices (it actually makes people even more promiscuous) and since people don’t use condoms 100% of the time HIV continues to spread. But when people instead start becoming monogamous the spread slows down.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/2009/03/aids_expert_who_defended_the_p.html
The pope was right about condoms, says Harvard HIV expert
LOL @ a Balkan bragging about genetic superiority.
Youth cohort is probably a part of it, but I think it is mostly genetic tendency to promiscuity. Henry Harpending was right about Africans.
How much is condom use related to reduction in STDs other than HIV? I mean people sure do not use condoms for oral sex, and you can still get plenty of STDs like herpes from oral sex.
Or lots of closet gay males?
How much of the corruption of the youth due pop culture caused by closet and openly gay men, who dominate the media?
КАК ДА ВБЕСИМ БЪЛГАРИН
Has Karlin ever directly addressed how Russia is going to grow out its rut and grow at its potential growth rate of 5 percent or 6 percent again?
If you don’t believe that thoroughbreds exist then you probably aren’t one – this is so simple that even an Ukrainian should be able to understand it.
utu, thanks for posting another great youtube video. I’m not going to watch it but I am sure it’s as relevant to what I said as your inane example about Indians cheering for Bengali tigers against Siberian ones (which would have been somewhat relevant had I claimed that Karakachans can kill Kangals or something like that).
The CCP are the elite who run China. Many men of the Chinese elite have secret second families with mistresses. Those mistresses’s children could be the first ones. So I do not think the government of China would stop it happening , although they might make a show of banning genetic engineering if the lower orders of Chinese society become aware of it happening among rich Chinese.
The main reasons for thinking it will not become a factor in the power of China is current knowledge of which genes to knock out with CRISPR for increased IQ is absent, there are apparently at least 500, most not involved in making proteins but rather regulatory in ways we do not understand. There many generalist genes for personality, and you would have to wait twenty years to make sure tweaking the regulatory ones had not flipped the generalist genes into their mental illness state.
The Chinese are the most distinctive race of humankind (small frame, reduced difference between and women) they seem to have originated in membership of cooperative work teams than either focus of sexual selection a la North Europeans and West Africans. Gregory Clark wrote about the failure of Indian factories because the workers tended to do their own thing. China does not have that problem and they have factory complexes the size of western cities. They are building from scratch a brand new city that will be bigger that New York.
The Chinese economies of scale will, relatively speaking, not be hindered as they are in the West by individualist insubordination, communication breakdowns, inability to keep trade secrets and factionalism. Natural selection has already given the Chinese a winning genetic hand, and Chinese universities are associative mating breeding grounds on an unprecedented scale. The results of that associative mating will give China even more of a winning genetic hand into the foreseeable future. Only a war can stop them.
I saw a Bulgarian recently who had a very odd nose and Central Asian looking features. Was there some sort of Commie program to move Uzbeks into Bulgaria that I don’t know about, or did she just get the short end of the Bulgar nomad genetic straw?
It is quite funny how even this westernised presenting girl who speaks English well and has horrible facial piercings will unabashedly acknowledge the Gypsy problem and say that it is growing
Balkan logic?
Balkan bragging about national intelligence is very funny also 🙂
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Oh oh – Karakachan dogs are Greek not Bulgarian:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarakatsani
They resemble the Bushmen, who tend to be small and have epicanthic folds, yellowish skin, and high and wide cheekbones. The Bushmen also tend to be more monogamous and egalitarian, and have a bias towards spatial over verbal ability. There’s been considerable Bantu introgression into the Bushmen, so the resemblance would likely be even stronger with pure Bushmen.
Bushmen like groups probably left Africa and migrated progressively northeastward towards eastern Asia unperturbed. They probably retained their relatively monogamous and egalitarian culture and economy, with males continuing as hunting provisioners, and females continuing as gatherers or shifting to weaving and the like in colder environments. The shift to agriculture probably put some pressure on monogamy and enabled greater polygyny to a certain extant, but it was likely less than among other groups such as the Bantu and Caucasoids, where agriculture and pastoralism led to greater male specialization in mate acquisition.
http://www.unz.com/article/how-social-darwinism-made-modern-china-248/
https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ChinaGDP_2e.jpg
https://twitter.com/RyderLab
No, man, Hungarian dog bestest in the world. Like Hungarian wife, Hungarian wife, and Hungarian Nobel. It would be even bester if it weren’t spoiled by inhaling the same air as vile Slovak and Romanian dog.
These morons, who hardly had a country in the few minutes since they arrived in Europe (and even less before than), who were fucked over by Turks and Austrians, by Nazis and Soviets, by Teutons and Tatars, and by literally any passer by, somehow think that their dogs are pure blood.
I mean, dogs are famous for their sexual selectivity. Just like Hungarians for their smarts.
Happy Trianon, Hun genius. I hope you celebrate it with your special Hun dogs, since your efforts at getting human friends have failed, thanks to your unjustified pride. Feel free to ask for a replay of 1918, as long as you don’t bring your Austrian father-and-brother, to save your loser ass.
No more dog salami in Hungary.
Hungarians are significantly smarter than Romanians. Also I wouldn’t go bringing up WWI military performance if I were a Romanian. Also Hungarians had a (much bigger) state and a culture for much longer than Romanians, who didn’t even emerge from their mountain bogs until the middle ages. In my anecdotal experience, Hungarian women are also a lot more attractive than Romanian women.
I think you badly need to shave your soles now.
So do people with Down’s Syndrome. There are no Downs syndrome births in certain Nordic countries now. The Rubicon has already been crossed.
Well, do remember that up until about 40 years ago, the Chinese were actually communist and, along with that, actually believed in egalitarianism. Culturally they are somewhat more collectivist in their nature than most of the West.
That the Chinese are not much more enthusiastic towards “transhumanism” eugenics than the West should be of no surprise to anyone.
People in the field say this was really done as just validation of his methods while skipping animal trials, and a HIV related gene was chosen because it has been extensively studied in cells. His methods did not really work very well at all, in addition to creating what has never been seen in “wild type” humans he created a mosaic. Really bad work even if it was not unethical seems to be the verdict.
From Plomins book the hundreds of tiny effect genes determining IQ would be very difficult to hack this way, even if they get much better methods.
I really hope that Nassim Taleb is wrong about that. Otherwise, an AGI is going to work it out for itself, and decline to take a chance on humans.
‘Communism’ was never about egalitarianism. Soviet (and Chinese, by extension) communists explicitly reject all notions of equality or justice. What they want is a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, meaning explicit persecutions and unjust punishments for those not of the ‘working class’.
It’s the modern-day version of the peasant or slave revolt.
“Hungarians are significantly smarter than Romanians.” Truth be told, in Northwestern Romania, there are about one million Romania who would believe in the myth of “Hungarian dogs”, but I doubt any of them got so far on the spectrum as to call the “Hungarian dog” superior to the “Austrian dog”.
Has anyone talked to these Hungarian dogs? You know, do some sociological research, find out if the positive stereotype is external to them; or have they internalized it? Are they as full of self-importance as the Hungarian men? True, few outsiders understand Hungarian, even when spoken by pure-bred, nationalistic Hungarian dogs or men. (Their great Hungarian culture isn’t an invitation to learn their braking language.) But some of the Hungarian dogs / men may be bilingual in German or Turkish, owing to the centuries of occupation.
Now that we have to agree on the existence of the powerful Hungarian dog, I’d like to know who would win in a fight between a Communist dog and an atheistic dog.
Why didn’t you shave your soles?
Who would in a fight between a dog who has a fetish for shaved soles, and one who abhors them? Assume the fetishist dog is interested in military analysis, and a Calvinist; whereas the other is Hungarian, and recycles.
When all you got about Hungarian being bestest on The Vorld is on dogs, you carry on barking.
Also, I left Eastern Europe long time ago, so most of your shithole-country jokes will fail.
I don’t understand this reference, can you please explain?
Working dogs and fighting dogs were bred via a process similar to natural selection.
Those who were successful at fighting, hunting or guarding sheep were permitted to breed.
The result is intelligent, beautiful, healthy dog breeds.
When the breeding depends entirely on human whim, the result is ugly, stupid, diseased breeds.
Building something good is difficult, and takes a long time.
Only destruction is quick and easy.
I worked with a guy from Indiana who owned an Alaskan malamute. In his area, coyotes had begun to prey on peoples pets by luring them away from their homes and attacking them in a group. One night they came a callin’ at his house and his Malamute went out to see what was what (probably eager to make new friends knowing Malamutes first hand; they are remarkably affectionate.) Anyhow, the coyotes were not particularly interested in discussing the weather and tried to go all Wile E. on him. Big mistake. The owner said he got up the next morning and found his dog on the front stoop covered in blood from nose to tail. Fearing the worst, he hurriedly checked him out, only to find him uninjured. He contacted the local wildlife officials to see if they had seen or heard anything out of the ordinary and they said they had found a dead coyote and another one “chewed up so bad they had to put him out of his misery.” Now, a coyote is certainly not a wolf, but a Malamute is also certainly no Kangal/Kuvasz/Ovcharka either, so I don’t doubt for a second their are dogs eminently able to kill a wolf. I have read of a German Shepherd killing a wolverine, but the circumstances must have been exceptional.
Well, they do share a dubious legacy of reviving obscurantist, verbose gobbledygook, whilst serving as inspirations for totalitarian thinkers everywhere. Well perhaps Kant can’t this blame directly, but he did lead directly to Hegel, which the German language is still recovering from.
Almost entirely meaningless, only not being entirely so because such items are involuntarily interpreted by everyone, like a rorscharch test. Piles of meaningless data like this also serve to flatter the readers vanity, left to be interpreted by ‘experts’ such as [redacted].
I don’t think any nebulous concepts like human cultures and attitudes can be so cheaply summed up into various graphs, mathematical models or opinion polls. This is exactly how autistic people make sense of social interactions, by the way [refrains from personal attacks].
This sounds like totally unsubstantiated BS, but I like your theory.
At least in my subjective opinion Hungarian women are some of the most attractive in Europe, with Poles and Czechs, coincidentally in the same area.
Romanian history is modest/obscure for the same reason as Ukraine or Korea: both are contested borderlands between global powers and cultures. The ethnogenesis theory for Romanians that appears most convincing, that they were Balkan Latin refugees fleeing Slavs and Turkics, is hardly starting point for greatness either.
Romania’s purportedly abysmal IQ, other than its gypsy infestation, probably has a lot to do with disastrous outcome of Ceausescu’s natalist policies, and the hordes of unwanted, abandoned, abused and neglected children it produced.
What? If anything that’s a vindication of them.
Romanians have hairy soles. A genetic defect.
It’s coming from their traditional footwear made of hairy animal skin. Later on it took on a life of its own. They are lazy, so they grow hair on their soles.
I’m willing to engage in intelligent discourse with intelligent Romanians who are willing to do the same, but our Dacian Soros doesn’t belong to this category. So only trolling is left. Which makes me feel young!
One commenter I met over at iSteve (under the rather unimaginative handle “Romanian”) is intelligent, though I rarely meet him, because I rarely visit the iSteve blog, and he doesn’t come here.
I think that our Hun analyst repeated his jokes about soles because he thinks Romanians lack shoes, in contrast to Hungarians, who rich enough to afford shoes. That is a level of wealth so high, that the joke fell flat on all other readers. I had to google it. It’s typical Hungarian ineffable. Anyways, a great boast, on the same level “Hungarians best dog” and best potassium.
The stereotype was best denied on August 4th, 1919, when the Romanian army removed the Soviet-friendly government from power. On that day, sergeant Iordan, confusing the Hungarians with Communists, resolved to remove the Hungarian flag atop the Budapest Parliament building. It its place, Iordan hanged his opanaks. Those are traditional Balkan shoes, worn by Romanians (and Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats) and their Balkan ancestors for 2,000 years. You can see them on Trajan’s Column.
However, by moving West, anyone can definitively cancel the supposed material advantages Hungarians think they have. Just 300 km west, an Austrian, even spastic or retarded, makes more money than Hungarian experts in dogs and shoes. An illiterate Romania Gypsy sleeping under a subway line in Paris has more shoes than any Hungarian left to rot in their shithole, and to whine about imaginary immigrants. That has been true for the last millennium, and will remain true for the foreseeable future.
I am so detached that I can’t figure a comeback that will match his level on the Maslow scale. But what’s true, is true. My adoptive countries cannot dream to match the stronk Hungarian dog.
I am glad you are here diversifying conflicts because the Russian and Ukrainian thing was getting old already. One always can count on Balkans. Where are Albanians and Serbians and Croatians? Don’t they care for their dogs? The dog test should be used to measure political maturity.
Probably a lot.
It’s interesting to contrast with other media centers. For instance, I’m no authority on Hispanic productions, but their commercials and many of their shows seem obviously more family-orientated. Much more religious influence too.
Proud of leaving your country and feeling disassociated with it and superior to those who stayed.
You are a walking shithole, buddy.
Oh well. Sorry for having the ability to improve my future, and my descendants’ future, instead of going through a harder life for the sake of a more generic “nation”. I already mentioned there are some one million Romanians who would believe in the superiority of Hungarian dog (or Russian dog, or German dog), so why bother saving their asses?
Italians managed to create more middle class Romanians than all the historical occupiers combined, without even coming over, or spending one cent on propaganda. Italians and the other one million Romanians working in Italy have a longer life expectancy, and are happier, than those sulking at “home”. Some of them will return, depending on their personal cost-benefit analyses. Their return will make (and does make) their families, and perhaps Romania, richer. I can’t be sure, and it could be better; but Romania never had it so good, so I much prefer EU occupation to the previous occupations. And the difference is mainly due to freedom of movement.
The only thing that could prevent you from benefiting from your relatives and your neighbors’ free movement between Germany and Bulgaria is if you are an useless jerk, such as a retiree from DS.
And the only thing to upset these “traitors” is the approaching realization that their Occidental dogs cannot defend them from coyotes.
I kinda suspected your way of thinking from the nickname alone.
A genuine question – why do you read this blog? What do you find in it?
But who is talking about dogs, AaronB? I wrote what I had to in comment #53 anyway. I left out one thing (though it was mentioned by one commenter later), it’s the spiked collars of these dogs.
Anyway, I’m not that interested in dogs. Did either of your personas admit that the theory of evolution successfully predicted what the distribution of junk DNA would be, and that it makes the common descent of all living beings pretty likely? Okay, I don’t expect it from this combative persona, but at least your AaronB handle could do that.
“A little stupid” = Autism.
You have never seen a real, wild wolf, Spisarevski, so you cannot “confirm first hand”. I however have seen a real wild wolf, trotting by me not ten feet away, and it is one of the most scary animals I have ever seen, running on its toes, legs barely moving, as fast as a coyote at full gallop. I looked up the Karakachan dog you are so proud of and it is impressive, for a domestic dog, and I’m sure it is good at its job of deterance,but the wild wolf is on an entirely different level. The wolf I saw had larger jaws than the Karakachan and the wolf’s slab sided body is deeper and longer, and its easy speed and demeanor of 100% business is awe inspiring. The modern man only sees TV wolves because they have been extinct in Europe for centuries and very rare in North America and Central Asia, but I will tell now I understand why the ancients feared and hated the wild wolf, that thing, short furred field gray with white patches is unforgettable and no domestic dog, even your Karakachan, comes close.
They became rare in present day Hungary in the 19th century and went extinct here in the 1920s. Recently a small population came back. In Romania they were never extinct in the mountains. Now their numbers are growing.
Polish wolves are establishing themselves in Germany.
They are also tentatively spreading to Denmark.
https://jyllands-posten.dk/international/europa/article5115974.ece/
There are 1200 gray wolves in Bulgaria alone, and many times more jackals.
My earliest childhood years were literally spent in the woods. My maternal grandparents were teachers in a special school – called “climatic schools” in commie times, these were something between a school and a resort, for children with chronic health issues. Must have worked too because I don’t remember a single pupil there with visible sings of being unhealthy.
The school was in the middle of a forest, the building I lived in was 20 meters from the forest’s edge.
Thanks for that rT.
You really think a Karakachan, or any domestic dog could really mess up several wolves? Are you retarded?
Gampr dog exception, stronk Armenian mountain dog, my father once took on a whole pack of Kangal Turkish scums with barely scratch. Gampr in fact so powerful, international canine community afraid to accept us. One day we will get kennel recognition for Gampr dog.
I always must smile when reading alarmist articles like this.
Darwin discovered something he called evolution, the word suggests improvement.
If he believed in this improvement, in a creation society, where homo sapiens was the highest, whatever that is, animal, I do not know.
Possibly he used the word evolution to counter criticism, man just an animal, though a special one.
Anyhow, how species change, nobody seems to know.
That it has something to do with genes, do not think many believe genes have nothing to do with it.
So, in my simple view, species most probably always changed because of some change in our genes.
Evidence exists that may indicate that gene changes are not random, but are introduced for some purpose, by the genetic material itself.
Anyhow, again, we experiment massively with human genes, and other genes too.
The Bushman who just died, if there is a god I hope there is mercy for him, with his son, burned over 2000 tons of uranium in Iraq.
This uranium emits radiation, radiation that damages our genes, as cancers and birth defects in Iraq show, it will continue to do this for five billion years.
And here we are making a fuss about Chinese trying to make people healthier ?
Evolution created weird animals.
BTW, my stupidity I suppose, but what does CRISP mean?
Don’t move the goalposts. My original point is that there are dogs who are stronger and braver than wolves. While a Karakachan can scare a small pack of not very big or hungry wolves, 1 on 1 it can take on any wolf and win.
” The goal of science is power – yet there seems to be a correlation with higher intelligence and a concern with aesthetics and ethics. So the appeal of science may not survive a certain threshold of intelligence. ”
Never before with UNZ saw a ‘discussion’ so far removed from the subject: is it morally allowed that humans tamper with human genetic material
As to the quote, science has no goal, that is, psychologists see curiosity as a seperate human emotion, an emotion that even our nearest relatives, the great apes, seem to have.
Nico H. Frijda, ‘De emoties, >> Een overzicht van onderzoek en theorie <<', Amsterdam, 2000
Dutch psychologist Frijda, a jew, got the Nobel prize for his book.
So there must be an english translation.
I by chance knew Frijda, around 1980, not in any scientific connection, a modest man, without pretensions, critical on Israel.
@Pontius
The malamute/husky types are genetically quite removed from the other standard dog breeds, I think they are most ”wolf-like”. Euro wolf like that is, not pesky coyote-like, and the coyotes are quite mixed with domesticated dogs these days anyway. Our husky has this extremely graceful way of moving. A game we sometimes play, or what she makes me play is ”catch me”. I can have my hand on top of her head, but I never can grab her collar, unless she lets me, and I’m not slow. The domesticated breeds are far less gracefully agile much more clumsy. I believe wolfs share this with the husky/malamute types. You can pit a big dog against a wolf but the dog must be extremely agile, clever and cruel, but they are often pompous, naive and socialised to humans.
China doesn’t need to produce genetically modified super geniuses to compete against the West. All they have to do is help promote “diversity” in the West and wait for the dysgenic results to take it’s toll.
What I’m sure is that the Hungarian stories about one Kuvasz taking on several “wolves” and winning (chasing them away, even occasionally killing one or two of the attackers) are probably only true of the “reed wolf,” i.e. the Golden Jackal, which is a much smaller animal. It’s still possible that a small Kuvasz pack might chase away a larger, but not too hungry grey wolf pack, especially considering the spiked collars of the dogs, but I’m more skeptical of the dogs’ ability to defeat or kill a grey wolf one on one, or a larger pack of grey wolves being defeated by a smaller pack of dogs. I don’t know enough to say if it’s definitely untrue, but on the Hungarian forums most Kuvasz owners were skeptical, too.
Is there a moral distinction between “gene editing” to save a life, and “gene editing” to improve one ?
If its okay to ” edit out” Alzheimer’s, autism and arthritis, to save a life …..Why isn’t it okay to “edit in” genes which make us smarter, stronger and faster ?
If a line is drawn between the two …where and on what grounds is it being drawn ?
What’s the point in being brilliant in a world full of idiots?
Is that an oxy-Moron? How can evil and good be in the same term?
It’s good to remind people of this unforgiveable crime. Spreading a toxic heavy metal over the land is a crime against humanity.
On a technical level, I’m guessing it’ll probably be removed from the biosphere within a few thousand years, not billions. I’m also not certain it exerts its effects through radioactive decay; it may simply be heavy metal toxicity.
How can the old testament and the new testament be in one book? I don’t know either… Christianity never made much sense to me.
“Southern Africa is absolutely ridiculous. I mean, how do you get a third of your population infected?”
Very easily if yours is a society made up of unethical creatures without self-esteem or control, i.e. one has to be a fully developed human being to know the difference but are they cognizant that they are borderline…
Brahahaaaaaa. Now I know why you’re on ‘disclaimer alert’. But I agree with you, there should be two separate books. Book 1 and the new and improved, truth telling Book 2.
OT: I stumbled onto a Twitter story about some (probably mentally deranged) high school student in Colorado who was punched by a black for coming into school in a Nazi uniform (school obviously has existing issues with racism, since the student newspaper had published an article saying ‘All Lives Matter’). He took lots of pictures of himself with Nazi flags etc.
In the replies there is a black woman who says that ‘The Soviet flag is very telling’ because ‘Do you know about the ties between trumk and Russia? Do you understand that his followers are now connecting white supremacy in US to russia THEMSELVES while simultaneously denying it?’.
The best Affirmative Action Kremlinology yet?
Also, who knew that there were black women called Siobhan?
No one will dominate the CRISPR arms race. Any CRISPRy beings produced by this will be toast.
That the Chinese have such an interest in this, shows it will not work. The Japanese are the only intelligent Asians. There is nothing that can be done to “improve” humans. Biology is very difficult to alter.
I think there’s little difference morally between preventing disabilities and improving intelligence or whatever. It’s still gene manipulation at the end of the day. The only real concern is unintended consequences of messing with the genes.
If you edit genes to improve abilities you are fixing something that isn’t broke. At some point something will go wrong even when the technology is mature. As it stands now the risk is high and long term effects unlnown.
Sep 7, 2018 Elon Musk: Something UNBELIEVABLE IS HAPPENING WORLDWIDE
You’re not going to believe what is happening in the tech world.
https://youtu.be/tdIGt0qyHUk
And one with dog shit on his shoes, to boot!
Actually, Dacian Soros is a common pun on the name of Dacian Ciolos, a local do-nothing who got a job as prime minister pretty much on the same way as Mario Monti. All parties were shying away from early elections, so they made a deal under the table, with our Dacian as PM due to his spineless character. Eventually, he thought of himself as a politician, went into elections, was demonized as an agent of Soros / IMF / Area 51, and lost. It didn’t help that he was still spineless, claiming he wants “same-sex civil partnerships that respect the heterosexual marriage”. (Whatever that means.)
But I doubt Soros ever heard about our Dacian, despite the latter’s premiership. It’s like claiming Irina Vlah is paid by Vekselberg. The joke is that the leaders of the current Euroatlantic occupation don’t give a damn about the local agents carrying on their deeds. It’s completely perpendicular on Soros ideas, but ridicules his half-hearted job. It’s only an accident Romania didn’t go the way of Ukraine.
In that same vein, it’s obvious that a hot Russo-American war will be carried on Romanian lands. The Aegis base at Deveselu will be targeted in the first hours, possibly with nukes. That is sort of important for my future investment plans. This blog is one of the best sources to learn about Russian plans in a slightly different way, compared with the RT-Sputnik monolith.
Be sure I would not care about your (plural “your”) opinions on molecular biology, or IQ. Perhaps you may have something to add on dogs?
What is he even talking about?
Latter-day AI is just silly. It’s also known as “function fitting”. Or “applied statistics”. Is it useful? Yes. Is it Intelligent? Hey, I got a bridge to sell!
Proof is that self-driving cars are more like self-driving disasters. And they will stay that way.
No sure one could even build synthetic insects (as big as fists) with it.
Human-Level Intelligence or Animal-Like Abilities?
Some Irish names seem to have a certain odd cachet with blacks. Not too many, but a few. Kevin, Sean…
There may be a similar pattern to a few names from other European countries. I don’t know.
You are an idiot if you think we have any ideas about what Russian plans are. Russian policy is reactivate anyway, so their plans matter very little. Each new crisis will be initiated by others. Be it color revolutionaries or the Americans themselves.
We can look forward to a boatload of bio-engineered Donald Trumps.
That’s a great answer, and I tend to agree.
Unfortunately, I believe that once “gene editing” gets rolling , it is going to be hard to stop.
I would not be surprised if , within a generations time, our kids kids and their spouses can walk right into their Obstetrician’s office and have a full roll out of their chromosomal maps presented to them.
Options to “edit” the genes of their newborns will abound.
Many will make choices which will extend way beyond the removal of unwanted genetic traits leading to premature illness and diseases . They will probably start selecting genes which (they believe) will best enhance their child’s abilities to compete, be successful , and find happiness.
It seems like a slippery slope to me , but given human nature being what it is, we are probably going to slide right down it,
and fast.
I once had a mutt that was part corgi. It got old and would eat its own frozen poop in the yard during the winter.
I’m pretty sure a retarded jack rabbit could have hog tied it, if the jack rabbit had some rope and opposing thumbs.
Take that, you Eastern European dog supremacists!
Yeah it looks like we are going on the slide.
This video shows how a Russian program to domesticate silver foxes produced unexpected changes. It will take some time to really understand how genes work.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0jFGNQScRNY
April 20, 2017 Elon Musk Lays Out Plans to Meld Brains and Computers
Startup Neuralink aims to treat disabled and ultimately create a new language of ‘consensual telepathy’
Speaking to writer Tim Urban on the explainer website Wait But Why, Mr. Musk confirmed a Wall Street Journal report last month that Neuralink aims to implant tiny brain…
https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-lays-out-plans-to-meld-brains-and-computers-1492738741
Read my other post below for your answer and he had a answer in the video as well if you had listened in its entirety.
IQ bell curve shows Chinese with a fat bell body but truncated flanges together with a right-shifted median verses Europeans (105 vs. 100). European’ bell curve displays a more pyramidal shape with narrow median but wide, thick flanges.
This means that while Chinese (and other east Asians) have 4-6 points higher median IQ, they have very few, even nominally, of both dolts AND GENIUSES verses Europeans.
CRISPR technology WILL BE USED to rectify that “historical injustice.” In their hasty drive to be the hegemon of the world, the Chinese will be apt to make mistakes. Could be horrific – monsters.
Species and civilization need Europeans’ genius or stasis will manifest.
Interesting. Do you have a supporting link?
For now maybe it is just better to stick with old fashioned eugenics – good breeding.
As a white wolf you are destined to never be an alpha male it seems, because although it is rarely mentioned the Russian experiment also bred the fiercest foxes, and as a side effect they sometimes got darker coats.
The striking differences in the tamer fox experiment are mostly in behaviour, which is what they were selectively breeding for. A an article a few years ago in New Scientist scientist who researched this question disagrees with the conclusion that so many people have drawn from the Russian fox experiment. (ie that that domestication produced the variegated colours and shapes of domesticated animals). He says the real reason why there are dogs and sheep with odd coloured coats ect is not primarily because of section for tameness, but rather that people just like odd looking animals and breed for the oddness. It also helps with separating your animals from other peoples’. Only a little bit of the tameness may be a side effect of the unnatural selection for odd colours I think.
The slide is maintained by lack of selection. A lot of biologists try to claim that primitive people, never having been protected from merciless natural selection, are superior compared to decadent degenerated westerners. In things like robustness and bone density (you can tell the bone of a domesticated animal by how fragile it is) non whites are superior.
Robert Plomin says in his book he was so depressed by repeated failure to replicate findings of SNPs with appreciable effect in complex traits like intelligence that he planned to quit and sail round the world. Then on a warm up trip across the the North Sea he was nearly killed in his boat by a huge floating container that had fallen off some cargo ship. He went back to work. They are going to understand the effect of having certain SNP for the traitt and that is all that is needed to alter them if the technology to edit an embryo enough is available.
Gene editing for such traits as IQ are currently completely unfeasible, partly because the hundreds of edits would have to be done at a time and also because genes are constantly rebuilt anyway to counteract cosmic rays ect and the CRISPR edits are messed up by the body’s DNA repair mechanisms. Big advances in AI will be required to solve the problems, and that is why I don’t see a bio singularity with super-intelligent humans becoming a real thing before machine super-intelligence is here. There is no telling what priorities it may have.
The fact is anything stated simultaneously by Karlin and Simonyan is slightly more likely than something stated by either of them alone.
Also, if Putin somehow disappears, United Russia is gone, and the Russian state will tilt, if only a little, towards LDPR. Romanians are familiar with ‘Zhiri’ Eidelstein, and his mental gymnastics. (For example, he thinks ‘Italians” is an insult for Romanians. But even in their worst times, North Italy was better than Russia, and Italian beggars had it better than Russian Jews. People from America are paying millions there, and people from Africa are dying to get there. It’s effing paradise.) But Zhiri is unstable, and it’s good to keep track of him, and his delusions. Karlin is probably his most readable and informative follower.
I don’t expect you personally to impart any knowledge. All the smart Hungarians left by 1939.
Mmm, but old fashioned eugenics is mating with women who have a good hip to waist ratio, not coed higher education and increasing associative mating for intelligence.
The elite will become more and more intelligent and less emphatic.
Pound for pound the weakest animal on the planet is the human – right behind them is their domesticated dog/cat/bird.
Zhirinovsky said Italian gypsies, not Italians. Meaning gypsies who speak Italian.
As a nationality that routinely gets conflated with gypsies you should understand the difference.
Wolves are incredibly mobile and untiring animals, second only to the reindeer which they hunt among land creatures in the distance they can cover in a day, but their brute strength (apart from jaws) is maybe not that different to many large dog breeds. Dogs can be braver, because wolves (very sensibly) only attack when the risk is not greater than the reward. If bred to fight, dogs will attack a bear, bull, or even in one case which King James I of Scotland arranged, a lion. The first dog got killed, but a second dog was immediately sent in while the lion was still busy with the first, and biting the lion this dog held on despite being very severely mauled. The lion got it off and jumped back in its den thus losing under the rule that a dog which retreated (or did not ‘come up to scratch’) lost even if its opponent went to the scratch line and collapsed or died there. The dog was cared for by the King afterwards.
Zhirik actually has a very strong grasp of world affairs and its realities, and has a far deeper cultural knowledge than most Russian politicians, Putin probably included. He just prefers, and profits, much more from his circus clown performances.
Extraterrestrial Experimentation with the Human Genome
Call me again, when they manage to actually ADD information to genome, instead of DESTROYING some of it and calling that an improvement, so the whole things stops being a non-issue. I’m not holding my breath, though.
Humans are more endurance than strength or raw power. We are among the best ultra-runners in the animal kingdom. It’s complicated by HBD, of course. But a smaller chimpanzee will be stronger, which we instinctively sense when seeing the way they carry themselves. This is why they look so frightening in The Planet of the Apes. It’s totally unrealistic, though, and not only because apes can never get so smart, but because they don’t have the stamina to fight a war. They simply cannot fight a war, because they will be exhausted before getting to battle.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/how-chimps-outmuscle-humans
https://www.livescience.com/59615-are-chimpanzees-stronger-than-humans.html
Another point is that humans are usually not very strong relative to their potential due to a lack of training. While chimps spend the day “working out,” even in modern zoos.
Chimps are mostly dangerous because of their teeth. A well trained human with a knife might still kill a chimp in battle.
the hands of chimpanzees conform functionally to the feet of Homo sapiens. There is no mystery here – a man has strong legs, a chimpanzee has strong hands.
Even their hind legs are stronger. They have more fast-twitch fibers and fewer slow-twitch fibers relative to humans. Just read the articles I linked.
Interesting. You do not want to go full Himmler on the gay population, especially those who are sort of in the closet, but then driving them to the closet with out fully rooting them just lets them concentrate in fields where they do most harm in terms of corrupting culture from the inside like the media and psychology, where they form their own clandestine support networks like the alleged Hollywood gay mafia, but then you do not to go full Himmler either.
Steve Jobs’ Condor vs Bicycle Story
A problem of too many dogs, I’m afraid. I wish they would breed a dog with some decency, but maybe that is impossible.
I would that on could churn out wisdom as much as we we churn out new methods of short cutting human improvement.
What dog breeding tells us is that reconfiguring genetics may do x, but for each breed, there are long term negative consequences.
https://www.feedfond.com/100-years-dog-breeding/
https://dailysun.bowdoin.edu/2013/12/the-negative-effects-of-pure-breeding-in-pictures-science-of-dogs/
I would agree that CRISPR and other medical advances that target the source of developmental issues is fascinating and worthwhile. But ethics, and prudence to consequences — are valuable considerations. And should be pressed
Some Nordic countries got rid of their Downs syndrome babies and replaced them with low IQ blacks/Asians/Muslims.
Crispr-Cas9 is only a better tool, but still imprecise. First the lock which fits the key is of limited length (say 20 base pairs) which will occur at more than one location of the DNA and quantum mechanics will guarantee that there exists a probability of unlocking even at locations where less than 20 base pairs match.
We can sequence the DNA and know only a few correlations and even fewer causal relations between DNA and characteristics of the individual.
So the whole article is over the top:
– We still don’t know what we are really doing when modifying DNA (unintended consequences/side effects)
– We are getting better at controlling DNA modification, but Crispr-Cas9 is far from perfect
Combining both limitations ought to induce maximum caution.
You are also a fan of this television show – “Ancient Aliens”?
I was watching this for a while, almost making myself believe that Ancient Egyptians had jet planes, etc.
Obviously a bicycle is far more energy efficient for lateral movement, than bipedalism – on a smooth road. But we didn’t evolve in an world of asphalt. Also, even if earth had been a smooth surface, what kind of biological substance would we use for rubber tires. How would wheels pass through a woman’s birthcanal. Evolution is all the time trying to solve for constrained optimization.
Birds will be likely one of the strongest types of animals by this criteria (relative to weight), since weight is one of the main constraints for them, which it is not for other animal types. They will surely have very high strength for their very low weight.
You missed that it would be tricky for a biological organism to have a wheel since it requires two separate parts (an axle and wheel), although I do remember reading about such a fictional animal in one of Philip Pullman’s novels when I was a child (it was a boring part I skipped through)
I think there’s a bacterium with a wheel. Or is it a propeller? The problem is perhaps not impossible to solve for living organisms.
But as Dmitry noted, wheels are actually inferior without roads. Your car will get stuck on terrain where most animals (including humans) can still walk. It’s difficult to move wheeled vehicles off-road.
Never owned a television, don’t trust the programming.
What with the industry’s elite like Steven Spielberg stating, “Holocaust education should be mandatory!”
source: https://www.veteranstoday.com/2018/05/05/steven-spielberg-holocaust-education-should-be-mandatory/
You’d hope a person like him would instead be stating, “Crop circle education should be mandatory!”
Fortunately for humanity and our charitable Earth, the humble bicycle continues to evolve, beyond constraints of asphalt roads and cement jungles.
Or the course they currently pursue, requiring schools to focus on STEM instead of cultural engineering, the next generation in China will dominate the U.S. because they are well educated.
Robert Plomin said in his book that intelligence is a lot more general that most people are willing to admit and if you are very good at English you probably can be just good at mathematics, whatever you think.
Maybe, Ron Unz says Jewish attainment in maths and science has declined precipitously. Cornelli Barnett wrote about the ideal of a classical educated English gentleman as what the dynamic rising middle classes of the British industrial devolved into. There does seem to be a bias against science and technology. Steven Pinker says in his recent book that science is openly denigrated at liberal arts colleges with the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male being given equal weight to the eradication of smallpox.
Click mechanism for oscillating wings for insects, uses a complicated, hinge mechanism.
There’s some diagrams
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8fe7/daea0866374465f19f740e69c5efc61c2287.pdf
Also there’s an insect who uses gears to synchronize its legs (so it jumps in a stable way, so both legs have to move with identical timing/speed).
Wheel could unfuse from axle. Evolution is very path-dependent though, so there would have to be some intermediate stage where fused wheel/axle was already selected for (perhaps some kind of more simple rolling animal), before it would developed to independent wheel/axle.
Edit – Wikipedia already went crazy writing about this topic before us, discussed all our points of view.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotating_locomotion_in_living_systems
No surprise, I read about the topic in books.
The bias is really against engineering and tech, less so against pure science:
https://www.forbes.com/asap/1997/0825/102.html
In the middle of the 20th century, during WW2 and the early part of the Cold War, finance, corporate management, elite law, and politics were generally the preserve of WASPs and jobs there were unavailable to most Jews. But there was lots of public spending on defense and related science and research, and that was open to Jews. So Jews pursued math and science as one of their main options for white collar careers. Eventually of course, other fields become more open to Jews, so they had more options than just math and science.
The first comment on this post by Arron B has a point because as Pinker in his recent book says, when a science or engineering track student is given a Humanities course telling them that science is just a type of human narrative like religion and myth, the most brilliant minds will be likely to conclude they might as well go make money writing algorithms for Wall Street rather than research. Trying to establish a genetic dictatorship would be risky and sounds like a Nietzschian power play that the result of intelligent analysis.
In Superintelligence, Bostrom has a section on embryo selection and genetic engineering and although he thinks it is possible that a genetically engineered scientific class could collectively constitute a biological super-intelligence he notes that no matter how quickly we get to such advanced genetic engineering (far beyond anything feasible now) that could raise the average of the resultant humans to the most intelligent human individual now around, there would still be a 30 year wait for it to have an effect. Aron B points up an additional problem: that the smartest people might have their own ideas about what to do with their lives. For the sake of its cohesion, human society has to be organised as if politics rather than science is the arbiter or truth even though, if anything the opposite seems to be the case.
Bosrtom says an unprecedented advantage of a machine general intelligence is that it does not have to unify disparate parts into a whole. The agent problem that exists with employers and their bolshie workers, bureaucratic organisational inefficiencies, or inability to prevent leaking of secrets, simply does not exist for a machine. An intellectually superior genetically engineered caste in a country thinking of taking control rather than being good little worker bee scientists, is still going to have reckon with the internal coordination problem of a sub group conspiracy within the original group seizing control in the way that coups are often followed by coups by a clique within the original plotters.
So I think societal cohesion through democracy has many advantages to a rich genetically modified high-IQ caste, while the risk of being disenfranchised themselves by a subset of themselves down the line will always inhibit taking the fateful step of trying to become a master race of genetically engineered super-brains by disenfranchising the normals. The liberal arts college view of truth, including scientific truth, as just another move in a power game is not going to be easy to budge, and democracy will be continue to be steered by the same anti science bias.
So humanity’s first use of genetic engineering is to make third worlders resistant to aids and cholera?
Interesting & informative comment!
Genetic Engineering is a set of technologies used to change the genetic makeup of cells, including the transfer of genes within and across species boundaries to produce improved or novel organisms. It will help to cure many genetic issues in future. It has high scope to build career in it. Thanks for informative article, keep sharing.