/sci/ - Science & Math

No. Too much responsibility and it can go wrong.

i dont see animals evolving without help. as things are going it looks as though humans are going to fuck everything up before anyone/thing has a chance to evolve naturally

Yes, bonobos and dolphins.

>>3493856
>bonobos
I see what you did there.
>dolphins
They already have human-like intelligence, they should only be given appendages with opposing thumbs, as it would be enough to help them reach our level. Also, they're all sex-crazed maniacs, you sick fuck.

>>3493863
Dolphins would bring another sexual revolution.

>>3493863
I do not see what he did there, yet now that you mention it, i find myself intrigued.

If the fear is they will be smarter than us, that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. If the fear is they will be less intelligent, angry, and somehow able to kill lots of humans, that is also stupid. If you think its unmoral or against religion that is also stupid. If you think its a waste of time and money, I can see where your coming from.

My vote is yes, more for me to learn if they did it.

>>3493863

They are slightly dim by human standards. Something like 85 on average, although of course that's an imprecise approximation. They could use a slight boost and some proper vocal chords.

Bonobros are just better than chimps in every way. Why would we uplift chimps? They're warlike shitheads, only Baboons are worse.

>>3493866
Bonobos have sex about 20 hours a day.

>yfw this is the same thing as breeding dogs from wolves thousands of years ago

>>3493871
I think that you chose bonobos and dolphins simply because they are both sex-crazed...

>>3493841
Which one would have the most potential to reach general intelligence? Wouldn't this require basically moving them way beyond their current limitations and beyond ours? Wouldn't it be trying to create not only an intelligent society, but a post-*insert-animal-now-general-intelligence-now-post-general-intelligence* in a single step?

Scientific progress should be without restraint.

>>3493871
>They're warlike shitheads
>implying we aren't
>>3493884
BUT WHAT ABOUT MORALS?

>>3493888
Fuck morals.

>Sexual intercourse plays a major role in bonobo society observed in captivity, being used as what some scientists perceive as a greeting, a means of conflict resolution, and post-conflict reconciliation.

GENIOUS

I don't see the harm, other than wasting time and resources on this instead of fixing our current problems.

i just dont see why this would be bad. for one we could all learn things from each other (especially if the animal in question is still able to remember being connected to nature...they might MIGHT actually be able to stop humans from destroying the planet for a little bit)..also going to school with dolphins would be the shit

It would just bring more issues, more conflict, more philosophical questions about morality and basically a lot more enemies.

The Salarians fucked around with the Krogans natural development and it was disastrous. You must allow a species to develop naturally or it will possess power it isn't fit to possess.

>>3493896
>remember being connected to nature
I lol'd. We can observe their behavior in nature and it will give us the same information. If you mean like "spiritual" connection then GTFO.

>>3493911
A species must develop culture and intelligence simultaneously. Otherwise you get a species that is intelligent but has no sense of identity or purpose. I think our dolphins would commit suicide.

>>3493911
Then again, if it weren't for that, the entire galaxy could have been wiped out by the Rachni. Maybe one day, we too will need the help of our uplifted animal brethren.

>>3493928
>Implying we didn't do this with blacks. Implying we aren't going to create a genophage to reduce their out of control numbers

>>3493936
I don't think a black genophage would work too well. For one, black men can breed with white women, so at best the genophage is useless or at worst the genophage spreads to us.

>>3493942
well shit

No, why the fuck would we do that. Then there would be controversy as to who is the master species? Lead to wars and civil unrest. Human's should remain superior.

>>3493957
> Human's should remain superior
You'll already be post-human, at that point in time, you're already nearly unstoppable and can only move forward. The question is wether we should accelerate other species which are close to us, but would take a long time to reach us, despite having the potential for general intelligence. We ourselves were very fortunate for our hands, body position, vocal chords and the eventual invention of language and tools, it all went from there to here. Some animals might have neurological potency for developing general intelligence like ours, but lack some features which prevent them from making the jump, and evolution would take too long.
My main issue here is of consent and wether the original species should also be preserved.

>>3493957
there would also be serious religions complications, with people insisting that humans have souls and not the animalfriends.

>>3493969
>Post-human
What exactly do you think we're going to become?

>>3493966
Relax, if you performed mind uploading, you either assume you have no soul, or the "soul" (qualia, not necesarilly continous, merely an illusion of continuity) is merely what computational mathematical possibility feels from the inside (see: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications.html or a quick 10-min explanation of similar concept: http://lesswrong.com/lw/1zt/the_mathematical_universe_the_map_that_is_the/ ). Of couse, if you deny qualia as existing, no need to argue about this at all, but if you accept it and you uploaded, it means computationalism is true, if you still keep on experiencing qualia.

>>3493966
>Implying we should care about religious implications.

It would certainly cause a shitstorm among the stupid religionfags, but I think the greater problem would be humans not being able to view themselves as smarter anymore. That's the characteristic that allowed us to dominate this planet, and bringing animals up to the same intelligence as us would take our intellectual superiority away. The psychological implications would be greater than any nonsense about a 'soul'.

>>3493986
Substrate-independent minds. Likely with a huge ability to self-modify in very interesting ways in which us normal humans have only dreamed of.

>>3493969
I personally don't think we should make animals more intelligent, however in regards to your main point that if we did;

1. I'm sure no one would have any objections to being made smarter, so I doubt any animals would.

2. Don't see why the original species should be preserved, after all, we don't really give a shit that Homo erectus aren't still around do we?

>>3493996
>not caring about religious implications
What I mean is that it would create a situation where, yeah, stupid people, would be holding themselves over the newcomers. Obviously if they believe in a soul and believe that only humans have them, they'd tend to subjugate the beings that don't. They'd probably want to keep using these beings the way we use animals today; its just that their smarter now and can do more for us. It would be a fucked up scenario.

There will be no species war idiots. If some animals get smarter it would be only a few specimen in labs.

>>3494018
Forever? That seems just as unlikely.

>>3493888
m.. moh... morulz?

>>3494017
Yeh, well the only situation I could see it working is after humans already have the ability to populate other planets. We could make them more intelligent and give them their own planet to prosper and flourish. Eventually they make progress enough that we can start to communicate and learn from them. However, I doubt we would ever put in the amount of resources and time needed for such an endeavour, especially seeing as humans will need other planets to live on themselves due to population growth.

>>3494017
Just don't give them right to abuse it.
If you're a post-human, it's highly likely you'll abandom most nonsense religions. I don't think there would even be much religiousity among posthumans, we'll essentially only need at most to hold 2 nearly religious beliefs which are self-evident to post-humans, such as computationalism (self-evident from first person perspective of an updated mind) and maybe MUH (testable by an upload at any point in time, but doing the test implicitly means subjectively "leaving" the universe, thus no-one in the universe will be able to find out the result of the experiment, except yourself and whoever you brought along with you, and the only way to go back to our universe would be to simulate it, if one knows the laws of physics (and even then, most likely have to simulate countless worlds and look for statistical properties that look like us), and if the laws are not known, it would mean running an Universal Dovetailer and searching in its results (even longer, not that time would matter at all for an uploaded mind, it can choose to subjectively experience time at any rate, and it could choose to delete all unsuccessful states, only remembering "success" of finding the right laws of physics).

s/updated/uploaded//

>>3494039
Good point
>>3494048
...I'm sure that's a good point to. If only I knew what you were talking about

>>3494048
Are you high?

>>3493841
I think it is very cool, and should be done.

Personally if I won 10mil€, large scale selective breeding programmes that is what I would be doing for the rest of my life.

Some speices that I would like to tamper with are: Dogs, Hyenas (spotted), Baboons, Magpies, Parrots, and maybe some squid.

>>3494071
>dogs

What has science done!

>>3494067
Nope, but you obviously have no read my post. If an uploaded mind is conscious, then it assumes computationalism is true ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_theory_of_mind ). A lesser known fact about this is that an uploaded mind can test http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothesis very easily from its own perspective (read "Permutation City" if you want a nicely spoonfed explanation of how). You're already making a huge bet by assuming you'll be conscious after uploading, and taking the MUH bet is about as likely. All I did was present the 2 minimum statements that an outside observer may not be able to make, that a posthuman mind may be able to hold despite them not being obviously true to outside observers. It's like the common amount of "religiosity" (statements assumed true without proof) in a posthuman world. Hardly anything of the level held in current human world.

>>3494089
but why are you talking about uploaded minds?

what's the point? They wouldn't be as smart as a human and if they were then they would be killed instantly since it poses an immediate threat to us. It's like making an exploding sandwich. Sure you can do it, but why the fuck would you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox

Link related. There is also a very cool documentary about this project, but I can't recall its name.

>>3493911

Not really, Krogans had already reached mid to late 20th century level of technology (well, before they nuked themselves). I can see their situation did'nt differ much from mankinds during the cold war.
By looking at Krogan culture of late 22nd century, it would seem that they are inherently more aggressive than other species, and have always been so, but i think this is wrong. In order to have reached the level of scientific development they had before nuclear war (not to mention building all the infrastructure for building all those nuclear weapons, along with their elevated highways and high rising buildings and shit), they must've had LOTS of highly educated and civilized people to do that.
While scientific advancement and being educated are something you would never link with Krogan society of late 22nd century (if you can even call it a society), you must remember that Krogans nearly went extinct after their nuclear war, and in post apocalyptic world, it were mainly most aggressive and violent who prevailed and went on, carrying their traits to future generations. This 'trend' of violent behaviour was further pushed/encouraged by the Salarians who began to uplift the withering Krogan population with their advanced technology, if they in return could be utilized as warriors against the Rachni threat (and later through genophage which resulted in males having to fight for the right to breed with the few fertile females). These things have even been mentioned during the game.

To be continued

>>3494108
Dude, make another thread for this. Seems like a decent story, but this isn't the place.

>>3493911

Not really, Krogans had already reached mid to late 20th century level of technology (well, before they nuked themselves). I can see their situation did'nt differ much from mankinds during the cold war.

By looking at Krogan culture of late 22nd century, it would seem that they are inherently more aggressive than other species, and have always been so, but i think this is wrong. In order to have reached the level of scientific development they had before nuclear war (not to mention building all the infrastructure for building all those nuclear weapons, along with their elevated highways and high rising buildings and shit), they must've had LOTS of highly educated and civilized people to do that.

While scientific advancement and being educated are something you would never link with Krogan society of late 22nd century (if you can even call it a society), you must remember that Krogans nearly went extinct after their nuclear war, and in post apocalyptic world, it were mainly most aggressive and violent who prevailed and went on, carrying their traits to future generations. This 'trend' of violent behaviour was further pushed/encouraged by the Salarians who began to uplift the withering Krogan population with their advanced technology, if they in return could be utilized as warriors against the Rachni threat (and later through genophage which resulted in males having to fight for the right to breed with the few fertile females). These things have even been mentioned during the game.

To be continued

>>3494095
Because the article is talking about lifting up other species in our planet. If we are to do this, we'll either be transhuman (at least biological), or most likely posthuman (substrate independent mind). I find it more likely that we'll have time for such playing around when we'll already be posthumans. It's of course possible that we somehow master genetics without getting to mind uploads first, but I find this unlikely (human geneticists will more likely focus on our own problems first, while when we take the step as an upload, our own subjective time will be much faster, as in, we'll have a lot more time to do more non-human-centric projects such as those described by OP). It was merely an assumption on my own about the rate of progress of these technologies.

>>3494115

Point being your "You must allow a species to develop naturally or it will possess power it isn't fit to possess." is bullshit when it comes to Krogans, because Krogans prior to their nuclear war were'nt too different from humans of today (or during the cold war). In matter of fact, humans were'nt too civilized either before they were introduced to the citadel, and still are'nt when compared to other citadel species.

Mankind is still divided to countries (of which some, even in the 22nd century, are still incredibly poor and riddled with violence and anarchy), and had to resort in loose alliances to encourage peaceful activity between countries. Only the contact war and joining the citadel later, was something that finally forced the countries to work towards the good of all humanity.

There is one particular animal that we could enhance that I think would be instrumental to world peace and the advancement of our species: niggers.

>>3493841
Yes. If we can, we almost have an ethical obligation to. Like the jesuit missionaries who wanted to spread to word of god to native americans to save them from damnation(never having known about jesus was not a good enough excuse to avoid damnation) we must uplift as many species as possible to save them from their own ignorance. It sort of has the same motivations behind it as promoting scientific awareness.

I'm more interested in knowing how much it would actually take to uplift a species. I have always been fond of octopi and cuddle fish. They are very smart creatures but severely limited by a short lifespan. I always wondered if extending their lifespan to that of a human's would be enough to dent the gap in intelligence.

"distasteful?" come onnnn

he should just admit that he just thinks it would be cool

>>3494120
Krogan with the bloodrage capacity were considered dangerous and insane by the mainstream krogan popultation, it's only because they nuked themselves that almost all krogan have it now.
Now, that don't mean they where all hippie-like, if they nuked themselves, it's not for nothing.

They were an aggressive prey, after all.
They only became the apex predator after the invention of the gun.

If we uplift them to human levels of intelligence, we'll let them vote, right?

Same for robots with human level intelligence, right?

An enlightened society like ours wouldn't treat them like slaves and cattle, would we?

Chimps can't talk not because they don't have the intelligence (they can use sign language), but because they lack the proper anatomical equipment. It's been deemed inhumane to give surgury to a chimp to allow it to speak, which probably means it's been done and hidden away forever. I want to see the footage. Actually, no. I don't just want the footage.

I WANT A GODDAMNED TALKING MONKEY.

>>3494191
Yes, but I think it depends on motivations/emotional/reward systems.
General intelligence, is... quite general.
Self-aware AGI's and GI's, which are capable of empathy and capable of forming their own desires/meta-desires in life would certainly qualify.
But consider this strange thing: some corporation decides to make housemaid robots and they use an AGI with some motivational system that makes the housekeeping experience exceptionally "orgasmic" or a life-fulfilling experience for those AGIs. Should they be allowed to vote when their entire motivation is basically wanting to keep your house clean? This is close to slavery, but not exactly slavery - there is no unwilling subjugation, that is, if those AGIs would acquire the descire to change their motivation/purposes and did it somehow, they would attain 'freedom', but from their perspective, they are 'free', just doing what they like. Just like humans are 'free', yet doing what they like (sex/love, food, surviving, ...). Its been shown that a human without any such motivational facilities are essentially unable to actually make any decisions or make any value judgements, only think rationally, but even rationality seems a bit comrpomised when no value judgements are possible at all.

>>3494471
> continued
Now think of another problem: company X wants political power, they set up candidate Y, they create an AGI population whose 'prime motivation/directive' is to vote for Y. They are sentient, yet they are completly engineered to subvert the voting system.
It becomes really tricky how to deal with this stuff, luckily I think posthuman society will mostly be anarchistic and voting/conventions would merely be between networks of intelligent agents which merely democrately agree on protocols/rules that would allow them to cooperate. There's no conflict there - housekeeping robots would agree with themselves; The politically-motivated 'AGI' coalition would be their own body. Cooperation becomes interesting when it involves more non-homogenous groups, but unlike modern society, I think there would be a lot more freedom and less coercion, thus voting would merely be a way to express local desires to others that are directly related to you.

>Know shit about Bonobos
>wiki
>Sexual social behaviour
>Reading
''Bonobo males occasionally engage in various forms of male-male genital behavior.[42][43] In one form, two males hang from a tree limb face-to-face while "penis fencing"

Hahaowwow

> should humans artificially evolve animals
Yes, we should genetically engineer animals with human-level intelligence, then hunt them for sport.

>>3494505
Hello Affront.