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Scientists create the first synthetic lifeform

#34
IconBasser said:
jeez, so many nay-sayers here. What's with the anti-technological complex? Bunch of Luddites...
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I think that technology and, to enlarge the umbrella, science ignore the "why"* far too much for my liking. Its the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge that makes me ask questions.


*clarification of the why:
Are human beings really happier than the were 2,000 years ago? 200 years ago? Do we really need these sorts of technologies? Is it a measurable amount of good? What kind of problems are they going to cause? etc.
 
#37
Not so sure to say they brought life from nothing if I read it correctly. Injecting human DNA, which was already alive, into a chemical matrix capable of sustaining a stable form (cell-shape) just means he found another healthful medium for the already true-living DNA sequence to successfully live in and do its thing (replicating a form).

Is it a big step forward in life-forming technology---you bet it is, but it is premature to say the lab created life. That's my take on it.

The questions are now:
1. Where does it go from here?
2. What is the intent/dreams of the goal by the "makers"?
3. What does a government think about this that it is not telling anyone ("their future plans")?
 
#39
Deluge Of Sound said:
I could have phrased that a bit better:

Obtaining knowledge for the mere sake of obtaining knowledge doesn't strike me as a particularly good attempt at enhancing the human condition. I see that as unhelpfully tangential, on the whole.
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I respectfully but emphatically disagree. Robert Pirsig expresses my view exactly:

Pirsig said:
It’s sometimes argued that there’s no real progress; that a civilization that kills multitudes in mass warfare, that pollutes the land and oceans with ever larger quantities of debris, that destroys the dignity of individuals by subjecting them to a forced mechanized existence can hardly be called an advance over the simpler hunting and gathering and agricultural existence of prehistoric times. But this argument, though romantically appealing, doesn’t hold up. The primitive tribes permitted far less individual freedom than does modern society. Ancient wars were committed with far less moral justification than modern ones. A technology that produces debris can find, and is finding, ways of disposing of it without ecological upset. And the schoolbook pictures of primitive man sometimes omit some of the detractions of his primitive life...the pain, the disease, famine, the hard labor needed just to stay alive. From that agony of bare existence to modern life can be soberly described only as upward progress, and the sole agent for this progress is quite clearly reason itself.
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#40
bassybill said:
I respectfully but emphatically disagree.
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Fair 'nuff.

One last clarifier/rephrasal:
I don't think that we're significantly happier than the primates who climbed down from the African canopy aeons ago. Or the more modern "humans" who existed for thousands of years before recorded history.

Of course, that ball ends up in a lot of courts--the scientific, the philosophical, the religious, being three of the most example. I see science as doing the least of the three to address it.
 

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