this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
36 points (95.0% liked)

Futurology

1771 readers
127 users here now

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
top 10 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (3 children)

People often talk about declining human demographics, but they rarely consider growing new humans artificially as a means of dealing with it. As nightmarish as it sounds, maybe that day is nearer than we think. Israeli scientists have already grown mammal embryos outside the womb to half their gestation period. If you have cloned embryos of "perfect" humans, perhaps growing them at scale outside the womb is nearer than we think.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

With all due respect, you couldn't explain this possible future in a single paragraph without using the term "'perfect' humans". This illustrates the extremely slippery slope of how it probably isn't a good idea to do this en masse because we're already dehumanizing them by thinking about them as a source of societal output or deifying them as some weird, eugenics influenced super race.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I don't see it. Countries don't want the human they want the productive, educated, well adjusted adult and you don't get that through cloning.

[–] possiblylinux127 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's actually pretty horrifying in many different ways. God help us all.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

God won't save you there. We've become God.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I can see the rich pouring money into this tech to grow organs for themselves. The clones would need to be segregated though, as otherwise there might be issues with property rights etc. They could be put on an island, the rich have a few spare I'm sure. We could tell the clones that the rest of the world was too damaged for humans to live there. It would need to be hidden perhaps as there would be moral outrage if it was discovered the clones were intended to have organs harvested from them. God help then if one of the clones escapes though.

Wait, no, thats the plot to The Island with Ewan McGregor... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_(2005_film)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

How would you know, earth isn't already one of those islands and we're the clones?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

I feel like the overloads would try harder for us to eat healthy and give us better climate of that were the case. Unless they are into free range like Jupiter acending or Vandread.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

As far as I remembered, the problem with eg. Dolly was that we doesn't know enough about epigenetics. Time change and we are on a more sophisticated, still far away from perfect, level.

[–] possiblylinux127 -2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

God help us all