Genetic 'Supermen' or what sort of evolutionary or genetic engineering changes would improve the human races
Ann Morgan
1. Slit pupils instead or round ones. Slit pupils have a wider range
of reaction to light, a person with slit pupils would see better in
both very bright light and very dim light.
2. Put the blood vessels that supply the retina behind it rather than
in front of it. Currently light has to pass through these veins before
hitting the retina, and it reduces vision
3. Extend the range of vision into the ultraviolet and infrared, and
the range of hearing as well.
4. Get rid of all armpit hair!
5. Increase the size of the brain to that found either in Cro-magnons
or better yet, Boskop Man (1800cc vs 1250 cc in us). The larger brain
will need a larger blood supply, therefore:
5a. Reduce the size of the intestine in order to accomodate a larger
heart and lungs. People will have to eat more, but with a larger brain
they would presumably be smart enough to get more food.
6. Give people the ability to regrow limbs. Also they should grow a
whole new set of teeth every 15-20 years.
7. Women should have the ability to conciously control their
fertility.
Anyone have any other ideas?
John H
"Ann Morgan" <sept...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:74e7d6b7.03022...@posting.google.com...
> Some ideas of mine for improving humanity
>
> 1. Slit pupils instead or round ones. Slit pupils have a wider range
> of reaction to light, a person with slit pupils would see better in
> both very bright light and very dim light.
Eagle eyes.
<snip>
> 3. Extend the range of vision into the ultraviolet and infrared, and
> the range of hearing as well.
Extending the range of vision to IR means you'll blind yourself with
your own bodyheat. Isn't that why only coldblooded animals get it?
Extending hearing and vision is cool, but I think increasing our pattern
recognition and having quicker comprehension of what's perceived might
serve to make humanity better.
>
> 4. Get rid of all armpit hair!
While we're at it, get rid of pubes too!
>
> 5. Increase the size of the brain to that found either in Cro-magnons
> or better yet, Boskop Man (1800cc vs 1250 cc in us). The larger brain
> will need a larger blood supply, therefore:
Does larger brain automatically mean smarter? Isn't there a way to
improve on the wetware algorithm we're using?
>
> 5a. Reduce the size of the intestine in order to accomodate a larger
> heart and lungs. People will have to eat more, but with a larger brain
> they would presumably be smart enough to get more food.
Digestion adaptation depends on what enviroment you're living in. In
fact most of these bod-mods are only useful in some circumstances. If
you're living off the land, the ability to eat a wider range of foods
would benefit you more. Or being able to photosynthesize, that would be
nice, since you actually can recycle the CO2 and oxygen your body
produce.
>
> 6. Give people the ability to regrow limbs. Also they should grow a
> whole new set of teeth every 15-20 years.
Regeneration is a must. Limited control of adaptability is probably
cool too. Like being able to increase muscle mass or bone density at
will. Ah, just give me to ability to customize my body to a wide
variety of enviroment and I'll be fine.
>
> 7. Women should have the ability to conciously control their
> fertility.
Note point 6. What do you think about women being able to keep
producing eggs?
john
Dan Goodman
@slb6.atl.mindspring.net:
>> 5. Increase the size of the brain to that found either in Cro-magnons
>> or better yet, Boskop Man (1800cc vs 1250 cc in us). The larger brain
>> will need a larger blood supply, therefore:
>
> Does larger brain automatically mean smarter? Isn't there a way to
> improve on the wetware algorithm we're using?
>
Birds do more with less brain size than mammals. This would require
extensive redesign of the brain.
David Cowie
> Some ideas of mine for improving humanity
>
>
> 6. Give people the ability to regrow limbs. Also they should grow a
> whole new set of teeth every 15-20 years.
>
> Anyone have any other ideas?
6a) Repair nerve damage. This would make spinal injuries less of a
problem.
--
David Cowie david_cowie at lineone dot net
Karl M Syring
>
> 7. Women should have the ability to conciously control their
> fertility.
Of course, we males need this too.
> Anyone have any other ideas?
Flaps on the ears or a neural disconnect to keep the noise out.
Karl M. Syring
Karl M Syring
Not to forget the redesign of the lungs and kidneys along that
lines. "Bird lung" sounds less offensive than "bird brain", anyway.
Karl M. Syring
Mark Atwood
>
> Flaps on the ears or a neural disconnect to keep the noise out.
Flaps on the nose to keep out fumes, and to add nasal frictives
and nasal stops to the language.
--
Mark Atwood | Well done is better than well said.
m...@pobox.com |
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
Johnny1A
> Some ideas of mine for improving humanity
>
> 7. Women should have the ability to conciously control their
> fertility.
Useful at the individual level, but is it evolutionarily adaptive?
Shermanlee
John H
"Johnny1A" <sherm...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:b3030854.03022...@posting.google.com...
Population control at the personal level isn't unheard of in evolution.
Don't some fish change sex according to population changes? Given that
we're smart enough to know when a child *should* be birthed, I don't see
why we shouldn't have total control over fertility. We already do
attempt to control it with contraceptives...
john
Dana Blackwell
> Flaps on the nose to keep out fumes, and to add nasal frictives
> and nasal stops to the language.
"Decrease amount of nasal mucous produced," she requests, cleaning
nearby surfaces after a particularly juicy nasal fricative.
--
Dana
Karl M Syring
Nah, Atwood needs a bird brain to attain sufficient
intellectual performance for that stunt.
Karl M. Syring
Ann Morgan
> Birds do more with less brain size than mammals. This would require
> extensive redesign of the brain.
Birds do have very good brains. Crows are supposedly smarter than
dogs, though less smart than chimps, which is pretty good for a brain
the size of a walnut. They also are able to regenerate their brain
cells, which I think is a pretty useful ability.
Birds also have better designed lungs than mammals, they have 'air
tubes' which are open ended rather than closed bubble shaped alveoli
like mammals do, which allows them to breath more efficiently.
Ann Morgan
> > 7. Women should have the ability to conciously control their
> > fertility.
>
> Note point 6. What do you think about women being able to keep
> producing eggs?
I am not sure what you mean by this, I think you mean that women would
keep producing eggs throughout their whole life rather than going into
menopause. I think it is a good idea for the ovaries to at least
remain active to the degree that they produce estrogen and a woman
does not have to worry about a lot of the symptoms of old age such as
osteoporosis. Evolutionarily speaking, the ovaries shut down at an age
where a woman in a primitive society (or her most likely mate) would
be too old to care for children any longer. However that is no longer
true, in some cases a much older woman might be better able to care
for a child than a youunger one because she has more financial
resources. So assuming that the woman was healthy enough to give birth
and nurse, I would not have a problem with women remaining fertile for
their whole lives. Given my point that she would be able to
voluntarily control her fertiliity, I would hope most women would be
smart enough not to have a baby when they were too old to handle
giving birth, but if some people were stupid enough to do that,
perhaps it would simply be Darwinism at work.
In addition to being able to voluntarily control her own fertility and
being fertile longer, I think perhaps women should be fertile less
OFTEN. Right now women have the potential of getting pregnant once a
month, which I think is much too often. I think once every 2 months or
3 months would be better, even if women could not control their
fertility, reducing the number of times they ovulate would help solve
a lot of problems like having more children than she could care for.
As an addendum on this point, I also think it might be a good idea for
childhood in human beings to be somewhat longer, right now most people
are physically adults while they are still in school and being treated
as children. This causes a lot of social problems. The age of puberty
ought to be delayed about 5-10 years, IMHO.
Karl M Syring
>
> Birds do have very good brains. Crows are supposedly smarter than
> dogs, though less smart than chimps, which is pretty good for a brain
> the size of a walnut. They also are able to regenerate their brain
> cells, which I think is a pretty useful ability.
>
> Birds also have better designed lungs than mammals, they have 'air
> tubes' which are open ended rather than closed bubble shaped alveoli
> like mammals do, which allows them to breath more efficiently.
The thought of feathered descendants of the troodonts, sitting
in front of their computers amuses me occasionally. What kind
of keyboards they would need?
Karl M. Syring
Mike Schilling
>
> > Birds do more with less brain size than mammals. This would require
> > extensive redesign of the brain.
As Monty Python pointed out, if you expanded a penguin to be the same size
as a human, its brain, while still smaller than human-sized, would be bigger
than it was before.
Brenda W. Clough
There was an article in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN a year or so ago which
essentially went into this question in detail. The more important
skeletal fixes include the spine (no more slipped discs or wrenched
muscles), the hip joint and pelvis (to allow childbirth -and- upright
walking) and the joint cartilages (to eliminate arthritis). A redesign
of the immune system would put paid to all the autoimmune disorders.
Brenda
--
---------
Brenda W. Clough
Read my novella "May Be Some Time"
Complete at http://www.fictionwise.com
My web page is at http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda/
John H
"Brenda W. Clough" <clo...@erols.com> wrote in message
news:3E56CD2A...@erols.com...
>A redesign
> of the immune system would put paid to all the autoimmune disorders.
Shouldn't that read, "...put paid to all of the <present> autoimmune
disorders?"
john
Craig Richardson
Speaking from painful current experience, I'll just say one word:
tailbone.
--Craig
--
Managing the Devil Rays is something like competing on "Iron Chef",
and having Chairman Kaga reveal a huge ziggurat of lint.
Gary Huckabay, Baseball Prospectus Online, August 21, 2002
Carl Dershem
So many "superman" ideas are strictly physical. Hm. Then again, the
things that would truly make a superior human would be damned difficult, if
not impossible to create genetically, as we don't have much, if any, idea
what controls them or what they are.
1. Remove superstition and irrational thought proccesses.
2. Remove vulnerability to optical illusions and false sensory input (the
old "which line is longer?" stuff).
3. Improve efficiency of neural processing - increased brain size wouldn't
be worth much if it was all inefficient - it may well be thati inefficiency
that eliminated Cro-Magnon and Boskop.
A stronger, faster human with a 'modern' mindset would probably be less of
a boon, and more of a danger.
cd
--
Those who do not understand history should not be permitted to make it.
how...@brazee.net
On 21-Feb-2003, "John H" <chandin169...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > 4. Get rid of all armpit hair!
>
> While we're at it, get rid of pubes too!
How do these improve humans? If you're going for cosmetics, at least pick
something that's not a current style - maybe make people immune to acme and
halitosis.
James Nicoll
Ann Morgan <sept...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Dan Goodman <dsg...@visi.com> wrote in message new
>
>> Birds do more with less brain size than mammals. This would require
>> extensive redesign of the brain.
>
>Birds do have very good brains. Crows are supposedly smarter than
>dogs, though less smart than chimps, which is pretty good for a brain
>the size of a walnut. They also are able to regenerate their brain
>cells, which I think is a pretty useful ability.
>
hemisphere dinosaurs. The narrator was comparing the brain size of
two related dinosaurs with that of T Rex, with the comment that T Rex
had a brain about the size of an ostrich brain, one of the stupidest
birds. OK, but what if T Rex and other carnisaurs' brains were more
like parrot or crows?
--
"Repress the urge to sprout wings or self-ignite!...This man's an
Episcopalian!...They have definite views."
Pibgorn Oct 31/02
Steve Coltrin
Indeed, fixing all autoimmune disorders is very nearly isomorphic to
fixing all bugs.
--
Steve Coltrin spco...@omcl.org WWVBF? ME's get the best stuff,
naturally, but find me a man who has at some point actually urinated
on a human brain, and I'll guarantee it is a tow-truck driver. -
EMT420
Steve Coltrin
> 2. Remove vulnerability to optical illusions and false sensory input (the
> old "which line is longer?" stuff).
I've got $10 that says that can't be done.
John H
<how...@brazee.net> wrote in message
news:4wC5a.1190$4n4....@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
They serve no function other than to make humans smell/taste bad to big
baddies. Side effect is, it makes us not so attractive to our own
species. BTW, I didn't know armpit and pubic hair had trends. ;-)
Ann Morgan
> > fertility.
>
> Useful at the individual level, but is it evolutionarily adaptive?
>
> Shermanlee
I think from the hereditary line of the woman, it would be. Keep in
mind that women physically HAVE to invest at least nine month of their
life and a lot of nutrients in producing one single offspring. Plus
women have a finite amount of eggs. Men on the other hand invest
rather little in any offspring and can produce a virtually unlimited
number of them. Given these facts, plus the fact that men are
physically stronger than women, historically this has resulted in men
forcing women to have children at times which are not so good for her,
and they may not be the best father (genetically) that is availiable
to that particular woman. This results in a lot of dead children, but
if only a few survive it was worth it from the man's evolutionary
point of view. From the evolutionary persepective of the woman,
however, she is best off being fertile only with the best mate she can
get, and only at times when there is enough food/wealth & whatnot to
properly care for any babies. Women who are able to control their
fertility so as to have children only under those circumstances will
probably have more children survive, in the long run. The same would
be true for males who adapted to the new circumstances, and took good
care of a few children rather than poor (or no) care of a lot. Also a
woman's ability to turn her fertility on and off at will would trump
the ability of men to father a large number of children, so men would
be forced to adapt to the new circumstances or have no offspring at
all. Therefore, I would have to say that yes, it is evolutionary
adaptive.
Ian Montgomerie
>Some ideas of mine for improving humanity
<snip minor physical improvements>
>Anyone have any other ideas?
Hm, let me think. What might one do. Increase intelligence, increase
prosociality and reduce selfishness, reduce the tendency to lie and
cheat, decrease hypocrisy, reduce or eliminate mental sexual
dimorphism, decrease authoritarianism... the list goes on and on.
Karl M Syring
<snip>
> care of a few children rather than poor (or no) care of a lot. Also a
> woman's ability to turn her fertility on and off at will would trump
> the ability of men to father a large number of children, so men would
> be forced to adapt to the new circumstances or have no offspring at
> all. Therefore, I would have to say that yes, it is evolutionary
> adaptive.
Me would think that we will long have transcended biological
selection when will be able to make all the required genetical
changes. Artificial wombs are not that far away and then
the whole problem will simply go away.
Karl M. Syring
Karl M Syring
>
> something that's not a current style - maybe make people immune to acme and
Wouldn't turn that real people into Wiley E. Coyote?
Speak of the dangers of genetic engineering.
Karl M. Syring
Ann Morgan
> So many "superman" ideas are strictly physical. Hm. Then again, the
> things that would truly make a superior human would be damned difficult, if
> not impossible to create genetically, as we don't have much, if any, idea
> what controls them or what they are.
The problem is that your ideas may have a downside.
> 1. Remove superstition and irrational thought proccesses.
If you did this you would probably also remove imagination, which
would be a bad thing.
> 2. Remove vulnerability to optical illusions and false sensory input (the
> old "which line is longer?" stuff).
I doubt if this is possible, and it would not be very useful if it
were possible, as being tricked by certain very carefully drawn
illusions is not really a disadvantage when it comes to dealing with
the real world.
Dan Tilque
> how...@brazee.net wrote on Sat, 22 Feb 2003 03:54:40 GMT:
>>
>
>> something that's not a current style - maybe make people
>> immune to acme and
>
> Wouldn't turn that real people into Wiley E. Coyote?
No, it's the Road Runner that's immune to acme. Wiley is acme's
victim.
--
Dan Tilque
Martin Wisse
Obviously they would be hunt and peck typists.
Martin Wisse
--
-We- don't flirt with Death. She runs up and sticks
her tongue in our ears.
James Nicoll, rasseff
Larry Caldwell
> I am not sure what you mean by this, I think you mean that women would
> keep producing eggs throughout their whole life rather than going into
> menopause. I think it is a good idea for the ovaries to at least
> remain active to the degree that they produce estrogen and a woman
> does not have to worry about a lot of the symptoms of old age such as
> osteoporosis. Evolutionarily speaking, the ovaries shut down at an age
> where a woman in a primitive society (or her most likely mate) would
> be too old to care for children any longer. However that is no longer
> true, in some cases a much older woman might be better able to care
> for a child than a youunger one because she has more financial
> resources. So assuming that the woman was healthy enough to give birth
> and nurse, I would not have a problem with women remaining fertile for
> their whole lives.
Women don't produce eggs, they ovulate. She is born with as many ova
as she will ever have. Over the course of her life, the quality of the
eggs decays and her fertility declines. A woman of 40 may still be
ovulating every month, but over half her eggs may not be viable. Some
women become functionally sterile before they reach menopause. The
ovaries shutting down at menopause may be caused by a lack of viable ova,
not her ability to care for a child.
Larry Caldwell
> of reaction to light, a person with slit pupils would see better in
> both very bright light and very dim light.
Is this true? I thought the vertical slit pupils in cats was a
concession to enhanced vertical peripheral vision in the vertical plane,
and the feline night vision was caused by a lack of color vision and a
reflective layer behind the retina.
> 2. Put the blood vessels that supply the retina behind it rather than
> in front of it. Currently light has to pass through these veins before
> hitting the retina, and it reduces vision
>
> 3. Extend the range of vision into the ultraviolet and infrared, and
> the range of hearing as well.
I never thought of ultraviolet vision as being particularly useful.
There is a problem with color correction of the lens, too. I find it
interesting that I need reading glasses in normal light, but can dispense
with them in red light. The wider the spectrum your eyes can detect, the
fuzzier your focus will be.
Animals that have IR sensors, like pit vipers, move the IR sensors to a
separate organ.
Humans already have excellent low frequency hearing, as good as any land
mammal. High frequency hearing would be nice, but we don't hunt bats and
mice, so it had no survival value. We evolved to hear animals like
mastodons and aurochs.
> 4. Get rid of all armpit hair!
? Mine doesn't bother me.
> 5. Increase the size of the brain to that found either in Cro-magnons
> or better yet, Boskop Man (1800cc vs 1250 cc in us). The larger brain
> will need a larger blood supply, therefore:
Some of us already have large brains. It pretty much goes with large
body size. I assume you are talking about the average brain size? It
would seem more appropriate to keep brain size constant and shrink
people, perhaps to 4' tall for the adult male and 3'6" for the average
female.
> 5a. Reduce the size of the intestine in order to accomodate a larger
> heart and lungs. People will have to eat more, but with a larger brain
> they would presumably be smart enough to get more food.
Speaking from experience, the human race has absolutely no need for a
vermiform appendix. At least one of my ancestors died at 26 because he
had one. Thanks to modern surgery and antibiotics, I survived.
> 6. Give people the ability to regrow limbs. Also they should grow a
> whole new set of teeth every 15-20 years.
Give people a self-healing CNS while you are at it. I don't know,
though. A brain that could regenerate might also automatically erase
memories.
> 7. Women should have the ability to conciously control their
> fertility.
Women already have the means to consciously control their fertility.
What is needed is a means for men to control their fertility.
> Anyone have any other ideas?
For modern life, and all those stresses that evolution didn't prepare us
for?
8. A better lower back design.
9. Better weight and blood sugar regulation.
10. Cleaner arteries.
11. Better toxin elimination, both in type and thoroughness.
12. An immune system that can handle cancers.
13. An immune system that can handle prions.
14. An immune system that can handle HIV.
15. No autoimmune diseases
Jim Battista
>> > > 4. Get rid of all armpit hair!
>
> They serve no function other than to make humans smell/taste bad
> to big baddies. Side effect is, it makes us not so attractive to
> our own species. BTW, I didn't know armpit and pubic hair had
> trends. ;-)
That's completely not the purpose they serve. The sweat from the
armpits and crotchular area is pheremone-oid laden and about the
closest thing to a human aphrodisiac you're going to find -- when
it's fresh. It's when it goes stale that it warps into stinky.
They're there to collect and concentrate the chemicals so as to
increase sexiness.
That said, sure, people should have more control over their own hair,
either by mental control / biofeedback or just with creams or
whatnot. It would be nice to not have to shave, because I have on
more than one occasion cut myself with an electric razor.
--
Jim Battista
A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.
Karl M Syring
Well, it causes him to completely regenerate each time.
This would allow very a innovative kind of reality TV.
Nobody gets killed, but there are spectacular explosions.
Karl M. Syring
Robert Carnegie
Syring <syr...@email.com> writes
Hunt and peck ;-)
I personally recommend Fitaly from http://www.fitaly.com/ , btw, but
I'd also recommend choosing a touchscreen or Tablet PC rather
than a desktop pen-sensor tablet with a regular monitor: the
disconnect between looking at where you type and looking at the
screen is a hassle - at least since my pen tablet maps to the
whole of a PC screen and can't have its whole surface mapped to
a larger version of the Fitaly keyboard. (On the plus side, the pen
is happy to share the screen pointer with the mouse.) The Fitaly
typing area also crowds out applications from screen space or
gets in the way of them - currently I have it parked over a stretched-
tall / wide Windows taskbar, so that applications keep away from
it.
It's this minute occurred to me that something might be done
about all of this with Microsoft Windows' two-monitor configuration
without actually /having/ two monitors: all I need is one extra
monitor adapter card, and maybe a monitor switch for
convenience, and I could configure Fitaly to run on one of two
screen areas, and then use it blind.
That's more than you wanted to know about Fitaly, but having
decided to mention it I figured I'd better go into detail about issues
arising from using it.
Robert Carnegie at home, rja.ca...@excite.com at large
--
"Shabab Indian Takeaway. Opening Wednesday the 13th of April.
Just two minutes from Whiston Hospital."
Robert Carnegie
<m...@pobox.com> writes
>Karl M Syring <syr...@email.com> writes:
>>
>> Flaps on the ears or a neural disconnect to keep the noise out.
>
>Flaps on the nose to keep out fumes, and to add nasal frictives
>and nasal stops to the language.
I want radio.
But I presume we don't have radio because of solar interference,
lightning frying our brains, and the power required to generate a
broadcast signal. Modern digital radio would be particularly hard
to evolve, and I'm not even sure about FM. And anyway, I have a
Walkman. If the in-ear speakers can be worn /inside/ closed ear
flaps then that's about all I need - except when I accidentally drop
the thing and yank the cord wrapped around behind my ears, it
better not hurt more than it does when I do it in the body I have
now.
Robert Carnegie
<chandin169...@yahoo.com> writes
>
>"Johnny1A" <sherm...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>news:b3030854.03022...@posting.google.com...
>> sept...@yahoo.com (Ann Morgan) wrote in message
>news:<74e7d6b7.03022...@posting.google.com>...
>> > Some ideas of mine for improving humanity
>> >
>>
>> > fertility.
>>
>
>Don't some fish change sex according to population changes? Given that
>we're smart enough to know when a child *should* be birthed, I don't see
>why we shouldn't have total control over fertility. We already do
>attempt to control it with contraceptives...
Heck, why not have us change sex by thinking about it? Not that I
personally want to, much, but if our redesigned human species
had that as a natural function then maybe we'd be better people.
Thinking a little longer, you probably /would/ have to increase the
male-mode version of the desire to have children to persuade
guys to be girls and get pregnant.
Arguably #7 happened some time ago, on the preventative side,
except that what we have is a range of physical and
pharmaceutical techniques for interfering with the ordinary
process of fertility, rather than inbuilt conscious physiological
control over it. I think it's one of those processes that's almost
inevitably going to be tricky for the conscious mind to get a handle
on: we don't usually think much about breathing, never mind our
heartbeat, because the timescale is short, and with fertility the
timescale is too long - at the moment, anyway.
OTOH, if the preventative side is sorted out (which, however, just
places evolutionary pressure on breeding super-sperm which can
chew through condom rubber, and smart eggs which can dodge
past an IUD), what about the positive side? Choosing to
reproduce today is pretty hit-and-miss - though it's fun, too, sure.
But it could be made /much/ more efficient. Let's give her a sac in
which to retain his sperm indefinitely (well, say a week; they last
that long, at least, AIUI). And when she chooses to produce an
egg, it plops right into that sac: what ensues like shooting fish in a
barrel. Then, probably /only/ then, does what we know as the
menstrual cycle start (the rest of the time, no mood swings and no
expensive sanitary products required), preparing the womb to
receive the embryo, which /walks/ out of the sperm sac on little
tentacles or flagella and settles down on what's going to be the
placenta of its own volition.
There are good evolutionary reasons why our bodies don't work
like that even if they scientifically could, but what evolution likes,
we don't have to like.
And if humans also change sex at will, couples have to take it in
turn to get pregnant.
Someone mentioned the possibility of artificial wombs as in
Aldous Huxley (I think there've been animal experiments in
Japan), and that brings up the issue of transferring functions
necessary to life to outside of the body, the most obvious others
being mobility and digestion, I think. H. G. Wells's Martians had
evolved with big heads, puny little tentacles, they used mechanical
aids to get around and they couldn't consume solid matter - they
drank our blood. (Practically, one would suppose that they also
rendered down human corpses into a liquid form, and the fresh
blood was just a special delicacy - there's a scene in the book
which you could read as that they have a kind of picnic, al fresco.)
Our bodies are designed internally for hunter-gatherer life, when
we mostly live in settled environments - I wonder what proportion
of the whole world's population lives in cities, but I presume the
ratio's still increasing. In developed countries, most of us get our
food in packages from the grocery store, anyway. It might as well
be pre-processed quick nutrient packs.
And for getting around, it would be nifty to exchange our legs for
motorised wheels. If we even need to get around; when I was
doing telephone support for computer equipment in remote
places, and I needed to ask the guy on site to find /this/ little plug
and switch it for /that/ one, and he couldn't, I figured it would be
just /so/ easy if every site kept an android in the closet that I could
just virtually occupy and then put to work as if I was there in
person myself - me, and the electrician, and the plumber, and the
phone service guy and the painter and decorator and the piano
tuner; one at a time, obviously. And washing our hands in
between. Telepresence, that's the ticket.
'Course, there'd be some risk that they'd build an android that was
smart enough to do my job and the other jobs just by itself, and
then I'd be unemployed...
Robert Carnegie
m>, Ann Morgan <sept...@yahoo.com> writes
>> 1. Remove superstition and irrational thought proccesses.
>
>If you did this you would probably also remove imagination, which
>would be a bad thing.
Does "irrational thought processes" include emotion? I think
emotion could probably stand to be toned down; the more closely
social we are, as a species, the better it is to let the head rule the
heart - so that both get what they want, but in a /smart/ way.
Thought processes other than the rational may be useful because
they lead to the correct solution faster than the rational process -
but they sometimes lead to the wrong solution. I'm still thinking
about emotion here.
How strong should we make the natural instinct to trust the
government and not break the law (i.e. respect tribal order and the
authority of the alpha male)? What about the instinct to break the
law if you're pretty sure you won't get caught?
If we're presuming that a superior species may have higher
intelligence, evolution may think otherwise: every species other
than ourselves, that we know of, isn't anything like as smart, and
up to now they've done pretty well. And then there's the idea that
we blow ourselves up in nuclear war and leave not much behind
besides cockroaches. At that point it's Roaches 1, Humans 0;
they win, we lose.
Jeff Suzuki
> Some ideas of mine for improving humanity
I'm thinking of Heinlein's "Gulf": a lot of these things would be nice,
but the only real improvement would be the ability to think better.
For example, consider Sept. 11. There was ample evidence
that something was going to happen...buried in tons and tons of
misleading evidence. What would it have been worth to have
someone who could look at the mound of evidence and say "THIS
is the important thing..."?
Jeffs
Karl M Syring
>
> Men already have some means (condoms, abstincence, 69) just like women
> already have a higher number of means.
Uhm, condoms are much too unsafe to use as a serious
anti-contraceptive. The yearly hit probability is around 15%,
under regular conditions. Periodical abstinence is even worse. On
the other hand, being a grad student seems seems to work.
Karl M. Syring
Craig Richardson
wrote:
>Men already have some means (condoms, abstincence, 69) just like women
>already have a higher number of means.
Guru: "Abstincence is a simple, yet effective form of birth control.
You merely light one of these special sticks - like so - and let the
room fill with the subtle, relaxing aroma."
Student: "Cool. Do you do it before sex, or after?"
Guru: "Instead."
Carl Dershem
news:1uNWXQA2...@redjac.demon.co.uk:
> In article <74e7d6b7.03022...@posting.google.co
> m>, Ann Morgan <sept...@yahoo.com> writes
>
>>> 1. Remove superstition and irrational thought proccesses.
>>
>>If you did this you would probably also remove imagination, which
>>would be a bad thing.
I'm highly doubtful of that, and intended it as a rejection of things that
would grant Darwin Award status, as well as foolishness like religion and
Puly Shore movies.
> Does "irrational thought processes" include emotion? I think
> emotion could probably stand to be toned down; the more closely
> social we are, as a species, the better it is to let the head rule the
> heart - so that both get what they want, but in a /smart/ way.
Emotion is a great thing, if used as motivation, but can really be a
problem when given control of all thought processes. Ask any male over 13
years old, end you may get some consensus about the problems that arise
when "the little head" does the thinking.
> Thought processes other than the rational may be useful because
> they lead to the correct solution faster than the rational process -
> but they sometimes lead to the wrong solution. I'm still thinking
> about emotion here.
See above. Though it was not a very good film, the first Star Trek film
showed where emotion and intuition can be very useful. But "moderation in
all things (even moderation)" is still something that would probably
benefit any individual or species that tried to 'improve' itself.
> How strong should we make the natural instinct to trust the
> government and not break the law (i.e. respect tribal order and the
> authority of the alpha male)? What about the instinct to break the
> law if you're pretty sure you won't get caught?
Grey areas are always interesting, and the answer would probably lie in the
question of whether we're talking about an individual or a species that's
being modified. If a species, the alwys and entire social contract will
probably have to be written. If an individual, it's be very beenficisl to
have him AWARE of the social contract, rather than just trusting in it to
be there and do the right thing.
When dealing with Government X, flexibility exists HERE but not HERE. With
Government Y, flexibility (and rigidity) exists in other places. Knowing
that and being able to deal with it rationally would be a major advantage.
> If we're presuming that a superior species may have higher
> intelligence, evolution may think otherwise: every species other
> than ourselves, that we know of, isn't anything like as smart, and
> up to now they've done pretty well. And then there's the idea that
> we blow ourselves up in nuclear war and leave not much behind
> besides cockroaches. At that point it's Roaches 1, Humans 0;
> they win, we lose.
We seem to be talking at cross purposes here. Natural evolution and
directed development are very different things, especially in the focus of
the discussion at hand. And "smart" isn't exactly a black-and-white thing
either. Would you consider it better to breed for a race of people with
the mental advantages of, say, Batman, or the physical advantages of, say,
Wolverine? I, personally, vote Batman.
But the changes inflicted on a society by the ability to pick and choose
among various genetic modifications is a greaf SFnal idea.
> Robert Carnegie at home, rja.ca...@excite.com at large
cd
Carl Dershem
news:4wC5a.1190$4n4....@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net:
Or cavities (which can affect one's breath - if you avoid the dentist,
your mouth may end up smelling like a cesspool) and snoring.
John M. Gamble
Steve Coltrin <spco...@omcl.org> wrote:
>Carl Dershem <der...@cox.net> writes:
>
>> 2. Remove vulnerability to optical illusions and false sensory input (the
>> old "which line is longer?" stuff).
>
>I've got $10 that says that can't be done.
>
In fact, i recall reading a Scientific American article in the early
90's regarding optical recognition, and the computer program (which
may have been a neural network) was fooled by the same illusions
most people are fooled by. Such illusions may be an inevitable
consequence of pattern recognition.
--
-john
February 28 1997: Last day libraries could order catalogue cards
from the Library of Congress.
Norville
>>Birds do have very good brains. Crows are supposedly smarter than
>>dogs, though less smart than chimps, which is pretty good for a brain
>>the size of a walnut. They also are able to regenerate their brain
>>cells, which I think is a pretty useful ability.
I'm a fan of crows and ravens; they can be lots of fun to watch. And any
bird that can roll down a snowbank for fun, making little "chuckling"
sounds as if terribly amused, has got to have a lot going for it. <g>
--
...ten.cinos@ellivron...
"...To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
<*> "Ulysses" by Tennyson <*>
Salute Space Shuttle COLUMBIA, 1981-2003
Robert Carnegie
Jim Battista <batt...@unt.edu> writes
>"John H" <chandin169...@yahoo.com> wrote in
>news:b3712e$r2i$1...@slb4.atl.mindspring.net:
>
>>> > > 4. Get rid of all armpit hair!
>>
>> They serve no function other than to make humans smell/taste bad
>> to big baddies. Side effect is, it makes us not so attractive to
>> our own species. BTW, I didn't know armpit and pubic hair had
>> trends. ;-)
>
>That's completely not the purpose they serve. The sweat from the
>armpits and crotchular area is pheremone-oid laden and about the
>closest thing to a human aphrodisiac you're going to find -- when
>it's fresh. It's when it goes stale that it warps into stinky.
>They're there to collect and concentrate the chemicals so as to
>increase sexiness.
AIUI, nature intended even old, stale sweat to be potentially
attractive to us - and even in Victorian times, the sexual attraction
of body odour was recognised, as a vile incitement to immoral
behaviour amongst poor people, given it was the Victorians ;-)
The problem is the modern perversion of hygiene. We're not
/used/ to smelling each other at distance any more. I suppose the
other modern perversion of living close together in cities doesn't
help with that.
Another factor, demonstrated on television for instance by the
eminent scientist Lord Robert Winston I am not making this up, is
cues describing your immune system contained in your personal
scent. The theory is that if you have a choice of mates, you should
choose the one who has a different immune system to yours. I
suppose that makes things better when the whole family gets sick
with some bug. IIRC, Lord Winston was given the interesting task
of sniffing the concentrated essences of six young women's used
nightwear and putting them in order of rank, so to speak, as to
relative attractiveness. Then the results of immune system tests
were revealed to correspond almost exactly to his choices.
So scent is important. IIRC, _The Joy Of Sex_ suggested that
eighteen hours after an all-over wash was enough to develop an
interesting natural body scent. Much longer than that and you
might have _too_ much of a good thing ;-)
>That said, sure, people should have more control over their own hair,
>either by mental control / biofeedback or just with creams or
>whatnot. It would be nice to not have to shave, because I have on
>more than one occasion cut myself with an electric razor.
Huh. If you want to be James Nicoll, you have to try harder than
/that./ ;-) You and I don't /have/ to shave, anyway, we just /choose/
to shave. Some days I don't. Of course if you don't /ever/ shave
then people start to think you're a Muslim or a communist (or a
lesbian), because shaving is another of those universal modern
perversions...
We could go in for electrolysis, I think it's called, if that didn't
compromise our masculinity. We want to know that we /could/
grow a beard if we so chose. (We also recognise that no one
particuarly wants to be kissed by one, modern perversion, yadda
yadda, which is why we don't actually do it.)
Oh, who's that artist we were just hearing about who kept painting
her self-portrait with a moustache, so the actress who got her bio-
pic made grew one herself? (Whilst explaining that the original
artist's face-fuzz wasn't as prominent in real life as in the
paintings.) I've just connected that with her beating out Jennifer
Lopez to executing this project, so now I have to imagine J-Lo
straining to try and grow a 'tache so she can play Leon Trotsky's
girlfriend. And so do you.
Robert Carnegie at home, rja.ca...@excite.com at large
Robert Carnegie
Syring <syr...@email.com> writes
>Dan Tilque wrote on Sat, 22 Feb 2003 00:45:06 -0800:
>> Karl M Syring performed an arpeggio on a keyboard and produced:
>>
>>> how...@brazee.net wrote on Sat, 22 Feb 2003 03:54:40 GMT:
>>>>
>>>
>>>> something that's not a current style - maybe make people
>>>> immune to acme and
>>>
>>> Wouldn't turn that real people into Wiley E. Coyote?
>>
>> No, it's the Road Runner that's immune to acme. Wiley is acme's
>> victim.
>
>Well, it causes him to completely regenerate each time.
Wait. Go back. You're saying that Wiley Coyote is a Time Lord out
of _Doctor Who_? That would explain... oh, no, no it wouldn't. :-)
>This would allow very a innovative kind of reality TV.
>Nobody gets killed, but there are spectacular explosions.
IIRC, there are a few comicbook characters like that. People who
are physically converted to gas / energy / explosions (an explosion
being after all simply a volume of gas suddenly released in a
confined space). Nitro, The Exploding Man, for instance. What
you do about a superhero costume can be an embarrassing
problem, particularly with the Comics Code Authority.
Warren Ellis's _Transmetropolitan_ (non-Code) once or twice
features "foglets", which are human beings converted into
swarms of flying nanotechnology machines. They claim it's a
great life.
Robert Carnegie
<Omixoch...@yahoo.com> writes
>Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote in <ZfPN7IA9+
>0V+...@redjac.demon.co.uk>:
>
>>Heck, why not have us change sex by thinking about it? Not that I
>>personally want to, much, but if our redesigned human species
>>had that as a natural function then maybe we'd be better people.
>>Thinking a little longer, you probably /would/ have to increase the
>>male-mode version of the desire to have children to persuade
>>guys to be girls and get pregnant.
>
>
>http://homepages.compuserve.de/Mostral/artikel/culture.html
>
>"...but the abilities to change sex and to alter one's brain-chemistry -
>without resort to external technology or any form of payment - both have
>more serious functions within the Culture. A society in which it is so easy
>to change sex will rapidly find out if it is treating one gender better
>than the other; within the population, over time, there will gradually be
>greater and greater numbers of the sex it is more rewarding to be, and so
>pressure for change - within society rather than the individuals - will
>presumably therefore build up until some form of sexual equality and
>hence
>numerical parity is established...."
Does equilibrium have to be at precise sexual equality and
numerical parity? Insects don't have numerical parity...but then,
insects don't get married. But then, these days already, a lot of
people don't get married.
I wonder how many guys would choose to become lesbians.
Going by videos and magazines and sleazy movies, they get /so/
much action :-)
>>And for getting around, it would be nifty to exchange our legs for
>>motorised wheels. If we even need to get around; when I was
>
>Slight problem with wheels: you'd need some connection between the
>wheel
>and the rest of the body, for the blood supply, and then after too many
>revolutions the connection would get wrapped around the axle and you'd
>have
>to stop and unravel it before rolling off again.
Maybe the wheel itself doesn't need to be connected to the blood
supply, or the connection can be arranged so the wheel's own
muscles draw in blood instead of depending on the heart pushing
it. Now I'm imagining some kind of laterally bicameral axle space,
we probably need lubricating fluid there anyway...
OTOH, I don't intend to confine my imagined body modifications to
the purely biological. Robot parts are fine. Although of course
bicycles aren't science fiction any more (unless ET is a
passenger)...
Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
> Someone mentioned the possibility of artificial wombs as in
> Aldous Huxley (I think there've been animal experiments in
> Japan), and that brings up the issue of transferring functions
> necessary to life to outside of the body, the most obvious others
> being mobility and digestion, I think. H. G. Wells's Martians had
> evolved with big heads, puny little tentacles, they used mechanical
> aids to get around and they couldn't consume solid matter - they
> drank our blood. (Practically, one would suppose that they also
> rendered down human corpses into a liquid form, and the fresh
> blood was just a special delicacy - there's a scene in the book
> which you could read as that they have a kind of picnic, al fresco.)
The Martians also come from a planet with 1/3 of Earth's gravity.
What seems awkward and slow on Earth might be a high-speed, aggressive
predator on Mars.
I can currently live in complete squalor, moving only between the
computer desk, bed, bathroom, and fridge, for about 48 hours before
being forced to clean up and "get a life" again in order to shop,
exercise, see people, etc. One of my friends, whom I have never seen in
person, uses her computer from bed, to avoid one of those steps, and I
think she can go up to 72 hours. Future advances in technology,
telecommuting, and non-judgemental pizza deliverators should be able to
extend this time to days, even weeks. Me and my fuzzy slippers sure are
looking forward to that glorious time in the 21st century!
> And for getting around, it would be nifty to exchange our legs for
> motorised wheels.
Ah, the Segway, evolutionary harbinger of future humanity. Just chop
yer legs off and attach one of those instead of prosthetics. Saves on
shoes and socks, too.
--
<a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
"We remain convinced that this is the best defensive posture to adopt in
order to minimize casualties when the Great Old Ones return from beyond
the stars to eat our brains." -Charlie Stross, _The Concrete Jungle_
Charlie Stross
as <suz...@bard.edu> declared:
Except you'd have smarter terrorists, too. (Or smarter activists using
more subtle mechanisms to coerce the desired social response, having
figured out that blatant acts of suicide-hijacking are counter-productive
but that it's possible to bring down the entire western economy by
creating a modified flu virus that just makes people _dumb_ for a couple
of weeks before they get over the bug ...)
See the problem?
-- Charlie
Doug
> In article <74e7d6b7.03022...@posting.google.com>,
> Ann Morgan <sept...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >Dan Goodman <dsg...@visi.com> wrote in message new
> >
> >> Birds do more with less brain size than mammals. This would require
> >> extensive redesign of the brain.
> >
> >Birds do have very good brains. Crows are supposedly smarter than
> >dogs, though less smart than chimps, which is pretty good for a brain
> >the size of a walnut. They also are able to regenerate their brain
> >cells, which I think is a pretty useful ability.
> >
> hemisphere dinosaurs. The narrator was comparing the brain size of
> two related dinosaurs with that of T Rex, with the comment that T Rex
> had a brain about the size of an ostrich brain, one of the stupidest
> birds. OK, but what if T Rex and other carnisaurs' brains were more
> like parrot or crows?
It's yet another manifestation of "size matters." Or, as our
Australian friends put it, "The bigga the betta, mate!"
Doug
Brandon Ray
Karl M Syring wrote:
> Omixochitl wrote on 22 Feb 2003 23:51:44 GMT:
> >
> > Men already have some means (condoms, abstincence, 69) just like women
> > already have a higher number of means.
>
> Uhm, condoms are much too unsafe to use as a serious
> anti-contraceptive. The yearly hit probability is around 15%,
> under regular conditions.
Not correct -- or at least, not complete. The failure rate for condoms is
about 14% per year -- but most of those "failures" are the result of
deciding not to bother "just this once" or not putting the condom on before
*any* contact between the penis and the vagina. The actual failure rate
for condoms, if they are always used, and always used correctly, is about
2%. Clearly, there's a lot of play in those numbers, and you can have a
significant impact on them by modifying your own behavior.
Source url: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/bc/condom.htm
> Periodical abstinence is even worse.
Again, not correct. The failure rate for the various rhythm methods is
about 20% -- but again, many of the "failures" are the result of not
strictly adhering to the chosen method. The actual failure rate if you
*always* follow a particular method range from 2% to 9%, depending on the
method used -- the low end is comparable to consistent, correct use of
condoms, and again, you can affect these numbers significantly by modifying
your behavior.
Source url: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/bc/WaysToChart.html
But none of this is really relevant to the original point, which is that
one absolutely obvious modification to make to the human genome is to allow
both women *and* men to have conscious, reliable control of their
fertility, *without* having to rely on artificial aids.
--
In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics! -- Homer Simpson
how...@brazee.net
don't want to revolt against the authorities (who also don't want to revolt
against the Way Things Should Be).
Our chances of survival are high - but obviously this is a dystopia, not a
utopia.
how...@brazee.net
On 21-Feb-2003, sept...@yahoo.com (Ann Morgan) wrote:
> 6. Give people the ability to regrow limbs. Also they should grow a
> whole new set of teeth every 15-20 years.
I don't want to have my teeth wiggle and come out like they did when I was
7.
how...@brazee.net
On 22-Feb-2003, Omixochitl <Omixoch...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >Women already have the means to consciously control their fertility.
> >What is needed is a means for men to control their fertility.
>
> Men already have some means (condoms, abstincence, 69) just like women
> already have a higher number of means.
>
> Trouble is, these means are not built into the body itself (like the way
> being able to think yourself infertile while deprived of the abstinence
> means in a jurisdiction where your husband can legally rape you would be a
>
> built-in means).
And there are women (usually teens), who accidentally/on purpose have their
birth control fail. Maybe the change should be that it is much harder to
become fertile.
how...@brazee.net
On 22-Feb-2003, Karl M Syring <syr...@email.com> wrote:
> Uhm, condoms are much too unsafe to use as a serious
> anti-contraceptive. The yearly hit probability is around 15%,
> under regular conditions. Periodical abstinence is even worse. On
> the other hand, being a grad student seems seems to work.
So do you think conscious desire will work better? I don't.
Being immune to AIDS, the cold, the flu, etc would be good. Having a
genetic disposition to prefer healthy foods would be good.
Brandon Ray
how...@brazee.net wrote:
> On 22-Feb-2003, Karl M Syring <syr...@email.com> wrote:
>
> > Uhm, condoms are much too unsafe to use as a serious
> > anti-contraceptive. The yearly hit probability is around 15%,
> > under regular conditions. Periodical abstinence is even worse. On
> > the other hand, being a grad student seems seems to work.
>
> So do you think conscious desire will work better? I don't.
Why not? If avoiding pregnancy were as simple as thinking to yourself:
"I will not become pregnant." or "I will not make this woman pregnant."
don't you think there would be a high success rate? Or better still, if
it took a conscious act of will to *become* fertile?
David Cowie
>
> Being immune to AIDS, the cold, the flu, etc would be good. Having a
> genetic disposition to prefer healthy foods would be good.
It's possible that we already have a genetic disposition towards healthy
foods. The problem is that what's healthy for hunter-gatherers is not
necessarily healthy for shopper-gatherers.
--
David Cowie david_cowie at lineone dot net
Jeff Suzuki
> Except you'd have smarter terrorists, too.
I'm not sure if you'd just end up with a higher equilibrium, though. Right
now
the balance of power is with the non-terrorists (really: how many of us know
people who've been killed by terrorists incidents?), and there are some
things that no amount of intelligence will overcome: if you want to bomb a
subway station, you've got to plant a bomb. You can be oh-so-clever
about it, but at some point, you've got to plant a bomb. What happens
if Joe Citizen is more aware of what should and shouldn't be in a subway
station?
Alternatively, look at the anthrax scare: for a few weeks, anytime someone
spilled non-dairy creamer, someone else called the bomb squad. Think of
how much less time would be wasted on false alarms if Joe Citizen said,
"Hmmm, there's white powder _there_ and non-dairy creamer _here_..."
(Or for that matter, the panicky calls over letters received from Lebanon...
Tennesee)
Jeffs
how...@brazee.net
On 23-Feb-2003, "David Cowie" <see...@lineone.net> wrote:
> > Being immune to AIDS, the cold, the flu, etc would be good. Having a
> > genetic disposition to prefer healthy foods would be good.
>
> It's possible that we already have a genetic disposition towards healthy
> foods. The problem is that what's healthy for hunter-gatherers is not
> necessarily healthy for shopper-gatherers.
That possibility can only be tested against what we are.
John H
"Omixochitl" <Omixoch...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:932B7DB80...@news.cis.dfn.de...
> Brandon Ray <pub...@avalon.net> wrote in
<3E59077A...@avalon.net>:
>
>
> >it took a conscious act of will to *become* fertile?
>
Indeed!
"Honey, lets make a baby!"
"What? Now? But it takes 3 hours to finish the fertility trance and
the games starts in two hours..."
Nancy Lebovitz
Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>
>How strong should we make the natural instinct to trust the
>government and not break the law (i.e. respect tribal order and the
>authority of the alpha male)? What about the instinct to break the
>law if you're pretty sure you won't get caught?
How about making the desire to get rid of rules as strong as the
desire to make new rules?
OBSF: _The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress_, in which it's suggested that
there should be a legislative house which repeals any law that
a third of the members vote against.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
Now, with bumper stickers
Using your turn signal is not "giving information to the enemy"
Nancy Lebovitz
Alternatively, making empathy more reliable would presumably have
meant that no one would want to fly airplanes into buildings.
It's possible that clearer thinking would have been enough--at least
enough to realize that the 9/11 attacks would not have predictable
results and therefore wouldn't be a reliable method of achieving
any particular goal.
Robert St. Amant
> So many "superman" ideas are strictly physical. Hm. Then again, the
> things that would truly make a superior human would be damned difficult, if
> not impossible to create genetically, as we don't have much, if any, idea
> what controls them or what they are.
>
> 1. Remove superstition and irrational thought proccesses.
If you can figure out the difference between rational and irrational
thought processes. That's a tough one. Also, presumably our biases
have helped us get to this point; it's not clear that they're no
longer useful. (I'm thinking of Tversky and Kahneman here, plus work
on the relationship between emotion and rationality.)
> 2. Remove vulnerability to optical illusions and false sensory input (the
> old "which line is longer?" stuff).
I don't know much about this area, but I'd expect that optical
illusions are inevitable in a practical vision system. It seems
plausible to me that things like the Muller-Lyer illusion happen
because we need to process patterns in such a way to get by in our 3D
world.
--
Rob St. Amant
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~stamant
Larry Caldwell
> Omixochitl wrote on 22 Feb 2003 23:51:44 GMT:
> >
> > Men already have some means (condoms, abstincence, 69) just like women
> > already have a higher number of means.
>
> Uhm, condoms are much too unsafe to use as a serious
> anti-contraceptive. The yearly hit probability is around 15%,
> under regular conditions.
Plus, they are the aesthetic equivalent of taking a bath with your socks
on.
> Periodical abstinence is even worse. On
> the other hand, being a grad student seems seems to work.
Fortunately, a men's birth control pill is in clinical trials in England.
Early reports are that it is nearly 100% effective and pleasantly free of
side effects.
Karl M Syring
>
> On 22-Feb-2003, Karl M Syring <syr...@email.com> wrote:
>
>> Uhm, condoms are much too unsafe to use as a serious
>> anti-contraceptive. The yearly hit probability is around 15%,
>> under regular conditions. Periodical abstinence is even worse. On
>> the other hand, being a grad student seems seems to work.
>
> So do you think conscious desire will work better? I don't.
No, it is just when both partners are subject to severe stress,
not much happens.
> Being immune to AIDS, the cold, the flu, etc would be good. Having a
> genetic disposition to prefer healthy foods would be good.
Hmm, arterial damage is more attributed to inflammatory
processes today. You may try to read some stuff about CRP
(C-reactive protein).
Karl M. Syring
Karl M Syring
The problem is that we are entirely unsuitable for our
living conditions. Speak about creating a new species.
Karl M. Syring
Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
It's a dystopia to us, because we value freedom. As long as the
citizens are happy, it's a utopia to them.
Craig Richardson
<cha...@antipope.org> wrote:
>it's possible to bring down the entire western economy by
>creating a modified flu virus that just makes people _dumb_ for a couple
>of weeks before they get over the bug ...)
Naw. Meetings make people dumb for a couple of hours, and our economy
limps along.
--Craig
--
Managing the Devil Rays is something like competing on "Iron Chef",
and having Chairman Kaga reveal a huge ziggurat of lint.
Gary Huckabay, Baseball Prospectus Online, August 21, 2002
Maureen O'Brien
>Fortunately, a men's birth control pill is in clinical trials in
>England. Early reports are that it is nearly 100% effective and
>pleasantly free of side effects.
>
> http://www.askmen.com/love/dzimmer_60/72_love_answers.html
But of course that won't protect men or women from STDs, which
currently seem to be running rampant thanks to stupid people.
An intelligence and wisdom boost among humans is definitely needed....
Maureen
Ann Morgan
> >>And for getting around, it would be nifty to exchange our legs for
> >>motorised wheels. If we even need to get around; when I was
> >
> >Slight problem with wheels: you'd need some connection between the
> >wheel
> >and the rest of the body, for the blood supply, and then after too many
> >revolutions the connection would get wrapped around the axle and you'd
> >have
> >to stop and unravel it before rolling off again.
>
> Maybe the wheel itself doesn't need to be connected to the blood
> supply, or the connection can be arranged so the wheel's own
> muscles draw in blood instead of depending on the heart pushing
> it. Now I'm imagining some kind of laterally bicameral axle space,
> we probably need lubricating fluid there anyway...
Exchanging legs for wheels is probably a very BAD idea, evolutionarily
speaking, since about 99.99 % of the planet is NOT suitable for
getting around on wheels. The only places that are, are certain fairly
new volcanic lava plains and assorted man-made surfaces. A society
advanced enough to pave large areas would be advanced enough to make
artificial wheels on cars, bikes, rollerscates & whatnot, so having
your own built in wheels would give you no advantage there.
Ann Morgan
> And there are women (usually teens), who accidentally/on purpose have their
> birth control fail. Maybe the change should be that it is much harder to
> become fertile.
That might possibly work, but the only one I can think of that would
be effective would be to tie in fertility somehow to both:
1. Nutrition, so a woman had to maintain a minimum body weight for at
least a year before being fertile. No more starving mothers giving
birth to babies destined to starve.
and
2. Beta waves in the brain, so that the more concious thought activity
going on, the more likely a woman was to be fertile.
Ann Morgan
Obviously you must be rich. I recently had to have a baby tooth pulled
and it is currently being replaced with an implant at a cost of $2400.
There was no adult tooth under it. Maybe you have enough money that
you wouldn't mind it, but for most people, they would prefer to have
their teeth 'wiggle' for a couple weeks out of every couple decades
than PAY that kind of money. And since you DO have that kind of money,
and the wiggling would BOTHER you so much, there is a simple solution:
simply pay your dentist to surgically remove all the toothbuds up in
your jawbone, and if your current teeth go bad, get implants.
Russell Borogove
How old are you now? What percentage of your teeth are
natural vs prosthetic at this point? Any unsightly stains?
Uneven wear?
I'll take a new set, please. The annoyance of them getting
wiggly every few years is relatively minor compared to
dental work. Hmm, it would be nice if the replacement
set came in not all at once but not spread out over too
long a period either -- say 6 months to bring in a new
set at the high end. You wouldn't want all your teeth
to fall out at once, but neither would you want to never
be able to predict when your next loss was going to be...
-Borogove
David Bilek
><how...@brazee.net> wrote:
>>
>> On 21-Feb-2003, sept...@yahoo.com (Ann Morgan) wrote:
>>
>> > 6. Give people the ability to regrow limbs. Also they should grow a
>> > whole new set of teeth every 15-20 years.
>>
>> I don't want to have my teeth wiggle and come out like they did when I was
>> 7.
>
>How old are you now? What percentage of your teeth are
>natural vs prosthetic at this point? Any unsightly stains?
>Uneven wear?
>
I'm 27. 100% No and no.
Probably won't be that way forever though.
-David
Karl M Syring
Uh, that is not true here in Europe.
Must be an pure US phenomenon.
Karl M. Syring
how...@brazee.net
On 23-Feb-2003, sept...@yahoo.com (Ann Morgan) wrote:
> > And there are women (usually teens), who accidentally/on purpose have
> > their
> > birth control fail. Maybe the change should be that it is much harder
> > to
> > become fertile.
>
> That might possibly work, but the only one I can think of that would
> be effective would be to tie in fertility somehow to both:
> 1. Nutrition, so a woman had to maintain a minimum body weight for at
> least a year before being fertile. No more starving mothers giving
> birth to babies destined to starve.
>
> and
>
> 2. Beta waves in the brain, so that the more concious thought activity
> going on, the more likely a woman was to be fertile.
I remember a short story where there was an epidemic of a "disease" that
made all women infertile. The cure involved a treatment that made them
bald. Bald women were trying to get children.
how...@brazee.net
On 23-Feb-2003, sept...@yahoo.com (Ann Morgan) wrote:
> > > 6. Give people the ability to regrow limbs. Also they should grow a
> > > whole new set of teeth every 15-20 years.
> >
> > I don't want to have my teeth wiggle and come out like they did when I
> > was
> > 7.
>
> Obviously you must be rich. I recently had to have a baby tooth pulled
> and it is currently being replaced with an implant at a cost of $2400.
> There was no adult tooth under it. Maybe you have enough money that
> you wouldn't mind it, but for most people, they would prefer to have
> their teeth 'wiggle' for a couple weeks out of every couple decades
> than PAY that kind of money. And since you DO have that kind of money,
> and the wiggling would BOTHER you so much, there is a simple solution:
> simply pay your dentist to surgically remove all the toothbuds up in
> your jawbone, and if your current teeth go bad, get implants.
There are alternatives to losing one's teeth. Like keeping them. I'd be
using my 4th set of teeth instead of my 2nd set under your scenario - with 3
operations to remove my wisdom teeth. Removing impacted wisdom teeth is
expensive as well.
how...@brazee.net
On 23-Feb-2003, "Russell Borogove" <kal...@estarcion.com> wrote:
> > I don't want to have my teeth wiggle and come out like they did when I
> > was
> > 7.
>
> How old are you now? What percentage of your teeth are
> natural vs prosthetic at this point? Any unsightly stains?
> Uneven wear?
I'm in my 50s. I do have fillings, but I really like the ceramic fillings
being as good as teeth.
> I'll take a new set, please. The annoyance of them getting
> wiggly every few years is relatively minor compared to
> dental work. Hmm, it would be nice if the replacement
> set came in not all at once but not spread out over too
> long a period either -- say 6 months to bring in a new
> set at the high end. You wouldn't want all your teeth
> to fall out at once, but neither would you want to never
> be able to predict when your next loss was going to be...
So you don't expect dental work with replacements? How about orthodontia?
If they came in crooked last time, they will come in straight the next
time? My wisdom teeth were completely on their sides and had to be
removed. I'll save dental care by having to remove them repeatedly?
how...@brazee.net
On 23-Feb-2003, Karl M Syring <syr...@email.com> wrote:
> > An intelligence and wisdom boost among humans is definitely needed....
>
> Uh, that is not true here in Europe.
> Must be an pure US phenomenon.
You're lucky that you have all of the intelligence and wisdom that you could
ever use.
Karl M Syring
No, we have better health care. The problem is, that
in the US 40% percent of women have Chlamydia infections
(http://www.bact.wisc.edu/Bact330/lecturechlamydia), which is
bad enough on its own, but this infection will multiply the
the probability of an HIV infection by a factor 4 or 5.
Karl M. Syring
Kittykat
graced us with the following words of wisdom:
>> 5. Increase the size of the brain to that found either in Cro-magnons
>> or better yet, Boskop Man (1800cc vs 1250 cc in us). The larger brain
>> will need a larger blood supply, therefore:
>
>Some of us already have large brains. It pretty much goes with large
>body size. I assume you are talking about the average brain size? It
>would seem more appropriate to keep brain size constant and shrink
>people, perhaps to 4' tall for the adult male and 3'6" for the average
>female.
Wouldn't either of these make childbirth much more difficult? Or was
there another improvement offered to compensate for that problem?
--
KittyKat (Jack V.)
crkrjack at earthling dot net
Why don't they make computers that will do what we think we want
them to do?
Brenda W. Clough
>On Sat, 22 Feb 2003 17:36:50 GMT, Larry Caldwell <lar...@teleport.com>
>graced us with the following words of wisdom:
>
>>>5. Increase the size of the brain to that found either in Cro-magnons
>>>or better yet, Boskop Man (1800cc vs 1250 cc in us). The larger brain
>>>will need a larger blood supply, therefore:
>>>
>>Some of us already have large brains. It pretty much goes with large
>>body size. I assume you are talking about the average brain size? It
>>would seem more appropriate to keep brain size constant and shrink
>>people, perhaps to 4' tall for the adult male and 3'6" for the average
>>female.
>>
>
>Wouldn't either of these make childbirth much more difficult? Or was
>there another improvement offered to compensate for that problem?
>
The problem is that it's hard to have a pelvis which will -both- allow
for a large baby and upright walking. The current complexities are a
compromise between these two goals. A redesign would fix this.
Brenda
--
---------
Brenda W. Clough
Read my novella "May Be Some Time"
Complete at http://www.fictionwise.com
My web page is at http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda/
Kai Henningsen
> Huh. If you want to be James Nicoll, you have to try harder than
> /that./ ;-) You and I don't /have/ to shave, anyway, we just /choose/
> to shave. Some days I don't. Of course if you don't /ever/ shave
> then people start to think you're a Muslim or a communist (or a
> lesbian), because shaving is another of those universal modern
> perversions...
In my experience, none of that happens, but kids often call you "Jesus".
(Somewhat irritating to an atheist.)
Kai
--
http://www.westfalen.de/private/khms/
"... by God I *KNOW* what this network is for, and you can't have it."
- Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu)
Kai Henningsen
> how...@brazee.net wrote:
>
> > On 22-Feb-2003, Karl M Syring <syr...@email.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Uhm, condoms are much too unsafe to use as a serious
> > > anti-contraceptive. The yearly hit probability is around 15%,
> > > under regular conditions. Periodical abstinence is even worse. On
> > > the other hand, being a grad student seems seems to work.
> >
> > So do you think conscious desire will work better? I don't.
>
> Why not? If avoiding pregnancy were as simple as thinking to yourself:
> "I will not become pregnant." or "I will not make this woman pregnant."
> don't you think there would be a high success rate? Or better still, if
> it took a conscious act of will to *become* fertile?
Anthony, Incarnations, last book. It's been a while, but IIRC, not only do
both parents need to want a child, they also need to have the resources to
raise one, or there'll be no child. I can certainly see how, while not
fixing all problems, this would statistically improve childcare a lot.
Steve Taylor
> 4. Get rid of all armpit hair!
Hard to see why this one is an improvement. What did armpit hair ever do
to you?
> Anyone have any other ideas?
Total redesign of knees to meet minimum safe engineering standards.
We're just not roadworthy after about four decades.
Steve
Steve Taylor
> It's yet another manifestation of "size matters." Or, as our
> Australian friends put it, "The bigga the betta, mate!"
We do? How embarrassing!
> Doug
Steve
David Friedman
"Brenda W. Clough" <clo...@erols.com> wrote:
> The problem is that it's hard to have a pelvis which will -both- allow
> for a large baby and upright walking. The current complexities are a
> compromise between these two goals. A redesign would fix this.
Such as velcro, or the biological equivalent, where the incision for a
caesarian would go. So far as I can tell, there is no essential reason
why the birth canal has to go through the pelvis.
Brenda W. Clough
Oh, and another good simple engineering fix would be to make the optical
nerve thread through some other part of the eye than the retina. Then
you would not have a 'blind spot,' and the retina would not be weakened
by the necessary hole and detach so often.
Little simple redesigns like this would be much easier to handle than
'eliminate unnecessary imagination' and suchlike, and would be less
likely to lead to unintended consequences.
Brandon Ray
Kai Henningsen wrote:
> pub...@avalon.net (Brandon Ray) wrote on 23.02.03 in <3E59077A...@avalon.net>:
>
> >
> > Why not? If avoiding pregnancy were as simple as thinking to yourself:
> > "I will not become pregnant." or "I will not make this woman pregnant."
> > don't you think there would be a high success rate? Or better still, if
> > it took a conscious act of will to *become* fertile?
>
> Anthony, Incarnations, last book. It's been a while, but IIRC, not only do
> both parents need to want a child, they also need to have the resources to
> raise one, or there'll be no child. I can certainly see how, while not
> fixing all problems, this would statistically improve childcare a lot.
Haven't read the book (haven't read Anthony at all), but it seems to me that the
requirement that you "have the resources" could be very problematic, since different
people might have very different notions of what constitutes "enough resources".
--
In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics! -- Homer Simpson
Nicholas Smid
"Omixochitl" <Omixoch...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:932B876FB...@news.cis.dfn.de...
> David Cowie <see...@lineone.net> wrote in <pan.2003.02.23.16.52.04.226786
> @lineone.net>:
>
> >On Sun, 23 Feb 2003 15:52:37 +0000, howar wrote:
> >
> >> Being immune to AIDS, the cold, the flu, etc would be good. Having a
> >> genetic disposition to prefer healthy foods would be good.
> >
> >It's possible that we already have a genetic disposition towards healthy
> >foods. The problem is that what's healthy for hunter-gatherers is not
> >necessarily healthy for shopper-gatherers.
>
> easy to find has changed.
>
> Apparently, fatty and sugary foods were lots harder to obtain for hunter-
> gatherers than carbohydrates. So a gene for a craving for that stuff
would
> replicate itself more easily: making its carriers less likely to
malnourish
> themselves by happily eating only the easy-to-obtain nutrients.
When your living largly out doors especuly in a cold climate fat is
critical, you need massive amounts of energy just to stay warm, stuff like
marrow might be bad for a sedentery city dweller but its easy fuel for a
hunter gatherer, especuly one that probably started off as an opertunistic
scavenger, it easy to grab an antilope thigh bone and run before the owner
gets back, and its a couple of thousand caleries right there, worth the
effort.
Nicholas Smid
"Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes" <kami...@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> wrote in message
news:slrnb5igeg.2...@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu...
> Sun, 23 Feb 2003 15:39:27 GMT, how...@brazee.net <how...@brazee.net>:
> > Maybe what the world needs is to make us into genetically happy workers
who
> > don't want to revolt against the authorities (who also don't want to
revolt
> > against the Way Things Should Be).
> > Our chances of survival are high - but obviously this is a dystopia, not
a
> > utopia.
>
> It's a dystopia to us, because we value freedom. As long as the
> citizens are happy, it's a utopia to them.
>
technological one, you need people willing to stand up and be heard, loudly,
when the dam is starting to crack rather than sit there trusting the
engeneers who assure every one it is inconsevable they migth have droped a
decimal point in their calculations. It might be possable if you could
somehow remove the human ego so people are willing to admite they screwed
up, or even admit the possablity of error rather than covering their arsses.
Nicholas Smid
"David Friedman" <dd...@daviddfriedman.com> wrote in message
news:ddfr-A6FAB6.1...@sea-read.news.verio.net...
palvic gurdle. Lungs are badly designed, go to something more like the Birds
use, nervious system that regrows properly even in the CNS, Goldfish can do
it aparently. Ofcourse in this age of political corretness some damn fool is
going to insiste on eliminating gender bias, so make everyone a
Hemaphradite, this would probably lead to lots of teenage pregnancies, self
inflicted, unless you change teenagers alot.
Brandon Ray
Karl M Syring wrote:
You know, your posts would be a lot more convincing if you wouldn't provide a
link to authoritative sources that refute your "facts".
I read the article. It does not say that 40% of U.S. women have chlamydia. It
says that 40% of *adolescent* women have the infection, and further states that
the disease is most prevalent in people under 25.
However, even that "fact" is questionable, since the article also includes a
graph that seems to show an infection rate for women 15-19 of 2,500 per 100,000,
or about 2.5% (as of 1991). That sounds a lot more plausible than 40%. I think
that if 40% of the teenage girls in this country actually had chlamydia, we would
have heard more about it.
And I don't see anything in that article to suggest that infection with chlamydia
dramatically increases susceptibility to HIV.
Mark Atwood
> it aparently. Ofcourse in this age of political corretness some damn fool is
> going to insiste on eliminating gender bias, so make everyone a
> Hemaphradite
Or else take Egan's approach in _Oceanic_ or in _Schild's Ladder_.
That's a part of _Schild's Ladder_ I didn't buy. The decendents of
Humanity are willing to tinker with themselves with great abandon,
but none of them, anywhere, ever, are willing to bring back
the permanent sexes.
I love reading Egan's stuff, but it's getting really really
hard to avoid wondering if maybe he has a couple of "issues".
>, this would probably lead to lots of teenage pregnancies, self
> inflicted, unless you change teenagers alot.
I would hope that the genengineers would make it so autocloning
yourself sponantiously fails, hopefully at initial sperm/egg
combination.
--
Mark Atwood | Well done is better than well said.
m...@pobox.com |
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
John M. Gamble
<how...@brazee.net> wrote:
>
>I remember a short story where there was an epidemic of a "disease" that
>made all women infertile. The cure involved a treatment that made them
>bald. Bald women were trying to get children.
Disease should not be in quotes, it was a real (in the story) man-made
disease, and the way to overcome it involved a cheap, but inconvenient
temporary procedure, one of whose side-effects was baldness.
It's by Sturgeon, but i'm having trouble remembering the title.
Appeared in F&SF, i think.
--
-john
February 28 1997: Last day libraries could order catalogue cards
from the Library of Congress.
John
"Nicholas Smid" <smi...@xtra.co.nz> wrote in message
news:nhh6a.103922$F63.2...@news.xtra.co.nz...
The problem being, we have the instinct to desire high energy foods, but
there's never been any evolutionary pressure to like them *up to a certain,
healthy point* and then stop desiring them, because very few people have,
historically, been in the position of getting all the high energy foods
their bodies could handle, and then some.
John
"Robert St. Amant" <sta...@haeckel.csc.ncsu.edu> wrote in message
news:lpnadgm...@haeckel.csc.ncsu.edu...
> Carl Dershem <der...@cox.net> writes:
>
> > So many "superman" ideas are strictly physical. Hm. Then again, the
> > things that would truly make a superior human would be damned difficult,
if
> > not impossible to create genetically, as we don't have much, if any,
idea
> > what controls them or what they are.
> >
> > 1. Remove superstition and irrational thought proccesses.
>
> If you can figure out the difference between rational and irrational
> thought processes. That's a tough one. Also, presumably our biases
> have helped us get to this point; it's not clear that they're no
> longer useful. (I'm thinking of Tversky and Kahneman here, plus work
> on the relationship between emotion and rationality.)
>
> > 2. Remove vulnerability to optical illusions and false sensory input
(the
> > old "which line is longer?" stuff).
>
> I don't know much about this area, but I'd expect that optical
> illusions are inevitable in a practical vision system. It seems
> plausible to me that things like the Muller-Lyer illusion happen
> because we need to process patterns in such a way to get by in our 3D
> world.
>
Both of these things exist for reasons of efficiency. We jump to the wrong
conclusions using faulty logic because in the past, the faulty logic was
advantageous in circumstances that we no longer face regularly. We see
optical illusions because our visual system has developed to process
incoming singals efficiently, which means occaisionally giving the incorrect
impression in circumstances that have not been not life threatening, but
being to process the things we want to see.
John
"Steve Taylor" <sm...@ozemail.com.au> wrote in message
news:3E598351...@ozemail.com.au...
> Ann Morgan wrote:
>
> > 4. Get rid of all armpit hair!
>
> Hard to see why this one is an improvement. What did armpit hair ever do
> to you?
Armpit hair effectively lubricates the movement of the arms as they swing, I
believe.
>
> > Anyone have any other ideas?
>
> Total redesign of knees to meet minimum safe engineering standards.
> We're just not roadworthy after about four decades.
Redesign the spine to eliminate back pains, allow the regrowth of cartlidge
at a significantly faster rate, re-engineer the skin so that scar tissue is
eventually replaced by normal skin, eliminate excessive nostril and ear
hair, do something about gall stones and kidney stones...
>
>
>
>
> Steve