Aimee Weber

Well as long as the discussion eventually got around to how white people like Luc and I treated the aboriginal peoples, then my job is done here.

*head spins*

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"I asked the Ouija Board about the ideomotor effect, but it just told me to f*ck off."

Redhead

There is only one way to find out what the neanderthals were like, and that's to clone some up and see. I say go for it and let the chips fall where they may. Fear of "what if's" isn't a reason to not do something.

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"Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words" Dorothy Parker.

Maddie Blaustein: the very definition of wit.

Aimee Weber

Well, most of the concerns haven't been so much "what if's" but rather "certainly will's." When the experiment is done, we certainly will have a living, feeling child that by any compassionate interpretation of human morality should be treated with dignity and kindness ... more than just a science experiment and more than the property of the research facility that produced it.


All that said, I'm not completely opposed to an experiment like this, given careful ethical supervision.

Tess Whitcroft

Well, no. At least not yet. But we may be closer than you might think.

"Recently a Japanese team of scientists at the Riken Center for Development Biology successfully cloned a mouse with the DNA that was acquired from a mouse that had been dead and frozen for 16 years."

Scientists Successfully Clone a Mammoth | Charles Hamel.com

"This paves the road for cloning other animals that have been extinct, but found in the frozen permafrost in Siberia. The same Japanese team of scientists have also cloned a embryo from freeze dried cells, the next project to work on for them is attempting to clone the now-extinct Japanese wolf from a stuffed specimen."

I guess part of the point is to discuss this and make some rational decisions now before the scientists get along too far.


Tess

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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscripti catapultas habebunt

Cindy Claveau

Most of the controversy isn't about their genetic makeup, even though that's a small part of it.

What you'd be missing by cloning a Neanderthal would be their culture, tribal habits, hunting patterns, etc. You can't clone behavior. The Neanderthal child would grow up exposed to moderm man's culture, not Neanderthal culture.

It'd end up being a freak in a sideshow.

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Sometimes, "I hit it with my axe" is the best solution.

Tess Whitcroft

I agree with all you said except that final sentence. I would put it.

"It could end up being a freak in a sideshow."

Which is something that must clearly not come to pass.


Tess

Redhead

Considering how we treat all the other living, feeling creatures on this planet there isn't much chance of that happening. We treat the great apes abysmally with our compassionate interpretation of human morality.

Frankly I think it's a double standard to even expect us to treat cloned Neanderthals any different, to the point of being hypocrisy even.

Aimee Weber

Yes, I should have mentioned this. Any benefits we get from producing a Neanderthal child would be purely physiological. Anything psychological would come from genetic predispositions, but they would manifest themselves in a modern context (For example: maybe Neanderthals enjoy grooming each other ... but rather than leaping on your back and running his fingers through your hair ... he may just go to school to become a hairdresser.)

Redhead

Not necessarily. Hell, you could get one of those tribes in the Amazon to raise them if wanted. The culture wouldn't be there, but we would absolutely have answers about their intelligence, whether they could produce offspring with modern humans, etc.

They wouldn't have to be sideshow freaks. It's all up to us.

Beebo Brink

The only reason to do this is to assuage our curiosity. I don't find that a compelling reason to bring a single individual back, stripped of any meaningful context, as Cindy described so well.

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Aimee Weber

Well I'd like to see more humane treatment for great apes as well.

But the fact that we do not treat other animals well doesn't seem to be sufficient justification to treat a prospective Neanderthal poorly.

Also, this isn't a matter of us failing to peacefully co-existing with another animal with whom we happen to be sharing the planet. We would be completely responsible for bringing this Neanderthal into the world, and that arrival would be solely for our own research purposes. I believe that makes us more responsible for it than any other animal.

Arilynn

It seems like a cruel thing to do to satisfy our curiosity.

Redhead

I'm not saying it's justification. I'm saying treating them any different is hypocritical.

We are completely responsible for bringing modern cows into the world too, but we don't think twice about cruel treatment of them.

Aimee Weber

Then we're agreed. Let's treat cows & neanderthals nicely.

Tess Whitcroft

Except that we are not born with context. Our context comes to us from our environment as we grow.

Although I have a set of Irish grandparents I was born and raised in California. I have a Californian context rather than none or a missing Irish context. In fact, since I have red hair and a light dusting of freckles I might even be part Neanderthal.


Tess

Redhead

Let me know when you become a vegetarian and then I will take this statement seriously. Until then, it's meaningless.

Brenda Archer

I sort of feel like pushing at this one so I will.

I have (or did have, before my cancer) an IQ of 145. A person with an IQ of 90 is legally and ethically a free adult citizen, but when I interact with them I don't attempt to introduce any topic I couldn't discuss with a bright ten year old. There's a huge gap.

So. Maybe we're defining "intelligent" very subjectively. I doubt a Neanderthal with an IQ of at least 90 would seem any different than many eccentric humans, and might be utterly normal given a typical childhood.

Anyone raised in a primitive culture would have a tribal viewpoint, but tribal peoples are not stupid, they are just attuned to a much simpler social system. Raise their child in an urban city and you have just another typical youth.

SO much is culture. It's possible cloning a Neanderthal would, on any subject other than physiology, tell us nothing at all.

Aimee Weber

What God or secular justification gives you the moral high ground to murder vegetables?

Tess Whitcroft

Recalls that stirring movie "The Silence of the Yams"


Tess

Envoy Costagravas

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"When Men differ in Opinion, both Sides ought equally to have the Advantage of being heard by the Publick;
and that when Truth and Error have fair Play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter."
~ Benjamin Franklin

Aimee Weber

Hey you guys joke, but the argument that favors murdering and eating plants while not murdering and eating animals is typically very human-centric (that is, the more human-like characteristics the living thing possesses, the less moral it is to kill them.) This works in an purely human-centric morality system ("RA-RA-WE'RE NUMBER ONE! GO HUMANS GO!") but fails miserably in any attempt at a universal-totally-holier-than-thou-one-with-the-universe morality.

IMHO.

Envoy Costagravas

Define murder.

Aimee Weber

OH THE HUMANITY!!!



One other point about plant life ... plants really don't do anything to anybody (oh sure, you have the Venus Fly Trap, but that sort of thing is an exception.) Animals kill other living things to survive. They do it constantly. So if one is to act as an agent of karma, it behooves one to kill and eat the guilty, not the innocent.

RandoymRandt

I know you are talking neanderthals here, but tribal cultures are not, IMO, "attuned to a much simpler social system".

Most tribal cultures have infinitely richer social systems, rituals, and family structures than "urbanites".

IMO, so complicated, in fact, that when I was doing the tribal living thing on Hopi/Navajo, I knew I was on a learning curve that I'd never see the end of.

Agree on the point of it not telling us anything tho.

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~I believe in love and being released from the tyranny of sim lines.~

Brenda Archer

Thanks, and I agree, I should have specified I was thinking of simple Paleolithic cultures, not all cultures that could be considered "tribal." I don't think of any original culture in North America as simple in the sense I had in mind. Even the Paleolithic cultures are not oversimple - but neither are they the impersonal economic hive that is a modern bureaucratic city.

The most substantial changes in human consciousness would all have taken place prior to any Neolithic or later society, and I simply think of Neolithic societies as civilization, even they are tribal.

Nor is it true that tribal order has vanished in the West, although it's least common in the suburban middle class and diluted elsewhere. This is one of the drivers for conflict between the middle and working classes and between immigrants and nativists.