Cyborg Cockroach Sparks Ethics Debate 512
sciencehabit writes "A do-it-yourself neuroscience experiment that allows students to create their own 'cyborg' insects is sparking controversy amongst scienitsts and ethicists. RoboRoach #12 is a real cockroach that a company called BackyardBrains ships to school students. The students fit the insect with a tiny backpack, which contains electrodes that feed into its antennae and receive signals by remote control — via the Bluetooth signals emitted by smartphones. A simple swipe of an iPhone can turn the insect left or right. Though some scientists say the small cyborg is a good educational tool, others say it's turning kids into psychopaths."
Fitting the backpack requires poking a hole in the roach's thorax and clipping its antennae to insert electrodes.
Cockroach rights? (Score:5, Insightful)
People who have never killed a roach in their life are free to throw the first stone.
Anyone?
Anyone?
Missing the reality of what kids do to insects (Score:5, Insightful)
If anyone is worried about these slight actions turning kids into psychopaths, they would be AGHAST at what kids normally do with insects when they catch or find them...
Fire, pliers, rocks, etc. All are involved.
It's a fucking cockroach (Score:2, Insightful)
If you live anywhere cockroaches run rampant, you know the score. Kill them, or be infested.
Imagine (Score:4, Insightful)
A beowulf cluster of those!
Re:Cockroach rights? (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't see a difference between killing it and doing this?
Re:Cockroach rights? (Score:0, Insightful)
Killing is one thing, torturing is another completely. You'll find many more countries allow killing criminals or enemy combatents than torturing them for the heck of it.
Re:Missing the reality of what kids do to insects (Score:2, Insightful)
My brothers and I used to love to use a magnifying glass on ants on my parents' patio. I don't think you would classify any of us as psychopaths 50 years later. Fortunately, we don't have any roaches where I live now, but I remember them in the apartment I first rented when I got married...took a month or so to exterminate them all.
I wouldn't buy anything that used roaches, not out of concern for roaches, but out of dislike for roaches.
Libertarians (Score:0, Insightful)
You can always count on Libertarians to miss the point. The ethical issue has nothing to do with cockroaches themselves, but whether it's ethical for humans to forcibly subject other animals to being implanted with technology to manipulate their behavior. Funny how much Libertarians love the slippery slope argument unless it's against something which they personally do not mind.
Re:Missing the reality of what kids do to insects (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was a little kid and pulled the legs off a daddy longlegs, my scoutmaster told me not to do that, that it was cruel. Now we're encouraging kids to inflict pain on animals for their own amusement. Can you really not see a problem with that?
Re:Cockroach rights? (Score:5, Insightful)
Agree. While I doubt this turns kids into psychopaths, I disapprove because it reinforces the notion that every other creature on the planet was put there to be our playthings and slaves.
What does this have to do with science? (Score:4, Insightful)
Gokiburi Gijinka Manga (Score:5, Insightful)
FYI: If you've ever doubted the ability of Japanese manga artists to make anything cute, take a look at Gokiburi Gijinka [mangaupdates.com], which features the adventures of adorable little Gokicha-chan and her misunderstood struggle to make friends with humans -- who for some inexplicable reason she can't understand -- keep trying to squash her.
Re:Missing the reality of what kids do to insects (Score:5, Insightful)
You scoutmaster was a douche. Did he care to explain why it was cruel? oh right, no.
Are you asking if my scoutmaster gave my ten year old self a lecture on consciousness and solipsism and morality?
Re:I certainly hope those protesting are vegetaria (Score:5, Insightful)
Killing a pig or a cow to eat is very different from killing a pig or cow for pleasure -- and very different from mutilating them while they're alive for our amusement.
Re:Missing the reality of what kids do to insects (Score:5, Insightful)
Why?
Re:Cruel (Score:5, Insightful)
I completely agree. It's completely unacceptable to force innocent students to used something as restricted and crippled as iOS. For once could someone actually think of the children.
In version 2, the system will prevent the cockroach from having thoughts that aren't cryptographically signed by Apple. True Facts.
After reading this thread... (Score:4, Insightful)
...and reading all the faux outrage (because it is) over the poor cockroaches...
I'm gonna go boil up some lobsters - just to piss you guys off - and I will savor every butter-dipped bite.
--
BMO
Re:Missing the reality of what kids do to insects (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. Roaches have survived billions of years, and would survive the nuclear zombie apocalypse. They have enough survival abilities.
Do you know what happens in nature? Every nasty bit of stuff eats these things, live without anesthetizing them. Sometimes they go down live and just get digested. Nature is cruel. And it hates you, and me, and roaches.
Should we be doing this in schools? That's the question here.
Not killing is not the same as killing (Score:5, Insightful)
First, because it should be obvious - doing something to an animal without killing it is not the same as killing it. For example, shooting a rabbit and thus killing it is not the same as breaking its legs kicking it around a football field. Thus, it could be argued that punching a hole in a cockroach thorax and clipping the antennae is not the same as stomping on the roach. So we should probably write off the "if you've ever killed or would ever kill a cockroach, then you have must accept this as ethical" arguments.
Second, just because kids burn ants with a magnifying glass doesn't mean we should be encouraging kids to burn ants with a magnifying glass. As artor3 posted in a previous comment:
When I was a little kid and pulled the legs off a daddy longlegs, my scoutmaster told me not to do that, that it was cruel. Now we're encouraging kids to inflict pain on animals for their own amusement. Can you really not see a problem with that?
That isn't to say that installing this on a cockroach is equivalent to burning ants; simply that just because children do do something doesn't mean they should be encouraged to do it.
Even if people do conclude this is ethical - and I'm not saying it is or is not - then the subsequent question is how you ensure children understand that while cutting half off the antennae of a cockroach is ethically acceptable, cutting half off the ears of a mouse is not. That is, assuming we consider that unethical.
There is also the question of when it becomes unethical, in terms of animals used. It wouldn't be too challenging to build a kit to allow mid-teenagers to install a similar device in a mouse (assuming they had a steady hand), including sterile implements and gloves, adhesive, etc. Would that be ethically acceptable?
Re:Cockroach rights? (Score:2, Insightful)
Jumping beans are not toys? The things that produce honey are not toys, we shouldn't control them to make our delicious honey? I believe that there is no physical or psychological reason that you should value the life of an animal above a human (for a value of human that you wish to define). If it took dog-brain extract to keep a person alive, it's too bad for the dog.
Re:Missing the reality of what kids do to insects (Score:5, Insightful)
We kill 9 billion animals for food each year, in the USA alone. We still somehow manage to remember that killing humans is bad.
Humans attack humans (Score:5, Insightful)
Because when a cat is "playing" with something smaller than itself, it's typically a bird, mouse, lizard, or small bug, etc. When a human adult is torturing something smaller than himself, it's often another human.
The leap from cockroach vivisection to psychopathy is a bit of a leap, but there kids out there that already lean that direction. It isn't a matter of whether we are going to encourage the average child to be a psychopath (a ridiculous notion), or be a bit more callous (perhaps worth discussing). But could this be a tiny step toward psychopathy for someone already headed in that direction? Probably.
Clearly unhealthy (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree that this is psychopathic. I can see how this is very harmful for children to be involved in this. One of the warning signs of psychopathy is to abuse animals in a grotesque manner. That we would actually teach children to do this and to adopt red-flag behaviours of a psychopath is nuts. This is not swatting a roach on the floor, which kills it instantly and as quickly as possible, which we have all done. This is torturing and messing with a living thing for long periods of time. They are not the same thing.
Re:Cockroach rights? (Score:5, Insightful)
This does seem a great deal more educational.
Exactly. This teaches that living creatures, and one would hope by extension other humans, are properly controlled at our whim.
As I'm teaching my boys, the point of life is to get other people to do stuff that is against their interests and in yours. All this talk of dignity, human rights, liberty &c. is, as Nietzsche pointed out, merely the pathetic cry of the weak, whom it is the right of my offspring to manipulate and exploit. I wonder where I can get this for them -given the great educational value.
And they call me a sociopath ...
Re:Cockroach rights? (Score:5, Insightful)
You've missed the point. No one cares about what's best for the roach. The roach is a insect without much of any brain and no conscious.
What makes it worse is the attitude it fosters within the child.
I'm not convinced it'll turn anyone into a psychopaths, but studies suggest this is how psychopaths start out; torturing insects and small animals. So this is one small step away from pulling wings off bees. Except this has educational approval!