The Chimpanzee Stem Cell

A thought experiment:

The stem-cell debate had been dogging scientists. There was uncertainty over funding, supply of material, and the risk of even being arrested. Despite all the ethics committees and agreements on good practices, the denial by those who believed it an affront to human nature meant the issue was not going to go away any time soon. Contemplating moving to another country or another field of study seemed like good career moves, but there was a reason they were studying stem cells after all.

One day, a stem cell research lab had called a conference announcing that they would no longer work on human stem cells. They had developed a way of doing their research that allowed for work to continue. The process was two-fold. First they would take stem cells from a chimpanzee. Then they would reprogram these cells to have the genome contained to be identical to ours. Most genes were nearly identical to begin with, requiring only slight adjustments, and the rest were programmed artificially and cultured in bacteria. For all intents and purposes, it was identical to a human stem cell, but it wasn't human. Stem cell research could continue, but now harassed by animal welfare advocates instead of pro-lifers.

While this might be scientifically-impossible (or taking too much effort to be worthwhile), such a scenario is an interesting way to tease out just what is wrong with stem cell research. The objection that the process is destroying human life is taken right out of the equation. So we're left with what is identical to a human cell, but not derived from human cells.

Of course, this might create new objections. That science is destroying human dignity by engaging in such acts. Using chimpanzees in that way might (justifiably) spark a heated reaction. But I think the core problem is at the point of reproduction and that life begins at conception.

Runaway Trolleys And The Problem Of Evil

A trolley is running out of control down a track. In its path are 5 people who have been tied to the track by a mad philosopher. Fortunately, you can flip a switch, which will lead the trolley down a different track to safety. Unfortunately, there is a single person tied to that track. Should you flip the switch?

This is the trolley problem as proposed by Philippa Foot, giving the utilitarian imperative to save five at the expense of one. While not responsible for the situation, you as an individual have the power over the outcome. It's a terrible outcome either way, but your actions either way determine the consequences. You either flip the switch ensuring the death of one, or you fail to flip the switch and allow for the death of five.

While there are many variations on this thought experiment and various forms of objections to it, about 90% of people would throw the switch to save the five at the expense of one. Meanwhile, change the thought experiment just slightly so that instead of flipping a switch you push a fat guy then a mere 10% of people would still do it. Such an experiment is akin to harvesting a healthy patients for the organs to save five dying ones.

I'd contend that we have the obligation to participate because we have the power to change the outcome. Consider seeing a drowning child at a pool and being the only one with the ability to rescue the child. Would it be excusable to let the child drown on the grounds that its not your problem? Action of omission is still an action. We are forced into making unthinkable decisions over the power to change an outcome.

Sometimes it is a choice between the lesser of two evils. Should one get an abortion or carry to term a rape baby? It's a dilemma that too many women each year are forced to choose between. What about in war attacking buildings containing civilians because there are known terrorists inside? And consider medical expenses, is it worth a hospital spending huge amounts of money to keep alive one person when that money could pay for hundreds, even thousands of treatments for others?

When it isn't a choice between two evils, such as diverting the runaway trolley onto an empty track, surely then it becomes a matter of harm prevention rather than degrees of it. By action of omission it is causing the unnecessary deaths of five, even if you weren't the reason they were in that situation in the first place.


Enter the problem of evil. As told by David Hume, it is as follows:

"Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?"

Such arguments show the contradictory nature of a reality containing an omnipotent omniscient omnibenevolent deity with suffering and pain. While I don't think such a deity is worshipped by many, many claim that their respective deity has those attributes and thus it is a powerful argument against particular forms of theism.

To take the first trolley problem, we understand that there are two outcomes in our control. We are limited to either pushing the switch or refrain from pushing it knowing that either way we cannot prevent harm but only limit the degree. An omnipotent entity has no such restrictions by definition with an infinite number of ways to prevent harm from coming. In that sense, it is like the trolley problem where it's a choice between acting to prevent harm and allowing harm to pass.

Should we consider a person wicked if all they had to do to save a life was to push a button? I would argue that they are. This is illuminated by a comparable situation, finding a baby drowning in a bath where all it would take to save the baby is to reach down and pick it up.

The trolley problem is very much one in a vacuum, it's asking a question without regard of the many factors. It doesn't say who the people are which would matter a lot. If the one was your child and the five were strangers, would you still throw the switch? What if the 5 were convicted rapists and the one was a rape victim? (this is a mad philosopher remember) The problem is to illustrate how we would act in an abstract sense without complicating the thought experiment through too many variables.


The reason I've made this post was something I read recently regarding Christopher Hitchens getting cancer. In defending against the accusation of a benevolent deity giving Mr Hitchens cancer, the response was that God didn't give Mr Hitchens cancer but allowed it to happen as if there's a distinction between the two.

As soon as you start explaining events in terms of deities it starts raising questions why one thing happens but not another. The outcome is saying some genuinely horrific things, like that your daughter's rape was a test of your faith or that an infant dying of SIDS was because the infant was evil. Any rationalisation of the horrors will do because they illuminate the problem of evil so vividly.

This thinking is often taken to absurdity, think of those taking 9/11 as retribution to America for working towards a secular society or those who take any natural disaster as again a punishment for immorality. In each case the evil is manifest as the divine workings of a deity, demonstrating the deity is by no means benevolent.

No matter what the reason Hitchens got cancer (and I wish him all the best in a quick and as painless as possible recovery), a deity that can intervene had the possibility to prevent it. It is like a runaway trolley which would only require the touch of a button to prevent harm. The problem of evil is an insurmountable one because it shows the described nature of God being incompatible with the nature of nature.

The Principle Of Stability

It must be incomprehensible at times to look up at the universe and not see intelligence. After all, we are agency-seeking apes. Detecting intelligence and looking for intentionality is what we do best. In navigating through social situations, and trying to understand the motives of other bits of matter, it's a very useful trait. When it comes to nature, not so much. We know now that order in species is a result of the evolutionary process, and order in nature is but an expression of the laws of physics. As Dan Dennett might put it, ultimately there are those who want an ultimate skyhook to explain all those cranes. Enter fine-tuning arguments.

Consider the anthropic principle in its most basic form: that the conditions of the universe must be that which allow for observers to exist. It's a truism by definition, if the universe couldn't harbour the kind of life observing it then there would be no observations of it. We know the universe can support us because we are here.

Various forms of fine-tuning are inevitably proposed to explain just why were are here. Certain types of fine-tuning can be explained already. For example, that we are so suited to the planet we live on can be explained by evolutionary theory. Or that the planet has a stable orbit and is the right distance from the sun can be explained by the huge number of planetary systems that there would be. etc. But there are some things that seem yet unexplained.

While there are non-controversial explanations for particular aspects, there are still aspects of nature which we don't understand. There is not yet a theory of everything, so it's no surprise to see a whole host of arguments based around seemingly improbable aspects of the universe. I think it's quite silly, because there are so many things critical to our existence it means that any any change means we don't exist.

I think the problem stems from our vantage point. We are looking at a universe 13.7 billion years old, we aren't seeing the process but the result. Like us being a result of 3.5 billion years of evolution, that evolution produced us does not mean that evolution was designed to produce us. Likewise, us existing in the universe does not mean the universe is the way it is for our existence.

I want to illustrate this using a thought experiment, invoking the principle of stability. Another truism, the principle can be stated as stable forms last longer than unstable forms. We can understand this function already in terms of stable and unstable isotopes. Nitrogen-14 is a stable atom, but when bombarded with cosmic rays in the atmosphere transforms into Carbon-14. Carbon-14 is an unstable form of carbon and decays back into the stable Nitrogen-14.

Imagine rolling a die 1000 times and recording the sequence. A simple procedure but one that will generate a sequence of immense improbability 1.4x10⁷⁷⁸. Each role has a 1 in 6 chance of being any value yet the number you end up with is beyond all human comprehension of improbability. It produced a huge number, one that wasn't by any means inevitable but it did result through the series of chance rolls. It's only a problem to explain if you're expecting the outcome to be a particular 1000 roll sequence. This is why instead of looking backwards we should look fowards and ask whether a process could allow for the possibility of our existence instead of looking for improbable things in order to invoke an infinite improbability drive God.


If we go back far enough in time, we are going to do away with a lot of things. Life on this earth is but a few billion years old, our solar system only 4.6 billion years old. The heavy elements that we see in great amounts would eventually go to, for we know they are forged in stars and distributed by supernovae explosions. Eventually we get back before there's galaxy formation, to a universe where there's only light atoms (hydrogen, helium and a tiny bit of lithium) then before atoms can form, then before before there were particles like protons. Going back further we see elementary particles then back further a place before elementary particles where there were no fundamental forces.

Like the die experiment, look at the process going forward. It's not an aim to get what we have now, but to see what would happen if we took the process on the principle of stability. Stable things last longer than unstable things, so in the most unstable state imaginable, some form of structure should emerge. Consider this initial structural states as elementary particles. Now that there is a basic form of structure. With those particles interacting, there's always further possibility that bigger particles could be made. Not all interactions need to lead to bigger particles, but if only a small percentage of particles could form stable structures they should emerge on account of stable structures being more stable than unstable structures.

On the principle, this should continue until there are no more possible increments in complexity. So now we have a whole host of particles, some composites of many iterations of smaller particle collectives colliding, and some that are still elementary particles. Some of these particles may only be able to exist when the universe is energetic enough and should not be seen in the latter universe except through high-energy collisions. And some states of interactivity might not be able to happen until the universe is sufficiently cool enough to allow for them. Atoms might be a good example of this, not being able to form until 100,000 years after the big bang.

Perhaps now you have a state where you can have structural formations, composites of atoms interacting together in a new structure - like for example in stars. And in those new states, in turn new forms of structure might emerge, like atoms fusing together to form heavier atoms. And from there perhaps those atoms by their interaction will come together to form spherical structures, and on some of those spherical structures, organising principles there will allow for complex chains of molecules. Which in turn might serve as templates for creating copies of the complex chains. That process might become better at doing so, creating a new means of generating complexity. And so on...

By now the principle should be illustrated, that is to say that if we take the events looking through time instead of back at them we should tend to see the gradual emergence of more complex structures by pure necessity.


I'm not saying this is the way that it happened, or even that it could happen this way. It's a means to think about the problem in a different way. That we look backwards means we aren't seeing the process, instead seeing a whole lot that needed to be the way it is for us to exist. But why shouldn't there be a whole host of things necessary for our existence? We exist, therefore the universe must have the conditions necessary for our existence.

A parallel argument is invoked by those who support biological fine-tuning called Irreducible Complexity. This suffers from the same process, it's looking backwards at what there is instead of considering the process by which to get to it. Can evolutionary theory account for irreducibly complex structures? It can! Any mutation that is advantageous may through later mutation make it necessary. Thus the structure looks like it is evidence against a gradual process, but only because it's looking after the fact instead of considering how the process works.

And I think the same error in thinking in all fine-tuning arguments. It's looking for that which is hard to explain by conventional thought without giving consideration as to what can explain it. By attaching huge improbabilities to that particular structure, it makes it seem like it needs a grand explanation.

One final thought is that perhaps this line of argument falls into irrelevancy if humans aren't treated as a necessity. That it could result in observers doesn't mean that the goal of the universe was to have observers. Likewise that evolution created sapient beings doesn't mean that evolution was made to create sapient beings. That we did evolve and that we do have the capacity to observe the universe says nothing about the laws of nature other than they have to be that way necessarily. It's because we are here to observe that we know that, but they are not that way so that we can be here to observe. Putting us as the focal point generates the improbability because we are very improbable - just like everything else!

Tuesday Thought Experiment: Subjectivity

"My opinion is as good as yours" is something you often here when discussing what we consider subjective forms, such as art for example. When it comes to what we like or dislike, we assume that ultimately it comes down to our own thoughts and feelings - and no-one can tell us otherwise. Who are Rolling Stone to argue that the latest Pearl Jam CD is bloated and repetitive? What we like and dislike ultimately comes down to ourselves.

So consider the following thought experiment...
There are two people brought in to assess a song written by what the record company see as the next big thing. The first person is a music theory professor, who has studied music for decades and has absolute pitch. The second person is someone pulled off the streets who is essentially tone deaf and has had limited exposure to music. Both people listen to the song and both form their own opinions on the music.

Both people have offered their opinion as to what they thought of the music, yet we should be able to distinguish between the opinions of someone who does and who doesn't know what they are talking about. At the same time, we do not hold the opinion of the expert as absolute. Yet if it were true that one opinion is as good as another then we should no more consider the trained and learned opinion than we do the random opinion of someone on the street.

So what does such an experiment tell us about the nature of art? It should be apparent that complete subjectivity is as much a myth as complete objectivity, yet this should say something deeper about the endeavour of art in itself. How can there be even the slightest objectivity at all?

And that in itself should cast some light of art in explaining something about the human condition. That certain works will be preserved over time, cherished by future generations and still have something to add. We can vividly recall the names of great dead composers such as Bach or Beethoven. Or writers like William Shakespeare. Their works have well surpassed their generation and audience and still resonate with the learned in their respective disciplines today.

While most high school students I'm sure are cursing Shakespeare's name (I recall a scene from Blackadder where he goes back in time and kicks Shakespeare "for every school child for the last 400 years") yet while in high school I questioned why we were reading the likes of Othello or King Lear, have a new-found appreciation for the genius present in those plays. Of particular note, the Shakespearean fool comes to mind every time I see Jon Stewart doing what the media should be doing.

The objectivity it seems is not a universal, rather it is an expression of who we are as a species. That within limits, there are those who can better capture an essence of ourselves and express it in such a way that is transcendent of time and culture. That it has the capacity to touch and inspire another and do so that resonates in such a profound manner. But perhaps I'm getting a little ahead of myself.


The point is that when one person says their opinion is just as valid as another, it may be wise to agree in order to stop a fight, but in reality such a statement is nonsense.