Human Modification

[Amadeus]

Gills or wings. That'd be sick.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

Gills or wings. That'd be sick.

For the record, the question was:
Do you believe it is ethically and practically good or bad to alter human performance through either drugs and/or surgery?

[Amadeus]

Gills or wings. That'd be sick.

For the record, the question was:
Do you believe it is ethically and practically good or bad to alter human performance through either drugs and/or surgery?

For the record, I created the topic. And for the record, The Juggler asked which alteration we'd pick, if possible.

[Animator]

I'm all for curing disease and whatnot but I hope you realize that if disease didn't exist, there would be no way to control the human population in the first place. No matter how hard you try, no matter how advanced you become, you can never cheat death. Death is inevitable, and will only come back at you in different forms.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

No matter how hard you try, no matter how advanced you become, you can never cheat death. Death is inevitable, and will only come back at you in different forms.

That's mighty arrogant of you. How on Earth could you know that?
Cuz in the world of thinking folk, we don't go around making wild existential claims without qualifying them, especially ones that effectively require omniscience.
PRO TIP: It is very likely that a scientist working on a "cure for death" will be well-aware of the fact that one might succumb to death in presently unforeseen ways. He is, after all, actively attempting to handle exactly that problem. This "reminder" of yours is not only useless without supporting reasoning, but is also not your place to give unless you are the god-like figure you'd have to be to actually know such a thing.

[Atilla]

No matter how hard you try, no matter how advanced you become, you can never cheat death. Death is inevitable, and will only come back at you in different forms.

That's what they said at the Academy! But I'll show them! I'LL SHOW YOU ALL! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!

[Amadeus]

No matter how hard you try, no matter how advanced you become, you can never cheat death. Death is inevitable, and will only come back at you in different forms.

That's mighty arrogant of you. How on Earth could you know that?
Cuz in the world of thinking folk, we don't go around making wild existential claims without qualifying them, especially ones that effectively require omniscience.
PRO TIP: It is very likely that a scientist working on a "cure for death" will be well-aware of the fact that one might succumb to death in presently unforeseen ways. He is, after all, actively attempting to handle exactly that problem. This "reminder" of yours is not only useless without supporting reasoning, but is also not your place to give unless you are the god-like figure you'd have to be to actually know such a thing.

If we never died, we'd live infinitely. And in that time, every possible scenario and event and occurrence will be played out, which makes it actually impossible that you wouldn't say, get hit by a car. In an infinite time span, it's inevitable. The only way really, that we could live forever is if we became a form of energy or such that simply couldn't die... but as a living organism, Subterfuge is right. We all must die.

[SlappyMcGee]

Errrm. No? There's no amount of inevitability in the concept of death. If there was an exponential increase in the population, life would become unpleasant, sure. But if there were such a advancement in science that any death can either be prevented or reversed then it would continue to be unpleasant until we rocket to another planet. Of course, by then we won't be able to die, so take that, density of Mars!

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

If we never died, we'd live infinitely. And in that time, every possible scenario and event and occurrence will be played out, which makes it actually impossible that you wouldn't say, get hit by a car.

I don't think I will ever be eaten by a dinosaur. Cars could easily phase out of existence in a relatively short time.
And even if I am hit by a velociraptor driving a Buick millions of years from now, how can you say with such certainty that the medicine of such a day won't be able to piece my spine and nervous system back together in minutes?

In an infinite time span, it's inevitable.

The universe doesn't have an infinite amount of time, so it remains extremely improbable that just any "possible scenario and event and occurrence" would happen.
But don't confuse the eventual death of the universe to be Subterfuge's point, because he was being mystical, not metaphysical. He doesn't deserve that credit.

The only way really, that we could live forever is if we became a form of energy or such that simply couldn't die... but as a living organism.

Wow. Okay, now it's your turn to start backing this shit up. Have you done / read / heard of / known a guy who's heard of / seen a commercial for a Discovery Channel series about any serious studies or investigations into "beings of energy"? How on Earth are you qualified to make that statement? Who on Earth could be?
In order for this statement to have any weight, you'd have to have complete knowledge of all forms "a living thing" might take (however you define it, which is also one-up you have on the entire scientific community at the moment), and know the characteristics of such a being that would enable them to live forever (which would, itself, require you to know all circumstances anything will ever face before the heat death of the universe).


Look. I know it sounds humble and wise to put humans in their place with existential remarks about the inescapability of death, the balance of nature, blah blah blah, but this is nothing short of pure fucking mysticism. We're not savages telling tales of the elder spirits around a fucking campfire; we are educated people with a well-established, tried-and-true means to assist us in our pursuit of truth. And people like you have to cock it all up with legends and old wives' tales, spawned entirely by primitive human creativity, without a lick of justification behind any of it. And the worst part of it is that the masses have a tendency to put their trust into people who seems to know what they're talking about, and so are swayed by your filthy lies.
I don't actually have any expectation that I'll live forever. I don't even expect that I'll last beyond my 70's because of the presence of various hereditary medical problems in my family history. I do, however, take issue with anyone who tells me that I will die because of some human-conceived hierarchy of anthropomorphic abstract nouns enforcing it, because that's plain idiotic. Furthermore, I will go on to question the capacity for critical thinking that such a person has if it's clear that he actually believes any of it.
With our level of intellectual progress, humans should be well past mysticism. But people like you hold everyone else back. Knock it off.

[scythe]

If we never died, we'd live infinitely. And in that time, every possible scenario and event and occurrence will be played out, which makes it actually impossible that you wouldn't say, get hit by a car. In an infinite time span, it's inevitable. The only way really, that we could live forever is if we became a form of energy or such that simply couldn't die... but as a living organism, Subterfuge is right. We all must die.

Energy also follows the Poincare Recurrence Theorem; besides, nobody here is really concerned with trying to outlive the heat death of the universe. PRT doesn't at all imply that the universe will reach all possible states; only that every state it has so far visited will be revisited.

[Amadeus]

Look guys, I'm no scientist. About the energy stuff, all I'm saying is that in our current form we all are going to die sometime, because in the span of such a long period of time, something's bound to happen. I'm not saying definitely, but chances are somewhere along you're route, something harmful will happen to you. And if we get lucky and last trillions of years, we're all screwed when the Universe runs out of time.

In my earlier post, I was addressing claims that people could live infinitely. My reasoning is, in an actual infinite time span, every possible possibility will occur, that's what infinite time is. Just like how if there were an infinite universe/space, there's actually a Star Wars like galaxy playing out right now.

[Sondrigal]

The possibility of genetics is so mind blowing. I want in. Post i agree with

Even though I'm more sharing my opinion rather than opinion. I'm all for it. Now I can have a tail, wings, and horns. I will be THE most badass human on the planet. That, and I want to be Harder, Better, Faster, and Stronger.

(also, you want your girlfriend to have a tail and ears on the top of her head)

HOT. Let's get on this.

[Animator]

That's mighty arrogant of you. How on Earth could you know that?
Cuz in the world of thinking folk, we don't go around making wild existential claims without qualifying them, especially ones that effectively require omniscience.
PRO TIP: It is very likely that a scientist working on a "cure for death" will be well-aware of the fact that one might succumb to death in presently unforeseen ways. He is, after all, actively attempting to handle exactly that problem. This "reminder" of yours is not only useless without supporting reasoning, but is also not your place to give unless you are the god-like figure you'd have to be to actually know such a thing.

Honestly, I only said that in reference to the deaths that occur in the present. Maybe I did come off a bit too mystical, but if death -was- cured, there'd be no limiting factor for the world's population, because we can't die. I find it to be a bad thing, oddly, and even though we could go hopping planet to planet, eventually it'll become overcrowded, but I guess that question could lie whether the Universe is infinite or not. Now I'm just rambling, but my point is that trying to avoid death altogether could be bad.

The only way really, that we could live forever is if we became a form of energy or such that simply couldn't die...

I think you're referencing the concept of the soul here, and no one can really know if that exists or not (cold-hearted as that sounds).

[The_Juggler]

we're all screwed when the Universe runs out of time.

No if the time runs out the universe goes into "Sudden Death Mode" and stars start blowing up until there's finally a winner.

[unoriginal name]

we're all screwed when the Universe runs out of time.

No if the time runs out the universe goes into "Sudden Death Mode" and stars start blowing up until there's finally a winner.

Bahahahah. What did we ever do without you, man?

[SkyPanda]

If we never died, we'd live infinitely. And in that time, every possible scenario and event and occurrence will be played out, which makes it actually impossible that you wouldn't say, get hit by a car.

I'm not sure about this one. Not only would the probability of a form of death have to be greater than zero, it would have to be greater than zero for an infinite length of time.

So all I have to do is move to a planet with no cars. The probability of me having a fatal interaction with a car is now zero, and therefore even in infinite time I will never die.

Alternatively, suppose I move to a planet with just one car. The probability of me being hit by the car is now greater than zero, so in infinite time I would eventually be hit by the car. But that probabilty has to be maintained for an infinite length of time, and I think that the probality will return to zero long before the car hits me. That little carbitch is gonna run out of fuel.

[Amadeus]

If we never died, we'd live infinitely. And in that time, every possible scenario and event and occurrence will be played out, which makes it actually impossible that you wouldn't say, get hit by a car.

I'm not sure about this one. Not only would the probability of a form of death have to be greater than zero, it would have to be greater than zero for an infinite length of time.

So all I have to do is move to a planet with no cars. The probability of me having a fatal interaction with a car is now zero, and therefore even in infinite time I will never die.

Alternatively, suppose I move to a planet with just one car. The probability of me being hit by the car is now greater than zero, so in infinite time I would eventually be hit by the car. But that probabilty has to be maintained for an infinite length of time, and I think that the probality will return to zero long before the car hits me. That little carbitch is gonna run out of fuel.

You'd have to move somewhere without a single risk of dying... good luck ;)

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

So I know I'm being an inexcusably obnoxious thread necro by posting here again, but I am fucking infuriated with what happened to my catgirl on page 1.
I'm not going to explain the reasons for viewing posts this far back, but as I hit the post in this thread, I saw an image I knew I couldn't possibly have linked to, especially given the date.
What clearly happened here is that tinypic.com recycles its links, or maybe they figure hash collisions occur so infrequently that they allow everything to be overwritten.

The end result was that my catgirl, attached, was replaced by this abomination.

I felt like sharing my rage.

[Tanner]

Hahahah! Amazing.

[otters]

As far as human modification goes, all I want is indestructible telomeres.

[Rose]

Anyway - I think it was on 60 Minutes - the show went on to talk about how much trouble she got from religious and political fanatics; all because she underwent a dangerous and experimental surgery to restore her lost sight.
Said she was no longer welcome in her church because of this.

So much for churches being welcoming and spreading the word if they can't even let someone who had a FUCKING MEDICAL PROCEDURE INTO THEIR ESTABLISHMENT ASDF RAGE.

I'm a fairly devout Christian and I'm all for this genetic modification stuff as long as it doesn't get out of control and misused.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

Relevant TED talk.

The day my local hospital has access to affordable replacement for my senses that offer a net improvement in performance is the day my face suffers an unfortunate shotgun-related "accident" just outside that hospital's ER.

[squibbles]

I know I'm a bit late, but I just thought I'd drop this bombshell of relevance on you guys.

A Jellyfish which is biologically immortal.

[Luminaflare]

Just a quick thought but isn't modification done every day? From tattoos/piercings to skin grafts to organ replacements.

[otters~1]

I know I'm a bit late, but I just thought I'd drop this bombshell of relevance on you guys.

A Jellyfish which is biologically immortal.

Ah god yes, I remember this. This is /amazing/.