For me “How long could I get away with driving like an ABSOLUTE ASSHOLE all the time before I lost my licence or had an accident.” Speed limits, red lights, stop signs… forget them all. Every day I have to drive sensibly and obey the law because without my licence I dont have a job, and every day I see at least one person driving like an absolute moron and I wonder…
Isolate a bunch of babies together, with food etc, and see how they develop their own language and society.
Not exactly the same, but suggests probably it would not turn out well. https://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/capsules/histoire_bleu06.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_deprivation_experiments
I already knew about Psamtik’s experiment but I thought I had a bigger memory of it than what I was able to find quickly. There’s a good starting place if you want to look deeper but I’m not that interested
I silently lament that this experiment cannot be done at least once every couple weeks. I think it would be the most fascinating experiment to observe. Watching a new language develop naturally in real time!
Really interesting idea.
It may not be possible, but I want to gradually replace a person’s brain piece-by-piece with the same areas from other brains and see if they retain their sense of self when none of the original brain remains.
The brain of Theseus!
How would you know if your sense of self is changing? Surely you always feel like yourself else you wouldn’t be you…?
Surely you always feel like yourself
This is disproven by considering dysphoria exists
I want to totally impoverish the 50 richest capitalists to see if they could “bootstrap” themselves out of it for real.
Okay, so there’s nothing unethical or dangerous about that (they are capitalist parasites, not humans), but it would still be interesting to see.
Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd already published the definitive paper on this.
Raise a kid in a sensory deprivation chamber, with one exception: a monitor that only shows gen alpha brainrot videos. When they’re like 14 drop them off in a populated area and see what happens
Realistically would just end up a developmentally stunted invalid. There was an example from some book, I don’t remember which, where there was a SE Asian woman who lived with her family and had a baby.
The family was ashamed, so they forced the girl to keep the baby by itself in the attic. She would go to work most of the day, and come back to take care of it when home. That was the total extent of interaction and stimulation the baby got. It ended up being severely stunted and never learned to talk.
Essentially young children need human interaction which includes warmth and constant validation, caring for, etc
If you interrupt that in any way, you end up with a feral child who is permanently stunted.
I’d give everyone a device that allows them to take photos of themselves and their lives, and then instantly post them online. Other people would be able to rate and comment on how well or badly they think someone is doing, based on these curated snapshots of their existence. In this experiment, people could also scroll through endless streams of these ‘highlights,’ constantly comparing their lives to others. To spice it up, I’d introduce a feature that allows people to see how many likes or comments other posts are getting, so they can feel great or miserable about themselves in real-time.
Interesting twist… Its now mandatory.
That’s fucking stupid, and you’re stupid, and you should feel bad, because you’re bad.
Did I do it right?
What happens when we reverse Earth’s rotation.
Lois Lane gets rescued.
I’m fairly certain that there’s a What If video on this by the XKCD guy, Randall Munroe.
While interesting I feel that one is more “Hilarously impractical” than anything else.
I’m pretty sure an experiment that kills everyone would be considered immoral but we’d have to ask the IRB to be sure ;)
Tons of drug tests on children to know the exact effect they have on development. Also anti-aging research to see how much you can potentially slow down aging and how the self repair mechanism of children works with respect to aging. The results could really give us a great insight into aging well and being healthy later in life.
To clarify, I don’t want to see them done, performed, do them myself or anything adjacent because they’re deeply wrong and dangerous.
Isn’t the main issue in aging the limit of cell division? Cells can only divide a certain number of times.
Maybe find some crazy ass backwards way to produce more stem cells in a person that the body delivers to key areas?
That theory is very outdated. People found out that telemeres are important but not the main driver of aging. A lot of research is Nov going on with senescent cells and epigenetics which looks more promising.
Oh wow. That’s neat.
I’ve broken traffic laws most of my life, and I still have a driver’s license. So, you can drive like a partially reasonable asshole indefinitely if you have the skill to pull it off.
I’d like to see GMO humans. I want to see how far we can elevate our species using science. It’s completely unethical, but there it is.
Oh I’m no saint. I set my cruise control at 10km/h over the speed limit, I punch it through orange lights and I sometimes roll through stop signs.
I’m talking about full blown fast and furious wannabe swerving lanes, running reds and racing literally everywhere.
This describes my brother in law. Granted, he’s better than he used to be about 10 years ago, but he grew up in a small town, got to know all the cops pretty quickly, did a little jail time here and there but still has his license. He’s totalled many vehicles, spent some time in ICU and still drives like a bat out of hell.
The movie gattaca does this well. No murder or cleansing. But you can have a natural birth or IVF with the Impurities stripped out. “The best of you.”
“Dirty” people were limited to shit like janitors and all high paying jobs would sneak a test in to filter out anyone “un-pure”
Gattica is a great movie, and a compelling story about the power of determination.
I’d like to experiment with other non-capitalist based systems in various points of infra-structure of my country.
I don’t think this “only make money in all things, all the time” shit is a smart way to manage numerous complex systems.
I don’t have all the answers on how that shakes out, but I think the first move would be to only allow professionals experienced in respective fields to set up these experiments. Existing profitable systems and overseeing corporations be damned.
Remember: Infinite growth is not sustainable in any natural system!
A bit contemporary, but I’d like to have studied what it takes to break someone of illusions that were fed and forced on them externally, e.g. schooling, TV, social media and other forms of cultural imprinting and propaganda.
We’ve all had that “what would it take to get this person to realize how far off base they are?” question, it would be fascinating, in a no-holds barred experiment testing various solutions and combinations to find out which is the most effective.
E.g. someone believes climate change isn’t real because (x,y,z irrelevant). No amount of written evidence is effective to people who don’t understand the scientific method, so would it be videos, traveling to acutely affected places, having polar bears removed from all zoos, baseball bats on their knuckles when they make a logical fallacy?
It would be interesting to then categorize the types of delusions or illusions and then prescribe treatment based on these results.
I think this one could be done ethically, even make a good TV show.
Parts of it could be done, but it would always stop at “the subject is uncomfortable”, which is the whole point of why changing someone’s mind against delusions, illusions and propaganda is hard. They don’t want to, so without some treatment experiments that would certainly not meet today’s medical and/or psychological standards, we wouldn’t get an answer to many questions.
You could make a TV show sure, but all the wrong people would tune in.
You would need volunteers, but let them witness the experiments that disprove chemtrails or flat earth bullshit themselves and in person allow them to inspect the equipment and so on.
See which ones of them are willing to actually take whats presented to them and see with their own eyes and re-evaluate their position.
Genetic engineering. We have the technology at this, point. What’s getting in the way are some very dated ideas of ethics.
Human genetic engineering. I’m sure governments are already doing this, because the technology is already here.
You could create super soldiers or very intelligent people. You could then copy them in cloning vats and have an army of people you could shape and mold to your will.
Could experiment with all sorts of stuff. For example they’ve put biiluminescent genes from certain fish into frogs to make glowing frogs. Now imagine giving humans the raw power of chimps. Or the ability to see UV light like birds. Or venomous spit. Or the power to smell like dogs.
the power to smell like dogs
I know how it was meant, but imagine a new X-men hero who has only the ability to smell like a wet dog. That’s some Deadpool level of absurdity.
I think I sat next to him on the bus once
I was imagining a human who is constantly shoving his face in other people’s butts and crotches for a good sniff.
Ah, the worlds greatest detectsniff.
Nice try Elon
Eugenics taken to their logical conclusion.
As the parent of a child on the spectrum that is very aware of what such practices would mean for him, I would never agree with it in real life. But I do have a fascination with what we could do if we just said the hell with ethics and started trying to breed “perfect” people.
The movie gattaca does this well. No murder or cleansing. But you can have a natural birth or IVF with the Impurities stripped out. “The best of you.”
“Dirty” people were limited to shit like janitors and all high paying jobs would sneak a test in to filter out anyone “un-pure”
Nice, thanks for the movie recommendation. Gonna have to check that one out.
Like, ok, let’s try to breed the perfect person–fine. But do we have to kill everyone else? Why is genocide seemingly always on the agenda? Lol
Eugenics doesn’t mean killing anyone, just improve the genetic qualities of humans.
You could do selective breeding, incentivized breeding (entice the right candidates with whatever) ,gene manipulations, etc…
But I understand that proponents of eugenics usually have extreme right wing views, and why you would come to that conclusion.
Eugenics. Not the racist BS that was done in the past, but really pushing the limit to see if we can breed super humans. Genetic editing to make humans immune to cancer or disease. Increased lifespan. Resistance to radiation. Smarter. Stronger. Better.
Arguably, this kind of thing is actually somewhat of a necessity if we ever want to explore the stars. We are far too fragile in our current bodies to survive the difficulties and vastness of space.
Honestly, I’d be super stoked if we could just get rid of all the actual serious defects, just, whack a few moles that really super suck for anyone who gets the short end of the genealogical stick.
And by that I mean like
- Huntington’s Disease
- Early onset and regular non early onset Arthritis
- My entire family bloodline is prone to heart issues/cancer type beat
- Crohn’s
