I would be very interested in controlled environment testing for different raising methods and circumstances. The scale would be humongous and the acts unethical beyond reproach, but the results would be immensely useful for future psychological programs and theories.
A lot of what we know is guesswork or seeing what happens during and after abuse. Quantifying these effects is shoddy at best. A study of this scale would span several generations and require a sub-society existing unknown to the rest of humanity. It would never happen. But the results... they would be very interesting indeed.
Yeah, that's a great idea! In general, without pesky things like "ethics" or "human rights", we'd be able to do a whole lot of experimental social science. Then social science could be put on much stronger foundations than it currently has.
A full on research experiment to substantiate and locate Trump's integrity.
But I suppose that wouldn't pass the litmus test...
I mean, it would be impossible to get Trump to submit to fMRI. If it weren't, though, it would be fun to see what the differences are between how he thinks and how normal people do.
”Anything you research can be used against you”
Hard to find something that cannot be abused
And I get more and more the impression that the “bad” guys are much better in applying many kinds of new knowledge, than the “good” guys.
I guess you can try to come up with things that can't be abused if you
want, but that's tough and it takes some of the fun out of it.
Oh, what the hell.
Inseminate a bunch of chimpanzees with human sperm, isolate the chimpanzee pack and see if the new hybrids grow up to create some kind of culture.
Making humanzees is the main thing I was thinking of when I posted the thread! I was only thinking of creating them within human culture, though, not seeing if humanzees within a chimp troupe would develop their own more sophisticated culture. I like that idea a lot.
Echoing Senethro, I'd also like to recreate Neanderthals and Denisovans. We have their DNA, so we might be able to remove the DNA from a human zygote and replace it with Neanderthal/Densiovan DNA. I'd love to see whether or not a Neanderthal can develop the full linguistic and cultural capabilities we have, and if not, what the limitations are.
Actually this just gave me a good idea - humans with edited embryos. Use the
FOXP2 genes from chimps and as many ancient hominids as DNA can be recovered from.
Yep, it would be very interesting to insert FOXP2 from chimps into human embryos. Likewise with every other genetic difference we have. We don't as yet really know how much of our speech capabilities and other traits really come from which genes.
