Bioshock[G5]

[Sleeping Dragon]

I played this game for xbox, and wanted to note the similarities between it and Geneforge. In Bioshock, people can alter their genes (not with magic but a sort of science) to have powers such as shooting lightning, fire, or even bees. The main difference is that Bioshock takes place is modern times. Well, the 1950s, but still.

 

The most striking similarity, however, would have to be the fact that getting too many of these genetic modification makes people go crazy. I thought that the fact that this was a common theme in both games was most interesting. Why do you suppose both story writers correlated genetic modification with insanity? Could it be because a large group of Americans have such a cultural distrust towards genetic engineering? I just thought this might be interesting to bring up. Feel free to voice your own thoughts.

[Randomizer]

There were lots of movies in the 50s and 60s where genetic or radiation induced mutation was related to insanity or other problems, mad scientist syndrome. The new technology was used as a plot point for scaring people.

 

The Fly had a scientist working on teleportation machine merge his genes with a fly and his father in one version had radiation damage from using the machine. I can't remember any others at the moment since they weren't that great or memorable.

 

Don't forget Marvel comics had The Incredible Hulk where gamma radiation mutated Bruce Banner into the Hulk and his assistant into the Gargoyle. Hulk get mad, Hulk smash.

[ShadowCentaur]

I love both games. The thing I like about both is the focus on setting, a unique world for the game to take place in. Splicer maddness and canister maddness are pretty similar, to think of it. Plus genetic engineering is AWESOME. I'm waiting for the day I can get a dog with an electric eel's electric organ inside. Shock Attack Dog!

[Alorael at Large]

Originally Posted By: Academician Prokhor Zakharov

Remember, genes are not blueprints. This means you can't, for example, insert "the genes for an elephant's trunk" into a giraffe and get a giraffe with a trunk. There are no genes for trunks. What you can do with genes is chemistry, since DNA codes for chemicals.

—Alorael, who thought it seemed necessary. A glowing dog isn't so far away. GFP is easy! A dog with weird organs? You may have better luck waiting for your flying car.

[Desmarestia]

My impression was that it isn't so much the genetic modification that makes people crazy, but the sudden power. People who earn their power are more likely to use it responsibly and understand how their personal ethics apply to it. I don't know if that's what Jeff had in mind, but I'd rather think of the Geneforge protagonist as megalomaniacal than just brain-damaged from snorting essence.

[Milla]

Originally Posted By: Loneliest One

—Alorael, who thought it seemed necessary. A glowing dog isn't so far away. GFP is easy! A dog with weird organs? You may have better luck waiting for your flying car.

I wouldn't mind one of those glow in the dark rabbits, however the glowing jellyfish fish are said to be particularly vulnerable to heat.

[Sleeping Dragon]

When people who are exposed to radiation have children with birth defects, isn't that a result of changes the radiation made to their child's genes? If simple radiation can accidentally cause people to be born with arms they shouldn't have, surely we could engineer this happen if we wanted to?

[Alorael at Large]

Radiation causes damage to DNA. If the damage is in germ-line cells, the damage is heritable. If the damage is to genes expressed in development, you can get messed up development. The problem is quite simple: evolution has done a good job of engineering us to develop right, and if you want an extra set of arms your going to have to significantly change the way an embryo develops and muck up a big chunk of torso.

 

Can it be done with greater precision? Maybe, but definitely not yet.

 

—Alorael, who would also like to point out that the most likely result of heritable genetic damage isn't extra arms or all the exciting fallout (terrible pun) from the Chernobyl disaster. Mostly the result is a greatly elevated risk of cancer.

[Sleeping Dragon]

Good point, Alorael. In fact, I think I've seen that very argument used in attempts to disprove the theory of evolution.

[Aran]

Originally Posted By: Loneliest One

Originally Posted By: Academician Prokhor Zakharov

Remember, genes are not blueprints. This means you can't, for example, insert "the genes for an elephant's trunk" into a giraffe and get a giraffe with a trunk. There are no genes for trunks. What you can do with genes is chemistry, since DNA codes for chemicals.

—Alorael, who thought it seemed necessary. A glowing dog isn't so far away. GFP is easy! A dog with weird organs? You may have better luck waiting for your flying car.

Let me just add an "OMG Alpha Centauri Rocks". Particularly the quotes.

The problem with engineering new organs is that the genome is about 1.5GB of information[1], and the only parts of it scientists have been able to understand are chemicals. Sure, the arms are in there somewhere, in a complex mixture of growth rates, cell types, mechanical factors that will give the arm its shape - but they're beyond comprehension, let alone ability to alter.

I haven't heard of anyone being born with arms they shouldn't have. The closest event I know would be the birth defects resulting from Thalidomide, but that was damage to the embryo's growth, and did not affect their genes.

[Lilith]

It's possible to duplicate body segments in insects by deleting a gene here or there, which can lead to them having more legs thant they ought to. Humans have segmented bodies too (just look at our spine), but it's a little more complicated to just change what grows at each segment.

[The Loquacious Lord Grimm]

Back on the original topic, I kinda figured that part of the insanity in Bioshock was came to be because of the splicers' chemical addiction to Adam and plasmids. It's revealed earlier on (Neptune's Bounty, I'm pretty sure) that Fontaine got into the splicing market because the first round of research revealed that a splicer's body constantly needed more adam to regenerate itself and recouperate from the physical damage that using the plasmids does. The lack of a fresh supply is what leads to the splicers' physical degredation.

That, and, well, there's also those pheromones that Ryan uses to instantly convince a splicer to do his bidding.

 

Whereas in Geneforge (I confess, I've only ever played the demos), the addiction is more psychologic1al: one must get canisters not because of a physical need, but because of the need for power, for strength, for control.

[Sleeping Dragon]

You're probably right with your Bioshock analysis, Lenar. That would explain why everyone is always trying to get adam from the little sister, despite it almost always resulting in certain death.

 

In Geneforge, however, it not so much the addiction that makes you insane as it is the canisters themselves physically effecting your mind. They definitely change one's personality, making them irrational and quick to anger. If you use too many, even your own character will be unable to talk through certain confrontations, resorting to violence instead because they can't control themselves.

[Alorael at Large]

Originally Posted By: Sleeping Dragon

In fact, I think I've seen that very argument used in attempts to disprove the theory of evolution.

"We can't control it" isn't at all the same as "it can't happen." Just look at our excellent record with nuclear fusion and then look at the sun. Well, don't because staring into the sun is a bad idea. But think about it!

—Alorael, who is perfectly happy to imagine that canisters contains some kind of bio-nanobots that alter biology. He's happy to think of shapers as thaumaturgical geneticists. He refuses to believe you can gain knowledge from having your genes improved. Not even for a fantasy game.

[Dikiyoba]

Originally Posted By: Alorael

He refuses to believe you can gain knowledge from having your genes improved. Not even for a fantasy game.

It's not really like gaining knowledge. There are plenty of canister users who can't teach you anything because they don't actually understand what they're doing. It's more like gaining instincts and reflexes, rather than learning anything.

Dikiyoba.

[Sleeping Dragon]

I agree with Dikiyoba on that, the game specifically says pretty much those very things when you first use canisters, doesn't it?

 

And Alorael, what I meant was that I've seen anti-evolution arguments that basically said even the tiniest physical change (perhaps a slightly longer neck as something evolves towards a giraffe) from one generation to the next would require so much perfectly correlated compensation from the entire rest of an organism's body that such changes are virtually impossible to happen by chance. I agree with you, though, as far as believing these things are in fact possible. I figure life's been around a long time, and humans have trouble coming to terms with all that stuff that happened before we even existed.

[Alorael at Large]

Dikiyoba: My point stands. Some reflexes are hard-wired and instinctive, which means there are probably genes involved somewhere. I am dubious about rewiring a fully-developed brain with new genes for new instincts. And I'm absolutely sure that how to make a fyora is not one of those instincts.

 

—Alorael, who won't drag up an evolutionary argument here. He'll just point out that while there are some reasonable objections to evolution (with reasonable responses from the evolutionary biologists), not understanding evolution is not one of them.

[Untamed Banana Slug]

Originally Posted By: Trans-Dianetic Ultra-Galvanometer

Originally Posted By: Academician Prokhor Zakharov

Remember, genes are not blueprints. This means you can't, for example, insert "the genes for an elephant's trunk" into a giraffe and get a giraffe with a trunk. There are no genes for trunks. What you can do with genes is chemistry, since DNA codes for chemicals.

—Alorael, who thought it seemed necessary. A glowing dog isn't so far away. GFP is easy! A dog with weird organs? You may have better luck waiting for your flying car.

? DNA doesn't really code for 'chemicals'. Genes code for *proteins*, which form a lot of the structural components, and most of the enzymes, of the body. The DNA *is* essentially a blueprint for an organism, and a series of genes does code for elephant trunks.

[Lilith]

The point is that it's misleading to point to some subset of genes and say "these genes are the genes that are responsible for making up the trunk". It's the entire genome working as a whole that produces a whole organism; being able to mix and match parts from different organisms on anything higher than the molecular level is the exception, not the rule.

[Alorael at Large]

Proteins are chemicals.

 

—Alorael, who wishes you luck finding the right set of developmental genes to add trunks arbitrarily to non-elephant organisms. Please not that a trunk is not an enzyme, does not have a particularly unique set of structural proteins, and does not consist entirely or even mostly of protein.

[RCCCL]

Originally Posted By: Coil Adaptor Array 5

—Alorael, who wishes you luck finding the right set of developmental genes to add trunks arbitrarily to non-elephant organisms. Please not that a trunk is not an enzyme, does not have a particularly unique set of structural proteins, and does not consist entirely or even mostly of protein.

Eh, I don't know about that. I don't know the complete make up of a trunk, but with the all of the muscle and maybe cartilage(?), that would be a fair amount of proteins.

Edit: Nope no cartilage, but apparently a lot of muscle. Look at Trunk section here. Apparently 100,000 muscles!

[Locmaar]

Originally Posted By: Untamed Banana Slug

The DNA *is* essentially a blueprint for an organism, and a series of genes does code for elephant trunks.

It is as far as I understand more like a recipe rather than a blueprint.

[Feo Takahari]

I recall an experiment in which genes for . . . I don't remember what, but the eye of something weird . . . were used in a fly in place of the fly's eye genes. It grew "normal" (that is to say, fly) eyes. Messing with genes profitably is hard.

[Alorael at Large]

On the other hand, you can mess with the developmental hox gene in Drosophila and either turn a pair of legs into extra antennae or the antennae into an extra pair of legs. That has to do with altered segmentation, though, because they're still all developed based on limbs. Adding an extra trunk to an elephant would work quite well if you could find a good way to add ectopic noses.

 

—Alorael, who was trying to say that a trunk is not a pile of proteins alone. It's a pile of cells, which consist of protein as well as some other things. You don't just need to dump trunk proteins into an organism, you need to dump all the regulatory and developmental genes that put the trunk cell differentiation in the right place.

[A less presumptuous name.]

Yes, while it would be more doable (although still very difficult) to change a similar structure to an elephant trunk, getting one to sprout out is very difficult.

 

Although, the can grow human ears on the backs of mice...

 

Not really sure how this relates to geneforge anymore, but genes and development is always fun

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Master1

Although, the can grow human ears on the backs of mice...

That was surgically grafted on, so it doesn't really count.

[Student of Trinity]

DNA is indeed a blueprint. Try taking the elevator to the rooftop restaurant of a blueprint some time.

 

I used to call this the Lara Croft paradox: the human genome is only a few GB, and many video games involve a lot more data than that. So apparently it takes more information to specify Lara Croft than it does to specify me. People who have seen us both may simply reflect that you get what you pay for. But personal characteristics aside, there is something disturbing here.

 

The point is that DNA won't crawl out of a test tube. It needs to be stuck in the right cells, and the cells have to be implanted in a womb or an egg or something. These contexts are the builders that turn the blueprint into reality, and they are staggeringly more complicated than any genome.

[Talias]

Less info in me than in a video game. I guess the fact that i'm actually here and alive because of how all the infromation in my body interacts with each other is a comfort.

Technically you could put an elephant nose gene into anything, the results just wouldn't be pretty.

DNA is more about interaction to create variation then it is about what is actually stored in DNA.

[Student of Trinity]

Less info in your genes; not less info in you. The point is that the genome is only a tiny fraction of the information involved in an organism.

 

We shouldn't get too cocky about our genetic mastery. Suppose a bunch of dumb little monkeys swarming around a building site have figured out how to snatch blueprints from the contractor's briefcase; but cranes and concrete, and even hammers and nails, are still unfathomable mysteries to them. They definitely don't understand building, no matter how many blueprints they collect. In the same way, we definitely don't yet understand life.

 

Actually, if you go a little further, I believe the blueprint analogy breaks down badly. Because when people say they've mapped some organism's genome, they don't just mean that they've read out all the base pairs. They mean they've figured out what proteins all the base pair sequences catalytically synthesize. In one sense that's much more than knowing a blueprint: it's practical nuts-and-bolts biochemistry. But in another sense it's much less than knowing a blueprint, because it is only nuts-and-bolts. Less like a building blueprint, more like a specification list for all the different kinds of rivets and fasteners the building contains. How protein catalysis governs the development and functioning of a living organism is a whole other question — and that's where all the extra information that separates me from Lara Croft must reside.

 

If we look for a different analogy, I think maybe genetics is like reverse engineering a computer and its program from nothing but screenshots and the program's compiled machine code. We know very little about how the processors or operating system work. We are now in the process of translating the machine code into an assembly code, by identifying which small chunks of code accomplish the most basic low-level routines. The full program is extremely long and complicated, and full of viruses and patches and bypassed obsolete sections. It wasn't written by an intelligent designer in any human sense of 'intelligent', so there are no comments, and the code may be extremely spaghettified. And the machine it all runs on is fundamentally analog rather than digital.

 

 

 

 

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

And the machine it all runs on is fundamentally analog rather than digital.

This is a big deal, by the way. The more you learn about biochemistry, the more you realise that a lot of things happen that first-year genetics says just shouldn't. The whole system is absurd from top to bottom: we wouldn't be able to breathe oxygen if it weren't for quantum tunneling, if you can believe that.

[Visionary]

I think also that part of the *issue* with the whole gene-changing effect on the mind also has to do with being done messily or hastily.

 

ex: when you *wake up* in the foundry, it is because you were shaped either too sloppily or to to great of an extent.

 

basically, going from that, there is a limit to the change (stress) that your body can take, and there is also a "clean" way to gene-edit (perhaps not yet found -- in the game); the canisters (I haven't played Bioshock) don't *do*.

[Student of Trinity]

I don't know about breathing, but I wouldn't be able to pay my rent without quantum tunneling.

 

In what sense does breathing require tunneling?