Comments on: Rat cyborg

By: Jason Adams

Jason Adams — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:56:29 +0000

Yeah my main concern is that open and intelligent debate doesn’t always prevail when it comes to governments. Especially when they think the enemy might develop it first. Of course, I consider the chances of my last moments being staring down the barrel of a rat cyborg’s plasma cannon to be very slim.. :)

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:12:24 +0000

I agree with Joshua that these issues are with us for a variety of reasons. As long as we have an open and intelligent debate about technology and ethics, I think we will settle on generally benevolent uses of new technology.

By: Jason Adams

Jason Adams — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:17:09 +0000

Thanks for the info! I'm sure [you are] right that the ethical issues here are all already present with non-human life from other technologies. And thanks for clearing up the issues regarding the rat neurons' learning on your blog post. (edit to fix typo)

By: Joshua

Joshua — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:42:04 +0000

Whales and elephants may have more neurons than we do, but most of them are dedicated to motor control of their many muscles and integrating sensation from their very large skin surface. It is for that reason that the degree of sentience is better approximated by the ratio of brain volume to body volume. Those animals (ceteceans and pachyderms) do still fare well in such measurements, though not as well as apes (hominoids).

I don’t really think that these cyborgs will add any more ethical issues than we currently face with ethics of non-human life (e.g. animal welfare).