Re:'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists
by geebee on Thursday May 20, 2010 @05:02PM
(#1365396)
I agree that disappointment in this accomplishment is crazy, it's an amazing feat
That said, people can sometimes go batty and start thinking something was achieved when it wasn't. I think it's reasonable to clarify that this isn't a full realization of "artificial life" just yet (though it clearly is a partial realization, as the scientists did alter the genome (also, apparantly they removed potentially disease-inducing strands of DNA, according to the NYTimes). The poster who got negged expressed this distinction in a fairly dismissive fashion that appeared to disparage the achievement. But you should be able to point out (diplomatically, one would hope)that a monumental achievement isn't an even more monumental achievement without being accused of minimizing the achievement itself!
That said, people can sometimes go batty and start thinking something was achieved when it wasn't. I think it's reasonable to clarify that this isn't a full realization of "artificial life" just yet (though it clearly is a partial realization, as the scientists did alter the genome (also, apparantly they removed potentially disease-inducing strands of DNA, according to the NYTimes). The poster who got negged expressed this distinction in a fairly dismissive fashion that appeared to disparage the achievement. But you should be able to point out (diplomatically, one would hope)that a monumental achievement isn't an even more monumental achievement without being accused of minimizing the achievement itself!