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
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!
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!
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.
How far can you strip down the human body until it can’t survive anymore. Assisted feeding and breathing is okay. Adjustable room temperature too.
Arms, Legs? Gone. Can we get rid of the skin? Probably, if the room is the right temperature? Bones? Most of them aren’t needed, are they? Some organs surely can go too.
Basically, what is the bare minimum needed so the body and the mind still more or less work.
So, firstly, may I suggest you check youtube for one of the now many ‘Adventures of Torso’ type videos done in Kenshi.
But as far as keeping a ‘minimum viable’ human actually alive?
You could remove limbs, but you would still have to have a method for them to eat and urinate and deficate.
You… almost certainly could not remove all skin and keep someone alive for very long.
For starters, they’d bleed to death. Secondly, the pain of existing without skin would probably literally kill them or drive them to try to kill themselves. Thirdly: Skin prevents infections, you’d have to keep them in basically a totally hermetically sealed room or container.
Bones? A de-boned human?
Well there’s almost certainly not a way to remove all of your spinal bones and skull without causing death or immensely serious paralysis and/or brain damage.
Sure you could remain alive without all your limbs if you have caretakers, you can survive without your lower jaw as well… You can maybe? survive with the loss of a certain high percentage of your ribcage, but probably not with the entirety of it and your sternum removed.
Organs? Well, brain, heart and liver are almost certainly mandatory.
Though you can remove portions of your liver and it can still function and regrow to some extent…
…and portions of your brain… though you’ll lose cognitive abilities, memories and basically become braindead but still technically alive at some point.
Assuming we are just removing things and maybe hooking you up to various kinds if life support tubes and not replacing organs with some kind of mechanical or genetically engineered equivalent:
I think you can survive without any kidneys if you are constantly on dialysis, but its far better to have at least one.
Similarly: Lungs, you need at least one.
You can have your stomach and intestines and bladder partially removed or reshaped, but not entirely.
You can survive without eyes… and a gallbladder and a thymus and a spleen and an appendix and your tonsils… and your adenoids, and your sex organs, but you’re gonna need a great deal of monitoring and bloodwork and hormone balancing and what not.
This was the topic of an episode of the podcast That’s Absurd, Please Elaborate, which I highly recommend. Unfortunately I can’t find the episode right now. https://thatsabsurdshow.com/
Gorillas on steroids. How bulky can these magnificent already bulky beasts get?
Oh, I like this one.
Mind you Ive seen a cranky Silverback at the zoo, one with an extra gram of test and tren a day would be utterly fucking terrifying, also the roadrage would be something to behold… dibs not being the poor fucker giving it its shots.
Roid rage comes from excess estrogen production, not from testosterone. I’d assume that a managed steroid treatment for a gorilla would include estrogen blockers.
Yeah, and if you want to climb in there and take his bloods and administer the androgen blockers you are welcome to.
Look up a shaved silverback… them mofos are scary.
Most big animals that are already properly scary with fur dont improve when shaved.
I want to see how far you can push performance of the human body, and make the results compete against each other. All the bonkers whacky surgeries you can think of: limb lengthening, bone strengthening, replace their organs with bigger, stronger versions.
All the drugs: hgh, steroids, any performance enhancing substance you can pump into an athlete.
Have sports scientists raise children so that they’re born into a dedicated training regime for running or swimming.
Then make them compete against each other in the trans-human olympics. I want to see someone do the 100m in 3 seconds, I want to see someone not have to come up for air during the freestyle, I want someone to throw a javelin 2 miles, I want bioengineered mutants doing gymnastics routines
You’ve got some close competition, but I think you win the most Mengele response of the thread.
This sounds like something in the dystopian future where they take volunteers from “the poors” so thier families can survive if they win…
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 ;)
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 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.
Oh boy, have I got good news for you!
That’s fucking stupid, and you’re stupid, and you should feel bad, because you’re bad.
Did I do it right?
Interesting twist… Its now mandatory.
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.
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!
It would also require centuries, so it’s not as possible, but breeding people for very specific traits and features. Whether appearance, physical strength, overall intelligence, specifically being great in mathematics, great smell, great sight.
Basically, control the evolution by favoring very specific features and outright disallowing others (like hereditary diseases/disorders) that would be unacceptable in the mix.
Since this requires a lot of time which I’d somehow theoretically have (I know, this wasn’t in the post, but anyway…), I’d want to try yet another thing. Breeding at the most late age possible, then continuing with that and extending it. Perhaps it would lead to increased lifespan, or at least lesser effects of aging in the far far offsprings. At least physically. These experiments don’t exactly favor mental health of the subjects.
This was done to some extent, slave in early america were bred like cattle for specific traits, primarily strength and endurance for tilling fields.
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 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.
make a fallout shelter and have some isolated communities there live off purely of either one of meta, apple, or alphabet products (or any large enough multinational like nestle).
all for the science of understanding addiction and brand cultism.
