Selective biological breeding

Before I go on to explain my point, here's a brief overview of selective breeding

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_breeding

  Quote

Selective breeding is the process of breeding plants and animals for particular genetic traits. Typically, strains which are selectively bred are domesticated, and the breeding is sometimes done by a professional breeder. Bred animals are known as breeds, while bred plants are known as varieties, cultigens, or cultivars

Also note that dogs are in fact juvenile wolves.

As a side note, I don't agree with selective breeding because nature knows best and by quickly (within 100 years) selecting a type of trait is not logical nor natural/beneficial to the animals.

With that said, if we were to do this, have we tried to selective breed for intelligence? For example, imagine breeding wild octopus (the most generally accepted most intelligent one) and with each passing week - they are set to do certain tasks or puzzles, perhaps even creativity. From there as it has these challenges to pass, you keep it in a huge tank so as to not disrupt it's natural environment and generations upon generations you begin to see progress and advances.

I don't know if it is ethical for it to be done and I'm not advocating it, but I thought it could be an interesting thing to think about.

Of course, it has to be mentioned that it's only going to be as intelligent as the puzzles, unless we give it puzzles that we ourselves aren't able to solve.

i see the future in another way, that we can choose traits we like for our babies

this natural evolution takes way too much time and energy. why not go at it craig venter style? programming dna and creating new cells and eventually living beings?

Well, there's this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox

It's domestication, and it only took a few decades.

The octopus wouldn't get infinitely clever if you kept breeding it, you can only use selective breeding to select for traits that already exist and combine them

Also selective breeding only produces fertile offspring when it is within the same species, so it is still following nature's rules in a sense.

  On 5/29/2010 at 10:00 PM, Coalbucket PI said:

The octopus wouldn't get infinitely clever if you kept breeding it, you can only use selective breeding to select for traits that already exist and combine them

 

Also selective breeding only produces fertile offspring when it is within the same species, so it is still following nature's rules in a sense.

So you're saying that you can only select traits and express them - but they cannot manifest their selves into the same particular direction? Like if you were to whittle down a white light for blue - that blue would stay the same once you have expressed it in its entirety?

What about us? This is my argument with that point. We were apes at one point but we kept breeding and somehow ended up that intelligence was the key factor in mating and that gene got expressed over a long period of time and now we have become "seemingly" the most intelligent beings on the planet.

As for your second point - I think it's a better idea to use natures helping hand because we don't know enough yet to fully do it ourselves. It's like pushing a huge gun at x direction and seeing where the bullet will end up hitting.

  On 5/29/2010 at 10:08 PM, joshier said:

  On 5/29/2010 at 10:00 PM, Coalbucket PI said:

The octopus wouldn't get infinitely clever if you kept breeding it, you can only use selective breeding to select for traits that already exist and combine them

 

Also selective breeding only produces fertile offspring when it is within the same species, so it is still following nature's rules in a sense.

So you're saying that you can only select traits and express them - but they cannot manifest their selves into the same particular direction? Like if you were to whittle down a white light for blue - that blue would stay the same once you have expressed it in its entirety?

 

What about us? This is my argument with that point. We were apes at one point but we kept breeding and somehow ended up that intelligence was the key factor in mating and that gene got expressed over a long period of time and now we have become "seemingly" the most intelligent beings on the planet.

 

As for your second point - I think it's a better idea to use natures helping hand because we don't know enough yet to fully do it ourselves. It's like pushing a huge gun at x direction and seeing where the bullet will end up hitting.

Monkeys to men; you're talking about evolution, which is essentially a process of selective breeding over a huge timescale which incorporates not only selecting for useful genes but also the creation of new genes. I don't know what you mean about blue light or huge guns, sorry.

Well actually I might know what you mean about the huge gun, but bare in mind nature doesn't have a final plan when it does it either so it is firing in the dark as well, just without any motive.

  On 5/29/2010 at 10:08 PM, joshier said:

What about us? This is my argument with that point. We were apes at one point but we kept breeding and somehow ended up that intelligence was the key factor in mating and that gene got expressed over a long period of time and now we have become "seemingly" the most intelligent beings on the planet.

 

 

Sex is still barrel-rate for humans. Our success with space rockets might have something to do with purposely condensing information into symbols or gestures. The octopus is interesting but rather short-lived, and most likely will remain short-sighted.

these barrels obviously.

humans have been doing this since they discovered agriculture, it is not unnatrual, plants and animals do bennefit from this in a sense because they better they are to us the more they are bred. just sayin'.

also

  On 5/29/2010 at 10:00 PM, Coalbucket PI said:

Also selective breeding only produces fertile offspring when it is within the same species, so it is still following nature's rules in a sense.

there are some exceptions.

but to answer your question if you bred octuposues that passed your crazy puzzle tests you'd get (maybe, at best) octopusses that are good at solving that particular puzzle test.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

tl;dr summary - don't do it for humans.

  On 5/30/2010 at 12:37 AM, chenGOD said:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

 

tl;dr summary - don't do it for humans.

  Quote

The philosophy was most famously expounded by Plato, who believed human reproduction should be monitored and controlled by the state. However, Plato understood this form of government control would not be readily accepted, and proposed the truth be concealed from the public via a fixed lottery. Mates, in Plato’s Republic, would be chosen by a “marriage number” in which the quality of the individual would be quantitatively analyzed, and persons of high numbers would be allowed to procreate with other persons of high numbers. In theory, this would lead to predictable results and the improvement of the human race. However, Plato acknowledged the failure of the “marriage number” since “gold soul” persons could still produce “bronze soul” children.

It's all about technology now (if it wasn't always)

from my anecdotal experience, this tends to happen anyway; you don't often see brilliant people with dim spouses. Hence above average intelligence seems to run in families. Of course the crapshoot of natural conception always changes things up somewhat, but still there are trends.

  On 5/30/2010 at 1:30 AM, lumpenprol said:

from my anecdotal experience, this tends to happen anyway; you don't often see brilliant people with dim spouses. Hence above average intelligence seems to run in families. Of course the crapshoot of natural conception always changes things up somewhat, but still there are trends.

I am under an impression that the intelligent do not produce often or at all.

  On 5/30/2010 at 12:42 AM, all_purpose_sandpaper said:

  On 5/30/2010 at 12:37 AM, chenGOD said:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

 

tl;dr summary - don't do it for humans.

 

  Quote

The philosophy was most famously expounded by Plato, who believed human reproduction should be monitored and controlled by the state. However, Plato understood this form of government control would not be readily accepted, and proposed the truth be concealed from the public via a fixed lottery. Mates, in Plato’s Republic, would be chosen by a “marriage number” in which the quality of the individual would be quantitatively analyzed, and persons of high numbers would be allowed to procreate with other persons of high numbers. In theory, this would lead to predictable results and the improvement of the human race. However, Plato acknowledged the failure of the “marriage number” since “gold soul” persons could still produce “bronze soul” children.

see? even plato knew it was fucked and that was before we understood that intelligence is not passed on through genetics, and that mutations for physical characteristics to evolve happen over millenia, not generationally.

lump: intelligence is not a genetic trait.

  On 5/30/2010 at 12:13 AM, all_purpose_sandpaper said:

 

these barrels obviously.

I salivated upon seeing these.

Out of curiosity, where do you draw the boundary between natural and non-natural?

Lots of species select for various traits. For example, female red-winged black-birds tend to go for male red-winged black-birds that have brighter red patches on their wings. Does this mean female red-winged black-birds are perverting the course of nature?

  On 5/30/2010 at 1:55 AM, chenGOD said:

 

lump: intelligence is not a genetic trait.

what? and you know this because?

  On 5/30/2010 at 2:01 AM, Root5 said:

Out of curiosity, where do you draw the boundary between natural and non-natural?

 

Lots of species select for various traits. For example, female red-winged black-birds tend to go for male red-winged black-birds that have brighter red patches on their wings. Does this mean female red-winged black-birds are perverting the course of nature?

there is no such thing as natural or unnatural. for some reasons we like to separate the human species from the rest of our biosphere. we say something is unnatural when it's things done by humans that wouldn't happen if we weren't doing it.

  On 5/30/2010 at 2:08 AM, GORDO said:

  On 5/30/2010 at 2:01 AM, Root5 said:

Out of curiosity, where do you draw the boundary between natural and non-natural?

 

Lots of species select for various traits. For example, female red-winged black-birds tend to go for male red-winged black-birds that have brighter red patches on their wings. Does this mean female red-winged black-birds are perverting the course of nature?

 

there is no such thing as natural or unnatural. for some reasons we like to separate the human species from the rest of our biosphere. we say something is unnatural when it's things done by humans that wouldn't happen if we weren't doing it.

agreed. it busts my buttons when the non-natural human spindle is cast. oil is oil too.

aren't alot of dog strains really fucking inbred?

eugenics is completely futile, it's not genes that are holding us back, it's the state of modern society

But he isn't just dividing human behaviour from everything else. If he was, it would be equally unnatural for us to be NOT domesticating animals. He's saying there is some specific kind of behaviour that is natural and other behaviour that is not.

What I think he's trying to say is just that some behaviour might be dangerous, because we don't know the possible consequences, and should be avoided. The naturalistic rhetoric is doing nothing, and is useless.

  On 5/30/2010 at 2:06 AM, GORDO said:

  On 5/30/2010 at 1:55 AM, chenGOD said:

 

lump: intelligence is not a genetic trait.

 

 

what? and you know this because?

It's been studied pretty thoroughly by sociologists, and it has been pretty conclusively proven that environment has a much greater impact on a person's intellectual environment than family.