Eugine_Nier comments on Recommended reading on the ethics of Animal Cognitive Enhancement - Less Wrong

1 [deleted] 22 February 2013 01:07AM

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Comment author: Eugine_Nier 23 February 2013 05:24:50AM 2 points [-]

Consider the following hypothetical experiment: take the 1% genetic difference between humans and chimps and create a primate that's halfway between us. Would this be ethical?

Our intuitions about the matter seem to depend on whether we think of it as creating an uplifted chimp or a retarded human.

Comment author: Baughn 23 February 2013 12:51:23PM 4 points [-]

I'm going to bite the bullet and claim that creating any sapient being with less potential than the best we can currently do is unethical.

So is not preventing the creation of such, everything else being equal. Which, yes, means I'd like to get rid of nature whenever convenient.

Comment author: ChristianKl 26 February 2013 12:00:55AM *  0 points [-]

Our intuitions about the matter seem to depend on whether we think of it as creating an uplifted chimp or a retarded human.

You don't know whether the result will even be a uplifted chimp. I think there a fairly good chance that gene's won't be expressed in a way to make the result more intelligent than a chimp if you just randomly combine gene from two different specis.

You could learn a lot through the experiment but I doubt, that expecially at the beginning the resulting creature would be very intelligent.

Recreating neaderthalers as is seems to be a much more interesting ethical question.