From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh...
Seriously, this playing with living organisms to augment their capabilities and make them do our bidding is a bit beyond my personal moral threshold. At this point isn't easier to miniaturize a robot cocroach?
Most flies I kill, butterflies and wasps I usually guide out. But catching a insect and injecting electronic into it to force it to move where it does not want is kind of a very different thing to me.
Flies fly on shit and bring that in the house. That is reason for me to not have mercy. They bring harm.
Wasps do not bring harm to me, I know how to coexist with them, but if my kids are around, I will also kill them if they seem aggressive. So my ethics are very pragmatic.
Killing something because it mistakenly wandered into your periphery isn't exactly what I'd call pragmatic.
If our solar system drifts too close to another civilization I don't want to get squashed. That's the maxim. We are the fly. If you don't want something bigger than you to be entirely justified in killing you for no reason, you cannot believe yourself to be entirely justified doing the same.
"If you don't want something bigger than you to be entirely justified in killing you for no reason, you cannot believe yourself to be entirely justified doing the same."
For the reason of it being a danger. And that my energy is spend more effective on other things, than trying to save life that potentially carries diseases and goes straight to any open wound or eyes. So they come on purpose, not by mistake.
If that is no reason to you, you may continue to catch and save flies if that is your thing, but please don't say "no reason" when you mean "no valid reason to you".
If you're going to apply the golden rule to amoral objects such as flies, it should also apply to, for instance, bubblegum. You should refrain from chewing bubblegum and blowing bubbles and popping them, because then when a nearby star goes supernova it will spare your life. You are the bubblegum, the star would think, if it had thoughts. Except none of these objects have thoughts, including the fly.
You might wonder why I say that with confidence, but I might wonder why you wouldn't say it with confidence. But even if the fly does have thoughts, such as "yum, I smell a dead squirrel", it's not a participant in morality. Why should there be a golden rule about protecting animated things? Does it apply to the entities in Conway's Game of Life? Does it apply to alien flies that aren't based on DNA, but not to robots? What is the purpose of such a rule?
If the idea is self interest and reciprocity, you're essentially saying "if an alien civilization assigns rights to all kinds of crazy things, it will also assign rights to me, even though it doesn't understand what I am. Therefore I will assign rights to all kinds of crazy things too, to set an example!"
The example would go unheeded, though, if the aliens don't understand what you are. But if they do understand what you are, they'll hopefully spare you because they recognize you as having moral ideas. In that case, you'd reduce your risk the most by not appearing crazy.
> playing with living organisms to augment their capabilities and make them do our bidding
I think the OP was just highlighting that we do this all the time.
I personally feel like cyborg control goes a step beyond selective breeding and it makes me feel icky too. But we need to talk about what the difference is.
What on earth do you mean? That's a basic form of argument, where you demonstrate that the logic of a proposition leads somewhere ridiculous, or leads to a contradiction.
It reminds me of somebody I knew who thought that metaphors are dishonest and should never be used.
Yes, "reductive argument" is fair enough, don't want to be reductionist and dismiss the emergent properties of the thing. (What were we talking about again? The ethics of meddling with nature?)
Posturing and pedantry like this doesn’t change the fact that the nature of exploitation is more important than its mere existence. I’m not sure what you’re trying to achieve with these comments but if it’s to convince me the original argument was made in good faith you should try doing it yourself.
I'm not doing those things, I'm making an epistemological point that I think is important, though it's an old one I picked up from reading Gödel, Escher, Bach in the 80s, but I do quite sincerely think that arguments that rely on reductionism are bad and frequently silly. Yet I also think that reductio ad absurdum is a crucial form of critical thought. Reductionism claims "there are no emergent properties when the parts are assembled", whereas reductio ad absurdum says "there's something that your simple rule doesn't account for", so it really is opposed to reductionism, unless it's carried out by misrepresenting the rule as being foolishly simple when it wasn't simple.
This is admittedly something of a sidetrack from the question of exploitation.
In the argument near the top of the thread, the point made is of course that lots of mundane and innocent things are the product of meddling with nature. I can't make sense of the phrase "exploitation is more important than its mere existence", by "its", do you refer to the existence of exploitation? Was that topic raised? I can't find the context. I don't understand what you're saying, but I'm picking up "when exploitation is bad, it's immoral", which is true by definition. But I suppose the unanswered question is why it's bad exploitation to make a cockroach into a robot.
It is fun to imagine paleontologists, some millions of years from now, whatever species they will be themselves, finding a fossil of this cockroach and trying to explain it. One thing are humans having hip joint implants, but "why on Earth would they make a diving suite for a cockroach?!"
Millions of years from now EVERYTHING will be some form of cyborg. So these cockroaches might be THE missing link of when computer and living species first started to merge.
Reminds me of the scene in The Fifth Element where Tricky is piloting a spy cockroach with a hilariously huge transmitter on it's back...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJxMpTeEf8Q
If you knew Russian you could enjoy the hysterics their propaganda were stoking in 2022-23 about alleged "combat mosquitos" the Ukrainians had developed. According to the propaganda the mosquitos were specifically able to target Russians based on DNA (interesting that according to the same propaganda Russians and Ukrainians are the same people - how poor mosquitos were supposed to distinguish between Russians and Ukrainians the propaganda didn't specify though)
Seems like the oxygen shell itself was just attached to the cockroach with adhesive, they were able to take it off afterwards.
> After experiments, the shell can be removed and the membrane can be gently polished off to minimise any restrictions on the cockroach’s normal behaviour and daily activities. Four small dorsal openings were reserved for attaching the oxygen tubes, which were connected to the thoracic spiracles.
Just what we need at this moment, the viruses and bacteria of hissing cockroaches entering into our valuable water sources so we can drink it, and maybe experience aquatic-park-fun mode in our intestines. Or even discover (who knows? microbiologists can dream) a new exciting pandemic, when two ecosystems that never evolved to be together meet each other? Imagine those giant marine viruses, now on our cricket bars and mosquitoes.
The authors of the article deserve to get appropriate controllers inserted right up into their assholes, so they enjoy the operational range it gives to their fucking selves.
Seriously, this playing with living organisms to augment their capabilities and make them do our bidding is a bit beyond my personal moral threshold. At this point isn't easier to miniaturize a robot cocroach?
For instance, different people put different amounts of effort in when a rogue house fly enters a room. Some kill, some catch and release.
Which is easier? It really depends on the person and what they are willing to tolerate.
Wasps do not bring harm to me, I know how to coexist with them, but if my kids are around, I will also kill them if they seem aggressive. So my ethics are very pragmatic.
If our solar system drifts too close to another civilization I don't want to get squashed. That's the maxim. We are the fly. If you don't want something bigger than you to be entirely justified in killing you for no reason, you cannot believe yourself to be entirely justified doing the same.
The golden rule is really hard to beat.
For the reason of it being a danger. And that my energy is spend more effective on other things, than trying to save life that potentially carries diseases and goes straight to any open wound or eyes. So they come on purpose, not by mistake.
If that is no reason to you, you may continue to catch and save flies if that is your thing, but please don't say "no reason" when you mean "no valid reason to you".
You might wonder why I say that with confidence, but I might wonder why you wouldn't say it with confidence. But even if the fly does have thoughts, such as "yum, I smell a dead squirrel", it's not a participant in morality. Why should there be a golden rule about protecting animated things? Does it apply to the entities in Conway's Game of Life? Does it apply to alien flies that aren't based on DNA, but not to robots? What is the purpose of such a rule?
If the idea is self interest and reciprocity, you're essentially saying "if an alien civilization assigns rights to all kinds of crazy things, it will also assign rights to me, even though it doesn't understand what I am. Therefore I will assign rights to all kinds of crazy things too, to set an example!"
The example would go unheeded, though, if the aliens don't understand what you are. But if they do understand what you are, they'll hopefully spare you because they recognize you as having moral ideas. In that case, you'd reduce your risk the most by not appearing crazy.
No mushrooms, no meat, and no vegetables.
I think the OP was just highlighting that we do this all the time.
I personally feel like cyborg control goes a step beyond selective breeding and it makes me feel icky too. But we need to talk about what the difference is.
It reminds me of somebody I knew who thought that metaphors are dishonest and should never be used.
Maybe it would be more precise to call it a slippery slope but I’m not sure there’s another name for this kind of reductive argument.
I'm not doing those things, I'm making an epistemological point that I think is important, though it's an old one I picked up from reading Gödel, Escher, Bach in the 80s, but I do quite sincerely think that arguments that rely on reductionism are bad and frequently silly. Yet I also think that reductio ad absurdum is a crucial form of critical thought. Reductionism claims "there are no emergent properties when the parts are assembled", whereas reductio ad absurdum says "there's something that your simple rule doesn't account for", so it really is opposed to reductionism, unless it's carried out by misrepresenting the rule as being foolishly simple when it wasn't simple.
This is admittedly something of a sidetrack from the question of exploitation.
In the argument near the top of the thread, the point made is of course that lots of mundane and innocent things are the product of meddling with nature. I can't make sense of the phrase "exploitation is more important than its mere existence", by "its", do you refer to the existence of exploitation? Was that topic raised? I can't find the context. I don't understand what you're saying, but I'm picking up "when exploitation is bad, it's immoral", which is true by definition. But I suppose the unanswered question is why it's bad exploitation to make a cockroach into a robot.
Except that this time you can check if it's working and optimize it better by listening to people's phones and seeing how they react.
https://global.espreso.tv/mosquitoes-vs-moscowitoes-reznikov...
This statement summarizes it nicely:
"The purpose of propaganda is not to make you believe something. It is to make you believe nothing.
Then you will do nothing."
https://x.com/DarthPutinKGB/status/1909932857948004738
An actual quote from a Nature article
> Madagascar hissing cockroach has been used in various applications as a powerful platform
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-60779-1
It looks like something out of CockroachPunk 2077
> After experiments, the shell can be removed and the membrane can be gently polished off to minimise any restrictions on the cockroach’s normal behaviour and daily activities. Four small dorsal openings were reserved for attaching the oxygen tubes, which were connected to the thoracic spiracles.
As long it carries out it mission for a minute of two. Send it to some underwater fibre optic cable and use it as a depth charge to blow it up.
No more requirements for anchors.
THE COCKROACHES CAN ALREADY SURVIVE NUCLEAR WAR.
WHY DO THEY INSIST ON MAKING THEM _STRONGER_?!