Upgrading and/or stripping down animal brain/nervous system

[Nathan McCorkle]

It would be great if we could program cows to not poop in the barn
and/or milk parlor. Maybe we'd want them to poop only in one place
(waste collection fermenter tank), or poop randomly as they
(seemingly) do except for where they see some icon (which would be
prevalent inside the barn and maybe near the barn door).

Basically if we can strip away enough intelligence to increase
morality, morally no one cares when we drop an iPhone running some GPS
app... so if we can make animals more like apps and less
intelligent/autonomous, I think we'd see quality of life improvements
for the farmer and animal, increased food quality (its taken a long
time to adapt cows to be OK penned up in a field), and increased
economic yield (whether by the other effects or because the farmer
wastes less time cleaning poo).

--
-Nathan

[Cathal Garvey]

Thoughts:
A) It's not if it can think, so much as suffer.
B) Cows can probably be trained to defecate outside the barn/parlour,
but nobody bothers. No amount of intelligence will change that, you'd
need an instinct, which is woolier and harder to "hack".
C) If your animal is so stupid and pain-free that people feel OK penning
it up in factory farms (they do anyway) then antibiotic resistance will
accelerate and new zoonoses will emerge more rapidly. We want ways to
either do in-vitro-meat efficiently or bust the factory-meat idea
entirely and go back to pasture.

T: @onetruecathal, @IndieBBDNA
P: +353876363185
W: http://indiebiotech.com

[Mega [Andreas Stuermer]]

Although you would reduce suffering, people would have ethical concerns. (like golden rice)

You may try chicken. I heard, like their ancestors the dinosaurs, they are as stupid as can be. Though I don't know whether that means they have no consciness or can't suffer. They know fear, at least it seems.

[Cathal Garvey]

Chickens can certainly suffer, and they're not *that* stupid. They do
have very different cognition, though. I have three backyard chickens,
and it's interesting to see how absolutely terrible they are at
"pathfinding"; predictable, as their ancestors were fliers and didn't
have as much need as mammals do for the ability to navigate around
obstacles. So, chickens certainly appear stupider than I think they
really are, because they have particular areas of stupidity. Because
they're birds!

They're certainly bright enough to remember who's "wronged" them in the
past. Ours took a while forgiving me for clipping their wings (because
they didn't like being handled, not because I hit nerves or blood
vessels), and one in particular who escaped and got chased by a dog
blamed me for the misadventure, and still doesn't like me. Contrarily,
our Sebright bantam got a lot more handling from me when she went
broody, and remembers that I'm "ok", but doesn't like my wife as much.

They all like my daughter, because she's small and feeds them a lot.
So, Chickens can recognise and distinguish people. There are studies
showing they have rudimentary language, too; with different calls to
describe aerial predators versus lateral (e.g. wolves) ones, and no
calls to describe flying wolves. Must have been a fun study.

So I wouldn't regard chickens as "cognition or suffering free" at all.

On 10/04/14 06:57, Mega [Andreas Stuermer] wrote:
> Although you would reduce suffering, people would have ethical concerns. (like golden rice)
>
> You may try chicken. I heard, like their ancestors the dinosaurs, they are as stupid as can be. Though I don't know whether that means they have no consciness or can't suffer. They know fear, at least it seems.
>

[Nathan McCorkle]

On Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 2:04 PM, Cathal Garvey
<cathal...@cathalgarvey.me> wrote:
> Thoughts:
> A) It's not if it can think, so much as suffer.

I'm convinced those two are connected. There are the nerve responses,
and the system reaction. Either you block the signal (which you have
to be careful of or you'll have cows getting themselves hurt), or you
reprogram the algorithm. I'm not stupid and think this could be done
overnight, but I do want to have conversation about goals and systems
engineering.

> B) Cows can probably be trained to defecate outside the barn/parlour,
> but nobody bothers. No amount of intelligence will change that, you'd
> need an instinct, which is woolier and harder to "hack".

I definitely would feel morally worse/more-questionable if these cows
were smarter, I'd know it understood more of what's going on, it would
be 'tasting' more of the life experience. Ignorance is bliss :P until
you get smarter.

> C) If your animal is so stupid and pain-free that people feel OK penning
> it up in factory farms (they do anyway) then antibiotic resistance will
> accelerate and new zoonoses will emerge more rapidly. We want ways to
> either do in-vitro-meat efficiently or bust the factory-meat idea
> entirely and go back to pasture.

Ok come on now, I wouldn't do that, and I don't hang out with people
who'd do that... nor do I support it! Why do we need vitro when we
have vivo? All the sterilizing crap in the other thread, using
machines to make all the parts... why not just use an embryo that
unpacks and makes all the parts on its own?

In-vitro meat is reinventing the wheel (err, no, the body) without a
brain or nervous or active/dynamic immune system, it's not portable,
still needs a gas/electric lawn mower to bring grass in... oh yeah and
now that you moved to in-vitro you no longer have stomach tissue
working as digesters, that's right you're feeding it DMEM+FBS, wait
that comes from a baby cow, so I guess you need the more expensive
synthetic serum-free media. And now what were you going to do with the
grass? Oh yeah, I guess just throw it on a fire under a boiler for now
and grow some sugar cane instead so we have a component of our defined
media. Err... derp, I don't have any more rant as I don't know what
serum-free media is made of.


As is, my farmer's barn is pretty poopy, and he doesn't seem to have
time to try and potty train them. Guess I just wanted to speculate
some...

[Cathal Garvey]

The ideal outcome of In-Vitro-Meat is understanding what conditions
animal tissues to become palatable. And to hack that into a plant that
grows burgers to satisfy the meat-eaters without requiring animals *or*
in-vitro factories. Peel your squash, and inside it's all muscle (except
the bit with the pips).

Not that that will happen, because big, silo'd factories are easier to
capture value from than seeded meat-plants.

Ultimately though, you're asking "how can we make a food/research animal
that doesn't think or suffer", and the easiest way to do that is to
perfect in-vitro or plant based "meat", rather than digging into
neurology to find ways of reducing one of the most complex systems ever
discovered (the brain) to an IO system that only handles food, movement
to-and-fro sleeping facilities and carefully levelled pastures (it's
unlikely you can get an animal with effective navigational abilities
that still lacks problem-solving and therefore learning), and
defecation, as well as edge cases like injury and sickness behaviours.

Against that, a squash containing conditioned actin is actually probably
a good deal easier, as is in-vitro musculature with a prosthetic immune
system.

Speaking of which; serum-free medium is mostly salt, nutrients and
buffer, but "artificial serum" (which I think is what you meant?) is
literally that; serum made using transgenic growth factors. No FBS
required, far more easy to standardise, potentially much cheaper. It's a
no-brainer for research AND In-Vitro-Meat, though for real scale up
you'd just hack the cell material for your IVM system so it doesn't need
external growth factors anymore.

[Nathan McCorkle]

Hmm, I haven't been eating chicken as much lately to give it that much
thought, due to someone telling me they have much less connective
tissue than beef, and thus have higher DNA/RNA loads (connective
tissue is not cellular, thus no nuclei) which having too much can lead
to gout.

A week or so ago I also thought about the action of killing... it
seems some people say that's the issue, and other's say it's how it's
raised... that killing one cow (430lbs meat cut and wrapped) in terms
of protein would be easily be ~2000 brocolli plants (22g protein/85g
beef)*430lbs beef/(4.2g protein/148g brocolli) = 3922 lbs brocolli,
assume 2lbs edible per plant that's 1960 brocolli plants. I DO think
about killing plants, life to me is about much something can
experience, how much interpretation it can do on it.
So cows definitely think/interpret maybe/probably experience more, but
is a few seconds of painful bleeding before blackout really worth 1960
slow brocolli plant deaths, which entail brocolli trafficking and
auctions, and which ends not unlike a lobster, being cooked to death
in a hot steam bath.

Yeah, that sounds like a MUCH better solution in terms of giving a
crap about something dying. (sarcasm)

[Nathan McCorkle]

On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 1:44 AM, Cathal Garvey
<cathal...@cathalgarvey.me> wrote:
> The ideal outcome of In-Vitro-Meat is understanding what conditions
> animal tissues to become palatable. And to hack that into a plant that
> grows burgers to satisfy the meat-eaters without requiring animals *or*
> in-vitro factories. Peel your squash, and inside it's all muscle (except
> the bit with the pips).

Yeah I guess that would work. I'm all for parallel development until
we've got numbers or let them battle it out in economics. There's a
bit of work that would need to be done to plants to make me really
feel OK about being purely vegetarian, on a nutritional level and for
the palate. Someone sold me fake ice cream a while ago and I was
pretty upset.

> Not that that will happen, because big, silo'd factories are easier to
> capture value from than seeded meat-plants.
>
> Ultimately though, you're asking "how can we make a food/research animal
> that doesn't think or suffer", and the easiest way to do that is to
> perfect in-vitro or plant based "meat", rather than digging into
> neurology to find ways of reducing one of the most complex systems ever

But I would think this would go hand in hand with research into
upgrading our brain, which is personally why I'm waiting a few more
years to have kids... need that GMO pipeline ready before I invest
some time training some unimprinted Intelligence myself. :D (ok I'd
have kids sooner than that, wetware/human-knowledge seems to be
progressing decently enough, and wetware/meme might be the only real
way I'll survive my body when it dies)

> discovered (the brain) to an IO system that only handles food, movement
> to-and-fro sleeping facilities and carefully levelled pastures (it's
> unlikely you can get an animal with effective navigational abilities
> that still lacks problem-solving and therefore learning), and
> defecation, as well as edge cases like injury and sickness behaviours.

As I mentioned in the first post, an icon recognition that
black-listed zones to a no-poop condition. Like a scarecrow, but for
the sphincter.

[Cathal Garvey]

> As I mentioned in the first post, an icon recognition that
> black-listed zones to a no-poop condition. Like a scarecrow, but for
> the sphincter.

Sure; I was just pointing out that, if regimented sanitation at the
animal level is the goal, then just train your cows. And that, even for
a "bright" cow, some training will probably always be needed.

The situation as things stand is that cows are almost never explicitly
trained; dogs are, and the cows learn by habit rather than by mimicry or
explicit training. So cows *do* learn habits like "At 1pm, head back to
milking parlour" because that's their habit.

But if you were to deliberately train cows, I think you'd find them
receptive; not nearly as well as a dog, because dogs are packed full of
mirror neurons and have co-evolved for training, but nevertheless
trainable. Mammals are learners; it's our schtick.

[Katie Kearns]

On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 6:30 AM, Cathal Garvey <cathal...@cathalgarvey.me> wrote:

> As I mentioned in the first post, an icon recognition that
> black-listed zones to a no-poop condition. Like a scarecrow, but for
> the sphincter.

Sure; I was just pointing out that, if regimented sanitation at the
animal level is the goal, then just train your cows. And that, even for
a "bright" cow, some training will probably always be needed.

You can train lizards and birds to poop where you want them to. I'm pretty sure you could train a cow if you wanted to.

For in vitro meat, it's silly to reproduce meat people can already get. They should make panda steaks, goldfish fillets, and other odd things that people would be willing to pay more to try. Crab steak -- lots of crab taste, no crab picking required! Then set up a Weird Meat of he Month club, or a restaurant that specializes in weird meats, where people can get badges for trying new meats.

-Katie

[Cathal Garvey]

Nice thinking! I must say, I do miss shellfish as a veggie, and
particularly crab, which wasn't that abundant to begin with.

[Mega [Andreas Stuermer]]

Nathan, you could also do the calculation this way... 

You kill a cow, you kill one "soul" / wipe out one life. And feed 300 people. 

Or, you wipe out 250 chickens, and also feed 10 people.  

But a cow has probably more intelligence / ahigher developed nervous system. So is it more or less worth than 250 chickens? 

>For in vitro meat, it's silly to reproduce meat people can already get. They should make panda steaks, goldfish fillets, and other odd things that people would be willing to pay more to try. Crab steak -- lots of crab taste, no crab >picking required! Then set up a Weird Meat of he Month club, or a restaurant that specializes in weird meats, where people can get badges for trying new meats.

That's actually a nice idea... How about lobster, they are immortal anyway. Maybe you can grow their cells even without transfroming them to cancer cells?? 

I mean, technically it would be ok to eat HeLa cells, right? On the other hand you would constantly digest DNA, and the chance of uptake, albeit very small is above zero. If you take up a "always-on" copy of RAS, and your body uses this as a template for homologous recombination... Chances are virtually zero - but not zero, right? 

what if you add cellulase to Hela cells? can you feed them with autoclaved hay?

[Mega [Andreas Stuermer]]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baculoviral_IAP_repeat-containing_protein_3

That's the one that would have to be added to lobster cells. Befause without growth factors, they would die in spite of telomerase. 

[Cathal Garvey]

> You kill a cow, you kill one "soul" / wipe out one life. And feed
> 300 people. Or, you wipe out 250 chickens, and also feed 10 people.

Actually, you keep the chickens alive, and feed far more people using
their eggs. Chickens are, IIRC, the most ecologically efficient way to
feed people with animal protein en-masse without resorting to bugs (not
that there's anything wrong with bugs).

> I mean, technically it would be ok to eat HeLa cells, right?

No, because Henrietta Lacks never gave her permission for her cells to
be used in research, much less as a foodstuff.

> On the other hand you would constantly digest DNA, and the chance of
> uptake, albeit very small is above zero. If you take up a
> "always-on" copy of RAS, and your body uses this as a template for
> homologous recombination... Chances are virtually zero - but not
> zero, right?

This "intestinal uptake of whatever" meme is way overblown. We tolerate
it as a hypothetical because, hey, it's interesting. But you eat animals
all the time whose oncogenes are 100% compatible with your cellular
systems, have you ever caught cancer from their DNA? Nope. You developed
colon cancer because of pre-existing genetics, and/or a diet rich in
nasty stuff and insufficient in plant matter.

When someone demonstrates real-world intestinal absorption of DNA into
human somatic cells, I'll resume listening to this line of argument, but
for now it's turned into a case of "scientists talk about it, so it must
be plausible, so you must ban anything with DNA in it because DNA bad".
I'm actually having twitter "conversations" these days with people who
are still blowing the "GM food has antibiotic resistance genes in 'em"
trumpet. Sadface.