For me “How long could I get away with driving like an ABSOLUTE ASSHOLE all the time before I lost my licence or had an accident.” Speed limits, red lights, stop signs… forget them all. Every day I have to drive sensibly and obey the law because without my licence I dont have a job, and every day I see at least one person driving like an absolute moron and I wonder…
Isolate a bunch of babies together, with food etc, and see how they develop their own language and society.
Not exactly the same, but suggests probably it would not turn out well. https://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/capsules/histoire_bleu06.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_deprivation_experiments
I already knew about Psamtik’s experiment but I thought I had a bigger memory of it than what I was able to find quickly. There’s a good starting place if you want to look deeper but I’m not that interested
I want to see how far you can push performance of the human body, and make the results compete against each other. All the bonkers whacky surgeries you can think of: limb lengthening, bone strengthening, replace their organs with bigger, stronger versions.
All the drugs: hgh, steroids, any performance enhancing substance you can pump into an athlete.
Have sports scientists raise children so that they’re born into a dedicated training regime for running or swimming.
Then make them compete against each other in the trans-human olympics. I want to see someone do the 100m in 3 seconds, I want to see someone not have to come up for air during the freestyle, I want someone to throw a javelin 2 miles, I want bioengineered mutants doing gymnastics routines
So basically unit 731 stuff
Unit 731 was garbage science. About the only thing worthwhile that came from that was learning how better to treat hypothermia. Most of their experiments boiled down to “If we do terrible things to people, how much will they suffer?” with the answer being “A lot.”
It doesn’t take live experiments to learn things like surgery without anesthesia is less effective, or that not treating people infected with horrible diseases causes them to die in agony.
For sure, unit 731 was an absolute horror show for psychopaths that were left to have fun with torture ecause they labeled it science
Eugenics. Not the racist BS that was done in the past, but really pushing the limit to see if we can breed super humans. Genetic editing to make humans immune to cancer or disease. Increased lifespan. Resistance to radiation. Smarter. Stronger. Better.
Arguably, this kind of thing is actually somewhat of a necessity if we ever want to explore the stars. We are far too fragile in our current bodies to survive the difficulties and vastness of space.
How far can you strip down the human body until it can’t survive anymore. Assisted feeding and breathing is okay. Adjustable room temperature too.
Arms, Legs? Gone. Can we get rid of the skin? Probably, if the room is the right temperature? Bones? Most of them aren’t needed, are they? Some organs surely can go too.
Basically, what is the bare minimum needed so the body and the mind still more or less work.
It may not be possible, but I want to gradually replace a person’s brain piece-by-piece with the same areas from other brains and see if they retain their sense of self when none of the original brain remains.
The brain of Theseus!
Cloning is the first one that comes to mind for me. If you could somehow avoid the horrors of the process of learning a reliable methodology the result wouldn’t necessarily be unethical.
We can do sheep. And thus pretty much know how that would go for humans.
I’d like to experiment with other non-capitalist based systems in various points of infra-structure of my country.
I don’t think this “only make money in all things, all the time” shit is a smart way to manage numerous complex systems.
I don’t have all the answers on how that shakes out, but I think the first move would be to only allow professionals experienced in respective fields to set up these experiments. Existing profitable systems and overseeing corporations be damned.
