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[wierd]

In which case, for the current argument tangent-- If the post-humans have a sufficiently alien feature, (Communicates primarily digitally, say-- Like, "Binary communication", akin do technologically assisted telepathy) from their normal human counterparts (Communicates primarily verbally or with phonetic abstractions like a written alphabet) then meaningful context between the two starts to radically dry up-- the two diverge, and will continue to diverge.

[Bauglir]

Yeah, I think we probably have similar understandings of the technologies and science involved (I was a Biology student myself, I worked in a few genetics labs, and was aiming for cybernetics at one point, FWIW). I think, perhaps, we may be talking past each other. I agree that the reproduction thing is probably the closest thing to a solid argument you can get (although it's hardly airtight, especially applied to individuals). But if that's what people argue to be the basis for human extinction, I don't see why I should care, if human culture and individuals both continue. It just seems like a technicality, in that case. Yeah, great, you proved current humans are extinct, and I get that my bath towel's color is "Molten Lead", but I'm still going to call it gray, and I don't know why you think it's a big deal.

EDIT: Left out a fairly crucial verb somehow.

[ChairmanPoo]

The thing is, SGT is, as the article mentions, only useful for fixing defects, and not only that, only single gene defects.

SGT goes far beyond fixing single gene defects. That was the 90s paradigm, but the field has advanced a lot since then, and far more diverse in approaches.

If you want something more dramatic and wide-reaching and more moddy than fixey, you need to modify the zygote, because that way all the cells which are descended from the modified stem cell will contain a copy of the transgene, and the higher differentiative potential the cell has, the more different tissues will have the gene in them.

I disagree. Precisedly because it will affect all cell lines in the organism, germ line is far less useful, as it's consequences are harder to gauge (and control).

[scrdest]

The thing is, SGT is, as the article mentions, only useful for fixing defects, and not only that, only single gene defects.

SGT goes far beyond fixing single gene defects. That was the 90s paradigm, but the field has advanced a lot since then, and far more diverse in approaches.

If you want something more dramatic and wide-reaching and more moddy than fixey, you need to modify the zygote, because that way all the cells which are descended from the modified stem cell will contain a copy of the transgene, and the higher differentiative potential the cell has, the more different tissues will have the gene in them.

I disagree. Precisedly because it will affect all cell lines in the organism, germ line is far less useful, as it's consequences are harder to gauge (and control).

Not germ line. Germ line uses sperm and oocytes, so you're likely to lose the gene to crossing-over. I meant modifying a zygote after it forms. Your point about affecting all the cells making it unpredictable is good, but I used it in the particular context of attempting body-wide modifications. If you'd try to modify individual tissues, you'd end up with a fuckton of cost and very little in terms of reliability.

[Singularity125]

I'm kinda sorta a Biotechnology student, I know how gene therapy works >.<

The thing is, SGT is, as the article mentions, only useful for fixing defects, and not only that, only single gene defects. If you want something more dramatic and wide-reaching and more moddy than fixey, you need to modify the zygote, because that way all the cells which are descended from the modified stem cell will contain a copy of the transgene, and the higher differentiative potential the cell has, the more different tissues will have the gene in them.

Although getting the gene in the cell still doesn't mean you can do the victory dance, since epigenetics can screw over the transgene by methylating it, and thus giving you a non-functional gene.

Ah, sorry, sorry. Somehow there was meant to be a question mark in there that didn't make it in. I was asking, for my own clarification, whether we were talking about that. I don't mean to imply anything about your base of knowledge, I'm the one in over my head here. My computer science degree isn't proving itself useful in this case

All that being said, I have to agree the distinction between species falls under semantics in this case. Any individual could theoretically choose, sometime during their life-span, to become a cyborg and therefore migrate to the new "species". I guess I think species is a poor way to categorize this stuff since it's never been the case before that an individual, after birth, can move from one species to another.

[WillowLuman]

From the morphological freedom view of transhumanism, it's hardly appropriate to classify humans into new species at all, since a person could take on any number of forms in their lifetime.

On the topic of gene-modding for body modding, I think cybernetics offers a lot more potential. To make any effective changes, the alterations would have to be performed on the zygote or gametes, as has been stated, and thus the person in question wouldn't have any choice over their modding. As with cybernetics, though, once you go all the way, it stops genetic evolution: random mutations are "corrected" with the "best" genes. Genetics becomes and expression of memetics, as new genes or alleles are created or added with conscious effort and choice. They key difference, again, being that the choice is not of the person in whom those alleles will be expressed.

[WillowLuman]

It's not so much that we have extreme neuroplasticity, it's that we have an advanced central control hub for them. Neurons in general are very plastic(?); see the ratbot experiment. They didn't even take a rat's brain and put it in the robot, they just took a thick sheet of rat neurons cloned in a petri dish.

[ChairmanPoo]

The thing is, SGT is, as the article mentions, only useful for fixing defects, and not only that, only single gene defects.

SGT goes far beyond fixing single gene defects. That was the 90s paradigm, but the field has advanced a lot since then, and far more diverse in approaches.

If you want something more dramatic and wide-reaching and more moddy than fixey, you need to modify the zygote, because that way all the cells which are descended from the modified stem cell will contain a copy of the transgene, and the higher differentiative potential the cell has, the more different tissues will have the gene in them.

I disagree. Precisedly because it will affect all cell lines in the organism, germ line is far less useful, as it's consequences are harder to gauge (and control).

Not germ line. Germ line uses sperm and oocytes, so you're likely to lose the gene to crossing-over. I meant modifying a zygote after it forms. Your point about affecting all the cells making it unpredictable is good, but I used it in the particular context of attempting body-wide modifications. If you'd try to modify individual tissues, you'd end up with a fuckton of cost and very little in terms of reliability.

The bolded part is usually referred to as germ line gene therapy. (s. 1, 2, 3)

And I strongly disagree about the second part. Specific tissue modifications are more reliable than germ-line  ones. This is why (insofar as human beings are concerned) the former are a thing (and have been in the market for ten years, as a matter of fact) while the second ones are not and involve ethical conundrums.

For example: in many gene therapy procedures a suicide gen is introduced in the transfected cells alongside the experimental payload. This is so that, if anything goes awry, the modified cells can be destroyed on command. For obvious reasons, such a method is not viable in germ-line gene therapy.

[wierd]

You could accomplish such zygote modification using a chemical disruptor (say, an androgen antagonist, forcing the genetically male zygote to develop as a female fetus would), or by introducing cells of a completely different lineage (such as producing a rat/mouse chimheric hybrid)

It doesn't have to be germline altering.

[scrdest]

The thing is, SGT is, as the article mentions, only useful for fixing defects, and not only that, only single gene defects.

SGT goes far beyond fixing single gene defects. That was the 90s paradigm, but the field has advanced a lot since then, and far more diverse in approaches.

If you want something more dramatic and wide-reaching and more moddy than fixey, you need to modify the zygote, because that way all the cells which are descended from the modified stem cell will contain a copy of the transgene, and the higher differentiative potential the cell has, the more different tissues will have the gene in them.

I disagree. Precisedly because it will affect all cell lines in the organism, germ line is far less useful, as it's consequences are harder to gauge (and control).

Not germ line. Germ line uses sperm and oocytes, so you're likely to lose the gene to crossing-over. I meant modifying a zygote after it forms. Your point about affecting all the cells making it unpredictable is good, but I used it in the particular context of attempting body-wide modifications. If you'd try to modify individual tissues, you'd end up with a fuckton of cost and very little in terms of reliability.

The bolded part is usually referred to as germ line gene therapy. (s. 1, 2, 3)

And I strongly disagree about the second part. Specific tissue modifications are more reliable than germ-line  ones. This is why (insofar as human beings are concerned) the former are a thing (and have been in the market for ten years, as a matter of fact) while the second ones are not and involve ethical conundrums.

For example: in many gene therapy procedures a suicide gen is introduced in the transfected cells alongside the experimental payload. This is so that, if anything goes awry, the modified cells can be destroyed on command. For obvious reasons, such a method is not viable in germ-line gene therapy.

The bolded part and the Wikipedia quote differ, then. I was working on the assumption we are discussing based on that quote, which listed only oocyte and sperm cell modification.

We are talking about two different things in regards to reliability: you - safety, me - efficiency of the process.

Genetic modification is, as a rule, not very efficient in the classical sense - out of thousand zygotes, only one may survive to childbirth (and may die in infancy anyway) in case of zygote modification, and in the case of somatic cells, you need selection genes for this reason - in many cases, the gene will fail to implant or won't be expressed in any significant quantity.

[WillowLuman]

Given what we know about genes, isn't a scenario like, say, brundlefly impossible?

[tahujdt]

Just wanna post my two bits here, with something I was thinking about.

Most Christians will say that any sort of improvement on nature is sinful, because according to the Bible, we are just stewards of creation. I'm neutral on the subject, but I was reading the Bible and remembered a parable which told about a landowner(Jesus) going on a journey and giving sums of money to his stewards. Two of them improved on what was given to them, while one just buried his. When the landowner came back with the news that he had been crowned king, he rewarded the two investors, while punishing the other one. My point? That stewardship does not preclude use and improvement.

I don't care about the subject too much one way or another, cuz I can see it from both sides, but personally I wouldn't want to go much further beyond the human condition than being permanently wired to a computer. At the point of uploading your consciousness, there's really no way to tell whether youare the original.

[scrdest]

Given what we know about genes, isn't a scenario like, say, brundlefly impossible?

Yes, it is impossible. A fully grown adult human would remain a normal human even if you crammed the full genome of a fly into him (if this was possible), except he would produce fly proteins. Those might cause abnormalities, but those would mostly be things like overly high levels of hormones or proteins, creating various metabolic disorders, more than anything else.

Generally speaking, the genes themselves aren't that crucial to the development of an organism's body plan - of course, their absence will lead to problems, but inserting another species' gene won't lead to the development of anything like that specific feature of that species. Expression patterns have much more influence on that.

[LordBucket]

I was reading the Bible and remembered a parable which told about a landowner(Jesus) going on a journey and giving sums of money to his stewards. Two of them improved on what was given to them, while one just buried his. When the landowner came back with the news that he had been crowned king, he rewarded the two investors, while punishing the other one. My point? That stewardship does not preclude use and improvement.

The Parable of the Talents

If you're going to look at it that way, it could possibly be argued that not attempting to improve humanity could be considered "sinful."  But then somebody could pull out the The Tower of Babel and argue that anything that makes man ("better" / "more like God") is "bad."

The bible is a big enough book that one can often find passages to support whichever conclusion you want.

[wierd]

*has fundie parents

The major objection to "Playing God", is really the interpretation of Genesis, where god creates the earth itself, then says it is "good", creates the oceans and says they are "good", and then creates all the plants and animals, and says they are "good."

God is a real stickler for perfectionism. (understatement of the millennium)
He doesn't do lackluster work, you see. If he says it's "Good", it's clearly much better than you could do. The claim that you could "improve" that, is seen as being overly arrogant and worshiping "the god of the self". (There's actually many references to this in the new testament, many in red-letters. -- 'god of the self' I mean.)

Remember, the sin that lucifer committed was to say "in his heart", that he would become like god, and replace god/surpass god.

That god represents absolute perfection is a profound axiom to the fundamentalist christian, and asserting that god makes imperfect work and imperfect creations (needing of, or capable of being improved by a known faulty creation, which was originally created perfect-- humans--- ) is beyond heretical. That's why they take such big offense to it.  Most lack the cogitative fidelity to articulate that chain of reason though, and just suffer the mental trainwreck instead.

This is the reason they object harshly to evolution, and such.

The way I approach this when communicating with them, is not to assert that they are stupid, irrational, or mentally deranged (The conclusion they have come to actually is a product of reason, just from some very curious axioms);  I approach it from the angle that "You, as a human, cannot understand what perfection is-- and god, as a being that knows all of time and space, and all of history, past, present, and future, is able to determine what is and is not perfect; Since time is not static, and things to change in the environment, in order for the creations of god to be perfect, they have to change as well-- The perfection could be that they DO change, and god's perfect knowledge allows him to know exactly what humans will be able to do, now or 100,000 years from now. He made it EXACTLY the way it needs to be, and it needs to be able to change. Remember, god created all of creation for his own pleasure-- for a being that exists simultaneously in all frames of reference, which would be more pleasing: a creation that stays still and eternal forever, and does not move, change, or have dynamic qualities-- Or one that does, but who's motions and patterns of change follow good wholesome rules?"

This usually cuts through the axiomatic "No! DO NOT WANT!" of their brains seizing up under the mental trainwreck of the apparent axiom violation, but tends to spark additional questions or for them to raise additional concerns, noteworthy amongst those are choice samples of the levitical laws, and the latter part of genesis where the angels come down from heaven and start screwing stuff up big time (and thus requiring the flood)-- coupled with parts of revelation asserting that (in the end times it shall be) "Like the days of Noah."

I can settle those questions too, having been deeply steeped in fundamentalist soup-- but they don't always like the answers, and the chain of discussion can wildly diverge from there. (they often don't like the first set of answers either, and I usually have to pull jesus out of my pocket numerous times to soften them up.)

The really real underlying problem is that fundamentalist christians (and probably other abrahamic religions) is that they have atrophied critical thinking skills, because they let their religious texts (and their preachers) do the thinking for them. (amusingly, this goes against many of the teachings of the christ, but that little oversight doesn't seem to sink in.) This leads to many of the issues that they encounter with axioms appearing to shatter inside their minds, and the resulting irrational spew.

(Imagine for a moment that science discovered that the universe REALLY IS a hologram/simulation-- and really ISN'T the objective showpiece they have thought it was all this time--- Make it even more insanity causing, because the evidence for that is inside the simulation itself, and thus also cannot be trusted (Reality is NOT self-consistent!) -- See how many objectivists still cling tightly to experiment as the end-all of discussion, and or-- go on tirades.)

LB is right that the bible can be twisted 7 ways to Sunday, and can be used to support basically anything, if you know where and how to twist. I suspect it was designed to be that way, or at least grew to be that way as a result of weasel-wording by ancient clerics being put under the spotlight with hard questions they couldn't answer. Regardless of how the bible came to be the way it is, it is that way now-- and LB is absolutely right about that.

The underlying problem with transhumanism and the christian fundie is that the concept violates the "literal" (as in writing) bounds of the axioms they were nurtured on.  To get anything besides "NO!" from them, you have to first re-rail their minds. The engines of that train use strange parts. Modern ones don't fit. Just keep that in mind.