Hypothetically, that is.

  • ace_garp@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    24
    ·
    4 days ago

    Just wipe out ALL mosquitoes, and then measure what the actual influence is on the food-web for other animals and plants.

  • djsoren19@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    24
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    4 days ago

    I really want someone to just really start messing around with the human genome, see the limits of gene expression. Let’s add horns, let’s add tusks, let’s add tails, and wings, and carapaces, and antennae, and claws, let’s just see what happens. Human evolution has gotten so tired and trite; let’s add some spice.

  • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    37
    ·
    5 days ago

    Take ten or twenty thousand children, take over a fairly large portion of a midwestern state, build a large and complete environment for them to live in including towns, museums, theme parks etc. and raise them as normal Americans but absolutely 100% avoid introducing them to the concept of religion until they’re 25.

    • meyotch@slrpnk.net
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      4 days ago

      Before the oldest turns 24, that small city would just sublime into a higher plane, leaving behind nothing but a beautiful prairie and a fresh minty smell.

    • Sunsofold@lemmings.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      4 days ago

      I suspect they’d invent their own. No one introduced religion to humanity. It came from within.

        • Sunsofold@lemmings.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          4 days ago

          It would yield another religion, originated in a group that could parley their forced participation into fame on social media, which might lead to many more followers and eventually a holy war with the Mormons. Hmm. Might be worth a try.

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        3 days ago

        Actually no, I was figuring on having adults present to raise, educate and care for the children, but under strict orders to not introduce them to superstition.

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        4 days ago

        I’m not meaning dump 20,000 children alone in the left half of Wyoming, I mean, keep them with their parents, hire teachers, teach them math and science and…basically a history that replaces a lot of “and they believed their gods said” with “the ruling class decided they wanted to”. What happens to children when they are raised in a functioning, supportive, nurturing society that does not contain religion or superstition?

        • stelelor@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          4 days ago

          Many developed countries are majoritarily irreligious. But it’s also hard to draw the line between religion and culture.

  • Riley@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    53
    ·
    5 days ago

    Making a lot of clones of myself, raising them all differently, and seeing how many of them turn out in the same way as me.

    • Stovetop@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      5 days ago

      Agreed, it’s an interesting thing to think about at least. The nature vs nurture debate is practically as old as time itself but it feels like we’re no closer to an answer outside of “it’s a bit of both.” But how much?

    • jef@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      4 days ago

      AFAIK genes only account for physical properties like hair color and shit, and upbringing effects everything else.

      Source: someone I met who claimed to be a psychiatrist told me and I’ve never confirmed it or that she actually was a psychiatrist.

  • cally [he/they]@pawb.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    21
    ·
    4 days ago

    Here’s a very unethical linguistics experiment that I think would be interesting:

    Raising a group of children completely isolated from any language, spoken or otherwise. They would not be fully isolated from people, but those people would not be able to communicate with each other in the vicinity of the children (no speaking, no gestures, etc.) Of course, to isolate them from language would mean strictly controlling their lives (very unethical). Could they communicate with each other, and maybe even develop a language?

    • taxiiiii@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      31 minutes ago

      I did that experiment with my flatmates for some weeks once. (I love them, but they had it coming.)

      One had a tighter schedule and you actually noticed the change pretty fast. I ended up telling him pretty early.

      The other one didn’t notice at all, so I just went on and on. He was mad at me when I told him. Told me I should’ve just kept going if it’s working.

      Both couldn’t tell from the taste alone.

    • monarch@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      4 days ago

      From what I’ve heard you’d probably see a spike in medical deaths basically immediately.

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    4 days ago

    Seems pretty tame compared to various other answers, but keeping people under anesthesia longer than expected during surgery and seeing how it affects things like memory or personality.

    Supposedly after an open heart surgery I had gone through over a decade ago, my mother swears my personality changed. Though I can’t remember if that’s true because my memory has felt, in a sense, kinda foggy since then. So I wanna know if it was because I was under for longer than expected or because the surgery itself.

    • medgremlin@midwest.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      4 days ago

      I would wager that it’s more to do with the surgery itself. Even transient hypoxia from blood not getting to your brain for a little bit can make a big difference. Anesthesia is used very frequently with rare complications, but complex heart surgeries have higher complication rates.

      • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        4 days ago

        Sounds fair enough that it could have just been the surgery. I’m nowhere near a medical professional, but I can totally see unforseen complications having happened to me.

        • medgremlin@midwest.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          3 days ago

          Brains are very finicky things and they get very upset if there’s any disruption in their supply of glucose and oxygen, but anesthetics are carefully selected to not disrupt that as much as possible. Anesthesia might paralyze the muscles you use to breathe, but that’s what the intubation and ventilator is for. The anesthetics we use don’t affect the heart muscle because it uses different ions and chemicals than every other type of muscle in the body to generate contractions. However, open heart surgery will absolutely mess with the heart which will disrupt circulation.

    • steeznson@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      4 days ago

      I’d be interested in this too. Maybe some synapsed stop firing if they are put to sleep for long enough.

      Alternatively your mother might be gaslighting you.

      • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        4 days ago

        I doubt she is gaslighting me because there’s not much for her to gain from her doing it. Tighter control over family is something I expect from her family rather than her.

  • DarkFuture@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    4 days ago

    Lobotomize all conservatives to see if their IQ increases.

    We’ve exhausted all other options.

    • Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      3 days ago

      Tbh I don’t think anything would really get done. Politicians would just recycle the same super popular ideas to prevent themselves from getting lynched.

      It’d be like how video games companies are just churning out safe titles they know will sell really well, but with our government instead of video games.

      • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        3 days ago

        Historically the most popular political idea is “all your problems are the fault of those guys over there”.

  • Hemingways_Shotgun@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    4 days ago

    Raise a group of a dozen newborns with absolutely zero contact outside of their own group. Food and necessities get provided of course, but no language learning, no nurturing, no generational teaching.

    What kind of community do they form when they are old enough to grasp such things? Do they develop their own language; or a different method of communication entirely. How do they stratify their society, or even do they?

    At a certain point, when they are old enough, introduce challenges that only work if they cooperate with one another. See what happens.

  • Iceblade@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    24
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    4 days ago

    Most research on human embryonic stem cells - currently impossible in western countries due to ethics concerns.

    Theoretically, if a few stem cells from every embryo early on and frozen that might be a huge boon for them once they grow up to adults with potential health issues. Need a new heart? Grow one in a lab from the preserved cells - perfectly compatible.

    Currently these kinds of things can’t be explored, and whilst the ethics may be dubious the potential medical benefits left on the table are astonishing.