Cosmic Queries – Bioethics

Neil deGrasse Tyson, comic co-host Paul Mecurio, and NYU bioethicist and philosopher Matthew Liao answer fan-submitted questions on artificial intelligence, the moralities of science, CRISPR, “designer babies,” the ethical limits of experimentation, vaccinations, and more. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Find out more at https://www.startalkradio.net/startalk-all-access/. Photo Credit: StarTalk©.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and beaming out across all of space and time, this is StarTalk, where science and pop culture collide.

• 0:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. We've got a cosmic queries edition of StarTalk. The subject: Bioethics.

• 0:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My co-host, Paul Maccherio. Paul!

• 0:43Paul Mecurio?

  Nice to see you again.

• 0:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back, dude!

• 0:44Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, thanks for having me back.

• 0:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for making some time for us before warming up Stephen Colbert's audience.

• 0:50Paul Mecurio?

  So you're right down the street.

• 0:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, which is up the street from you, from here, yeah.

• 0:54Paul Mecurio?

  And you provide a limo, which is nice.

• 0:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did we?

• 0:58Paul Mecurio?

  No.

• 1:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, you're not a bioethicist.

• 1:02Paul Mecurio?

  No.

• 1:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Neither am I, even though we might have thoughts on the matter.

• 1:05Paul Mecurio?

  Yes.

• 1:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right?

• 1:06Paul Mecurio?

  Every day, I'm constantly... I wake up and go, "What is going on ethically in the...?"

• 1:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bioethically, yes. So we went back into our rolodex and re-invited Professor Matthew Liao. Matthew, welcome back to StarTalk. Thank you. So we last had you on stage, live, in front of an audience at New York Comic-Con. And we had Adam Savage with us as well, and we were talking about human augmentation, and whether that would be bioethical. And you said off-camera, you remembered that that was my birthday? We sung, right? Oh, I tried to forget those things. 3,000 people sang for you. They did, they all sang. They all did sing.

• 1:46Paul Mecurio?

  It was written on the program that that was required when they came in.

• 1:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, welcome back, and good to have you. You are Director of the Bioethics...

• 1:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A program.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  The Center for Bioethics at NYU.

• 2:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At NYU, Center for Bioethics. And New York University, right here in town. So easy date for you. So we'll be calling more on you.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Oh, great.

• 2:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As we think of these issues. So we've got questions. Paul.

• 2:11Paul Mecurio?

  Yes.

• 2:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I haven't seen them. I don't know if Matthew's seen them.

• 2:14Paul Mecurio?

  No, he has not. And we'll just sort of jump right in.

• 2:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, let me just find out. What is bioethics? What's an example? Just to, just to, so we're on the same page.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's the study of biomedical issues arising out of biomedical.

• 2:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mostly medical now.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  Yep, mostly medical. But it could also involve things like artificial intelligence and sort of its connection to healthcare. So.

• 2:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but AI is not bio on purpose.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Right, right, right. But it could be used for.

• 2:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you want is silicon ethics.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, silicon ethics. That's right, that's right. Well, a lot of people are now thinking about putting in things like brain-computer interfaces into their, you know, into their brains and things like that. So the silicon and the organic matter, they're kind of merging.

• 2:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so this complicates your job.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 3:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What makes it more interesting, both?

• 3:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 3:02Paul Mecurio?

  What's the fastest moving area? Is it AI? Is it, is it genetic manipulation? Like what's?

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think both of them are occurring concurrently. So there's the CRISPR technology, genotyping technology, that's sort of really advancing.

• 3:18Paul Mecurio?

  I like that because if you can mutate my genes so I don't have to go to the gym.

• 3:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that how that works?

• 3:24Speaker 02

  That's exactly how it works. You can do it today.

• 3:30Speaker 02

  And then there's the artificial intelligence. People are using that for things like cancers. You know, their pathologists are looking at sort of these images. The AI is getting really good at pattern recognition and image recognition. They can spot sort of cancer cells almost as good as pathologists now.

• 3:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, so, but that wouldn't be an ethical thing. That's just the machine can do it better, so let the machine do it.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so ethics would be now the machine knows your condition and it's connected to the internet.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so a hacker might have access.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, or say that, you know, the insurance company,

• 4:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  you know, knows the algorithms and tries to hack it and sort of make it look like it's not cancer when it is, or something like that, or sort of issues to do with privacy.

• 4:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, he's paid to think about this stuff.

• 4:20Paul Mecurio?

  It's incredible. You have a very diabolical mind.

• 4:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. Yeah, come up with a way we can foil this system.

• 4:27Paul Mecurio?

  When you're out for dinner and the waitress goes, would you like to have dessert? You're like, what do you mean by that?

• 4:33Paul Mecurio?

  Are you fun around people? I mean, I mean, you're fun, but like, if they want to do something a little like inappropriate, like put a little extra gas in when nobody notices, you go like, no, there's an ethical issue there.

• 4:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How ethical are you is the short question there.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  Well, there are surveys that say that ethicists aren't necessarily necessarily more ethical.

• 4:52Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, really?

• 4:53Speaker 02

  So they, apparently they steal, they steal sort of books from libraries and they don't call their mothers, you know, on Mother's Day and things like that. So I call my, I call my mom.

• 5:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so do as you say, not as you do.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  That's right. That's right. That's right.

• 5:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So what questions you have, Paul?

• 5:11Paul Mecurio?

  Uh, we're gonna start with the Patreon question.

• 5:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Patreon, let's do it.

• 5:15Paul Mecurio?

  This is Oliver.

• 5:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hit us up to the Patreon.

• 5:17Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, absolutely. We love them. This is Oliver Giegaz. I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing that. Personally, I feel that we, the general public, aren't talking enough about subjects like bioethics and AI, even though they are clearly going to be a huge part of the future. Do either of you feel the same way? And if so, how can we better educate ourselves on these subjects?

• 5:38Speaker 02

  I completely agree. And so one of the things I try to do is to, yeah, talk to the public about some of these issues and, and, you know, work in this area. Things like sort of gene editing and artificial intelligence.

• 5:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How much of it is just fear that people don't understand the technology? And so we fear everything we don't understand.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  I think

• 6:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't that, doesn't it come down to that at some level?

• 6:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think a lot of it is that, just people are scared of new technologies. They, um, they're very cautious and there's also

• 6:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you have great science fiction writers that take it to the worst

• 6:16Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 6:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This topic, this future.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  That's right. The, you know, the robots are after us. They're gonna kill us.

• 6:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  The super intelligence is coming.

• 6:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Um, and so people get really scared and they think, oh, we should not do any of this stuff. And that's also bad for science. It's bad for progress.

• 6:32Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, but I just bought a car where I don't have a dipstick anymore and I just hit a button and it tells me the oil, the oil stuff.

• 6:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 6:38Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah. And I'm a little weirded out by that. Like, I want the physical thing.

• 6:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get off my lawn. You're not an old man yet.

• 6:46Paul Mecurio?

  But I don't trust them.

• 6:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Young whippersnapper.

• 6:48Paul Mecurio?

  What if the oil companies have adjusted the min, the, the program of that so that it's falsely telling me I need oil to make extra money?

• 6:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:57Paul Mecurio?

  We should hang out. You see what I'm saying?

• 6:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you, you sound like a bioethicist already.

• 7:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man, I, I was, okay, just not to, not to hang you out to dry.

• 7:06Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 7:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When the dashboard became all screen

• 7:10Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  without a mechanical speedometer.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where it just, it turns on.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in what turns on, it has your mileage. And I'm thinking, this is a screen. Come on now.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 7:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, where, where there's no mechanical mile, how does, who, I, I got all, old, old man on it. I said, give me back my dial.

• 7:32Paul Mecurio?

  I'm with you. I am pluck my toaster every night because I think it's gonna catch fire. I don't know. The whole thing is sort of overwhelming for people on some level.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think you're, you hit on exactly the right issue and the issue is

• 7:43Paul Mecurio?

  I did?

• 7:44Speaker 02

  is trust. Like, trust in technologies, trust, trust in algorithms, trust in, like, how do we make sure that when we roll out these technologies, there's trust? And, um, and that's the job of the scientists, but also the ethicists and everybody.

• 7:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the educator.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the educator.

• 7:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 7:59Speaker 02

  To make sure that we can actually trust these things.

• 8:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So here's a question that I remembered getting asked of the public.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I remembered at the time what my answer was then and it still is today.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the public in the day

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  answered differently. Here's the question. Um, if

• 8:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The, uh, something happens, you're on an airplane.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there's, something goes wrong with the airplane.

• 8:24Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and what would you trust? A button that says "auto-fly this thing home", or a trained Navy pilot? Who decorated trained Navy pilot to bring it home? It was a pilot, of course, and I'm thinking, "No, give me the automatic, push the auto button."

• 8:42Paul Mecurio?

  What if he just had a fight with his wife and just downed a bottle of scotch in the airplane?

• 8:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I'm saying. The button didn't have a bottle of scotch, guaranteed. So, so, and today, I mean, what my, my thinking has borne out, because planes are designed that they cannot actually be flown by a human being. There's too many surfaces that are under control of the computer. That's why flying is so stable now. So, that's, it's, do you trust the technology or not?

• 9:08Speaker 02

  That's right, yeah. And so, in order to trust the technology, you have to make sure that it's safe, it's tested, it's reliable. It can be, uh, sort of adversar- adversarially attacked. And that's why, sort of, uh, ethicists, uh, like myself, we ask these, you know, questions, like, things like, well, what happens? You know, we imagine these hypothetical examples, like, what happens if the insurance company is trying to cheat you and they'll do certain things? Or, you know, if the hacker is trying to hack into the algorithm? Or the imaging thing, you know, like, there are ways of, uh, there's plenty of evidence that some of these imaging, machine learning technologies can be hacked.

• 9:45Paul Mecurio?

  But I think this is amazing to me is like, science, and especially what you do, is so, sort of, on track with ethics. It, it's a microcosm, because in the society in general, ethics seems to be the last thing. It's like worrying about table manners at a Game of Thrones red wedding, right? Like, you just sort of, you guys have this ability to really think about these things. Like, there's this conversation about, like, well, AI could, like, destroy the planet. Well, humans are already kind of doing that, so is it any worse?

• 10:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe AI can do it better.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  More efficiently.

• 10:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. The most dallying about it.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. Less complaining. Yeah. Well, that's, you know, so some people think that, you know, the superintelligence, you know, if they were to be created, they're gonna decide that, hey, we're destroying the, you know, we're destroying the planet, and one way to stop, to help the planet is by, like, killing all of us.

• 10:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we're a virus.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  Because we're viruses. Yeah. That's what my wife uses for me.

• 10:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a line from The Matrix, the first.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so Paul.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got more questions?

• 10:49Speaker 02

  I do.

• 10:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  Raymond O. Yang, StarTalkRadio.net.

• 10:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Question about morals and science. Are there any circumstances in science where it would be acceptable to bypass ethics in human experimentation if the findings would lead to greater good? Wow.

• 11:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, good one.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  Wow, that's a really.

• 11:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wasn't that the entire Nazi medical?

• 11:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Enterprise?

• 11:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the, and the, and the Tuskegee study?

• 11:14Speaker 02

  That's the Tuskegee study as well.

• 11:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, just tell us about one or both of those, and then tell us what, that's a great question here.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the Nazis were sort of experimenting, they, on human, sort of, on humans, they're sort of, for example, they're taking them up into the airplanes to see how much pressure a human being can withstand.

• 11:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These are mostly Jews and other undesirables.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 11:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the, in the Germanic model.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  That's right, that's right. And, and they, you know, apparently, some people say that they were able to find out, you know, things that we wouldn't have otherwise, you know, found, but still, I think that it's very clear now that, you know, we need to sort of abide by these ethical norms, and we shouldn't, you know, we should, we need to stick to research ethics, and they're sort of, since the, there's something called the Belmont Report that came out as a result of the Tuskegee experiments, and.

• 12:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Describe the Tuskegee briefly.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's where, it's the experiment where there are these subjects, and they were given syphilis, and they were, they weren't told that.

• 12:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I thought they already had syphilis.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  They already had syphilis.

• 12:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they were told they were being treated, but in fact, they weren't.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 12:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then the observation was to see the progress of syphilis in the human. Body.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  That, that.

• 12:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and all the subjects were black men.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 12:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  That's right. After that, when, when it was discovered, um, basically that was the birth of bioethics as a field. People decided that we shouldn't be doing this, you know, we need to look at, there were sort of different principles, um, that were being proposed, things like do no harm, um, you need to make sure that the research benefits the subject. And then you need to make sure that there's autonomy, there's informed consent. So a lot of the biological principles came out.

• 12:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do no harm.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, go ahead. Well, if you do no harm, that's in there.

• 13:00Paul Mecurio?

  That's part of the Hippocratic oath.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 13:02Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, but talk to Mickey Rock surgeons, I mean, they're not, they're, they violated that thing eight ways to Sunday.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:07Paul Mecurio?

  I mean, isn't that sort of part of the, like, the medical field to me seems like that was fair to say the first sort of, uh, area where bioethics was sort of really founded in some way.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:18Paul Mecurio?

  And yet it seems like that profession, they're all over the place. I mean, there's pimple popper shows and TLC like.

• 13:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I think maybe their intent is to not do harm, even if they end up doing harm.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:27Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 13:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Like in plastic surgery, it can go wrong, but that wasn't their intent.

• 13:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 13:32Paul Mecurio?

  It's like me with a bad joke, yeah.

• 13:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You did harm.

• 13:35Paul Mecurio?

  It was a lot of harm. That set did a lot of harm.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:39Paul Mecurio?

  And I can't bring it back.

• 13:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so what you're saying is, uh, this is an interesting enlightened posture, which is no matter what is going on, I will do no harm to you. Even if having done harm to you saves the lives of a hundred other people.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the individual is, has the priority in this exchange, in this relationship.

• 14:01Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 14:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's, that's enlightened.

• 14:03Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and even profound, I think. And so.

• 14:07Paul Mecurio?

  Is the converse of this, this whole issue with measles now and how, cause I'm really fascinated by that. So someone is morally against a vaccination because they think it causes autism and yet they're putting entire communities at risk.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:19Paul Mecurio?

  Right?

• 14:19Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:20Paul Mecurio?

  Where, what is the conversation in your field now about that?

• 14:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's.

• 14:25Paul Mecurio?

  And what do you serve at a measles party, salmonella cake? I'm just curious, like, what do you?

• 14:29Speaker 02

  But. Yeah.

• 14:30Paul Mecurio?

  But that seems to me to be.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, so my own view about vaccination is that we have a public duty to, you know, be vaccinated.

• 14:38Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  And so that comes from sort of not harming other people. So we have an obligation not to harm other people. And so the issue with vaccination is that we also have a right to bodily integrity. So some people think that we shouldn't be forced to be vaccinated if we don't want to. And I think that's right, but I also think that that doesn't mean that we ourselves don't have a duty to be vaccinated. So we should do it voluntarily, so.

• 15:05Paul Mecurio?

  So there's a greater good.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  That's right. It's a greater good argument.

• 15:08Paul Mecurio?

  That overrides the personal integrity.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  Well, you can, personal integrity is something that you can waive. It's your right, but you can waive it, right? In these cases. And so in this case, I think that we have a duty to serve the public by getting vaccinated.

• 15:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You kind of straddled the fence there a little.

• 15:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You want to create a law.

• 15:27Paul Mecurio?

  You should run for president.

• 15:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was good.

• 15:30Paul Mecurio?

  I didn't answer that question. You know what? That was an unethical answer.

• 15:33Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 15:34Paul Mecurio?

  No. No, that, it's interesting. It's really complicated.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they actually dealt with a little bit of this in Planet of the Apes. Because you have the intelligent chimps and they're doing medical experiments on the humans that they captured.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 15:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we think that's an abomination because we're human.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 15:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But of course, we do that on lab animals all the time.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 15:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So who are we to say that they can't do that?

• 15:55Paul Mecurio?

  And yet, the quality of our life is much better because we do it. So it's sort of this whole.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:59Paul Mecurio?

  Balancing act.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why we have you.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay.

• 16:04Paul Mecurio?

  Not to do experiments on you.

• 16:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no.

• 16:06Paul Mecurio?

  That's next week. You come back and there's a dungeon and we take you there.

• 16:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's why, wait, just, let me just, I can't let this go. Is there, so there's not even some numerical threshold where you would say harm to one person if it saves a hundred?

• 16:21Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 16:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or a thousand?

• 16:22Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 16:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or a million?

• 16:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or a billion?

• 16:26Speaker 02

  So there's this view, it's called threshold deontology. And it's threshold deontology.

• 16:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Deontology.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  That's right. And it's the view that there's a threshold. And when you cross that threshold, then it might be okay to harm somebody in order...

• 16:41Paul Mecurio?

  But isn't it arbitrary? Who decides what the threshold is?

• 16:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, so...

• 16:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why we have him.

• 16:46Paul Mecurio?

  You're making all of these decisions.

• 16:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's the ethicist.

• 16:48Paul Mecurio?

  You? I'm leaving.

• 16:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're sitting next to an ethicist. Who makes these decisions? He makes the decisions. He and his people.

• 16:56Paul Mecurio?

  His people, he has a team.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, so you're absolutely right. So where's the threshold? It's not okay to, say, kill one to save five people. But is it okay to kill one to save a million people?

• 17:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  Or a billion people? What's the threshold?

• 17:11Paul Mecurio?

  But if one to five is okay...

• 17:14Speaker 02

  It's not okay, yeah.

• 17:15Paul Mecurio?

  Okay, but okay, so, but then you're saying, let's say, no joke here, Neil is one of the five, but then there's a million and you're saying it's okay. You've devalued his life based on the number of people.

• 17:27Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 17:28Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah. There doesn't seem to be any logic to that.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. So some people say that, well, if we were to think that it's okay to kill Neil in order to save a billion people.

• 17:39Paul Mecurio?

  Why, how did I think in the middle? Well, you're just, well, you're very smart, extremely intelligent, so you're worth a billion people. I'm worth like a dog. I'm the equivalent of a dog.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. Then all of us...

• 17:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is like, it's the rowboat thing. Do you throw out Abe Lincoln? Do you keep the criminal?

• 17:57Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 17:57Paul Mecurio?

  And by the way, how would we kill Neil? Just out of curiosity, would it be a slow death?

• 18:03Speaker 02

  I'm an ethicist.

• 18:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ethical way to kill me.

• 18:05Paul Mecurio?

  The most ethical way. Watch the Lifetime channel the whole time?

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Painless, painless, you know, painless when you're doing it, so...

• 18:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So tell me that it's called the...

• 18:12Speaker 02

  Threshold deontology.

• 18:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Threshold deontology.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so that's, you know, the view that there's a threshold beyond which it's okay to harm somebody in order to save the greater number.

• 18:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So at the, towards the end of the movie, the Secret of Santa Vittoria. This is, I don't know if it's fiction or if it's based on a real story. There's a town in Italy that had this, or it might have been France, this amazing wine-producing, they're world famous for their wine. And the Nazis were coming through and they didn't want the Nazis to get it. So they hid the wine in a cave and bricked it over and then put moss on it and made it look aged. And then the Nazis came in looking for the wine and they couldn't find it. And they scoured the countryside and they decided that whoever's the next person that comes out in the street, they're going to torture them and find out where the wine is hidden.

• 19:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the townspeople agreed to let the prisoner out of the, they said, "You're free to go." And the prisoner, because the prisoner didn't know any of this. The police knew it was just a thing. The prisoner comes out and the Nazis torture him. Wow. And they couldn't figure out where it was and the Nazis leave. Jesus. It would have been hilarious if the guy they tortured was a Somier and they just got caught. Come on, man. I just got my degree. Really? Yeah, what are you doing in jail, though? All right, we gotta take a quick break and when we come back, more on bioethics. Really cool when StarTalk continues.

• 19:53Speaker 03

  Bringing space and science down to earth. You're listening to StarTalk.

• 20:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk. We're talking about bioethics. My co-host, my guest co-host this episode, Paul Mecurio. Paul? Hey. You tweet, Paul? Mm-hmm. What, give me your Twitter handle? At Paul Mecurio. Okay, very creative.

• 20:28Paul Mecurio?

  I had my people, we gathered around, we had a long meeting. By the way, it's M E C U R I O, and I only say that because there's an Australian actor, Paul Mecurio. M E R C U R I O.

• 20:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mercurio.

• 20:38Paul Mecurio?

  Which is actually how I spell my name, but he got in the Actors Union before I did. He was in Strictly Ballroom in Exit to Eden.

• 20:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 20:44Paul Mecurio?

  So I did my first guest appearance on a sitcom.

• 20:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You had to change your last name.

• 20:48Paul Mecurio?

  My manager calls, "You have to change your name." I'm like, "Why, did I bust a law or something?" He's like, "No, this is this guy." So it's M E C U R I O. And in retrospect, I should have just changed it to like Smith. Because it would have been a lot easier.

• 20:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mercurio's cool.

• 20:59Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 20:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Reminds me of the planet Mercury.

• 21:00Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, there you go.

• 21:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. And we have Professor Matthew Liao, welcome. And you're head of the Bioethics Center at New York University. And we're reading questions, we've got questions from our fanbase.

• 21:12Paul Mecurio?

  We have another question for Matty. I'm gonna call you Matty the rest of the show.

• 21:17Paul Mecurio?

  This is Hey Hider from Instagram. "Do you think CRISPR's technology will allow us to take the DNA of an athlete, or maybe a bounty hunter, tweak it to be even better and stronger than the original, and then take the DNA and create a clone army? Can we do that? And if so, please send the instructions to my bunker." No, I just added that one.

• 21:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, cool. So what's up with that?

• 21:44Speaker 02

  So, yes, I think that's possible. I mean, sort of the fact that some people are stronger than others is partly genetics, right? And so if we can figure out the genetic sequence...

• 21:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't say that, because now Paul will say, "I'm not getting muscles because it's genetic."

• 21:58Paul Mecurio?

  Right, right.

• 21:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So therefore, there's no point in going to the gym.

• 22:01Paul Mecurio?

  Twinkies have nothing to do with it.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  Right, right. I did say partly.

• 22:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Partly, partly.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And so, like LeBron James, you know, sort of, you know, because of his genes, right? And so if you can sort of sequence...

• 22:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, he's big because of his genes, but is he athletic because of his genes?

• 22:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, he needs to work out.

• 22:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, okay.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  So there's definitely the nurture part.

• 22:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And other things very bluntly from your genes.

• 22:24Speaker 02

  That's right, that's right. And so we can figure that part out. And so, and then you can imagine using CRISPR technology to then put that into sort of either gametes or embryos and then create, you know, offsprings that have those traits.

• 22:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is, this is in our future?

• 22:41Speaker 02

  Uh, I think so. I think this is, uh, this is something that can be done.

• 22:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, so we will breed into our own civilization?

• 22:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Entire classes of people for our own entertainment?

• 22:54Speaker 02

  Well.

• 22:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that anything different from sumo wrestlers in Japan?

• 22:57Paul Mecurio?

  It's called the one and done rule in college basketball. Is that what we're doing basically?

• 23:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, tell me about sumo wrestlers. No, it's not a genetic thing, but they, they're specially treated and specially fed.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 23:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To be sumo wrestlers.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  That's right. Yeah.

• 23:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's a cultural thing. They don't live long and everybody knows this. I don't think they reach 40, age 40.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so is that really any different from doing that genetically?

• 23:20Speaker 02

  So, uh, that's what, you know, so people talk about designer babies and the ethics of designer babies. Like, so there's the question of whether we can do it, but then there's also whether we should be doing this. Um, and I think.

• 23:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's very Jurassic Park.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  And I think Neil asked a really good question.

• 23:37Paul Mecurio?

  Do you have an evil lair?

• 23:39Speaker 02

  Right, which is that we're already doing a lot of this, uh, you know, this hyper parenting.

• 23:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  Uh, look at like Serena Williams and, you know, Venus Williams.

• 23:48Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, but that's different than manipulating through CRISPR, manipulating.

• 23:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the result is the same. It's not different.

• 23:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. So the question is, what's the difference, right? What's the difference?

• 23:56Paul Mecurio?

  One psychologically and the others through genetic.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  Yes. So the means are different. That's definitely right. But why does that make a normative difference? Right? Why is it sort of ethically different when we do it at the genetic level? As opposed to after the, you know, sort of like after the child is born?

• 24:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So maybe it's, it's because, uh, maybe I can, you might genetically bred me this way, but I can choose to not do this.

• 24:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:23Paul Mecurio?

  But can you? Shouldn't you have bred him in a way not to fight who he is and what he is?

• 24:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but maybe I'll say I'd rather just be a poet and then you can't stop me. Whereas otherwise, if you're raising me this other way, then there's all this conflict.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, go to the gym, do your good, eat your three squares, whatever. Or stay at the piano. And, right, it's conflict at home.

• 24:45Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whereas you can be genetic, you have a genetic propensity, but then just decline.

• 24:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The option.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:50Paul Mecurio?

  Boring house, though. I'd rather be like, "I'm not, I don't have a mom," and then slam the door, you know?

• 24:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, the problem is, what if you also genetically modify the motivations? So that the child wants to be a, uh, a super athlete or super pianist.

• 25:06Paul Mecurio?

  Could you make me want to be Neil deGrasse Tyson?

• 25:09Speaker 02

  Maybe, you know?

• 25:10Paul Mecurio?

  I just want to be able to talk like this.

• 25:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  We have another one?

• 25:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the answer is yes, it's possible, and it could happen. And we need more of you, the ethicists, around at that time.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To either say no or yes to it.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good, okay.

• 25:25Paul Mecurio?

  Uh, Launchpad Cat Instagram. Is there any such committees that regulates new technologies such as genetic tech or AI? And puts regulators in place preemptively to prevent it from being used for amoral things? Like eugenics or something of that sort?

• 25:42Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. So the US has a, uh, sort of, uh, the...

• 25:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just remind people what eugenics is.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 25:48Speaker 02

  Eugenesis, yeah.

• 25:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, to remind people what eugenics is.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  Oh, eugenics is this idea, it means well-born. And so it basically, uh, you know, the Nazis were trying to breed these people to sort of, you know, like a certain race or certain class of people, uh, thinking that, uh, some genes are better than others. Um, and there's, uh...

• 26:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But even at a time when the concept of gene was not really, they just knew that if you breed two people who are desirable.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Presumably you'll get a desirable person. And then you prevent others who are undesirable from breeding. And then you can systematically shift the balance in the population.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 26:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To be a demographic who you want and care about. So the Aryan ideal was then what was sought.

• 26:31Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 26:31Paul Mecurio?

  Isn't that happening in a way with breeding dogs and breeding purebreds?

• 26:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:35Paul Mecurio?

  And sort of inbreeding?

• 26:37Speaker 02

  And, and plants and...

• 26:38Paul Mecurio?

  So like Irish settlers are out of their minds.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  Because they've been bred so much, we have a dog that we adopted, it's like a mutt and she's

• 26:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Totally chill?

• 26:48Speaker 02

  Totally chill. But to not breeding

• 26:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've been doing it with plants and animals.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 26:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And other animals.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  That's right. But is there really gonna be a board that's gonna oversee this preemptively? I mean, I said this before, but like, look at the medical profession, there are a lot of questionable things that are going on in the medical profession. Yeah. And there's a board that oversees that. Yeah. Preemptively.

• 27:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The boards have ethicists on it.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  That's right, that's right, there's, there's sort of different research committees, they have oversight, sort of IRBs, they're institutional research boards.

• 27:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Institutional research board.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, and then they have ethicists on, on those boards to look over research, look over the experiments to make sure that they're ethical. The problem is that with these IRBs, it's sort of

• 27:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh wait, there's something like that.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're not allowed to, we, the scientific community.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are rules about what animals you can do laboratory tests on.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Really?

• 27:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, like chimpanzees, there's certain things you can't do.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 27:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That you can, and depending on whatever, someone's judgment, some panel's judgment.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As to the value of that animal to the echo sphere or to whatever.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And other than PETA, if you're doing it to a rat, I don't think anyone cares.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, the rat, like, that poor thing's gets slammed every time, yeah.

• 28:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so do you think it can be effective going forward?

• 28:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the, I mean

• 28:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's only effective if the researchers are responsible.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 28:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 28:08Speaker 02

  That's right, yeah, and also, the value of the research has to justify whatever research that you're doing, so you can't just sort of, you know, torture these rats for fun. You can't? You cannot, right, so that's very unethical, right? Wish you'd told me that a couple of weeks ago. You know, so, in order to do research, even on animals, even on rats and mice, you have to be able to justify it to an institutional research board, you have to sort of say, why is this necessary? And there's no other way, you have to show that there's no other way.

• 28:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh yeah, yeah.

• 28:39Speaker 02

  And this is sort of a less harmful way of doing it, the least harmful way of doing it.

• 28:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's not the rat's fault it doesn't have hair on its tail, the squirrel does.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  It'd look adorable.

• 28:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  It's not its fault, it's got a little, it's really pointy nose.

• 28:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not its fault!

• 28:53Speaker 02

  Exactly. It's just hanging out, it's a rat.

• 28:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not its fault, it eats your garbage!

• 29:00Speaker 02

  Oh, now it's my fault!

• 29:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's your

• 29:02Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, I put my garbage out on the street.

• 29:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Squirrel eats nuts, and rat eats your garbage, and you don't like it.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  Right, that pigeon, right, rats with wings?

• 29:10Paul Mecurio?

  Do we do experiments on those?

• 29:13Paul Mecurio?

  We should. Look into that.

• 29:16Paul Mecurio?

  Do we have another one?

• 29:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I guess keep going.

• 29:17Paul Mecurio?

  All right. Scotia show frandon. Instagram. If in the future, our noble intentions lead to the practice of genetically editing fetuses for preventing birth defects and future diseases, how do we avoid the pitfall of creating designer babies and the possible repercussions? Genetic inequality, caste systems, etc. And would it even be a pitfall at all?

• 29:41Speaker 02

  Yes. So, that's right. Would it even be a pitfall at all? Maybe this is something we should think about doing. Maybe there are good reasons to do it, for example.

• 29:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But to do what?

• 29:52Speaker 02

  To genetically have designer babies. To engage in genetic editing. So, this is where we were talking about earlier, that people, as soon as, you know, when they think about new technologies, they get very scared. But maybe there are good uses of these technologies. So, just for example, if we wanna sort of go engage in, if we wanna go to the moon or go to space, we wanna make sure that we're more radiation resistant. Right? And so, there's, maybe there's some sort of genetic thing, basis where we can sort of be more radiation resistant. And so, that's something that we should look into if we wanna sort of.

• 30:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, that means you breed people for certain jobs?

• 30:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:36Paul Mecurio?

  But this idea of like creating the perfect human, like, I mean, I don't know. I don't even know if anybody wants that. I mean, everybody hates Tom Brady.

• 30:46Paul Mecurio?

  And that's about as perfect as you're gonna get. And I'm a Patriots fan saying that.

• 30:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's where I would take that. I would say, isn't so much of what we are, what we've been through to overcome what we're not.

• 31:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that if you come out perfect, then where does your character get developed? Where's your sense of?

• 31:06Paul Mecurio?

  Because you're interacting in an imperfect world. Right? So, your perfection is always challenged.

• 31:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I'm just saying, who you are is almost always what you have overcome in life.

• 31:18Paul Mecurio?

  Absolutely.

• 31:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're perfect, there's nothing for you to overcome. What do you got to show for anything?

• 31:23Paul Mecurio?

  So, you're saying it's unachievable to create a perfect person?

• 31:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you create a perfect person, but they will achieve nothing.

• 31:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I'm saying. The real achievers, they, they, stuff happened to them.

• 31:34Speaker 02

  Hey Doc, I was supposed to be perfect and I'm not. What's going on here?

• 31:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Look at the real achievers in life. They've overcome something. It's a broken family. There's a thing, they have a lisp, but they've got it in. They have a limp.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  A therapist gave me a list of people that, things that, people who were rejected. You know, that, like Edison.

• 31:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 31:56Speaker 02

  Bell, no one's gonna wanna talk to each other far apart through a box. And they were rejected and rejected and overcame, yeah.

• 32:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, that's what I'm saying. So, if you're perfect, you might be of no use to anyone.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  Right, yeah, so I think there are two things to say there. So, one is that, you know, human goals will change, like, the better you get. So, you know, like, my kids, when they're five years old, they like to play Go Fish, right? But now they're 10 years old, they don't play Go Fish anymore. It's too boring, right? Because you've kinda outgrown that, right? And so you can imagine that, uh, when we get smarter, there are other things, there are other challenges. Um, you know.

• 32:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That we don't even know of.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  That we don't even know of right now, right? Um, and then the, the flip side of that is, you know, if you really think that there's really value to being imperfect, then that can be, you know, there's a nap.

• 32:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Programmed.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  You know, like, uh, like, so make it more challenging.

• 32:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, take it back.

• 32:54Paul Mecurio?

  All right, should we do another question?

• 32:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, real quick, real quick, another question, go.

• 32:57Paul Mecurio?

  Okay, here we go. Uh, Patrick Lynn, Facebook. Are there any red lines that we should not cross, uh, or maybe never cross in science and in ethics? Uh, and a related question, are there any ethical red lines today that you think should be rolled back?

• 33:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, good one. And we don't have time to answer that because we have to take a break. When we come back, the red line. Should you cross it or not, on StarTalk?

• 33:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk. Bioethics is the subject of this edition of Cosmic Queries. Matthew Liao, you're our ethicist. You're head of a whole center for bioethics. Everybody comes to you with their problems. Is that how that works? And always good to have you, Paul. So when we left off, there was a question about crossing red lines.

• 34:18Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, this is Patrick Lynn, Facebook. Are there any red lines that we should not cross? And a related question is, have there been any red lines that you feel we've crossed that should be rolled back?

• 34:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 34:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I think there are many red lines that we shouldn't cross. So some people are, I mean, just, you know, creating humans that'll be like slave humans, for example. I mean, that's an obvious one.

• 34:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Doesn't that happen anyway if you create humans who are perfect? Then the humans who are not created perfect are left as slave to the perfect ones?

• 34:48Paul Mecurio?

  Well, you really hate perfection.

• 34:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, then you're making a slave class without purposely making a slave class.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. So there's this view that, I mean, even in our society now, sort of people have differential abilities, right? But we think that everybody has equal, like, they're all, they all have the same moral status, right?

• 35:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  And so we could still have that.

• 35:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People under the eyes of the law.

• 35:10Speaker 02

  That's right, that's right. And so we could still have that, even if you have, like, some people who are perfect and other people not as perfect, right?

• 35:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who would be enslaved by them.

• 35:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how about red lines that we have crossed that you would roll back today? I got one. I'm old enough, I'm old in all y'all, to remember the announcement of the first test tube baby that was born. That was banner headlines, test tube baby. And today, that's not even an interesting point to raise on a first date, whether you were in vitro or in utero conceived.

• 35:41Paul Mecurio?

  What do you like dating? Is that your opening line?

• 35:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but there was a day that might have been a thing. Yeah, I'm a test tube baby. It was like, wow, tell me about it.

• 35:49Paul Mecurio?

  That's a really good point.

• 35:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. And so, and back then, people say, are we playing God by fertilizing eggs in a test tube? And now it's like, of course you're doing it. This is, this is the fertility aid that goes on every day for so many couples. So I bet that that would be a line that existed back then that we cross and now you'd roll it back, because we're all just accustomed to it. Would you agree?

• 36:11Speaker 02

  Actually, we just ran a conference on the ethics of donor conception two weeks ago at NYU. And there were all these donor conceived individuals. And they were saying that they shouldn't have been born.

• 36:24Paul Mecurio?

  Should not have been.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  Should not have been born.

• 36:26Paul Mecurio?

  Why?

• 36:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, they were, because they feel that like they don't know who their genetic parents are. They feel very isolated from, you know, there's just a lot of psychological trauma.

• 36:39Paul Mecurio?

  Well, this idea of God, I mean, if you're an atheist, right? Like, so this, I was curious about this, like, where does religion creep into this, right?

• 36:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good point.

• 36:45Paul Mecurio?

  So like, people start to go, well...

• 36:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because ethics panels typically have a pastor or somebody that brings a religious philosophy to their argument.

• 36:51Paul Mecurio?

  And if I don't, if religion is not a part of my life on any level, why am I living to some ephemeral meaning?

• 36:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That explains everything about you.

• 37:00Paul Mecurio?

  I'm soulless, everybody.

• 37:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You heathen.

• 37:03Paul Mecurio?

  That's, that's my tour, the soulless stand-up comedy.

• 37:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're going to hell.

• 37:09Paul Mecurio?

  But even religion, that's all.

• 37:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, so, so, how does religion fold into this? Religious ethics, I guess.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, religion, so some people look at ethics from a religious standpoint. So there's like divine command theory, what would God do? Or what would God command in certain situations? So, so they would look at these issues from that angle.

• 37:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Speaking for God on the assumption that they understand the mind of God for having read books that they presume God wrote.

• 37:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just want to clarify.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, there's a view, there's the natural law view that what God would want is what our best reasoning, you know, whatever we come up with, our best reasoning.

• 37:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the time.

• 37:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, at the time, yeah. And so that's sort of a natural law type view, so.

• 37:55Paul Mecurio?

  I just don't know, I don't like, and you alluded to this, bringing a perfect person into the world, right? This idea of bioethics and whatever. And it's like, but then you look at the world we live in, right? Like, we're obsessed, okay, we're gonna make genetically enhanced corn so we have better nutrition so that we're in better shape to kill each other, right?

• 38:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 38:10Paul Mecurio?

  It's sort of like... I just feel like it's

• 38:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here we do. We need a gene for rational thought. Let's work on that one, okay? Get your people to

• 38:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:21Paul Mecurio?

  That's trademark.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, there are like a lot of people talking about moral enhancement. Like, you know, can we enhance ourselves morally so that we're less aggressive and more sympathetic and empathetic to the plights of others, et cetera, et cetera.

• 38:36Paul Mecurio?

  I say screw other people.

• 38:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next question. Go. Yeah, yeah, go for it.

• 38:43Paul Mecurio?

  We are gonna go to Dixon Clinton Instagram. Combining CRISPR and ever advancing AI will be the downfall of humankind, right? How many years do I have before I'm being murdered by cyborg overlords? Wow, you gotta stop going to the movies.

• 38:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so when do we all die?

• 39:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:00Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, well, we're all gonna die.

• 39:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, good.

• 39:04Paul Mecurio?

  But yeah, so that's the question there.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  So, you know, some people like Ray Kurzweil thinks that, you know, by 2050 we'll have super intelligence, other scientists, AI scientists.

• 39:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ray Kurzweil, we have interviewed him on StarTalk, in a live taping. Yeah, go on.

• 39:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, and so, and other people say it's not so, you know, like, they're less optimistic, but they think that maybe by 2100 we'll have super intelligence. And so, and so there's a real life issue. What happens when you have these really smart AIs that are, you know, that are smarter than us?

• 39:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We become their slaves.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  We become their slaves, if we're lucky. Maybe the

• 39:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, maybe we'll just become their pets.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. Or maybe we'll go out of existence.

• 39:46Paul Mecurio?

  I can see you sniffing your butt.

• 39:52Paul Mecurio?

  Maybe I went too far there, sorry.

• 39:56Paul Mecurio?

  All right, this is Chris Cherry Instagram. Hi, Chris, from the Sunshine Coast, Australia. Not Austria, Australia. Should we fear DNA samples being required by health insurance companies and employers? Potentially, you could be discriminated against because of something you have no control over. Yeah, Chris, it's called race and ethnicity. It's happening every day.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 40:19Paul Mecurio?

  You alluded to this about the insurance.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, absolutely. I think that's a real worry that as, you know, more and more of our information are available, you know, through genetic testing, et cetera, et cetera. You know, companies might use that in sort of inappropriate ways or unethical ways.

• 40:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So an ethics board would say, no, insurance companies will not have access to your DNA.

• 40:40Speaker 02

  That's right. Or maybe a society, that maybe that's something that's beyond a like ethics board.

• 40:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So don't leave a coffee cup that you sip from in the, in the insurance office.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. They might take, they swab.

• 40:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Swab.

• 40:53Speaker 02

  Swab it and send it.

• 40:54Paul Mecurio?

  Just show up completely.

• 40:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Swab your spit.

• 40:56Paul Mecurio?

  Hazmat suit, gloves.

• 40:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we gotta go to lightning round. Okay, ready? So you're gonna ask a question and Matthew, you have to answer it in a soundbite.

• 41:07Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 41:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pretend you're on the evening news and they're only gonna soundbite you.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 41:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, go.

• 41:11Paul Mecurio?

  Okay, this is Justin Vilden from Instagram. What's your opinion on ethics of manipulation slash creation of AI in general? Could we manipulate with it so far to come close to something resembling our own consciousness?

• 41:27Speaker 02

  Not yet.

• 41:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When?

• 41:30Speaker 02

  It's, it's hard to say. So I don't think we have figured out what consciousness is or, you know, sort of the biological substrates of consciousness to be able to do that yet. None of the machine learning technologies right now can do that.

• 41:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Today, we understand consciousness. How soon after that do we program that into computers? The next day. Okay, next question.

• 41:53Paul Mecurio?

  This is De Janeiro Instagram. Do you think AI and humans will be integrated or DNA editing can be used to create superhumans like we see in X-Men?

• 42:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like that because if you can edit the DNA, what do you need the computer for?

• 42:07Paul Mecurio?

  That's, yeah.

• 42:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the question, right?

• 42:09Speaker 02

  So the computers might be faster, right? So they have more bandwidth. So the brain is sort of very slow. It thinks very slowly. So you can imagine that once you can kind of augment through some sort of brain-computer interface, it gives you vast amount of storage, space, capacity, upgrade.

• 42:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And perfect memory.

• 42:26Speaker 02

  And perfect memory.

• 42:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's none of this arguing about what happened.

• 42:28Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, exactly. I said this. No, I didn't forget to buy the milk.

• 42:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's go to the videotape. Right, this is a theme on many episodes of Black Mirror. By the way, you should check it out on Netflix. Okay, next.

• 42:41Paul Mecurio?

  Galaxy Star Girl Xbox Instagram. Do you think?

• 42:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa!

• 42:46Paul Mecurio?

  I...

• 42:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent, I love it.

• 42:48Paul Mecurio?

  And then, uh, and as an underscore, but I left that out. Do you think the future of AI in society will bring about, uh, the less need for doctors? I believe doctors will still be needed, just in fewer numbers.

• 43:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm not sure about the numbers, but, uh, you know, we're gonna have wearables that are gonna be able to track our heartbeats. Uh, our toilets are gonna be able to, you know, kinda, you know, analyze our stool, you know, and sort of tell us whether we're healthy and not, or not. And then that's gonna be sent to doctors.

• 43:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you want your toilet talking about your food?

• 43:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what he just said.

• 43:23Paul Mecurio?

  If my toilet could talk, it would throw up.

• 43:28Speaker 02

  So, um, but I, I think it's coming. Smart toilets are coming. So, uh, that's sort of the, that's the next business, you know?

• 43:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next!

• 43:40Paul Mecurio?

  Uh, this is from, uh, Kristen Versai Instagram. I would like to know what are the considerations to judge something as, quote, "good" or "bad" in the aspects of modifying an organism, an organism genetically? Humans, for instance.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  So I have this view that, uh, humans need, uh, some basic capacities. Things like the ability to be able to think, uh, to have deep personal relationships and things like that. And so I think that whatever we do with genetic modification, we shouldn't interfere with those core human capacities. And, and if, uh, say, uh, and the flip side of that is if, uh, an embryo, like an offspring, doesn't have those capacities, then we should try to make sure that they have those.

• 44:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In whatever genetic way.

• 44:28Speaker 02

  In whatever genetic way.

• 44:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And beyond that, it's just, it's just luxury items.

• 44:32Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 44:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Off of a shopping list.

• 44:33Speaker 02

  That's right, that's right, exactly, exactly.

• 44:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, next, go.

• 44:36Paul Mecurio?

  Okay.

• 44:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cut time to have like one more.

• 44:38Paul Mecurio?

  Here we go.

• 44:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That'd be a good one, dude.

• 44:41Paul Mecurio?

  Uh, wow, there's a lot of pressure here. Um, okay, this is, uh, Dagan Pleak Instagram. We will attempt, uh, will we attempt to splice human DNA with other animal DNA to make mutants of a sort? Uh, with this conflict with our ethics? And what are your thoughts on creating new humanoid species? It's called a centaur, isn't it?

• 45:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or a minotaur.

• 45:02Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 45:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a great question. So it relates to what I just said earlier. I think as long as we don't affect those core fundamental capacities, sometimes we might look into these type of, you know, like augmentations, these, you know, combining different genes.

• 45:19Paul Mecurio?

  What animal would you want to splice for the human?

• 45:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can tell you.

• 45:21Paul Mecurio?

  Would you want to be?

• 45:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll tell you.

• 45:22Paul Mecurio?

  Let me guess, a dog, so you could sniff.

• 45:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll tell you, in my concluding remarks, I will say, I will tell you.

• 45:28Paul Mecurio?

  Oh.

• 45:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes. So we got time for just some reflective thoughts. So Paul, why don't you go first?

• 45:35Paul Mecurio?

  I just think all of these questions that you deal with, it's endlessly fascinating and on some level open-ended, right? You seem to have the most subjective sort of job in a way.

• 45:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, you're like the calmest person I've ever met.

• 45:47Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, which means you're up to no good.

• 45:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, he's hiding something.

• 45:50Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, exactly. You know something that we don't, right? And we didn't get much into this, but this, I know you've done a lot of work with manipulation of memory for PTSD, rape victims, et cetera, and erasing thought. Is that making advances?

• 46:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was that part of your TED Talk? Is that right? Yes, yes.

• 46:09Paul Mecurio?

  And can I have it in September? Because I'm going to a reunion in high school and I want to wipe out the memory of asking Renee Sherlock to the prom and getting turned down twice. I want to wipe out her memory and mine.

• 46:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And both memories. Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 46:23Speaker 02

  Take some propenol with you.

• 46:25Paul Mecurio?

  I knew you were a drug dealer.

• 46:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's got it, he's got the drugs.

• 46:28Paul Mecurio?

  Is that fairly far along?

• 46:30Speaker 02

  That's, that's pretty far along, but you unfortunately got to take it within 12 hours of asking someone to a prom, so, you know.

• 46:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It erases your short-term memory.

• 46:39Speaker 02

  That's right. It stops it from consolidating into the long-term memory. There's, there's another thing, something called zip. So there's this idea that...

• 46:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not consuming anything called zip. I'm sorry.

• 46:54Speaker 02

  Zip erases everything.

• 46:56Paul Mecurio?

  Really?

• 46:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:57Paul Mecurio?

  Wow, I'll see you after the show.

• 47:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Matthew, give us some reflective concluding remarks here.

• 47:04Speaker 02

  So I think these, there are a lot of these new technologies there on the horizon. I think they have a lot of promises, but we also should worry about their, you know, we should be mindful of their ethical implications and...

• 47:19Speaker 02

  You know, I think they can help.

• 47:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Further keeping you employed.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  That's right, so that, you know, it keeps me employed. That's hilarious. It keeps raising issues that aren't issues. No, that's an issue, it is.

• 47:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not an issue yet, but it will be.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  It's an issue, my kid's going to college next year. It's an issue. Yeah. And I think ultimately, our aim is to sort of create human well-being, human flourishing. And so, we want to make sure that these technologies do that.

• 47:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So here's what I think, not that anyone asked.

• 47:50Speaker 02

  Wait, Neil, what do you think?

• 47:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you, Paul.

• 47:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The fact that you can cross-breed

• 47:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  the genetics of different species at all. We do this, we do this often in the food chain. Is a reminder that all life has some common DNA. So we should not be surprised that you can take a fish DNA, put it in a tomato. Just a reminder that we're all related genetically. So what I think to myself is, the human form is not some perfect example of life. I like the fact that newts can regenerate their limbs. Where's the gene sequence for that? Let's put that in humans and give it first to veterans who have lost their legs or arms. And regrow our limbs.

• 48:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If a newt can do it, and we have genetic editing, why can't we do it?

• 48:48Speaker 02

  Then why haven't we?

• 48:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, well, maybe that's to come. But I look at what is possible in the experimentation of the biodiversity that is life on Earth, and say, why can't we have some of that?

• 49:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that is a thought from the cosmic perspective. I want to thank Matthew Liao. Second time on StarTalk, we will bring you back for sure.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you.

• 49:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, and have fun down in that fun, but, you know, work hard, make a better world for us. Help us make a better world for ourselves.

• 49:19Paul Mecurio?

  Keep creating issues that aren't really issues.

• 49:23Paul Mecurio?

  By the way, best mind eraser? Better than vodka? Right. So you didn't even invent it.

• 49:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Takes out those cells right there. Paul, always good to have you.

• 49:32Paul Mecurio?

  Thank you.

• 49:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, I've been and will continue to be Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, coming to you from my office at the Hayden Planetarium of the American Museum of Natural History. And as always, I bid you to keep looking up.