Perhaps this has been discussed before but i need some informed comments on this subject which seem to spring up on every long conversation i had.
(maybe not a good way to start but well…its a start)
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=138174
which one you want to talk on?
How would you “genetically design” natural procreation?
try coming up with a PURELY LOGICAL reason for living.
isn’t satisfying curiosity an emotional experience? wouldn’t you have to engineer the pleasure center out of the brain? eliminate pain also? would these genetically engineered superbabies just lay in place and starve without crying?
YUK!
Dal Timgar
Besides the will to live, morals are also pretty dependent on emotions. An emotionless society might turn into “Categorical Imperative Land,” but I suspect that it would probably turn into “Efficient Killing Machine Land.”
There are useful social aspects to emotions too; empathy particularly.
Define “emotion” anyway. Is the desire to go on living an emotion? Is curiosity (“Should people in the future be genetically designed to be emotionless?”) an emotion? Is a desire to improve oneself or the species (“Let’s genetically engineer people to be emotionless!”) an emotion?
What kind of people do you talk to??? Besides us, of course.
It’s widely appreciated that mammals as a group have emotions. Perhaps all the same emotions as human beings. Read, for example “Why Elephants Weep”. Therefore, removing emotions would be to create an entity that in some respects had less in common with a human being than a shrew does.
An entity that thinks like a human, but has no emotions is the sort of thing feared by science fiction writers. An entity whose motivations were, at heart, entirely different than ours. And one which presumably had no feelings such as pity and sympathy to keep their “lesser brothers” around – consuming Earth’s resources, propagating urban legends, and becoming experts in the Buffyverse.
Why not design them to be brainless vegetables while you’re at it? It would amount to the same thing.
See prior thread: Are emotions useful?
And British Rock bands.
It doesn’t work out too well for the common folk.
Woho, hmm…seems abit one sided so far. Ok i’ll take the “bad” guy point and see what happens.
(purely from a scientific point of view)
1)How special are humans? I think the only one thing that sets us apart and hence precious is our ability to think logically and rationally. This means our physical vessel is expandable and should be if possible engineered to aid in the survival of this cognitive ability.
2)Logical and rationable thought is now at the current state hopelessly governed by something which is unpredictable and fleeting; Emotion
3)People usually say that it is emotion that motivates life to seek fulilment through happiness. But isn’t happiness a just a stimulation in the brain? If seeking happiness IS the ultimate purpose for humanity why not just built machines that put us to sleep in eternal bliss? Sounds pointless dosn’t it?
So what should be the goal of humanity?
Ans: To ensure the survival of the next generation. And to search for the source and reason for why is everything the way it is.
Since the physical body is expandable, the future descendent could be designed to be not even of flesh at all!
“”“Besides the will to live, morals are also pretty dependent on emotions. An emotionless society might turn into “Categorical Imperative Land,” but I suspect that it would probably turn into “Efficient Killing Machine Land.””"
Opinions:
The will to live is a habit
Habits come from emotions
There doesn’t seem to be a 12 step program for this habit yet; addiction really.
As for “Efficient Killing Machine Land”…
I believe the idea behind such a change would be to forge something a bit different than what is already a life imbued with efficient killing machines everywhere. I’m sure we all kill ‘stuff’ all the time; with phenomenal efficiency. I we can isolate this unversal puzzle and control it; emotions may find their way back into us as a decorative novelty, for those who are into fads.
-Justhink
Edit: ““I(f) we can isolate””
-Justhink
No.
I’ll try to dig up a cite, but I remember reading the story of a woman who, due to brain damage, was largely bereft of emotion. She was functionally crippled–she couldn’t make any decision where there was no compelling reason to go with one alternative. Is that a good thing?
btw, whoever said that humans are the only animals that can reason? Rational though, while not as highly developed in other animals, is present. It is true that humans are the only animals that are capable of communicating abstract thoughts. Is that what you meant?
I directly or indirectly kill quite a bit of “stuff” (germs, wheat, cattle) as fits my needs/desires/whatever (if I’m hungry I’ll eat some bread or maybe a hamburger, if I’m sick I’ll take antibiotics). If I were to kill a person, though, I’d feel guilty – it doesn’t matter where this emotion comes from (societal conditioning, instinct, God, whatever), what matters is that the emotion is undesireable and so I seek to avoid it. Take away guilt, and would I think the same way? Probably not – I suspect that I’d think of humans as just another thing for me to kill as it behooves me, along with germs, wheat, and cattle. I’d still be the killing machine that I am currently, but my efficiency would be vastly increased (since I’d no longer be hampered by things like guilt, sympathy, empathy, love, etc).
If you could not feel you could not think (rationally or otherwise). You could not draw conclusions. You could not infer from data. You would be incapable of holding an opinion.
I suppose if you could be programmed with a rigid set of instructions, you could do with data the kinds of things that my PowerBook can do with data (i.e., in strict accordance with the instructions with which you are programmed), although the human brain is not designed to be programmed like a computer so that’s a highly hypothetical if. (but then so is the entire line of thought in this thread).
Wait a minute…
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Do we know that the concept “emotion” is neuroscientifically meaningful–i.e., like “consciousness,” could it be a term which has, possibly, no functionality in science? If it is not you may also be talking (in YOUR terms), about the elimination of…decision-making ability, the will to live, consciousness, and other similarly trivial cognitive functions. I.e., your question would then be, “Should people in the future be replaced by computers?”
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If a computer-person could somehow be engineered to maximize its survival potential, the only possible activity for such a thing, in the absence of emotion or immediate apocalypse, would be to do things which work strictly to promote the continued survival of its fellow borgs. Therefore, your question would be, “Should the goal of life be survival?”
I think we need to be clear on what you are actually asking. IMO, the answer to these questions is, respectively, maybe and certainly not.
I’m gonna vote no on this one. It would take the life out of life.
If women were to begin making all procreative decisions based entirely on logic then far fewer men will be mating.
“We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are already working on it.”
– George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, part III