Let me share a twist on this train if thought that I've had recently.
The nature of the Earth's atmosphere, surface, oceans, and much of the subsurface is entirely the product of a single cell. A single cell lead to more cells which eventually evolved into different forms and became multicellular and so on and so forth until the earth was covered in all kinds of shapes and sizes of life and the landscape was permanently changed.
All that from one cell.
You and I are composed of trillions of these things and we're able to do incredible things with them, but at the same time our power is much more limited than that of the single cell that created all of life. We can do incredible things with our bodies but we lack the ability to completely control even a single cell in our body. As such a single cell can go rogue and kill you with cancer, or despite your best efforts to nourish, heal and exercise your cells you will eventually die.
Imagine if it wasn't so.
Imagine if you could control but a single long lived cell in your body. What could you do with that? Anything. Nothing could stop you. You could travel to the deepest depths as a whale or soar to the highest heights as an eagle. You could spawn a mass organism larger than Pando, or evolve something novel that would go to space.
So imagine if someone locked you deep in a dark prison in solitary confinement and you could through something akin to meditation come to control a single cell in your body. No prison could hold you.
What happens when we achieve mastery over ourselves in such a way through technology? Will we allow individuals this level of control over their own cells? Can we stop them?
Oh, lots. We are slowly but steadily making more advances with learning how to reprogram cells and get those cells to grow and divide and turn into things are sort of like different body parts. It's not really like sci-fi yet but it is honestly starting to get a bit weird. See the new book The Master Builder by Alfonso Arias for some recent info.
> our power is much more limited than that of the single cell that created all of life
Is it? That single cell had 3.5 billion years of almost-exponential growth to do its thing. We've been on this planet for something like 100,000 to 1 million years, depending on how you count, and we've had a pretty damn big impact on its atmosphere, surface, oceans, and even subsurface; most of that in the last century. Imagine how much we could change the Earth in the next billion. Our power seems terrifying in comparison.
> We can do incredible things with our bodies but we lack the ability to completely control even a single cell in our body
That's only because you've snuck in a very particular definition of "we" here. Single cells in my body are happily controlling themselves as they always have.
> Imagine if you could control but a single long lived cell in your body. What could you do with that? Anything. Nothing could stop you. You could travel to the deepest depths as a whale or soar to the highest heights as an eagle.
Could you? By your accounting, isn't your original single cell (let's call it LUCA) already doing that now? That little archaebacterium from 3.5 billion years ago must be pretty proud of itself. Aren't you essentially saying: hey, you might end up with a lot of descendants, and they might do cool things. Yup. That's true. "Control" never really played into it at all. See the funky accounting of "we" and "you" you're doing here? It's actually LUCA going to space, isn't it? Or is it us? Or just them? Who are you actually talking about here?
> So imagine if someone locked you deep in a dark prison in solitary confinement and you could through something akin to meditation come to control a single cell in your body.
Yeah, but, y'know, you can't, because the "you" you're thinking of is an emergent property of the collective action of trillions of these cells, with virtually no resemblance to the forces that individual cells use to make decisions.
> No prison could hold you.
There's already no prison that could hold me for 3.5 billion years. Except a black hole, I guess. And I've already spawned some descendants, so by your accounting, you'd have to imprison them all too.
> Will we allow individuals this level of control over their own cells? Can we stop them?
What happens when humanity develops The Super Encaptropositronator? That can do ANYTHING? Are we just going to let ANYONE use the Super Encaptropositronator that can do LITERALLY ANYTHING!? IMAGINE THE HORROR! It might make a decent sci-fi book though.
The nature of the Earth's atmosphere, surface, oceans, and much of the subsurface is entirely the product of a single cell. A single cell lead to more cells which eventually evolved into different forms and became multicellular and so on and so forth until the earth was covered in all kinds of shapes and sizes of life and the landscape was permanently changed.
All that from one cell.
You and I are composed of trillions of these things and we're able to do incredible things with them, but at the same time our power is much more limited than that of the single cell that created all of life. We can do incredible things with our bodies but we lack the ability to completely control even a single cell in our body. As such a single cell can go rogue and kill you with cancer, or despite your best efforts to nourish, heal and exercise your cells you will eventually die.
Imagine if it wasn't so.
Imagine if you could control but a single long lived cell in your body. What could you do with that? Anything. Nothing could stop you. You could travel to the deepest depths as a whale or soar to the highest heights as an eagle. You could spawn a mass organism larger than Pando, or evolve something novel that would go to space.
So imagine if someone locked you deep in a dark prison in solitary confinement and you could through something akin to meditation come to control a single cell in your body. No prison could hold you.
What happens when we achieve mastery over ourselves in such a way through technology? Will we allow individuals this level of control over their own cells? Can we stop them?