Human nature and The Forbidden Experiment

I was watching tv a week or so ago and a documentary came on that fascinated me. It was called something like "Are Chimps human too?". The narrator when on a global search to find out what actually makes us human, and then based on the answers of scholars and everyday people he researched whether Chimps did the same thing. Language, love, society where some of the things he researched and he kept finding that Chimps did the same.

Now at the end of the documentary, i got to thinking. What exactly does make us human? Then i went further and thought about how much society is responsible for making us the way we are. We appear to be advancing because every generation is able to start with more knowledge than the previous. Society (Parents, culture etc i place under this word) shapes everything about us.

So what are humans REALLY like? We know what we all act like because of our society, but seeing the melting pot of life on this earth and how different humans are within their own societies cannot even answer the question.

This thinking brought me to "Feral Children" and "The Forbidden Experiment". The idea of Feral Children does not interest me as most of the children tend to grow up and act like the animal that fostered them.

It was the idea of the The Forbidden Experiment that i would like to put forward to the brains of SkunkWorks.

www.feralchildren.com...

The Forbidden Experiment

The Forbidden Experiment has been used to describe the idea of bringing up a child in isolation, to see what, if anything, he or she acquired in the way of language, and possibly other attributes we associate with humankind. Much of the interest in feral children by the scientific community is because of what they can teach us that we cannot ethically learn by experimentation.

If you Google The Forbidden Experiment, you will find a few such experiments, however, most have involved either a mute, or someone instructed specifically not to communicate with them to be left alone and bring them up. Most were done to discover what language they would speak if left alone (God's language). Obviously none spoke.

Apart from the Inhumane implications, i am proposing this experiment at a much more severe level. With NO human contact.

Remember the idea is far fetched, but i would love to see the results of a similar experiment.

My suggestion is something along the lines of a pair of two brand new infants (males and females) placed within a crib that scientists create to be a food giver for the first few years of life (forget the complexities, just say it can happen lol). One set is placed within a stimulus free environment, the other set within a recreated typical earth landscape (Bio Dome).

These pairs grow and mature and are studied with contact.

I would love to know what they find out.

Just a few things i would like to find out:

1. Do they walk on two legs?
2. Do they learn to communicate with each other?
3. Do they take on gender roles?
4. Do they appear intelligent or more like animals?
5. Do they mate?
6. What happens when they get pregnant?
7. How do they rear their children?

Obviously just a few questions of the thousands that could be answered.

So i ask the SkunkWorks brains. Would you be interested in the study? What things would you like to see? I have given the way i have thought it to be conducted. What can you add or change?


[edit on 8/2/2008 by SilentShadow]

I dont know what you are asking about the "human experiment". Are you asking that we give our guess as to what would happen? As for the reverse,(chimps being indoctrinated into human behavior) it has been going on for quite some time. Norm Chompsky was involved in this in the 60's , hence a monkey in a famous linguistic experiment being named "Nim Chimpsky". Many say that his "experiment" with leading smart humans down the path to being dumb chimps as a "leader" in the antiwar movement would qualify as your forbidden experiment .

And who exactly will play the role of "lab rat"??? Would you like to "donate" one of your children? Or maybe we should grow them in machine and terminate in the end of experiment?
No reason to theoretise about this, this is "forbidden".
Anyway, to achieve clear results we'll have to "run" several generations
in order to eliminate abnormalities.
Maybe thats how humans were created by (greys/greens/reptilian/titans/......).

Originally posted by ItsHumanNature
I dont know what you are asking about the "human experiment". Are you asking that we give our guess as to what would happen?

You can say whatever you want. It is the idea of the experiment that would utterly fascinate me. I would be absolutely intrigued to see how humans react naturally.

Originally posted by ZeroKnowledge
And who exactly will play the role of "lab rat"??? Would you like to "donate" one of your children? Or maybe we should grow them in machine and terminate in the end of experiment?

Therein lies the inhumane aspect of this experiment or thought. I would not like to donate one of my children, however, i am sure, somewhere... someone would. Everyone has a price.

Originally posted by ZeroKnowledgeNo reason to theoretise about this, this is "forbidden"

.

lol... just because it is 'forbidden' or inhumane does not mean that is hasn't happened, isn't happening or shouldn't happen.

Originally posted by ZeroKnowledgeAnyway, to achieve clear results we'll have to "run" several generations
in order to eliminate abnormalities.

Absolutely, seeing how they continue to grow and mature and take on life roles (grandparents etc). This experiment would need to be ongoing.

I be very interested to see results of an experiment of this magnitude. In saying that, i would not be surprised at all if it was already happening. I wonder how we would find such information.

I would like to think that being "human" would mean not experimenting on innocent children. If the children are unwanted... being "human" would mean taking them in and raising them as you own.

To try and find out what makes us "human" by being inhumane to a newborn, would speak more of the "human" qualities or lack thereof of the experimenter than the child.

Originally posted by yankeerose
I would like to think that being "human" would mean not experimenting on innocent children. If the children are unwanted... being "human" would mean taking them in and raising them as you own.

Is taking a child and bringing them up as you see fit more natural than letting nature take its course?

Originally posted by yankeerose
To try and find out what makes us "human" by being inhumane to a newborn, would speak more of the "human" qualities or lack thereof of the experimenter than the child.

So it would be more humane to bring the child up in the world we know, with its terrors, stress and violence than keeping it in a controlled environment.

Of course it is all a matter of perspective, and a love or hate of the world we are in lol.

I read a document a long time ago that claimed they ran this test on two male twins and not only didn't they speak but they developed a high level of psychic powers and communicated with each other through telepathy. they were supposedly highly intelligent and spent their days studying every inch of their prison looking for a way out and then one day they just vanished from the cameras never to be seen again.

I watched this documentary and it was facinating. First, let me make it perfectly clear that children were not being donated to the project, or thrust into a prison cell... these were children that were abandoned, some raised by animals, etc. without human contact.

Extremely interesting on a 4 year old was considered part of the pack of dogs... another child was actually breastfead by a dog, and later brought food by them.

The doctors came in to help rehabilitate the children in a scientific manner - studying their progress, etc. I did not see anything unethical about what they were doing. They were helping children adjust to a normal life.

It's easy to work around the child donation part. It's only a child after it's born.

We use donated sperm taken anonymously from a sperm clinic. The only people who can know they are involved in the experiment are the experimenters themselves, and no one from the outside could know that they served a part in its creation. I'm talking about the sperm clinic personnel, the donor, the handler, the courier, etc...

I think the problem with the experiment is that we are not separate from our environment. We've arrived at our current situation quite naturally. We have a culmination of knowledge that is passed down verbally and through records. I believe that some other animals such as chimps pass down information too, such as using sticks to eat termites.

We could say that a chimp discovered this behavior by curious chance, and others who observed recognized that using a stick to get termites yielded a greater reward. With the discovery of the action that yields a greater reward, the action is repeated by others through imitation. The brain plays are large role in this situation, because it must be able to recognize the benefit of the action. Now the action has been introduced into the society, and it is shared and passed down - not by record keeping, but by imitation. It was that one curious chance that spurred the result of the discovery. If this knowledge was somehow lost, it would be, by chance, learned again.

In the physical realm, this same chance discovery can be related to evolution. It's all about reinforcing behavior with a reward.

By curious chance, some ocean based ancestral life form produced an offspring with a mutation of a few genes that rendered a simple light-sensitive spot of skin somewhere on its body. This gave it a tiny advantage over its parent in that it could now sense the environment in another spectrum. Perhaps it allowed the creature to evade a predator. By surviving, it was able to reproduce and pass down the trait to its offspring. Over time, and on average, the form of the creature with the light sensitive patch would be more successful, while the other creature would either die out, or undergo a different type of by chance genetic mutation that increased its odds for survival. After millions of years, the result of that split between the creatures would arrive at two species from different animal kingdoms. It was the one curious mutation that spurred the result of the mutation. This would allow for another few mutations to by chance occur which deepened the pit and increased the light-sensitive skin's resolution.

Like the brain has allowed us to pass down by chance knowledge of discovery, DNA has allowed us to pass down knowledge of chance interaction with the environment. It all began with the very first life form, and our DNA has been evolving with the experience that it has had with the environment.

DNA itself undergoes a by chance evolution as it interacts with environment, in the same way that we undergo mental conditioning by chance interactions with environment. We are bound to a causal chain of events that goes back into eternity. We are the universe come alive, naturally.

So anyway, back to the actual topic:

I thought about this before as well. Our minds evolve and learn behaviors based on our interaction with the environment (much like DNA). DNA knowledge is passed on and physical adaptation occurs; mental knowledge is passed on and mental adaptation occurs (absorption of knowledge). A newborn sent to grow up in an isolation chamber would in no uncertain terms be in a completely alien environment that our bodies and minds have not evolved to live in. DNA may adapt to such an environment over hundreds of thousands of years, but certainly hardly any knowledge would exist in the mind.

With no interaction with the environment possible, and the senses cut off, not much knowledge could be collected. The sensation of movement and the body touching itself could be absorbed as knowledge. Perhaps other bodily processes and noises would be absorbed into the mind as some type of sensation. There is actually no way to create a stimulus free environment for the mind because it is stimulated by the body processes. The mind would live in a restricted environment, and the environment would be a reflection of the mind. This would create a rather alien perspective of the body and environment, and as the baby grew up, it would never even realize that the bodily sensations that it is feeling are in fact what we would call its own body. There would be no way to know. There would be nothing for him to compare other than the relation between mind and body, body sensation to body sensation. Yet, it would have never have learned the concept of a body, or a mind, or anything other than the stimuli that his mind was exposed to.

I just realized that sounds very similar to Plato's allegory of a cave. I'll put the first part up:

“I want you to go on to picture the enlightenment or ignorance of our human conditions somewhat as follows. Imagine an underground chamber, like a cave with an entrance open to the daylight and running a long way underground. In this chamber are men who have been prisoners there since they were children, their legs and necks being so fastened that they can only look straight ahead of them and cannot turn their heads. Behind them and above them a fire is burning, and between the fire and the prisoners runs a road, in front of which a curtain-wall has been built, like the screen at puppet shows between the operators and their audience, above which they show their puppets.”

“Imagine further that there are men carrying all sorts of gear along behind the curtain-wall, including figures of men and animals made of wood and stone and other materials, and that some of these men, as is natural, are talking and some not.”

“They are drawn from life,” I replied. “For, tell me, do you think our prisoners could see anything of themselves or their fellows except the shadows thrown by the fire on the wall of the cave opposite them?”

“How could they see anything else if they were prevented from moving their heads all their lives?”

“And would they see anything more of the objects carried along the road?”

“Of course not.”

“Then if they were able to talk to each other, would they not assume that the shadows they saw were real things?”

“Inevitably.”

It later speaks of the man being freed from the cave, and going outside to experience an influx of new sensations, never before imagined or known. He gradually gets used to it and adapts his mind to live in that environment.

“Later on he would come to the conclusion that it is the sun that produces the changing seasons and years and controls everything in the visible world, and is in a sense responsible for everything that he and his fellow-prisoners used to see.”

You should read it if you are not familiar with it. It's only like a 2 minute read.

I believe the interaction between two children in a biodome would be a scenario that our minds and bodies have evolved for, and that if they were to survive an eventual culture would be created and knowledge passed down. It would just be an alternate little earth, you know?

reply to post by HuntaXX


Thats interesting , is there a chance that you could somehow remember the name or anything concerning the document ? I would love to have a look at it .

Oh, I love that idea. I study social sciences basically and have alwasy wondered what it would be like to just take some toddlers and dump them on a small island (that had plenty of fruit and stuff growing on it) to see what would happen. Obviously that would be evil, but :p

Oh and I'm not sure if humans really do differ all that much from animals. Most things we do are because of our genes and pheromones and need to pass on our genes. Not only that many mammals have cultures, and all mammals play and feel empathy. The thing that would set us apart might be society but some animals also have society.

Perhaps it's our dependance on technologies that makes us different. We've evolved in such a way that we need some form of technology to keep us going (wether it's to cook meat, or a sling to carry achild to make it easier to gather food).

[edit on 21-2-2008 by monkey_descendant]

Well, you'd have to make certain exceptions as to what knowledge may be allowed to be "passed down" or "given" to the children. (Such as feeding them, taking care of human waste, that sort of thing.)

It isn't hard to imagine that, without this specific knowledge given to a very young individual, that the experiment would end rather quickly. Think of a toddler. Is it potty trained? No. Does it have the concept of what to eat and how to eat it safely? No. So if you put a toddler in a room/environment without this amount of care that we usually provide them, they'll be going to the bathroom all over the place and sticking things in their mouth that they shouldn't. The amount of toxicity that would build up from lack of knowledge of bathroom habits would be life-threatening. The accidents that could occur with choking would also be very hazzardous. Death would more than likely occur at a very early age.

If we look to the animal kingdom, we find that many species take care of their young for SOME amount of time. If may be a very SHORT amount of time compaired to human standards, but an amount of time non-the-less.

So, if we could somehow find a way to ensure the survival of the children, without any obvious interference, then we'd have a proper experiment on our hands. :-)

All unforeseen circumstances aside, it would indeed result in some facinating information.

-Nintendophile

Oh dear somehow this flew of my 'myATS' radar and i thought it was destined for the depths of no-one is interested.

Originally posted by benign.psychosis
Plato's allegory of a cave

Thankyou for that, it was very fascinating. It reminded me of this unsolved mystery;Kaspar Hauser. It is a very interesting read and i ask that you do.

It is also very relevant to this discussion, however, not quite 'pure' enough of an experiment, similar to my problem with feral children.

Originally posted by Thill
reply to post by HuntaXX

 

Thats interesting , is there a chance that you could somehow remember the name or anything concerning the document ? I would love to have a look at it .

Can i also ask for this information please.

Originally posted by nintendophileIt isn't hard to imagine that, without this specific knowledge given to a very young individual, that the experiment would end rather quickly. Think of a toddler. Is it potty trained? No. Does it have the concept of what to eat and how to eat it safely? No. So if you put a toddler in a room/environment without this amount of care that we usually provide them, they'll be going to the bathroom all over the place and sticking things in their mouth that they shouldn't. The amount of toxicity that would build up from lack of knowledge of bathroom habits would be life-threatening. The accidents that could occur with choking would also be very hazzardous. Death would more than likely occur at a very early age.

Well see that would be what this experiment is all about. How do we know if the toddler will just poo everywhere?

Even rats don't like to poo and sleep in the area. Does a human child even have this much sense at a toddler age to be aware of this? I would suspect that a toddler would eventually learn to poo in a corner.

Originally posted by nintendophileIf we look to the animal kingdom, we find that many species take care of their young for SOME amount of time. If may be a very SHORT amount of time compaired to human standards, but an amount of time non-the-less.

I agree and that's why maybe as others have allured to, a toddler may be a more capable subject after a very limited nurturing stage (ie no spoken word).

Originally posted by nintendophileSo, if we could somehow find a way to ensure the survival of the children, without any obvious interference, then we'd have a proper experiment on our hands. :-)

I agree that this is important in this experiment, however as we have seen by people posting in this thread. Although it fascinates us all, and we like to speculate on it all (which is the beauty of SkunkWorks). I am unsure whether we would carry it out. I do believe with enough monetary incentive (ie grants etc i could convince myself to do it), however, i believe the people most likely to carry out this experiment will not have a high regard for the safety of their subjects.

Only early on, once the person has been established it is critical they survive, or what a waste of time lol.

Originally posted by monkey_descendant
Oh, I love that idea. I study social sciences basically and have alwasy wondered what it would be like to just take some toddlers and dump them on a small island (that had plenty of fruit and stuff growing on it) to see what would happen. Obviously that would be evil, but :p

After reading nintendophile and the environment risks of a room experiment as well i think that this is the better experiment. Or more like a bio-dome that can be better monitored that i mentioned in my OP.

________________________________________________

Something i just thought of was without the exposure to consumer electronics and the hustle and bustle of reality and life. What would the health of the subject be like?

Exercise is important as we all know and our subject will get plenty in his biodome lol, but I remember reading that stress could ultimately be the number 1 killer of us all and is related to all other disorders. I would imagine that our subject would have 0% stress and hence I believe would be incredibly healthy.

I also wonder if physically they could gain ape like strength in our biodome as well.

reply to post by SilentShadow

ok, I find this subject interesting, so here's my theories: (with the understanding that SOME type of nurturing influence is necessary for the babies to even survive infancy... this was discussed in my psych classes and I cant remember the source... food and shelter alone are not enough for the babies to survive)
1. Probably when advantageous (otherwise it would depend on what type of mammal raised them)
2. yes, (once again determined by the nurturing influence)
3. highly doubtful, gender roles seem to be mostly a human trait other than caring for the young which varies according to species
4. that would probably depend on both the individual child but for the most part I would have to say their behavior would tend to be more animal like
5.probably a lot more enthusiastically and with a lot less angst then we ever do LOL
6.life as usual (survival being the primary concern)
7. probably very similar to their own memories of being nurtured, variations appearing for individual temperment

I was reading about "idioglossia" and started thinking about this thread. This refers to a phenomenon where people will develop their own idiocentric language. When two children are raised without hearing other people's language, they can develop "twin speak".

en.wikipedia.org...

One famous case deals with Grace and Virginia Kennedy, two twins of average intelligence, who were raised with no significant exposure to human language. They developed their own sophisticated way of communicating.

Strangely, they named each other "Poto" and "Cabengo".

Not all people agree that idioglossia is really a phenomenon. The article below dismisses twin speak as something more akin to a speech disorder than a different way of thinking. I am not so sure I agree.

www.toddlerstoday.com...

#

I'm reading "The Stuff of Thought" by Steve Pinker. He states that language is an instinctive aspect of our brains, too complex to model, but completely imprinted on us, shaping all aspects of our conscious thought.

Without a doubt, language is our greatest tool and invention, which distinguishes us from all other life forces we know of. That is not something that generates a lot of discussion (which is a bit ironic, if you think about it.)

Originally posted by Buck Division
I was reading about "idioglossia" and started thinking about this thread. This refers to a phenomenon where people will develop their own idiocentric language. When two children are raised without hearing other people's language, they can develop "twin speak".

en.wikipedia.org...

Thanks for that, i guess it does give us a small insight into whether some language would be seen in this experiment. It may be possible that with two children together they will develop their own language.

Man is a social animal, no? So then how is isolating children from all contact with others, or limiting their contact to only one other putting them in a more ‘natural situation’? The extreme cruelty that some would subject another person to in order to satisfy their own vain curiosity is just amazing. Such an experiment is forbidden for a very good reason. I also saw the documentary where the child was nursed and fed by a dog in the middle of a housing complex, and I thought how much more humane that dog was than any of the people going about their business, ignoring the child suffering in their midst.

Human beings require more than just food and water. It was found in hospitals back in the 50's, I think, that newborn babies that were placed in the back of the nursery (away from the viewing window) died. These were babies that were born healthy, given nutrients and had their diapers changed, etc. Without A LOT of human contact and the ability to see and be seen they just died.

Your experiment has been partially done, albeit accidentally, and shown to have disastrous results. Hospital policy nationwide was changed because of that incident and now babies either "room in" with mommies or their position in the nursery is rotated to include more "face time" in front of the viewing window. Also, it is required that a certain amount of time be included to just hold the infant, even if it doesn't need to eat or be changed. It seems that a human beings' number one need is for love/human contact.

Great thread.

After I stopped choking and sputtering at one posters fractured spelling of Noam Chomsky (Norm Chompsky), I had a couple additional thoughts...

It's clear that a lot of human brain development depends on experience and exposure to the environment.

In a recent documentary on vision, a man had his vision restored that he lost at the age of 3 in a chemical explosion.

Though he has almost perfect vision, he totally lacked the experience.

Thus he had enough trouble with things like curbs, height and distance that he had to walk with the classic red-tipped cane lest he fall over a curb and hurt himself.

He said he can experience colors and shapes but so far he still was trying to train his brain to know if someone was smiling at him by looking at their face.

It may be that like some skills, such as throwing a ball, that if not developed within a certain early time frame became nearly impossible to learn. Once the brain had matured the visual cortex even though blind, it may be difficult to learn to 'see', because all the cues we need for perspective and distance had not been learned during childhood.

Of course this is just one case so it's probably premature to draw a conclusion.

Similarly, it may be easier to learn languages while the brain is still 'plastic'.

It would be interesting to see this experiment mentioned with various tweaks. I.e. a baby that was isolated, but allowed to watch TV.





[edit on 7-3-2008 by Badge01]