I am worried about the long term impact of research involving human conception, IVF, etc.
The reason is that genetics/evolution don't yet seem to fully explain how humans exist. A computer genetic algorithm run for a billion generations doesn't lead to anything anywhere near the the complexity of a human.
I suspect there are as-yet undiscovered effects which shape the next generation. Whether that be DNA methylation, gut bacteria passing from mother to child, selection of the 'correct' egg or sperm out of millions, or something new and un-discovered etc.
And if those effects are bypassed with artificial conception, we might end up with humans which aren't as strong, aren't as smart, aren't as well adapted to a changing environment, etc.
The effect will be small for each generation, but after 5-10 generations of a combination of artificial and natural conception you could end up with meaningful loss of fitness - or perhaps a lack of gain of fitness that would have otherwise occurred.
You’re layering
several hypotheticals on top of each other, which leads to progressively distant possibilities. Good on you for caring about humans though
But it reads to me like the thread parent's point is that there are many unknown risks which can exist? I also wonder about long term effects to the health of the genome from IVF and other forms of fertility treatment as infertility could be acting as some sort of protection mechanism of the genome. But I suppose such objections form a continuum which extends to treatment of all genetic diseases or diseases in general--all of which probably applies some evolutionary pressure towards more healthy individuals but which we as a society have to balance against wellbeing of individuals and their human rights.
Why is it a designer's dream to hijack and control my scrolling experience? The scroll they've implemented is slow to respond, and has a weirdly low capped max speed. I don't understand why that's what a designer dreams of doing to me. I like my scroll (and other computer interactions for that matter) to be responsive and fast. You know, the kind of thing that puts me in control, not the designer.
That being said, the scroll was as smooth as regular webpage scrolls. Usually these JS scrolls aren't able to avoid dropping frames or otherwise introducing judder, but this one does appear to run at a consistent and high framerate, which is technically impressive.
That can't be good. Life cycle of a human egg is organized around preserving mitochondria to be as young and fresh as possible across generations. Using adult cell, even a stem cell to make an egg probably gives it mitochondrial damage that usually takes hundreds of human generations to accumulate.
Can you point me to anything about mitochondrial transplants? I'd love to see bat mitochondria transplanted into other mammals. They must have really superior ones given the energy expenditures needed to support flight and their long lifespans.
Instead of just dismissing this and saying this can't possibly work, it would be better to ask: how do they get around problems of mitochondrial damage, or have they not tackled that yet?
Because it is unlikely that you just punched a hole through the plan of the several dozen people in bioengineering, life sciences, and other related fields that are at this company.
When the damage accumulates across generations the natural selection has opportunity to weed out particularly harmful instances. You can get a feeling for how important avoiding the mitochondrial damage is and how hard it is to mitigate, by looking at how fiercely the reproductive process protects them from aging.
Guess the japanese excel at micromanaging. Although one could
say that the research here in the article is more epic than
Shinya's discovery, but I remember having watched one of his
presentation and it convinced me of pure epicness, if you
understand how his team found the "Yamanaka factors". That
was by human (work) consistency. About as epic as
Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard and her mutant screens, that also
involved tons of micro-experiments.
The origins of stem cells for use in the biosciences and in cosmetics are extremely brutal and should be illegal. Sandra Bullock explains it better than I could:
https://youtu.be/PwO3TEj9-5g
The reason is that genetics/evolution don't yet seem to fully explain how humans exist. A computer genetic algorithm run for a billion generations doesn't lead to anything anywhere near the the complexity of a human.
I suspect there are as-yet undiscovered effects which shape the next generation. Whether that be DNA methylation, gut bacteria passing from mother to child, selection of the 'correct' egg or sperm out of millions, or something new and un-discovered etc.
And if those effects are bypassed with artificial conception, we might end up with humans which aren't as strong, aren't as smart, aren't as well adapted to a changing environment, etc.
The effect will be small for each generation, but after 5-10 generations of a combination of artificial and natural conception you could end up with meaningful loss of fitness - or perhaps a lack of gain of fitness that would have otherwise occurred.
You'd have a rather different opinion if you had to squeeze out a water melon out of your genitals.
Can we stop adding unnecessary JS to website to stop global warming by calculating AND ALTERING SCROLL?
Firefox on Samsung S23, not exactly a new or a powerful phone but rendered it fine.
That being said, the scroll was as smooth as regular webpage scrolls. Usually these JS scrolls aren't able to avoid dropping frames or otherwise introducing judder, but this one does appear to run at a consistent and high framerate, which is technically impressive.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7169912/
Because it is unlikely that you just punched a hole through the plan of the several dozen people in bioengineering, life sciences, and other related fields that are at this company.
Shinya Yamanaka created iPSPs in 2009:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinya_Yamanaka
Guess the japanese excel at micromanaging. Although one could say that the research here in the article is more epic than Shinya's discovery, but I remember having watched one of his presentation and it convinced me of pure epicness, if you understand how his team found the "Yamanaka factors". That was by human (work) consistency. About as epic as Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard and her mutant screens, that also involved tons of micro-experiments.