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Liminal Space
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this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2026
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Science Memes
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Everybody wants science to cure cancer, but the moment someone does foundational research they lose their fuckin minds.
Guys, the alternative is cutting up mice and pigs.
Yeah, this is pretty far below the level of a mouse even, typically
All I want science to cure is billionaires, we'll take it from there. Concentrations of wealth that enable making brains grow eyes are a bug, not feature. Ever read "Whitey's on the Moon"?
That problem is very much one that's beyond the domain of scientists. That's like saying "All I want literature to do is decipher the genetic basis of cancer". Trust me, if science were able to cure billionaires, it would.
Iam not sspecifically talking about this example and I am not trying to imply this tissue has any sort of consciousness but if "foundational research" means "man made horrors beyond my comprehension" maybe we need to find another way, and if we cannot, maybe we just shouldn't torture conscious beings in the name of science and progress.
Nature is full of horrors beyond your comprehension. If you want to make that less so, manmade horrors are the only way to do it.
This is by no means torture, quite the opposite in fact. Neurons are little prediction machines, and if you don't give them stimuli, they either make their own of degrade. Particularly in small clumps of cells like this, you can't be sure of whether they're conscious, but if they are, they're having an amazing time learning about the light signals.
That touches upon the actual issue here. We dont know if they're conscious. We don't have a solid idea of what consciousness is, where it comes from, what it consists of, or where the line is drawn. That's the sort of knowledge you only get by performing these sorts of experiments.