Rodrigo:
I subscribe to this list one and half a year ago. I do not participate in it
because I only can read English. I don’t speak nor do write it. I live in
Colombia South America, and my native language is Spanish. I have learned a lot
from all of you. Thanks very much.I am
reading and studying Life Itself and Essays on Life
Itself.
Dan: I
say this since, again following Rosen, life is no machine. If
Venter's
bacterium were a machine - no problem to assume
one can design, expect,
achieve, control the outcome and the
goal/purpose/function/results/effects of
the creation. But if
the bacterium is alive, then almost by definition it
will also
embody and entail and create its own
goals/purposes/
functions/results/effects/development/growth/evolution,
etc.
There could be no way to expect, determine or control
that these goals
endogenous to the life form would in any
way match up to the exogenous goals
of the creator. A "good",
realistic, humble creator, perhaps, would not be
attached to
the outcome or results, but would be detached and know
that
the life form would literally "take on a life of its own".
The surprises may
be nightmarish or happy, but they seem
to me guaranteed to be unknowable and
truly surprising.
And as such, very hard to make any profit off of, unless
one
billed the process as a freak show or adventure, like Russian
roulette
maybe...
I
agree with Dan, there are real dangers here I think.
Judith:
Venter, therefore, talks about "creating life" but he's cheating: he's
using the organization of a living organism and basically doing genetic
engineering. I wonder how he plans to "write the new genome"... I bet he's going
to Frankenstein it from all sorts of other organisms. He can do a whole lot of
mischief with his work, and it's the same sort of mischief we are already seeing
with genetically engineered crops, etc. I find it pretty scary. But he's not
even close to "creating" a living organism; he's just tinkering with organisms
that already exist.
I
agree with Judith, he is not starting from 'scratch'. And I reiterate her
(implied?) question, why does it seem that he makes a near identity relation
between genome and life?
I personally am beginning to believe that among the main
values of experimentally induced emergence might be to tease forth the
how's of something Judith said a while back... "If we
could figure out ways to tweak our internal models, it would be a whole new
world."
Rodrigo, will you tell us what you
think about these activities of Dr. Ventor? How do you feel about
them?