hypothetically, how long would it take to selectively breed chimps to have sentience?
you know, just for shits and giggles
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hypothetically, how long would it take to selectively breed chimps to have sentience?
Depends on what do you think by sentience. If you just mean human like intelligence then
Within humans just the fact education disincentives fertility may lead to an IQ drop of 0.2 to 1.4 points per decade(depending on who you ask), given that chimps live slightly shorter and we would breed them selectively I'd expect it to be possible to get the 1.4 points per decade figure so reasonably speaking 200-300 years and they have a cognitive ability of stupid humans and that's a conservative estimate.
>sentient
like ants? or thermostats? i'm pretty sure chimps already qualify
maybe you're thinking of a different word?
500 thousand years tops
A long time. Could cheat a bit via domestication ala the Belyaev foxes to make a separate population with more peaceful and manageable characteristics. That could take a couple hundred years just because of their long life history but killing off hyper-aggressive chimps to promote cooperative chimps should have quick results.
The next shortcut is to hijack brain activity epigenes by exposing males to various dosages of psychedelic compounds from an early age. Combine this with a regimen of wildly divergent behavioral conditioning with “scary” situations like having young chimps play at dog parks, watch fireworks shows and gather food at the beach near crashing waves. Just getting them to have impulse control instead of launching into fearful reactiveness or aggression at the drop of a hat would be a huge step in enhancing their intelligence. It’s sort of like how small species of dolphins are intelligent but difficult to work with due to their shyness, while large species of dolphins are top predators with a high fear threshold so they are much more curious and active instead of being cautious and defensively reactive.
The last cheat is cloning. Once you have one chimp that shows improved characteristics you could clone it to make more including opposite sex counterparts. Doing that over and over for every improvement and sending clones off to develop other populations could cut the timeline to a sapient chimp down by quite a lot.
With all these tools you could conceivably have them in under a thousand years.
boring choice, picrel would be much more interesting. plus would prob be quicker since they have bigger brains and are more adaptable already
both are already sentient, and probably "sapient" in the way Wauf loves to abuse the word.
sure but i mean in terms of what op meant, i.e. what if we uplifted their level of intelligence, communication, abstract thinking etc to be comparable to our own
fair enough, I agree orcas are closer to humans in thought than chimps are, and chimps are pretty dang close.
Aren't we still on the fence on whether or not orcas actually have complex language?
Are we? I thought it was consensus that they did. They even have different ‘dialects’ that only certain pods can understand iirc
probably not very long but there are so many ethical issues it would be pretty much impossible in the west.
I am VERY surprised that some 2nd or 3rd world nation hasn't tried this. Like Russia could easily make an entire race of slave chimps but for some reason they haven't. They could do it with foxes, why not chimps?
To be fair, foxes breed a lot faster than chimps do; the typical vixen has about 5 kits per litter and can start breeding at a year old, and can easily have a litter every year. Meanwhile chimps usually only have one baby at a time and you will be waiting at least ten years before a female can mate, and chimps usually go a couple years in between offspring. The Russian foxes took about 40 generations before they were considered fully tame; with chimps well that gives you 400 years of work at minimum for the same number of generations.
well it took a couple million years for chimps to breed themselves into humans.
around 500,000 years, with extreme luck and the exact same genetic bottleneck inducing incidents that happened during our own development
They're pretty close already. Better off starting with bonobos or orangutans.
You said "selective breeding," which takes generations. Like, lots. And your end-result isn't all that precise. The gene-line can be unstable and only achieve a temporary level of what you're attempting, but then could revert back if the inbreeding program isn't maintained.
Genetically engineering a species could result in far more stable and faster results. David Brin wrote some neat science fiction about uplifting species with potential into sapient civilizations. Real cool reading. He explores the pitfalls and potential from a number of interesting viewpoints. BTW, he seems to think bonobos with human-tier sapience would take about 200 dedicated & coordinated years of vigorously applied genetic uplifting.
for the sake of the universe itself, please no
sapient bonobos would get to degeneracy levels we cant even think of
We ought to uplift the most morally upstanding animals to prevent a catastrophe. Imagine the evils a race of superintelligent lions could commit for instance. I recommend manatees, due to their peaceful and curious nature, and herbivorous diet. A race of uplifted manatees would spend their days creating beautiful works of art and competing in friendly aquatic sports.
Sapient herbivores would be the most brutal and warlike things on earth. Don’t fear what kills for food, they only need fed.
Just look what happened the last time an herbivorous species went brainy. They turned into apex fricking predators that need meat to thrive.
But who would really do it with apes?
The best species to uplift would be one that is socially compatible with humans but not truly part of our innate hierarchy, near but not in our niche, impossibly reproductively incompatible (to the point that cross species mating attempts would carry a high risk of injury, not just some condom-defeated STDs, and mutual desire itself would be extremely uncommon), and dietarily similar but able to feed on some things we simply can't, and unable to feed on some things we can. A balance of sharing and exclusion would minimize conflict by setting boundaries but also creating space for bonding.
We would prefer it to be one we have significant experience with and innately understand how to interact with. It would also have to still serve some function in our society at the earliest stages of the program so we could justify maintaining a large enough population for a stable gene pool, and be numerous enough in their base form to avoid stepping on environmentalist toes.
Under no circumstances would this be another primate. Uplifting another pimate is the worst idea in the world. Not just for practical and safety reasons, but human nature wouldn't help. The entire purpose of our species for the past 2,000,000 years has been PURGING anything apelike from our world. Ape is an insult. Ape is a lower state. People can not come around to the lowly ape like they can come around even to appreciate rats. Ape is irredeemable.
What we don't need for this species is hands. If we could uplift species, it would be in the days of humans controlling additional robotic limbs.
Can you think of such a prime candidate? I can. There is one. And there's already a selective breeding program to select them for part of the most important part of human intelligence: comprehending abstract language.
>DOLPHINS?
#1: That program is classified, report to your superior immediately. #2: No, they'd probably ally with ecoterrorists to landlock humanity.
>David Brin
>uplift
>Earthclan
Also the Heaven's Reach trilogy, which continues the story after Earthclan. The stories. Somewhat. Heaven's Reach is mostly new stories, but some stuff is resolved nicely from Startide Rising.
Anyway, nobody should be posting in this thread if you haven't read these books. Brin is fricking brilliant in these, he's six moves ahead of any points made in this thread so far playing on a 7 dimensional chess board. Do yourselves a favor and read the books. This shit is Dune-tier epic and classic science fiction.
Why would you want to do this? They’re our biological competitors and already stronger than us. We don’t need them being as smart
This. Primates being anymore intelligent than they are now would spell doom. They do NOT need fricking around with and given free intelligence hand outs. That’s patently moronic.
>the most morally upstanding animals
Which is not in any way, shape or form chimps.
Animals can never be bred to have sentience that is a gift from god
Which god? There’s like 600 of them.
We’ve been trying, honest.
Allah. Only he could make such beutiful creatures such as cats.
evidently he forgot to give it to you
>chimps to breed themselves into humans
human ancestors were not chimps. the human and chimp lineages diverged 5-13 million years ago from a common ancestor, which was an ape but was not a chimp
>human ancestors were not chimps.
they were indistinguishable genetically from modern chimps
>the human and chimp lineages diverged 5-13 million years ago from a common ancestor,
and then went back and mated with each other repeatedly for several million more years.
>which was an ape but was not a chimp
we wouldn't have been able to mate with chimps if our common ancestor wasn't a chimp.
>they were indistinguishable genetically
bullshit, post source
>we wouldn't have been able to mate with chimps
which is exactly what your mom did when you were conceived
>bullshit, post source
look it up. How much chimp DNA do humans have? How much chimp DNA do chimps have?
bait or moronation, call it.
You're thinking sapience, chimps are already sentient