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https://xkcd.com/1589/

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Next week, we are going to start diving into all the fantastic issues the text raises around ethics. For those of you who want to get ahead, the attached article will be read together in class. And our focus will shift to evaluating the text's ideas regarding innovation and science. Should we side with Shelley, should we distrust science? Should we distrust humans to be responsible with the "things" that they create? Should we have more oversight, regulation, and control over new technologies? Can you think of an example right now that supports this?

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"Clear!" At some point during medical education and practice, every physician has heard or given this command. One person - such as a closely supervised medical student - pushes a button to deliver an electric shock and the patient's body jerks. The code team, in complex choreography, works to restore both the patient's cardiac rhythm and a pulse strong enough to perfuse vital organs.

After a successful defibrillation effort, team members do not have time to dwell on the line crossed from death to life. It is even difficult to focus on the ultimate goal: to enable the patient to leave the hospital intact, perhaps to grasp a grandchild's - or grandparent's - hand while crossing the street to the park.

Despite these dramatic hospital scenes, many scientists, doctors and patients balk at any mention of the words Frankenstein and medicine in the same breath. Because, unlike the Victor Frankenstein of Mary Shelley's novel, the reanimators at a hospital code have not toiled alone in a garret; assembled body parts from slaughterhouses, dissecting rooms and charnel houses; or created an entirely new being. Nonetheless, in this bicentennial commemorative year of the book's publication, it is not only germane, but important to consider the impact of this story, including our reactions to it, on the state of scientific research today.

Shelley's Frankenstein has captured the imaginations of generations, even for those who have never read the tale written by a brilliant 18-year-old woman while on holiday with Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Dr. John Polidori amid extensive storms induced by volcanic ash during the so-called year without a summer. Mary Shelley (her name was Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin at the time) was intrigued by stories of science such as galvanism, which she would have heard through her father's scientist (then called natural philosopher) friends.

With Frankenstein, Shelley wrote the first novel to forefront science as a means to create life, and as such, she wrote the first major work in the science fiction genre. Frankenstein, a flawed, obsessed student, feverishly reads extensive tomes and refines his experiments. After he succeeds in his labors, Frankenstein rejects his creation: He is revulsed by the sight of the "monster," whom he describes as hideous. This rejection of the monster leads to a cascade of calamities. The subtitle of the book, The Modern Prometheus, primes the reader for the theme of the dire consequences of "playing God."

A framework for examining morality and ethics

Frankenstein is not only the first creation story to use scientific experimentation as its method, but it also presents a framework for narratively examining the morality and ethics of the experiment and experimenter. While artistic derivations, such as films and performances, and literary references have germinated from the book for the past 200 years, the current explosion of references to Frankenstein in relation to ethics, science and technology deserves scrutiny.

Science is, by its very nature, an exploration of new frontiers, a means to discover and test new ideas, and an impetus for paradigm shifts. Science is equated with progress and with advances in knowledge and understanding of our world and ourselves. Although a basic tenet of science is to question, there is an underlying belief, embedded in words like "advances" and "progress," that science will better our lives.

Safeguards, protocols and institution approvals by committees educated in the horrible and numerous examples of unethical experiments done in the name of science are used to prevent a lone wolf like Victor Frankenstein from undertaking his garret experiments. Indeed, it is amusing to think of a mock Institutional Review Board approval process for a proposal he might put forward.

But these protections can go only so far. It is impossible to predict all of the consequences of our current and future scientific and technologic advances. We do not even need to speculate on the potential repercussions of, for example, the creation of a laboratory-designed self-replicating species, as we can look to unintended consequences of therapies such as the drug thalidomide, and controversies over certain gene therapies. This tension, this acknowledgment that unintended consequences occur, is unsettling.

The theory of galvanism - the idea that electricity could reanimate dead tissue - is named after researcher Luigi Galvani, who published an illustrated report on what he called animal electricity. (Photo from Luigi Galvani, De Viribus Electricitatis in Motu Musculari Commentarius.)

Science and technology have led to impressive improvements in health and health care. People I love are alive today because of cancer treatments unknown decades ago. We are incredibly grateful to the medical scientists who envisioned these drugs and who did the experiments to prove their effectiveness.

As an anesthesiologist, I care for patients at vulnerable times in their lives; I use science and technology to render them unconscious - and to enable them to emerge from an anesthetized state.

But, as the frontiers are pushed further and further, the unintended consequences of how science and technology are used could affect who we are as humans, the viability of our planet and how society evolves. In terms of health, medicine and bioengineering, Frankenstein resonates far beyond defibrillation. These resonances include genetic engineering, tissue engineering, transplantation, transfusion, artificial intelligence, robotics, bioelectronics, virtual reality, cryonics, synthetic biology and neural networks. These fields are fascinating, worthy areas of exploration.

'Frankenstein' is not only the first creation story to use scientific experimentation as its method, but it also presents a framework for narratively examining the morality and ethics of the experiment and experimenter.

We, as physicians, health care providers, scientists and people who deeply value what life and health mean, cannot shy away from discussions of the potential implications of science, technology and the social contexts which give new capabilities and interventions even greater complexity. Not much is clear, but that makes the discussion more imperative.

Even the call "Clear!" and the ritual removal of physical contact with a patient just about to receive a shock is not so "clear," as researchers scrutinize whether interruptions to chest compressions are necessary for occupational safety - that is, it may be deemed safe in the future for shocks and manual compressions to occur simultaneously.

We need to discuss the big questions surrounding what is human, and the implications of those questions. What do we think about the possibility of sentient nonhumans, enhanced beyond our limits, more sapient than Homo sapiens? Who or what will our great-grandchildren be competing against to gain entrance to medical school?

Studying and discussing works of art and imagination such as Frankenstein, and exchanging ideas and perspectives with those whose expertise lies outside the clinic and laboratory, such as artists, humanists and social scientists, can contribute not just to an awareness of our histories and cultures, but also can help us probe, examine and discover our understanding of what it means to be human. That much is clear.

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Why issues raised in Frankenstein still matter 200 years later

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Two hundred years later, quickly advancing science makes the ethical dilemmas raised in Frankenstein still worth considering.

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Here's a poorly photoshopped version of my monster

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Here's a poorly photoshopped version of my monster

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https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMRDTmfxM/

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I find SCP really interesting and when looking through SCPs I found this one. It is quite humorous and if you guys have an interest in anomalous beings and like reading then you should definitely check out the SCP website. You can find some interesting stories on there.

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Item #: SCP-504

Object Class: Safe

Special Containment Procedures: All seeds, plants, fruit, crossbreeds, and other products of SCP-504 are to be classified as SCP-504. SCP-504 seeds need no special containment, other than to prevent misuse by unauthorized personnel. Grown SCP-504 plants and their fruit should be kept in soundproof rooms. Guards and researchers assigned to maturing or growing SCP-504 are to be equipped with radio-enabled masks which insulate non-transmitted sound, and are to be instructed to avoid attempts at humor.

Description: SCP-504 is a species of tomato physically and genetically identical to that of the typical commercially-grown tomato. It was recovered in [REDACTED], Kentucky after a woman reported to the police that her farmer husband had been "murdered by his lunch". The Foundation is currently working to identify and destroy loose strains of SCP-504 in the surrounding commercial farming areas.

When a poor attempt at humor is made verbally within human hearing range of SCP-504's tomatoes, they instantly accelerate to a speed of at least 100 miles per hour (approx. 160 kilometers per hour, 45 meters per second) in the direction of the sound's source. Only mature tomatoes, separated from their vines and less than 10% rotted or chemically compromised, exhibit this effect once each. Tomatoes do not have to be physically intact, though ingested tomatoes are usually insulated enough from sound to prevent their effects before neutralization by stomach acid.

SCP-504 tomatoes seem to reach speeds relative to the inciting attempt at humor ( see experiment log). Relevant variables seem to include corniness, humor-to-length ratio, and use of puns. Language appears irrelevant.

Note: Whoever snuck SCP-504 into the cafeteria kitchen is getting terminated. Those tomato slices are like fucking shurikens. - Dr. Blast
Log of tests with SCP-504:
Notes: It appears that SCP-504 has a certain "taste" in jokes. This might indicate sapience. I hope not. - Dr. Blast

Item: One mature SCP-504 tomato
Subject: CD player playing "Harmful If Swallowed" (2003, Dane Cook)
Result: At [REDACTED], tomato clocked 167 mph. CD player destroyed.

Notes: It works with recordings? Dammit. Didn't even have to deal with Class-Ds in the first place. - Dr. Blast

Item: Three mature SCP-504 tomatoes, one for each test subject.
Subject: After the introduction to the following news item, Bomb blows hole in Lenin statue, the three following jokes were made.

Test Subject 1: Ooh, that's gonna leave a Marx.
Result: Tomato number one 'twitched', but did not displace from its original location.

Test Subject 2: BBC is just Stalin the good news.
Result: Tomato clocked at 152 mph. Chipped tooth and hairline jaw fracture.

Test Subject 3: That blows.
Result: Tomato clocked at [REDACTED]. Subject is hospitalized with a massive skull fracture.

Notes: I thought we'd just established that recordings work in place of live subjects! I know how much you guys hate the Class-Ds, especially D-504-012 (poor guy might not even recover before termination rolls around), but I'm making it clear that whoever oversaw this round of testing is getting a serious reprimand. The same goes for whoever leaked its video logs to the staff. - Dr. Blast

Item: One mature SCP-504 tomato
Subject: Television playing the SNL Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton skit.
Result: Tomato reacted as if 'confused': slow-motion video shows three separate bursts of speeds in excess of 200mph, two incidences of motion at normal throwing speeds, and one unprecedented instance of backward motion, all in the one trajectory. Dr. King hypothesises that the tomato was unsure whether or not to 'take it seriously'.

Item: One mature SCP-504 tomato
Subject: A portable computer playing a pre-recorded engineering joke.
Transcript: "2009 is going to be a complex year. We already know the real part; we still have to find the imaginary part".
Result: Supersonic blast detected; computer was completely vaporized by the tomato's kinetic energy. Sensor readings indicate an approximate speed of 3500 km/h (2174 mph).

Item: One mature SCP-504 tomato
Subject: A portable computer playing a partial audio recording of the Monty Python sketch "The Funniest Joke in the World".
Transcript: "Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!"
Result: Tomato explodes. Debris clocked at 137 mph. Computer heavily coated by debris. Keyboard ruined by exposure to liquid matter - all other components proved functional after cleanup.

Item: One mature SCP-504 tomato
Subject: A portable computer playing the text of SCP-904
Result: [DATA EXPUNGED]

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Item #: SCP-504 Object Class: Safe Special Containment Procedures: All seeds, plants, fruit, crossbreeds, and other products of SCP-504 are to be classified as SCP-504. SCP-504 seeds need no special containment, other than to prevent misuse by unauthorized personnel.

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This might just be me, but the absolute funniest part of Frankenstein so far was when Victor and the creature reconnect and Victor tells the creature to get out of his sight, so the creature puts his hands over Victor's eyes.

It's been days since I read that scene and it's still so funny.

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I think that I speak for at least a fair amount of students here when I say that this class is at its best when we're discussing what we recently read. I personally learn best through discussion about what I am interested in, the philosophy of literature is a star example of that. I want to hear from some students what their opinions are on having more class-wide discussions in the class.

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This is favorite short story about an everyday horror.

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I recently went on vacation to Disney World with my family. It was a lot of fun until I went on Splash Mountain. There are a lot of animatronic animals on that ride that sing and dance before you go over a big drop at the end, and although most of these robotic animals are wonderful to watch as you float down the river, there was an animatronic fox that started addressing me by name halfway through the ride. He told me that he was going to marry my dad. He did that five times.
I was riding Splash Mountain, and the animatronic fox was doing his preprogrammed speech about how he wanted to catch the animatronic rabbit. The fox said, "Now's our chance to set a trap for Br'er Rabbit!" Then it turned and looked me right in the eyes and said, "I'm going to marry your dad, Ryan." Then the fox leaned in real close to my face, which I'm pretty sure it was not programmed to do, and he said, "Call me 'Mrs. Dad,' Ryan. I'm going to be your dad's bride at his wedding." Before he could say anything else, I had floated away from him to enjoy the rest of the magic of Splash Mountain.

The big drop at the end of Splash Mountain was so fun that I decided to get back in line and ride it again. I was having a blast listening to all the robotic animals sing and move around until the animatronic fox once again turned to me as I floated past. It started to say, "You sure done made a fool of yourself, Br'er Bear!" but about halfway through the line he trailed off, turned around, and said, "Welcome back, Ryan. I'm going to marry your religious dad and the wedding is going to take forever. Everyone's going to talk so slow and your dad and I are going to kiss 100 times. Your dad is going to get down on his knees and thank Christ for making his wedding to the robot fox take so long." I tried to tell the robotic fox that I didn't want that to happen, but I had already floated away from him.

I had decided not to go on Splash Mountain anymore, but then I remembered how fun the big drop at the end was and I got back in line. I was hoping the animatronic fox would just do his clockwork movements and prerecorded lines, but instead he popped up out of the water in the middle of the ride and said, "Your dad is my fiancé, Ryan. I'm going to wear your shirts and your pants when I marry your dad. Your dad's going to wear a wedding dress and we're going to be bonded in the eyes of Christ. Enjoy the rest of Splash Mountain, Ryan." After the ride, I told the Disney World employee working the line what had happened, and he just said, "That sounds bad." But he didn't do anything.

I just couldn't stay away from that incredible drop at the end of Splash Mountain, so I got right back in line. There is an animatronic goose on Splash Mountain who mostly sings and babbles about being careful on rivers. One time, when I was floating past the goose, it stopped singing, swiveled on its metal hinges to face me, and said to me in the fox's voice, "Ryan, it's me. It's the fox. I'm going to marry the ever-loving shit out of your religious dad. Listen to me, Ryan. Our wedding will not have any refreshments. Guests will be permitted to bring one bowl of warm water from home, but that's it. Once I marry your dad, I'm going to become a huge part of your life. Have fun on the big drop." Then the goose's voice returned to normal and it sang a song about fishing. I do not want to attend a wedding where there is no food, especially since the fox said it was also going to be very long.

I had promised myself I would never ride Splash Mountain again, but on the last day of vacation, the siren song of the big, fun drop lured me right back into the den of the clockwork fox and his wet carnival of torment. When I got to the animatronic fox, he was standing next to an animatronic model of my father, which sparked and sputtered as he moved back and forth in repetitious motion. My log boat stopped right at that scene, which it hadn't done any of the other times before, and the animatronic fox started saying things like, "Hello, Ryan. Your dad and I are going to be each other's wives," and, "You'll have to watch me marry your dad through the window of the church because you're not allowed inside, Ryan." Then the animatronic model of my dad said, "I love marrying the fox more than I love having a son!" and then it burst into flames. As the ride finally lurched forward on the river and I floated away from this horrific scene, the fox called after me, "I'll see you and your real dad at the wedding, Ryan!" I tried to call back, "Please don't do this!" but my voice was drowned out by the sound of the robot porcupine singing about the dangers of being foolhardy.

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5 Times The Animatronic Fox On Splash Mountain Addressed Me By Name And Told Me He Was Going To Marry My Dad - ClickHole

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I recently went on vacation to Disney World with my family. It was a lot of fun until I went on Splash Mountain.

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This is my favorite fictional monster. This is from a fictional universe in which monsters exist and are contained/tracked by a secret organization: the SCP foundation

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Item #: SCP-4666

Object Class: Keter

Special Containment Procedures: Web traffic and law enforcement channels worldwide are to be monitored for evidence of SCP-4666 activity, and particularly for cases of stalking or reports of anomalous phenomena involving families with young children.

Should a Weissnacht Event be suspected to be in progress, the nearest Containment Task Force is to be dispatched to attempt containment of SCP-4666. Standard PDP/VIII Humanoid First Contact Protocols apply.

Media coverage of family deaths attributed to SCP-4666 is to be suppressed or falsified to make said deaths appear as non-anomalous home invasion murders. Forensic evidence and SCP-4666-A instances collected by non-Foundation agencies are to be confiscated, and witnesses amnesticized.

Description: SCP-4666 is currently believed to be a single, exceptionally long-lived humanoid entity of unknown origin. Survivors of Weissnacht Events typically describe SCP-4666 as a very tall (between 2 m and 2.3 m) elderly male of European descent, with an extremely emaciated appearance. The entity always appears completely naked, even when observed outdoors in freezing weather.

Though the nature and extent of its anomalous properties remain uncertain, SCP-4666 appears capable of instantaneous or near-instantaneous travel to any location north of 40°N latitude, and possibly to any location on Earth.

SCP-4666 activity occurs exclusively within a period of 12 consecutive nights every year, from the night of December 21-22 to the night of January 1-2; this period is known as SCP-4666's "active phase". During this phase, in what are termed "Weissnacht Events", SCP-4666 will appear at dwellings in one or multiple locations north of 40°N latitude. In all known Weissnacht Events, these dwellings have shared the following characteristics: isolated rural location, home to a family with at least one child under the age of 8, and situated in an area with snow cover lasting throughout the duration of the event.

Weissnacht Events consist of the following general progression:

Nights 1-7: Children will report seeing SCP-4666 in the vicinity of their family's dwelling. The entity will typically be observed watching the dwelling from a distance, such as from across a nearby field or from the edge of a neighboring forest. In some cases, children will report waking up at night to find SCP-4666 watching them sleep through a window.

Nights 8-11: Family members (including the parents) will report sounds of footsteps coming from the roof or the attic. An extremely unpleasant odor will also frequently be noticed inside the dwelling. No cause for these phenomena will be found. As a result, parents will often begin to suspect that their family is being stalked, or even that their dwelling might be "haunted".

Night 12: Over the course of the night one of two scenarios will occur:

The first, and most common, is that SCP-4666 will kill all members of the family save for one child under the age of 8, whom it will abduct. SCP-4666 will inflict incapacitating injuries to family members while they are sleeping, then herd them into a single room of the dwelling where it will proceed to kill them in view of each other. The method of killing varies with the event, and will typically be preceded by some form of torture, which appears to serve a ritualistic purpose (see "Weissnacht Events Log" below).

In the second scenario, which has occurred in roughly 15% of known Weissnacht Events, SCP-4666 will not harm the family. Family members will report hearing footsteps inside their dwelling during the night, though no signs of forced entry will be found. In the morning children will discover presents at the foot of their beds; these will consist of toys crudely crafted from the remains of human children (see "SCP-4666-A Instances Log" below).

The criteria, if any, by which SCP-4666 determines the outcome of a Weissnacht Event are unknown.

Discovery: SCP-4666's existence and ongoing activity were first detected in 1974 through the Foundation's newly-implemented Anomalous Signature Recognition Program, when several highly-similar home invasion incidents resulting in family deaths were found to have occurred throughout the Northern hemisphere during the night of January 1-2.

Extensive research into civilian and law enforcement archives worldwide eventually uncovered evidence of probable Weissnacht Events for nearly every preceding year, going back to the late 18th century (average of 3.1 known events per year). Numerous historical documents were also found which appear to describe SCP-4666 activity occurring prior to this period, in some cases as early as the 2nd century AD in Europe and Russia, and as early as the 1st century BC in Scandinavia.

Fingerprints belonging to the same humanoid entity have been discovered at the locations of all Foundation-investigated Weissnacht Events; these have been matched to a partial fingerprint found preserved in dried blood on a recovered SCP-4666-A instance dating from 1873. The fingerprints present characteristics not known to occur in human beings (see image). Human-like white hairs were also recovered from the locations of several Weissnacht Events, though no DNA, human or otherwise, could be extracted from them.
Addendum 4666-01
On 02/01/2018, several SCP-4666-A instances were discovered at a family's residence in Hoonah, Alaska, following the conclusion of Weissnacht Event #060198. Among these instances was SCP-4666-A-0960, which consisted of a crude, life-sized doll made from the emaciated body of a female child, to which the following modifications had been made:

A dress made from various pieces of dirty, discolored clothing had been sewn around the body, and in several places, into the body's skin.

The mouth had been sewn shut with thread made from human tendons, and the lips painted red with a solution consisting primarily of human blood.

The fingernails of another child had been glued over the body's fingernails with pine resin; these had been painted red with the same human blood-based solution. Three of the body's fingers were missing.

The entire scalp had been removed from the head, and the scalp of another child with long, blond hair sewn onto the head in its place. The hair had been tied into two braids.

Both eyes had been removed, and two large round pebbles on which eyes had been crudely painted placed into the empty orbits.

Upon examination by the family, the child from whom the doll had been made was found to be still alive, albeit unconscious. Authorities were notified, and the child was airlifted to Bartlett Regional Hospital in Juneau, Alaska, where she survived for 18 hours. Two Foundation agents were dispatched, and were able to interview the subject (see "Interview Log" below). Following the subject's death, her body was confiscated by the agents, and all witnesses amnesticized as per standard procedure.

DNA testing revealed the subject had been Ekaterina Morozova, age 7, a known abduction victim of SCP-4666 taken from her family's residence in Dubovka, Russia on 02/01/2016. Autopsy of the subject's body showed she had been severely malnourished during the two years following her abduction, which had resulted in considerable stunting (weight was only 15 kg, height was only 90 cm). A number of scars and burns were present on her skin, and she had suffered two bone fractures (left tibia and left ulna) that had not been reset and had healed improperly. Hands were heavily callused. Cause of death was attributed to multiple organ failure resulting from severe, sustained malnourishment.

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Item #: SCP-4666 Object Class: Keter Special Containment Procedures: Web traffic and law enforcement channels worldwide are to be monitored for evidence of SCP-4666 activity, and particularly for cases of stalking or reports of anomalous phenomena involving families with young children.

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Article about Frankenstein & Modern Monsters

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Article about Frankenstein & Modern Monsters

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Thought this would also be a cool thing for you to check out as you begin planning and creating your project.

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In 1797, at the dawn of the industrial age, Goethe wrote "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," a poem about a magician-in-training who, through his arrogance and half-baked powers, unleashes a chain of events he cannot control.

About 20 years later, a young Mary Shelley answered a dare to write a ghost story, which she shared at a small gathering at Lake Geneva. Her story would go on to be published as a novel, "Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus," on Jan. 1, 1818.

Both are stories about our powers to create things that take on a life of their own.

Goethe's poem comes to a climax when the apprentice calls out in a panic:

Master, come to my assistance!
Wrong I was in calling
Spirits, I avow,
For I find them galling,
Cannot rule them now.

While the master fortunately returns just in time to cancel the treacherous spell, Shelley's tale doesn't end so nicely: Victor Frankenstein's monster goes on a murderous rampage, and his creator is unable to put a stop to the carnage.

Who foretold our fate: Goethe or Shelley?

That's the question we face on the 200th anniversary of "Frankenstein," as we find ourselves grappling with the unintended consequences of our creations from Facebook, to artificial intelligence and human genetic engineering. Will we sail through safely or will we, like Victor Frankenstein, witness "destruction and infallible misery"?
Will science save us?
In Goethe's poem, disaster is averted through a more skillful application of the same magic that conjured the problem in the first place. The term for this nowadays is "reflexive modernity" - the idea that modern technology can be applied to deal with any problems of its own creation. Whatever problems arise from technoscience we can fix with more technoscience. In environmentalism, this is known as ecomodernism. In transhumanist circles, it is called the proactionary principle, which "involves not only anticipating before acting, but learning by acting."

Frankenstein, by contrast, is a precautionary tale. Imbued with the impulse to transform nature, humans risk extending beyond their proper reach. Victor Frankenstein comes to rue the ambition to become "greater than his nature will allow."

He laments: "Learn from me...how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world."

Hubris, he seems to warn, will be the death of us all.
The rise of the Silicon Valley refuseniks
This same worry over hubris appears to be creeping up among today's scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs, many of whom seem to be getting cold feet. After creating something, they've turned around and denounced their very creations.

Are they like the apprentice calling for a master who will rescue us? Or are they, like Frankenstein, engaged in a futile quest to squelch something that is already beyond our control?

Consider Sean Parker. The co-founder of Napster and an early investor in Facebook recently announced his status as a social media "conscientious objector." Facebook, he claims, is likely damaging children's brains and definitely exploiting human psychological weaknesses.

There are more Silicon Valley refuseniks. Justin Rosenstein, the inventor of the Facebook "like" button, has deleted the app from his phone, citing worries about addiction, continuous partial attention disorder and the demise of democracy at the hands of social media. Former Google employee Tristan Harris and Loren Bricther who invented the slot machine-like pull-to-refresh mechanism for twitter feeds are both warning us about the dangers of their creatures.

Anthony Ingraffea spent the first 25 years of his engineering career trying to figure out how to get more fossil fuels out of rocks. From 1978 to 2003, he worked on both government and industry grants to improve hydraulic fracturing. His own research never panned out, but when he learned of the success of others and the magnitude of chemicals and water required, he was "aghast" and said, "It was as if [I'd] been working on something [my] whole life and somebody comes and turns it into Frankenstein." Over the past ten years he has become one of the nation's leading fracking opponents. The industry that once funded him now regularly trolls and attacks him.

Jennifer Doudna is one of the main scientists behind the gene-editing technique known as CRISPR. In her new book, "A Crack in Creation," she writes that CRISPR could eliminate several diseases and improve lives, but it could also be used in ways similar to Nazi eugenics. Doudna has revealed that she has nightmares where Hitler asks her to explain "the uses and implications of this amazing technology."

Elon Musk worries that with Artificial Intelligence we are "summoning the devil." AI is, for him, "our greatest existential threat." Musk has super-charged Dr. Frankenstein's initial impulse of evading his abominable creation: He is working on interplanetary colonization so that we can run all the way to Mars when AI goes rogue on planet Earth.
Treating technology like a child
The anthropologist Bruno Latour chastised Musk for this kind of thing. The way Latour sees it, the moral of Frankenstein is not that we should stop making monsters but, rather, that we should love our monsters. The problem wasn't Dr. Frankenstein's hubris, but his unfeeling - he abandoned his "child" rather than educating it so that it could learn how to behave.

Latour's point is that no amount of technological advance will give us total control and a blissful detachment from the world. Instead, technology, like parenting, will always require being constantly folded into new developments, tending, fretting and caring.

Musk's initiative OpenAI, which seeks to develop safer AI technologies, is more what Latour has in mind.

As it turns out, Latour is putting his own advice to the test. He is the creator-in-chief of the scariest monster of our times. This creature is not actually a product of science, but rather a way of thinking about science. Latour spent his career showing how scientific facts are socially constructed, and that there is no such thing as unbiased access to truth.

In short, he argues that objectivity is a sham and science is never really settled or certain.

Now, of course, he's watching in horror as this spirit of deconstruction and distrust takes root in our post-truth age of alternative facts, climate change denialists and partisan media bubbles.

In a recent interview, Latour admitted that he now regrets his earlier "juvenile enthusiasm" in attacking science and vows to reverse course:
"We will have to regain some of the authority of science. That is the complete opposite from where we started doing science studies."
In order to love our monsters we have to have some basic agreement about when they are misbehaving and what to do about it. That agreement comes through widespread trust in the traditional institutions of truth: science, the media and universities. Latour sought to liberate us from the paternalism of the experts inhabiting these institutions, and it was a noble quest.

But his acid, combined with the chaos of social media and the greed of big money, has corroded things more deeply than he imagined. Now it is bias all the way down, everything is susceptible to a knee-jerk accusation of 'fake news!' Climate change may be the ultimate abomination or maybe it's a hoax. Who can tell? The skepticism-induced paralysis is hardly conducive to chasing monsters.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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social media ai gene editing frankenstein

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As Frankenstein Turns 200, Can We Control Our Modern "Monsters"?

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In 1797, at the dawn of the industrial age, Goethe wrote "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," a poem about a magician-in-training who, through his arrogance and half-baked powers, unleashes a chain of events he cannot control. About 20 years later, a young Mary Shelley answered a dare to write a ghost story, which she shared at a small gathering at Lake Geneva.

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So my monster idea is a virus that is given too much machine learning and eventually gains sentience followed by morals that end up being anti-human. Like with school shootings (active thing right now), corrupt governments, the decaying climate... It's fair, actually.

My idea is to create a video game (via Scratch, I don't actually know how to program but that'll do for short-term...) that's designed to look corrupted, and there are "glitches" that are what makes the game difficult by cheating against the player, breaking the fourth wall and being pretty creepy if I succeed...

Anyway! Any questions or comments or feedback? I'd love to hear people's thoughts so I can improve this!

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Other interesting items to consider in your monster creation...

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The creepiest urban legend from every state

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From aliens and monsters to ghosts and the supernatural, each state has an urban legend that has been spooking the masses for years.

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Editorial: Should serial killers be glorified? 

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Editorial: Should serial killers be glorified? 

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Something I thought was interesting to consider within the context of our monster project.

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In an era where documentaries about serial killers are so palatable that people throw watch parties with snacks and bottles of wine, it's no surprise that millennials have a morbid fascination with the gruesome aspects of existence and the perpetrators of awesome crimes. For some, this fascination extends far beyond curiosity.

Earlier this year, a slew of biopics on brutal serial killers like Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer hit our screens, including "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile" starring Zac Efron, a Hollywood sex symbol. Women across the country doubted their own moral aptitudes as they found themselves attracted to a prolific serial killer with murders under his belt.

Hybristophilia is a sexual paraphilia in which an individual seeks sexual partners who have committed an outrage or crime. This attraction is symptomatic of a larger issue within our society: toxic masculinity and regressive behaviors. When women find themselves drawn to men who kill, they are unconsciously perpetuating the expectation of a hypermasculine, violent man.

This community of serial killer enthusiasts is especially active on Twitter, manifesting itself in popular accounts like (TW: graphic content) @DailyKillerFact and @TrueCrimePolls . The followers of these account are predominantly women , and many of them have the word "feminist" in their bios. There are also extensive online communities where young women self-identify as hybristophiles. On tumblr, the hybristophilia hashtag has thousands of posts and a popular fandom called the True Crime fandom allows people to fantasize about murderers. Despite claiming to be feminists, they are inexplicably drawn to figures whose objectification of women became deadly.

In an era that seems to be by the U.S. mass shooting, it is surprising that these criminals warrant any modicum of admiration, especially from school-age women, but even school shooters are regularly glorified. After the horrific Columbine shootings, a new fandom called Columbiners arose ripe with , fiction and posts dedicated to Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. Furthermore, James Holmes, the perpetrator of the Aurora Theater mass shooting, was able to create a of dozens of suggestive pictures women sent to him in prison.

The outpouring of fetishization directed towards murderers on social media outlets is related to the way the media portrays them. By picking actors like Zac Efron or Ross Lynch from "My Friend Dahmer," to portray killers, media organizations are making their crimes digestible. In the biopics starring these two actors, no killing is shown on screen and emphasis is placed on their perceived charisma or their bad childhoods, reducing accountability.

As we continue to push for equality for all genders and sexualities, it's important to leave our fascination with serial killers behind us. Morbid curiosity will always be a subject of art and a part of the human experience, but we must separate fascination with murder cases from fascination with murderers.
Opinions expressed on the editorial pages are not necessarily those of WSN, and our publication of opinions is not an endorsement of them. A version of this article appeared in the Monday, Oct. 21, 2019 print edition. Email Ashley Wu at [email protected]

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To Condemn Serial Killers, We Must Stop Glorifying Them

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In an era where documentaries about serial killers are so palatable that people throw watch parties with snacks and bottles of wine, it's no surprise that millennials have a morbid fascination with the gruesome aspects of existence and the perpetrators of awesome crimes. For some, this fascination e