Quoth jsgoddess:
But there are many animals in the world to which that standard is applied, and you likely benefit from their “slavery”. When a chicken stops laying eggs, the farmer has chicken soup for supper that night. And farmed pigs have no purpose other than meat: The pig can’t even serve its intended purpose until after the pigkeeper stops caring for it.
You don’t give them a human-grade brain in the first place. Chimps are plenty smart as it is. They’re just really hard to control.
I think that’s outside the parameters of what I was discussing.
I don’t think there’s any economic incentive to creating a slave species. Lots of jobs suck, but people need those shitty jobs to survive.
Why’s a dog part of the genetic equation anyhow? That’d needlessly complicate things. Who knows, perhaps the humanzee is achievable through traditional (shudders) means. Could closely DNA related primates be impregnated by human sperm? Or chimps sperm and human eggs?
There have been GQ threads about this. The learned answer is that a humanzee may be possible, but nobody knows for sure,
I wonder how far along other countries might secretly be with this. Perhaps that’s how China pulled off it’s opening Olympic ceremony - monkeyman power!
I am surprised to see this thread get so far, even in GD, with no discussion of the benefits of monkey butlers.
I thought the answer also included, “what scientist would be brave enough to try it and publish?”
Another approach would be to try and hybridize chimps and gorillas. Since humans are more closely related to chimps than gorillas are, if they can do it, we almost certainly could, too. We know that gibbon species that are much more distantly related than humans and chimps can hybridize.
If you start mixing dogs, chimps and humans you might end up with a loyal, docile servant who washes windows, does dishes, takes banana breaks, chases cars for fun and pees on every fire hydrant.
Did anyone ever asked R2 if he wanted to be an astromech droid, or pay him for his services?
My opinion is that any species we create is no longer a species, but a biological machine that we are free to do with as we please. I would stipulate that they must want to willingly serve in that capacity if they are capable of sentient thought, but I’ve no issues with the willingness being programmed into them. I would also stipulate that any species or machine we make must be made, insofar as our capabilities allow, to reduce or eliminate suffering, physical and emotional. I.e. little or no emotional capacity, and only enough pain reception to warn about self damage.
I think the reason for the dog admixture was to get the desired temperment and eagerness to please humans.
Oh, I forgot to ask, what is the difference between this hypothetical slave creature and a working animal? A horse pulling a trailer is the definition of a slave, simply a bit further down the scale of sentience than humans.
And elect it as our most recent Republican President.