Hypothetically, that is.

  • ace_garp@lemmy.world
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    7 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
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    7 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.

  • cally [he/they]@pawb.social
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    7 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?

  • DarkFuture@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Lobotomize all conservatives to see if their IQ increases.

    We’ve exhausted all other options.

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
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    7 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
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      7 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
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        7 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
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          6 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
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      7 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
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        7 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.

  • steeznson@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    The metal gear solid thing where you clone someone into two separate people but one gets all the recessive genes and the other gets all the dominant ones

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Who from the US government will last the longest in a bonfire. Although it might be questionable if this experiment is really unethical.

    • Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world
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      6 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
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        5 days ago

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

  • steeznson@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Recreate the setup of Training Day and see how many people become dirty cops because they get finessed by Denzel Washington

  • Riley@lemmy.ml
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    8 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.

    • jef@lemm.ee
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      7 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.

    • Stovetop@lemmy.world
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      8 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?