hi!
I took a quantum chemistry class and learned about bosons last semester and that just about blew my mind!
like the higgs boson particle?
Mostly just the implications of the difference between bosons and fermions. I think it is so cool that while most things can only exist in one state at a time, things like light can have multiple occupations in the same state. What about you? What's the most interesting thing you've learned recently?
that's pretty mind blowing the most interesting thing i learned recently is kind of random. in the 60s a researcher decided to experiment by raising her baby with a baby monkey. but then she called off the experiment when her child started copying the monkey all the time haha
That's funny. What did she expect to happen?
i think she expected the monkey to become more like a human, because she raised it like a human baby but it's pretty funny that the opposite happened
Oh I see. That makes a lot more sense, but still, it's pretty funny she was surprised with the results I took an ethics class where we talked about some of the crazy experiments that happened before the government began enforcing regulations on how you could use humans in experiments. There was some weird stuff going on 50+ years ago.
that stuff is both hilarious and scary what do you think about ethics in science? because a lot of people argue that if we removed ethical boundaries we would make much more progress
I don't think there is a purely black and white answer.
true i mean the nazis performed tons of unethical experiments in the name of science, and they did make good progress, but ...
In some situations the progress  would not cost much, but just like you said, can we really justify any means for the end?
what about genetically altering humans? like changing the genomes of fertilized eggs and such?
There was one experiment we learned about where they took a group of people with a curable disease and didn't tell them what they had. Instead, they just tracked their suffering and symptoms for years until the government intervened and made the researches cure the test subjects. When it comes to genome therapy, I personally think it should depend on individual situations. If someone was going to be born without an arm and somehow you had the power to fix that, why not do it?
oh wow that experiment is pretty messed up hm i think fixing disabled people before they're born would be a great use, but some people think altering human genes at all is unethical
I guess the question is at what point and what conditions does that kind of control become unethical. People breed dogs and specifically select the ones with the best genes or at least phenotypes to get the dog that they want. Is that any different?
true. personally, i don't think it's very different
I think perhaps one of the reasons people are against it is that they fear what they don't really understand.
exactly, for example i think that's the case with nuclear power people hear nuclear and freak out without realizing it's actually pretty safe
Then again, I don't claim to fully understand gene therapy but I still have an opinion about it. That's a great example!
have you read about CRISPR and things like that?
That sounds really familiar. Can you remind me what CRISPR was?
CRISPR is just a simple and cheap way to alter DNA sequences it was a super big deal because it was cheap and easy enough that almost anyone can experiment with it
That's super exciting that technology like that has become so accessible. At the same time, it's also a little scary. I bet there's been some public backlash for that.
yeah definitely. but it's like what you said, people usually just don't understand
Have you hard about why we call it an MRI?
maybe. does it stand for magnetic resonance imaging?
Yeah, but really it's just the same as NMR used in research labs. It's Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, but because it had the word "Nuclear" in the name, people freaked out. Now we use the same technology under a new name and suddenly everything is fine.
oh my gosh really? i had no clue
So if you had everything you needed to alter DNA sequences like using CRISPR, what would you use it for?
no clue. kind of a scary idea and i mean i know nothing so i wouldn't even know where to start
Fair enough.
what about you?
I think it would be cool to integrate it into hospitals so expecting mother's could use it as a form of preventative treatment. If someone is born with a disability we use medicine and therapy to try to help them become fully functional, so why not use a new tool to do the seam? same?
yeah! that's smart
Well thanks for the chat! I have to go. Good luck with everything!