Super Humans: Nano Biotics, Genetic Engineering. The Future?

Introduction:

Nano Biotics-

A revolutionary scientific progression of a natural mechanical nature. If mankind is to survive, self enhancement of our human bodies will be key to our very existence.

Nano Biotics

Here is a video made by scientists in nanobiotechnology, very informative and extremely well put together.
Nanobiotechnology


Genetic Engineering of Humans-
Here is a short and informative video. Genetic Engineering of Humans

And here is a good website to learn about the genetic engineering of humans.Genetic Engineering

Longevity: www.humansfuture.org...

Capacity: www.humansfuture.org...

Adaptability: www.humansfuture.org...

Discussion:

This thread is for the purpose of debating weather we should not advance these technologies or rather we should advance these technologies. Some people feel that many aspects of these technologies are immoral or unethical and that we need to have a more "natural" approach. Other people feel that these technologies are vital to the future of the human race and should be pursued full force.

Here I will post an edited and contracted excerpt from the book that I am writing. This excerpt describes what could happen when these technologies are pursued by a civilization, and when technology in general is embraced by this civilization. It also shows how the deception of the government can effect this situation. Keep in mind this is a fictional scenario.

............... Draconia has long been under single government rule and has been very efficiently progressing toward higher intelligence, continuously overcoming obstacles and making leaps and bounds in science and technology. Their government had been making secret progress toward the completion of the decoding of their genetics and before long the key to the future of their species lay in the hands of just a few powerful leaders.

These powerful Draco's wanted one thing. To live forever. And this new development made it possible to come a step closer to that dream. They could now genetically modify their existing bodies and live up to three thousand years. Other applications of this technology was used to create almost from scratch genetically modified Draco's that could live for 70 to 90 thousand years.

They called these Draco's the master race. And not only did the master race have an extended life span they also had extended intelligence. Very extended. It took the Draco's hundreds of years to perfect and complete the modification of their species. Only then did they allow full growth of 5 thousand master race Draco's. Schooling them, grooming them and giving them the best the planet could offer in loving homes in a small city of scientists and doctors created just for their keeping the master race Draco's rose to power.

As they grew to adult age this new group of genetically modified Draco's took the technology of the planet to astounding new heights and eventually took the Draco's to the stars.

The master race Draco's only bread with each other. They drasticly reduced the planets population and made the infirior Draco's their subordnates.

The Draco's had been a technologically advanced space fearing race for over three thousand years before they developed and perfected interstellar space travel. In the process of developing and perfecting interstellar space travel they discovered inter-dimensional travel being that the two were found to be closely related.....

Closing:

Okay I would like to hear all of your opinions on this subject. Should we pursue these technologies? Or should we take a more "natural" approach. Or maybe some of you have ideas that can take us down a more midway path. I look forward to hearing all opinions and I also look forward to a good debate.

-Alien

P.S. Will a mod please embed my videos?

Thanks...There's a lot of info (Some new and some old)

F&S

It depends on one's perspective.

“And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.”
--Abraham Lincoln

Are we supposed to reach perfection? If so, who defines it? Aren't we just supposed to evolve?


“Variety's the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavor”
--William Cowper

I say let nature take care of us, and tread very carefully with the insane emerging technologies of the not so distant future. There already seems to be quite a bit of ethical breaches that must be contained before we get to all these things that are on the way.

reply to post by unityemissions


What sort of ethical breaches?

The "ethical boundaries" very from culture to culture and also from person to person. And I think that in lots of cases people site their "religious boundaries" as actual ethical boundaries. This is where a lot of debate is going to take place.

Personally I think most of what the bible and other religious books say should not be considered, other than the moral aspects of those books.
Things like God said this and God said that is bogus, but yet other things that are written in some of those books are good to consider. Such as love your fellow human beings. Most of these morals are common sense in todays civilized world and thus the religious aspect of it should be discarded because it just causes confusion.

-Alien

Once we complete the decoding of out genetics we can defeat all diseases. We can also make genetic modifications to make our selves live longer, have more intelligence and much more strength.

These are but a few examples of what we will be able to do. Keep in mind that this is in the very near future and this is NOT science fiction.

-Alien

reply to post by Alien Abduct


Please don't be another member who thinks that morality or ethics is always tied into religion. I'm not religious. Why the hell did you just spend a post talking about religion? Can't someone mention morality or ethics these days without being accused of being some sort of religious fanatic? How demoralised and desensitised to correct ethics has our society really become?

There have been MANY things that are unethical, imo.

-GM crops that are known to cause disease.
-Cloning an animal that takes hundreds of duds to get a decent one
-Introducing nano-material into the environment without considering the repercussions
-Nuclear power??

I mean, I could go on and on. For anyone who still has a tiny bit of humanity, it's easy to see there's many unethical practices in the sciences these days, and this has been the case for a very long time.

Originally posted by Alien Abduct
Once we complete the decoding of out genetics we can defeat all diseases.

You know you just pulled that out your bum, right?

I do believe human genetic engineering is inevitable, and will come sooner than we think.

There are no ethical barriers IMHO, we have been involved with our bodies and bodies of our children routinely in healthcare, this is no different. Quite the opposite, it would be unethical to have the capability, but deny our children the right to the best genome available, just as denying them the best healthcare is unethical.

The pinnacle of human self-evolution will be human mind simulated in a computer. An immortal soul itself finaly free from the bounds of matter.

Originally posted by Maslo
I do believe human genetic engineering is inevitable, and will come sooner than we think.

There are no ethical barriers IMHO, we have been involved with our bodies and bodies of our children routinely in healthcare, this is no different.

Fabulous reasoning. We've already crossing into being psycho in the sciences...let's just keep going!

Quite the opposite, it would be unethical to have the capability, but deny our children the right to the best genome available.

Yeah, maybe so if the outcome would be even remotely close to what you imagine.

This isn't the sci-fi channel.

reply to post by unityemissions


Of course, some regulation will be needed, just as in other branches of healthcare, to ensure that the result is in the best interest of the child.

My point is that in principle, human genetic engineering is no different from other branches of healthcare currently routinely practiced. It is not unethical in any way when used for good.

reply to post by Maslo


If you truly believe what you just wrote, that human genetic engineering is no different than any other branch of healthcare, then we have nothing further to discuss.

That's just insanity, man.

Originally posted by unityemissions
reply to post by Maslo

 

If you truly believe what you just wrote, that human genetic engineering is no different than any other branch of healthcare, then we have nothing further to discuss.

That's just insanity, man.

Why? What is the difference? I dont see any.

Originally posted by unityemissions
reply to post by Alien Abduct

 

Please don't be another member who thinks that morality or ethics is always tied into religion. I'm not religious. Why the hell did you just spend a post talking about religion? Can't someone mention morality or ethics these days without being accused of being some sort of religious fanatic? How demoralised and desensitised to correct ethics has our society really become?

There have been MANY things that are unethical, imo.

-GM crops that are known to cause disease.
-Cloning an animal that takes hundreds of duds to get a decent one
-Introducing nano-material into the environment without considering the repercussions
-Nuclear power??

I mean, I could go on and on. For anyone who still has a tiny bit of humanity, it's easy to see there's many unethical practices in the sciences these days, and this has been the case for a very long time.

Originally posted by Alien Abduct
Once we complete the decoding of out genetics we can defeat all diseases.

You know you just pulled that out your bum, right?


Do you really feel the need to personally attack me? I never said that you were religious or that you were a religious fanatic but thanks for putting words in my mouth.

As you can gather from my post I was speaking in generalities.

IMO we need to"extend" the moral or ethical boundaries. I think many people (not saying you, generalities again) are just too uptight about this subject.

-Alien

reply to post by Alien Abduct


I think this should be insanely kept under watch... last thing we need is a break in and to have to deal with Super Human Al-Qaeda... Just take a look back at the past hundred years and what technology has done and what man has done with that technology... Splitting the atom anyone? Only man can take something so genius and use it to kill himself (generalizing us all humans into one man, even though I know that not how most people would react (hopefully) with this kind of upgrade). The human species is just not mature enough to be messing around with things like this.

Humankind is suffering DNA destruction right now.

There are some races where females are having very very few normal child births. They have to have C-Sections.

Maybe in another generation that race will have to have all births by C-section. Since we are not letting those bad gene'd people die maybe we are pushing human DNA to further damage?

Maybe down the road from that babies will be born with a gene where they will never develop teeth. So we'll give them teeth with surgeries.

Then in a hundred years those babies will have to be born by C-section, won't have any teeth making genes, and will see their gene to have 5 fingers destroyed....they will be born with 3 fingers.

And then in another generation they will be born by C-section, no teeth gene, only 3 fingers, and they will no longer have hair and will have pale grey skin.

Next thing you know humankind looks like the Grey Aliens.

There's our future.

reply to post by Pervius


That would be our future if we continued fixing things only with surgeries and the like, and given up on fixing things on genetic level (substituting evolutionary natural selection with more humane genetic engineering).

What about the government doing secret experiments and developing this technology in secret? And then making their own super human with super intelligence so that they can teach him all that we know then have him solve some of their biggest problems like how to perfect the quantum computer.

If I was in charge this is what I would do.

-Alien

I suppose that traits useful through genetic engineering would largely be in the population already. The most dangerous thing would the creation of a cast system where the genetically engineered would not understand that superior beings would already exist through luck and evolution. As normal arrogance would be more destructive than the truth. If other genes outside of humans were added then diseases would species jump and the genetically engineered would need to be contained to protect the masses.

Genetic engineering is the next nuclear weapon and we dont fully understand its consequences, once anything leaves the lab and enters the world it is uncontrollable, a mathmatician would probably start mentioning chaos theory at this stage.

I believe in the next few years when we really start meddling we will change the life on the face of the planet in such a way that we havn't done before, not even comparable to climate change because as long as we have a magnetoshpere and an atmosphere life will continue in some form. There is a real danger in the next few years of us not only wiping ourselves out but many many other species.

As the great futurist Michio Kaku usually says this is the time where we become a type one civilisation.

Having said all of that I do believe that as long as we make informed choices not based on society or the latest "genetic fashion" then we'll be fine.

Trying not to sound too Hitler here, but I think it's important for a genetic survey of everyone on the planet to be done so we have a backup in case we screw up our genome so bad we need to do a restore.

Transhumanism forever!