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[Knit tie]

Okay, I am making a transhumanism thread right now.

It technically should have no reason to go down in flames, as people who are willing to make illogical, insulting arguments solely in order to promote their agenda don't usually discuss transhumanism.

Just out of interest, what exactly happened to the last thread?

[Lagslayer]

Okay, I am making a transhumanism thread right now.

It technically should have no reason to go down in flames, as people who are willing to make illogical, insulting arguments solely in order to promote their agenda don't usually discuss transhumanism.

Just out of interest, what exactly happened to the last thread?

Religion got injected.

[Knit tie]

Okay, I am making a transhumanism thread right now.

It technically should have no reason to go down in flames, as people who are willing to make illogical, insulting arguments solely in order to promote their agenda don't usually discuss transhumanism.

Just out of interest, what exactly happened to the last thread?

Religion got injected.

Oh boy, that's usually lethal.

The transhumanism thread is open now, let's relocate this discussion there.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Okay, I am making a transhumanism thread right now.

It technically should have no reason to go down in flames, as people who are willing to make illogical, insulting arguments solely in order to promote their agenda don't usually discuss transhumanism.

Just out of interest, what exactly happened to the last thread?

Religion got injected.

Not entirely accurate.

[Knit tie]

Okay, I am making a transhumanism thread right now.

It technically should have no reason to go down in flames, as people who are willing to make illogical, insulting arguments solely in order to promote their agenda don't usually discuss transhumanism.

Just out of interest, what exactly happened to the last thread?

Religion got injected.

Not entirely accurate.

Fundamentalist zealot flamewar? Misinterpretation of a post leading to self-propagating indignation? Arrogant, proselytizing atheism?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I'm just going to say that this is all a bad idea.

[Putnam]

Okay, I am making a transhumanism thread right now.

It technically should have no reason to go down in flames, as people who are willing to make illogical, insulting arguments solely in order to promote their agenda don't usually discuss transhumanism.

Just out of interest, what exactly happened to the last thread?

Religion got injected.

Not entirely accurate.

Fundamentalist zealot flamewar? Misinterpretation of a post leading to self-propagating indignation? Arrogant, proselytizing atheism?

Why don't you just search the word "transhumanism" in the general discussion board and check?

[Osmosis Jones]

Well, due to timezones and work hours, it appears I missed this entire discussion.

However, I am very glad you all managed to pull yourselves back from the brink, and avoid turning this thread into a soulless-cyborg-vs-deluded-hippy flame war. Gold star for all of you!

(Tongue in cheek humour aside, it's always good to see both responsible discussion, and the community knowing when to branch a discussion that begins to leave the original thread's subject area.)

For future clarity, and just so we have a word from OP, this thread is for discussing the interesting (preferably breaking) news on major/minor/weird/cool science; while some expounding on the potential impact is of course welcome, if we start talking in-depth philosophy where any science involved is pretty much all in the someday science may be able to do this category, we're probably off topic.


With that said, have some science! The latest computational modelling shows we seem to have a pretty good idea of the *behaviour* of dark matter & energy; previous errors appear to be mostly due to what can basically be considered rounding errors due to lack of modelling resolution. Of course, we still have no damn idea what the stuff actually is, but eh, baby steps!

[Il Palazzo]

With that said, have some science! The latest computational modelling shows we seem to have a pretty good idea of the *behaviour* of dark matter & energy; previous errors appear to be mostly due to what can basically be considered rounding errors due to lack of modelling resolution. Of course, we still have no damn idea what the stuff actually is, but eh, baby steps!

See, I knew my post on Illustria would be lost in the avalanche of all that immortality-craze.

[Osmosis Jones]

Oh hey, whoops, sorry about that


Ummmm, how about some synthetic bases (different from A, G, T & C) being injected into E. Coli, which then successfully reproduce them sound?

[Knit tie]

Oh hey, whoops, sorry about that


Ummmm, how about some synthetic bases (different from A, G, T & C) being injected into E. Coli, which then successfully reproduce them sound?

Very interesting and promising, but not exactly groundbreaking. Still, there are plenty of potential applications.

[lemon10]

Oh hey, whoops, sorry about that


Ummmm, how about some synthetic bases (different from A, G, T & C) being injected into E. Coli, which then successfully reproduce them sound?

That sounds pretty awesome.
The idea of creating lifeforms so artificial that even their DNA has bases not found in nature makes me very happy.

[kaijyuu]

Are there any useful proteins that can be built from this that couldn't be built before?

So far it just seems like playing God

[Sheb]

Hard to say, because proteins are already so versatile, and we aren't good enough with them to do much beside using natural domains so far. By the way, this technology is not the only one that would let use add more amino acids. Another team made a ribosome that can read quadruplet of bases rather than triplet. This again let your extend the genetic code.

[Helgoland]

The thing is that predicting what a given protein will look like in 3-D (and thus what it will or will not do) is reeeally computationally intense. So protein design isn't really practical right now...