Summary:

A society striving to create new intelligent life

Uplifters

Pilgrim 09 Apr 2008 22:19

Uplifters

While humanity has met (and created) alien life, some just can't leave it alone and want to create new intelligent alien forms of life. To that end, they have tinker with the genes and neurology of likely candidate animals. The goal is to create a new intelligent, but non-human species, uplifting them. Their biggest problem with earlier efforts is that they include human genetic material and not a new species. They have disparaged many of these as 'Stardweller cousins.'

Likely Candidates

• Chimpanzees
• Gorillas
• Orangutangs
• Baboons
• Barbary Apes
• Parrots
• Dolphins
• Orcas
• Octopi
• Ravens
• Otters
• Racoons
• Pigs
• Coyotes

Their efforts are controversial at best, partly from previous efforts (everyone remembers the AIA and the Transcendentals), but also due to the morality of it. Is it right to create a new child species that can and will compete with humanity? Or possibly our successors? It is a controversial decision.

Then there are the failures. For every success they've had there are hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals that are semi-functional, insane, doomed to mental collapse or with serious physiological defects. Some of these are cared for as best the Uplifters can. Others are euthanized. This alone makes them wanted criminals in some civilizations. And the successes are disturbing - they take animals that are familiar to humanity and make them very strange. Instead of understandable aliens, they wind up with entities that are partially understandable (and in some cases very competitive), which is incredibly frustrating.

Emblem: Neural network with the ascent of man superimposed on it.

Core Value: Uplift, or that mankind should create its successors and companions.

Benefits: +2 to Biotech Researcher and Engineer and Cognitech for uplift research purposes.

Edit: Implemented change ideas based on Colin and TauCeti's comments.

Last edited on 11 Apr 2008 01:17 by Pilgrim Show more

Re: Uplifters

Pilgrim 09 Apr 2008 22:21

It was tempting to call them the Institute for Uplift.

Re: Uplifters

Colin_Fredericks 10 Apr 2008 16:28

I can't see them being unsuccessful… but I can see them being successful in creating really alien intelligences out of things that humanity once considered friendly and understandable, and getting frustrated because of it.

Re: Uplifters

TauCeti 10 Apr 2008 20:51

The biggest ethical dilemma in my mind (the one that all would-be sentience creators must face), is the ethics of creating an imperfect but conscious being. Any project like this takes time and many trials. There will be failures. Each near-success represents a sentient, conscious being that is flawed in some irreconcilable way. Likely insane or doomed to psychological collapse. In order to achieve success, the scientists must create these intermediate beings, who's lives will often be full of misery. Worse, when dealing with AI's which may be gifted with immortality, the scientist must choose whether to grant immortality to something which will spend an eternity in mental pain, or force it to die (either by outside interaction (“turning it off”) or some internal timer (“fail-safe”)), which is paramount to murder.

Merely risking creating something which can compete with humans (who already compete with themselves, so it's nothing new) pales in comparison to the horrible lives that would necessarily be created in such an endeavor.

P.S. I still think that it's worth it. I'd willingly get that much blood on my hands for the opportunity to create something with non-human sentience. But that doesn't mean that I wouldn't hate myself for it.