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PowerElectronix 18 hours ago [-]
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh...
Seriously, this playing with living organisms to augment their capabilities and make them do our bidding is a bit beyond my personal moral threshold. At this point isn't easier to miniaturize a robot cocroach?
f6v 18 hours ago [-]
It's much easier to plug into something perfected by millions of years of selective pressure.
npmaker 17 hours ago [-]
It really depends on a person's moral qualms and how deeply they are felt.
For instance, different people put different amounts of effort in when a rogue house fly enters a room. Some kill, some catch and release.
Which is easier? It really depends on the person and what they are willing to tolerate.
lukan 11 hours ago [-]
Most flies I kill, butterflies and wasps I usually guide out. But catching a insect and injecting electronic into it to force it to move where it does not want is kind of a very different thing to me.
lmf4lol 9 hours ago [-]
What is , in your moral judgement, the difference between a fly and butterlies and wasps?
why kill one but guide out the other?
lukan 8 hours ago [-]
Flies fly on shit and bring that in the house. That is reason for me to not have mercy. They bring harm.
Wasps do not bring harm to me, I know how to coexist with them, but if my kids are around, I will also kill them if they seem aggressive. So my ethics are very pragmatic.
imustbeevil 1 hours ago [-]
Killing something because it mistakenly wandered into your periphery isn't exactly what I'd call pragmatic.
If our solar system drifts too close to another civilization I don't want to get squashed. That's the maxim. We are the fly. If you don't want something bigger than you to be entirely justified in killing you for no reason, you cannot believe yourself to be entirely justified doing the same.
The golden rule is really hard to beat.
igleria 13 hours ago [-]
I can picture an alien picking me up and making horrible experiments on my body alright, so I understand your worry...
engineer_22 12 hours ago [-]
Very interesting research but can’t help but /feel/ this is abominable
tryagainian 17 hours ago [-]
No more beer, wine, bread, or yogurt for you.
No mushrooms, no meat, and no vegetables.
silver_silver 16 hours ago [-]
This argument is called reductio ad absurdum. It’s often used by people like you who want to prevent others from trying to be better.
sarchertech 13 hours ago [-]
> playing with living organisms to augment their capabilities and make them do our bidding
I think the OP was just highlighting that we do this all the time.
I personally feel like cyborg control goes a step beyond selective breeding and it makes me feel icky too. But we need to talk about what the difference is.
card_zero 11 hours ago [-]
What on earth do you mean? That's a basic form of argument, where you demonstrate that the logic of a proposition leads somewhere ridiculous, or leads to a contradiction.
It reminds me of somebody I knew who thought that metaphors are dishonest and should never be used.
silver_silver 3 hours ago [-]
Yes if we follow the logic that exploiting an organism is universally unethical it leads to a ridiculous conclusion.
Maybe it would be more precise to call it a slippery slope but I’m not sure there’s another name for this kind of reductive argument.
card_zero 2 hours ago [-]
Yes, "reductive argument" is fair enough, don't want to be reductionist and dismiss the emergent properties of the thing. (What were we talking about again? The ethics of meddling with nature?)
silver_silver 1 hours ago [-]
Posturing and pedantry like this doesn’t change the fact that the nature of exploitation is more important than its mere existence. I’m not sure what you’re trying to achieve with these comments but if it’s to convince me the original argument was made in good faith you should try doing it yourself.
alentred 15 hours ago [-]
It is fun to imagine paleontologists, some millions of years from now, whatever species they will be themselves, finding a fossil of this cockroach and trying to explain it. One thing are humans having hip joint implants, but "why on Earth would they make a diving suite for a cockroach?!"
proee 10 hours ago [-]
Millions of years from now EVERYTHING will be some form of cyborg. So these cockroaches might be THE missing link of when computer and living species first started to merge.
6 hours ago [-]
BirAdam 12 hours ago [-]
They’d clearly decide that the cockroach was worshipped.
ch4s3 11 hours ago [-]
I dunno, probably had religious significance.
notahan 18 hours ago [-]
Oh god, you can imagine how governments are going to look at this and freak out about espionage. Or worse, use this tech for espionage!!
abrugsch 16 hours ago [-]
Reminds me of the scene in The Fifth Element where Tricky is piloting a spy cockroach with a hilariously huge transmitter on it's back...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJxMpTeEf8Q
marcosdumay 10 hours ago [-]
It makes for a good psychologic weapon, like the exploding mice from the 2nd World War...
Except that this time you can check if it's working and optimize it better by listening to people's phones and seeing how they react.
trhway 16 hours ago [-]
If you knew Russian you could enjoy the hysterics their propaganda were stoking in 2022-23 about alleged "combat mosquitos" the Ukrainians had developed. According to the propaganda the mosquitos were specifically able to target Russians based on DNA (interesting that according to the same propaganda Russians and Ukrainians are the same people - how poor mosquitos were supposed to distinguish between Russians and Ukrainians the propaganda didn't specify though)
macintux 13 hours ago [-]
I can't believe Russia even took that to the UN. Insane.
The title says "hours-long diving" so at least a few hours i guess...
financetechbro 9 hours ago [-]
Seems like the oxygen shell itself was just attached to the cockroach with adhesive, they were able to take it off afterwards.
> After experiments, the shell can be removed and the membrane can be gently polished off to minimise any restrictions on the cockroach’s normal behaviour and daily activities. Four small dorsal openings were reserved for attaching the oxygen tubes, which were connected to the thoracic spiracles.
doublerabbit 18 hours ago [-]
I am unsure they really care how long it lasts especially when you create something like this.
As long it carries out it mission for a minute of two. Send it to some underwater fibre optic cable and use it as a depth charge to blow it up.
No more requirements for anchors.
frotaur 16 hours ago [-]
Not sure the cockroach cyborg will survive such pressures, already surprised it can survive the few feet of water.
swader999 15 hours ago [-]
This is the kind of Science I'd expect a 12 year old boy to come up with given unlimited funding.
alex_duf 17 hours ago [-]
Just because you can doesn't mean you should
encrypted_bird 11 hours ago [-]
Exactly.
THE COCKROACHES CAN ALREADY SURVIVE NUCLEAR WAR.
WHY DO THEY INSIST ON MAKING THEM _STRONGER_?!
pvaldes 9 hours ago [-]
Just what we need at this moment, the viruses and bacteria of hissing cockroaches entering into our valuable water sources so we can drink it, and maybe experience aquatic-park-fun mode in our intestines. Or even discover (who knows? microbiologists can dream) a new exciting pandemic, when two ecosystems that never evolved to be together meet each other? Imagine those giant marine viruses, now on our cricket bars and mosquitoes.
gregoryyy 16 hours ago [-]
Bill Gates at it again!!! Damn you Bill Gates, damn yoooooouuu...!
txoria 12 hours ago [-]
The authors of the article deserve to get appropriate controllers inserted right up into their assholes, so they enjoy the operational range it gives to their fucking selves.
Seriously, this playing with living organisms to augment their capabilities and make them do our bidding is a bit beyond my personal moral threshold. At this point isn't easier to miniaturize a robot cocroach?
For instance, different people put different amounts of effort in when a rogue house fly enters a room. Some kill, some catch and release.
Which is easier? It really depends on the person and what they are willing to tolerate.
Wasps do not bring harm to me, I know how to coexist with them, but if my kids are around, I will also kill them if they seem aggressive. So my ethics are very pragmatic.
If our solar system drifts too close to another civilization I don't want to get squashed. That's the maxim. We are the fly. If you don't want something bigger than you to be entirely justified in killing you for no reason, you cannot believe yourself to be entirely justified doing the same.
The golden rule is really hard to beat.
No mushrooms, no meat, and no vegetables.
I think the OP was just highlighting that we do this all the time.
I personally feel like cyborg control goes a step beyond selective breeding and it makes me feel icky too. But we need to talk about what the difference is.
It reminds me of somebody I knew who thought that metaphors are dishonest and should never be used.
Maybe it would be more precise to call it a slippery slope but I’m not sure there’s another name for this kind of reductive argument.
Except that this time you can check if it's working and optimize it better by listening to people's phones and seeing how they react.
https://global.espreso.tv/mosquitoes-vs-moscowitoes-reznikov...
This statement summarizes it nicely:
"The purpose of propaganda is not to make you believe something. It is to make you believe nothing.
Then you will do nothing."
https://x.com/DarthPutinKGB/status/1909932857948004738
An actual quote from a Nature article
> Madagascar hissing cockroach has been used in various applications as a powerful platform
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-60779-1
It looks like something out of CockroachPunk 2077
> After experiments, the shell can be removed and the membrane can be gently polished off to minimise any restrictions on the cockroach’s normal behaviour and daily activities. Four small dorsal openings were reserved for attaching the oxygen tubes, which were connected to the thoracic spiracles.
As long it carries out it mission for a minute of two. Send it to some underwater fibre optic cable and use it as a depth charge to blow it up.
No more requirements for anchors.
THE COCKROACHES CAN ALREADY SURVIVE NUCLEAR WAR.
WHY DO THEY INSIST ON MAKING THEM _STRONGER_?!