January 21, 2014 • 35 mins
The Werewolf Principle: Will astronauts of the future be able to adapt their physiology for long-term space travel and life on other planets? In this classic STBYM episode, Robert and Julie explore the ideal physical modifications that could theoretically create the world's best astronaut. 'The Werewolf Principle' cover image by artist Ian Miller
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hey there, welcome to Stuff about your mind.
Julie Here. Robert is out this week with his son
who has undergone surgery and is doing well. So we
decided to present a classic episode The Werewolf Principle, in
(00:24):
which we discussed the ideal astronaut and how we can
tinker with our humanness to adapt ourselves to space. Latest
will be discussed a positive attitude, of course, not to
mention becoming a cyborg. Julie. There is a book I
read a little while back, and it's reference to the
(00:44):
title of this podcast, UM The Werewolf Principle by Clifford D. Simmic,
and I find it really interesting. It's not perhaps not
Simmic's best works, and he's probably best known for a
book called City, which one Hugo Award, But it's kind
of like they came up to the Clifford, you know,
(01:04):
really established us sci fi dude, and they said, hey,
we want you to write, um a novel about wherewolves
from space? And then he set out and wrote the
most intelligent, interesting take on that concept possible, instead of
it just being where wolves landing and running around howling
it things, um it involved a guy. Yeah, yeah, which
(01:26):
gets into the interesting argument that I've always wondered. It's like,
what if what would happen to a werewolf landed on
the moon. Would they be aware a wolf all the time?
Would they be affected by what the Earth was doing?
Would it be howling all the time? Yeah? Yeah, interesting
But but but Clifford, the simics, the whole take was
that he decided to make this a person who had
been engineered to adapt to different environments and sent off
(01:50):
into space. So he goes to, if you were to
land on Mars, his body would rapidly change so that
he could know live on Mars, um et cetera. And anyway,
he's returned to Earth and he's he keeps changing into
these previous forms. Uh, And that's the base. There's also
something really like that, like humans live in houses that
can fly around and there, and they're brownies like little
(02:11):
um creatures that live in the woods. So isn't he
like two hundred years old or something by the time
he returns. Yeah yeah, yeah, so he's got he's got
a lot of living. Yeah, but it's it's such a form.
But at hard it's such a fascinating concept because, uh,
we're we still talk about tera forming a lot. We
talk about I mean, one of the basic models of
(02:33):
space flight is let's take a little bubble of our
environment and let's blast it up into into orbit. Because
we are ultimately we're creatures that can that are that
have evolved to live only in a very small region
of our own atmosphere, just a small portion of of
the Earth's crust, because the crust also some definitions includes
(02:55):
the atmosphere. So so we're only really supposed to live
in this one little section. But we keep pushing the boundaries.
You know, we want to climb on Everest, we want
to to live in space, and then we want to
have our little environment when we're in orbit. We want
to turn Mars into Arizona. Uh and uh and and
and and and you see these fantastic science fician visions, um,
(03:17):
where we've gone out and done that to all these
different worlds where we we just find you know, exo
planet after exo planet, change it into into Florida, change
it into a vacationville, right right. Um, we're looking at you,
Richard Branson. But and then do you think, okay, well,
I mean fish. They're not doing this. They're not saying, Wow,
I wish I could live on land run and have
these gills. You know, how do I come up with
(03:39):
some sort of lung situation here? Right? They ended up evolving,
adapting over time and uh and reaching the point where
they where something could not return to the water. Uh.
And and so you run into this interesting argument of
what should we be doing to evolved to our setting
and as opposed to changing our setting to to to
(04:03):
adhere to our demands? Right, And of course the astronaut
is like the perfect specimen to look at this whole
argument with, right, Yeah, it's they're not very ideal in
terms of trying to actually explore space and nothing against them, yeah,
getting in the way. Well, that's actually a good place
to start, Like what is the ideal astronaut given what
we currently know about you know about about sending people
(04:26):
into orbit um. One of the more interesting things is
that you want somebody with ideal methane output of course. Yeah.
And of course, for I think we all know what
I'm talking about farts of course in space. And when
you see ideal, I think you mean minimum minimum um. Yeah,
because at first of the methane is it's flammable, so
(04:48):
you don't want you have a closed environment. You don't
want like a lot of gas going off in there
and potentially catching on fire while guys are carrying off
you know, experiments, etcetera, plus the whole psychological thing. If
you're going to be stuck in a spacecraft for six months,
you don't necessarily want to be gas and people out
right right right. There's a govern name of Edwin Murphy,
(05:10):
and he did some he conducted some research on this.
Uh and this is this is really anoting it was.
It was. There's a whole chapter dealing with with this
topic and Mary Roach's latest book UM about Mars and
the Space the space program. So Murphy used an experimental
bean meal and he fed it to volunteers who had
been rigged to a erectal catheter uh to uh and
(05:33):
and to to measure how much gas was going out
uh and he was he was interested in individual differences,
not just the the overall volume, but in you know,
the percentage of methane in the game in the the
the flattest I believe it's the flattest technical term for it,
because if you're writing a scientific you know, um, discussion
(05:55):
on something you don't want to just you know, keep
saying the farts over again part doesn't cut it. Yeah
in sert cheese joke here Yeah, uh so. Um, but
what he found was really interesting. Uh he found out
that about half the population doesn't produce methane in there. Um.
I thought that was incredible because it was something about
like their their bacterial flora. Yeah, it's and it's great,
(06:17):
and it's important to know that methane itself is like
a it's not methane doesn't stink. Okay, there are other
things at work in one's digestion besides methane production. Um.
So it's not something where you can where where these
people are not creating or uh you know, emanating or
expressing express thing flattist, though he did apparently claim that
(06:40):
one he found one individual who was quote flattist free,
which just sounds I just I don't I didn't even
think that was possible. I mean, can you imagine, I
mean you can put that on your resume? Yeah, I
mean people would or would they hate you? I don't know.
I would kind of I would feel like like if
someone if I was in a position to hire somebody
and be like, oh, by the way, I'm flattist free.
I would be like, well, I'm not hiring you, jerk.
(07:01):
You're gonna set around just make us look bad. Yeah, yeah,
you're right. Yeah, we could never blame anything on you. Yeah, yeah,
I just can't. It would happen and like we do.
We just said they're all smug like and just it
would be horrible. Yeah, but you could always be an astronaut. Yes,
being an astronaut would be great because because there wouldn't
be any concerned with methane at all. Um. So, Murphy's
(07:24):
whole argument was, hey, NASA, you need to focus on
getting astronauts who have the proper um flattest output for space.
You want to want people that are that are producing
the less hostile flattest and only those people. Everybody else
you're you're out of the pool. Yeah. And then NASA
was like, no, we're just gonna not serve beans, that's right,
No cabbage, broccoli. I think we're going to get the
(07:47):
go the easier route. Yeah. And actually, this guy to um,
if I understand this correctly from Mary Riches book, he
was like a flattest researcher, Like he was employed as
a flattest reacher researcher, and only a plattest research. This
was his life work. Yes, yeah, so you can can
imagine why he took it so seriously and and didn't
(08:08):
he even uh insert the rectal cath Yes, she actually
talked about that, the rectal catheter. Yeah. I mean it's
we're we're laughing, but it's you know, it's a it's
an important area of study if you're talking about sending
guys up in gals up into space in this little,
tiny environment. But it's but this is cost it's also
like one of the first like real you know moments
(08:30):
like which way are we gonna go? Are we gonna
gonna gonna change our environment? Are gonna change us? And
this was a chance to not really change us, but
to you know, selectively choose. And I mean granted there
there are you know, minimal requirements for for astronauts and
and uh members of any you know, space program stuff
like um you know, you know, I sight blood pressure height. Um.
(08:53):
You know obviously that they tend to go for people
who have at least a bachelor's degree in some sort
of science or engineering. Our mathews. Yeah, so and and
you have to have kind of a happy, go lucky disposition, right. Yeah,
and even like space tourism, most of them models we're
looking at, even the ones like you know, even like
the Branson's whole whole space tourm tourism deal. As as
(09:14):
much as they're going to try and cater that to
to make make it available to everybody, Uh, the certain
people are just not going to be eligible to go
into space, right, So people who have a fear of flying, right,
I think are going to be cut off the list. Yeah.
But but this is a case where where NASA could
could either have have have said, yes, we're gonna go
after the people who who have minimal flatt us you
(09:34):
know in our o methane producers um, and they said, no,
we're going to change the meal plant. So it's so practical.
So so other areas that the mary roach brings up.
Bone mass, of course is a big deal if you're
gonna lose bone mass if the more you're in a
in a in a microgravity environment. Yeah, and actually that
I mean the staff that I saw in that was
(09:56):
astronauts lose one to two percent of their bone mass
for each month they spend in spe that's quite a bit. Yeah,
and uh and but but the interesting thing is that
black women, for instance, are seven to denser in their
bones than than than wider Asian women. And uh, of
course Mary didn't have the the data for men, just
(10:16):
for the women, and I've seen that's tied to osteoporosis research.
But but conceivably, um black men would also have better
bone density than wider Asian men. So so it ends
up creating an interesting argument there should we only be
using um minimal flatt us black astronauts, you know? Why not?
(10:39):
Why not? Yeah, if they're gonna be more suited for space.
And you can take this even one step farther, and
that is that maybe they should all be deaf, because
because you know, if anybody's ever had motion sickness, be
it on a boat, in the car, etcetera, you know,
it's you get kind of nauseous. Next thing, you know,
you're throwing up into the the floorboard of the vehicle.
(11:00):
And it's an inner ear thing. And I think it
used to think it was tied to the stomach, but
it's not. It's tied to inner ear and uh and
and many people argue that it's kind of a mistake
of evolution, because vomiting, as much as we may hate it,
does serve a number of really key functions. You know,
you eat something and it's bad, it's poisonous, you barf
it up, start over um and and actually animals that
(11:22):
don't vomit, I mean that becomes a problem because if
they eat something they should eat a belief. Horses are
like this, Uh, they eat something they shouldn't eat. They
can't vomit it up. It's it's you know, it's more
of a it becomes a real problem with discomfort, right, Yeah,
because like with kids, right, if a kid eats something
they're not supposed to. A child, not a goat. If
a child eat something that he or she is not
(11:43):
supposed to, you can always there's the vomiting, right, you
can give them epicac or something, right. Uh. And I'm
thinking about this too, like this is sort of accident
of nature, right, because whatever controls our vomiting response is
near our inner ear or function or something along this time. Sorry,
I don't have the correct terminology, but I sort of
scan that remembering. Okay, so that's why we sometimes vomit
(12:04):
because we're Yeah, but it serves no evolutionary you know,
there's no reason for it. It's like I'm feeling kind
of motion sickness and my body's like we have to
vomit now, you know, there's no Yeah, it serves no
like evolutionary advantage. UM. So the only way to a
completely get rid of motion sickness is um is for
(12:24):
the human have a non functioning inner ear. And uh
so you we can see within go for deaf people.
So all black death astronaut crew with minimal flattus, all right,
I mean it could happen. I guess the problem is
is that you just keep narrowing the pool to the
point where it's probably harder and harder to get astronauts
right unless you create and this is I'm throwing this
(12:46):
out there is like a future kind of thing and
and and kind of a potentially scary eugenics kind of thing.
But like then you create a breeding program, right just
for astronauts, just to encourage the traits. I mean, we
do it. We've done it with dogs and that has
some horrible effects and many times. But conceivably, it seems
to me you could you could have a breeding program
(13:07):
similar to the you know, like something out of dune
where you're just breeding for ideal astronauts and and so
it's like a genetic, you know, hereditary thing. You create
an entire cast or subspecies of astronauts. I know. And
I'm just thinking now, like the Island of Misfits and
we have bread nose reindeer in the elphit wanted to
be a dentist, Like there might be that person that's
(13:28):
bread to you know, do this and guess you know what,
I don't want to. I really want to go to space. Thanks. Yeah,
but then when you have to sit down with and
be like like but dude, listen, listen like you well,
don't listen, like read the words from the writing because
you're deaf, because we bread for that. You know. It's
like your your death, your bone density is incredible, your
(13:48):
you have no methane when you when you when you
break wind, like this is this is for you. But
they're like, no, I really really want to be an artist.
But what do you do? Yeah? Right, I guess what
it's time to take a break. We get back. We
will talk more about the werewolf persiple. So there's that
(14:10):
that viewpoint like what if we so you know, step
one we we only choose the people that are ideal
for space. And then okay, we can take that a
step farther. What if we we bred people for space?
But then then the next step is, what if we
engineered people for space? What if we made them, um
adapt or made them better? We adapted them and to
(14:31):
the cyborg yes, um, And like a simple version of
it would be like if you just made people deaf
before we sent into space, which is kind of horrifying,
but I'm not sure a lot of people go for that.
They might, I don't know, but there are a number
of interesting changes that could that could take place that
would be less scary, though some of them are pretty scary. Um.
So let's look get the cyboard now that this is
(14:54):
a term that is preloaded these days, because when when
when I say cyborg, what do you think of? Well,
I think of the terminating I think he's technically yeah,
he was more of a robot covered with flesh, with
flesh um Darth Vader. Yeah, I think Darth Vader was
pretty cybernetic in his state. Um RoboCop. Perhaps the cyborg.
(15:15):
I'm I'm kind of foggy on the explanations in the
first two movies. But but yeah, you get this idea.
It's like a human being that has been augmented terrifically
or terrifyingly with machines. Six million dollar Man, six million
dollar man is is a prime example on the cyborg Yeah.
But but again, this is kind of a term that's
gon been taken by by science fiction and and just
(15:35):
sort of they run wild with it. So now you
just think of like man with half metal face kind
of thing. The term actually originates back in nineteen sixty
September of nineteen sixty in UH an edition of Astronautics.
And this was an article by men manfred E. Kleins
and Nathan S. Klein uh one with a C, the
second with a K, and it was titled Cyborgs in
(15:58):
Space and it's a great read. I will have to
throw up a link to it on the the accompanying
blog post when this podcast comes out. Um, but they may,
they just may. May. They make the huge argument that
like here's just a quote from it. It It really sums
it up. In the past, evolution brought about the altering
of bodily functions to suit different environments. Starting as of now,
(16:18):
it will be possible to achieve this to some degree
without alteration of heredity by suitable biochemical, physiological, and electronic
modifications of man's existing um bodies. So and so, what
I thought was kind of cool about this too is
that it's not necessarily that they felt like they were
changing humans, but that they were improving humans so that
(16:41):
they could explore more and they could have more independence
to to create more and to think more if they
if they weren't um burdened by their own physicality. Right,
and you in pulinding, people make the argument that the
cyborg has been around for ages. Right, the second that
we skinned an animal and started wearing its fur cyborg. Second,
with the second we strapped or wristwatch to our to
(17:03):
our arm cyborg dentures exactly, Yeah, how are you gonna chew?
You know, you throw the dentres in. You've augmented the
individual with technology to better enable them for their environment.
You've become something more than human. Right and and certainly
we went into a number of of these possibilities on
the previous uh UM Accessorizing podcast about you know, somebody
(17:26):
can wear flippers, They're gonna they're gonna swim faster. Um,
you know, we we wear about computers, are you know,
are our iPhones? It's like there's there's so much technology. Eyeglasses, contacts, um, lasers.
These are all examples of something where technology changes the
person to better suit them for their environment. You may
think of it as just your everyday life, but your
(17:46):
everyday life is here on earth. But what if the
everyday life was in space? So clients and client took
that and then they looked at all the problems facing
us and trying to exist in space or explore space.
And I thought that the solutions they came up with
were incredible. I mean, they're they're really creative, and they're
really interesting ways to to approach the problem. Yes, And
(18:09):
I have to tell you though, to like reading this,
I thought, God, this is this is so crazy, Like
this is the Madman era. Can you imagine them like
sitting in a cocktail party saying, well, I've got an
idea about this whole problem of the lungs in space? Yeah? Yeah,
or I mean it reminds me a little bit. In
Mary Roach's book, she talks about like when you would
have scientists, the scientists that designed space travel and the
(18:32):
jock afternaughts that would do it, like sitting in the
same room and the and she pointed out how that
the scientists would be like, you know, we could develop
a way for the for them to actually eat parts
of the ship on the return trip from Mars, and
maybe there's a way we can make it to where
they can eat eat pooh or something. You know. It's
like they're actually beginning to think along those lines. And
the astronauts were like, no, no no, no, no, we're not
(18:54):
doing that because it's something about like the scientific mindset
when you really get into it from a just a pure,
purely logical problem solving, uh you know, frame of mind. Right.
So so there's a hint of that, more than a
hint of that in this in their original article, because
it's some of the possibilities are a little uh uh,
you know, they make you shake your head a little,
(19:14):
but but but they're but the logic of it is
is interesting and intensive. For instance, they pointed out that
we could have osmotic pressure pump capsules, um and sensing
and controlling mechanisms in our bodies, like implanted to give
us medications for blood pressure to give us basically speed
if we need to to stay awake um, which you know,
(19:37):
they have various medications on space UM any kind of
a space mission these days, but you generally have to
pop the pills yourself. But what if it was an
automatic thing. And that's one of the huge key um
you know, aspects of of what was basically cyborg one
um as outlined in this proposal, and that was that
we were taking these different things and turning them over
(19:59):
to subconscious functions, so automating the right Yeah. So it
wouldn't be like like, oh, I'm getting a little sleepy
and I've got the high pressure job ahead of me.
I better you know, pop some of this uh this
NASA speed Uh No, you would just it would just
kick in ums all these sensors that are taking the
data and recalibrating your body based on that. Yeah. And
and other things too in this situation, would be like
(20:21):
any radiation medications, uh, pituitary drugs to help induce hibernation.
That was a big key too, because you get into
the issue of how are you going to worry about
sending people on long space voyages where you know they're
gonna be that they're going to be setting around doing
nothing for you know, years. What if you can we
could learn something from bears. Well, bears don't technically hibernate,
(20:44):
I remember correctly, it's a different Well, I think that
they are interested in pairs. It's something that when they hibernate,
they're actually redistributing the calcium back to their bones or
something nuh like that, that which they thought. Well, if
we could just replicate that humans would be great. Yeah, yeah,
because bears are sitting around doing nothing for for the
period of their of their their winning nap time. But
(21:06):
they're not they're not losing a bone in their bone
density and their their muscles. They can still walk at
the end of it. The human lad in bed for
X number of months here, she would not necessarily be
able to move when I got it when they woke up.
And the crux of the problem too is that yeah,
you can you might have muscle atrophy atrophy, but you
can get your muscles back afterward, right, And you'll have
(21:28):
some bone loss, but you may not be able to
recoup actually all of the bone density that you lost
in particularly um the area and your hips. So if
you're an astronaut and you reach retirement age, then it's
not a great scenario for you, because that's like the
number one thing that happens to people in your older
years is that they fall and break their hips. So
it's actually like a real problem for Yeah, yeah, totally.
(21:50):
Here are a few other things from the Cyboard paper.
They suggested replacing them, along with an inverse fuel cell
um altering your intestinal plumbing so that don't love this
waste water goes through a filter and right back into
your blood, which which this is one of those where
you can just imagine it coming up in in the
(22:10):
Madman era where it's like, you know, we're wasting a
lot of water when we go to the bathroom. I
think we can we can probably pump that through a
filter right back into the bloodstream. Yes, yes, And to
your point to about redistributing the poop so to speak, Um,
there's a quote from the paper that says sterilization of
the gas show intestinal tract plus intravenous or direct intra
(22:31):
gastric feeding could reduce fecal elimination to a minimum, and
even this might be reutilized. So yes, to your point,
they're absolutely thinking about this eating your own Well, well
that's kind of the you're putting the dark spin on
it do it that we'll put the light spin on it,
minimizing and hate. You know, I'm a dreamer one day
eliminating pooping, just completely get rid of it. What a
(22:55):
world we would live in? Um So. I mean that
most assuredly be the death knell for the newspaper industry. Um.
The of course, the whole idea of like a recycling
like urine. Of course, we're already doing that in space.
We we have water filtration systems and uh and and
(23:17):
and of course everybody has the the idea of the
still suit from from the dune novels, you know, the
idea that you could pee in the suit and it
would turn back into water. So um So, some of
the ideas are like I would not be opposed to
wearing a still suit to you know, or or two
or someone said hey, this this water was p an
hour ago. I'd be like, well, you know, a lot
of water was p at some point, so it's good.
(23:38):
But the whole idea of like we're now gonna re
reroute your intestinal system so that the waste water goes
back into your bloodstream. That's a little more extreme, but
it's an interesting solution. Um let's see a few other
ones here enzyme tinkering to create uh anaerobic organisms in
other words, astronauts that don't require air or can live
(24:00):
in different atmospheres. So that's some extreme makeover right there. Yeah,
And for those types of solutions, I can't help but think, like,
how do you recircuit the autonomous part of your body,
like your lungs that want to breathe? Like and I do.
I think that all of their solutions are really fascinating,
but that's to me, those are the sticking points like that, well,
(24:23):
the humanness part of our body that wants to do this.
How do you shut that off? Um? They go back
to the inner ear thing and and getting a little
motion sick and weight business. They proposed either draining ear
fluid or filling them up. So there you go. Um
they said electric slash drug cardiovascular control. They recommended drugs
(24:45):
to preventing a muscle atrophy, which sounds perfectly reasonable except
in their in their argument, would probably just happen on
its own through something implanted in you, which I guess
you would have to get like a refill pack. You'd
be kind of like a printer. I'm thinking on your
back where you have like the cyan and the magenta
and all this. You suddenly you get like a little
light would show up and it's like, oh, I'm running
(25:05):
low on anti radiation medicine. Yeah, and I wonder if
there'd be one that would run out the fastest, you know,
because it seems like we're always having to replace cian.
I don't know it's true. Why is that? Yeah, it's
a weird color. But they also recommended lowering body pressure
to facilitate better facilitate space walks, perhaps naked space walks.
(25:26):
I'm thinking like, like, basically they're saying we we would
we would just remove some of the necessary functions of
a space suit. So that's that's pretty wild. They also
talked about engineering humans to have a light sensitive, chemically
regulated system that would change their reflecticity. In other words,
(25:47):
you wear you know, you wear a black shirt on
a bright day, you end up being hotter and you
have a lot more of that heat you were a
white shirt reflects. So in space you're gonna have situations
where where you need to eat or don't need the heat,
because it can make a difference between cooking and freezing.
Is this the protective plastic sponge clothing they were talking about. Yes, yeah,
(26:08):
which sounded um, sounded like I don't know something in
my attic right. They also brought up anti basically anti
space madness medications, anti psychosis medications, because you're gonna be
up there for a while in this cramp space. You
don't want your fellow astronauts going crazy. Yeah. So yeah, actually,
(26:28):
and I noticed that that drugs were huge part of
the solution here for a lot of this stuff. Yeah,
which makes sense at the time, but I guess not
knowing as much about the side effects now. Well, well,
the thing is they keep a lot of these type
medications on the spaceship. I have a blog post on this,
which will also link to when I get around and
doing the the accompanting blog post for this. But but
(26:50):
there are a number of different medications that they keep
on on the shuttle. So it's not not just the
idea of using them, but having them where they kick
in automatically, where it's like you start feeling a little
crazy and then you're the system that's implanted in your
side like checks you, you know, so you only feel
crazy for a second. That now, oh it's interesting this, uh,
(27:13):
if I remember correctly, this features into n and Banks
culture series. We have the humans have been augmented over time,
so everybody has like all these systems that are either
subconsciously or consciously control so they can they can feel
less psychotic or or you know, crank up there. They're
sort of caffeine level without actually uh, you know, having
something to drink. She's actually made me think about this
(27:35):
book that I just read, Super Sad True Love Story.
I believe this is the title. And they talk about
everybody has something called an apparette, which is they wear
around their neck and it basically will tell you every
bit of data about yourself, will communicate it to another person,
so you could feasibly see what my cholesterol level is
and you know whether or not I need to adjust
(27:56):
that or if I even have like little nano robots
going through my blood like cleaning things up as well
as my credit score. It's good stuff, but just reminded
me of that. Um. They also talked about prolo using
pharmaceuticals too, to have to kick in some prolonged sleep
if you get injured. Like they're all deals. Like you're
on your return trip from Mars and you, I don't know,
(28:19):
you step into really badly, or more likely you're injured
on a space walk, etcetera. You might need to just
be able to put that person under for the ride home.
It might maybe a condition that can't be or an
injury that can't be treated reasonably on the ship. That
was another hallmark. Yeah, putting people inder and um so yeah,
those are some of the key arguments that they made. Um.
(28:40):
From there, they went on to do a number of
other cyborg studies, where each one dealt with another level
like cyborg to dealt with the manipulation of human emotions
through mental exercises. Um. And and this this one involved
like a lot of hypnosis, like like the idea of
using using hypnosis to and uh and I could see
like like meditation being a big thing too. Yeah. They
mentioned in yoga too in the paper Yoga in space?
(29:03):
Can you do what here? You will have done more
yoga than me. Could you do yoga without gravity? I
assume you could do some of the postes, right, um,
I mean never having done it and then gravity free environment,
I'm not quite sure, but yeah, like I mean, I
don't know, it seems like the different balancing poses would
be kind of pointless and like down dog. I don't know.
(29:25):
I think the down dog even count if there's no gravity. No,
it doesn't. I mean I think you'd have to have
your compression suit on, and perhaps you'd have to do
like partner yoga with one person holding you down. This
would be interesting if if anybody out there has any
thoughts and what a micro gravity yoga technique would consist of.
I have to ask my yoga teacher. Um, so there's
(29:46):
that level. Maybe I will No, I will do it, okay,
Um maybe alright. So then Cyberg through his genetic alterations
to enhance the human emotional range uh Cyberg four deeper
genetic changes, and then uh Cyborg five. Ultimately, they were
talking about the separation of mind from body, um, which
(30:07):
you know, the ideas like, perhaps instead of sending humans
to this hostile environment, you can fall back on the
human creation that is best suited for space travel, the machine.
If we could just simply put our consciences in it,
or somehow experience what the machine is experiencing. Uh, you know, remotely,
we could have some sort of implant that tied into
the Yeah. Yeah, like it more or less an extension
(30:29):
of what we're already doing, right, we just more data. Yeah,
we talked a big game, you know about sending humans
to Mars, but ultimately we can send robots there and
we can you know, move our hands on a on
a keyboard and move things on Mars. We can we
can look through a screen and see what's happening on Mars.
And as that technology improves, and I mean it's it's
(30:50):
basically like we're there and without having to worry about
how you're gonna feed this person, how are you gonna
keep them alive, how are you gonna you know, tackle
the the the huge obstacles of engineering a person that
can or buy this environment. That makes sense to me.
I mean, to to do the sort of surveillance that
you need, right to to have nano robots or robots
go out and accumulate all that data. The thing that
(31:11):
I think about is what what's missing there? Is um
like the overview effect, right that the reporting back of
the the human part of it. Yeah. So yes, the
We've talked about this before in a podcast about overview
ef fact that since the beuphoria, you get in this
deeper better understanding of the planet that you live in. Yeah,
like the Grand Canyon example is great. Like, I've never
(31:32):
been to the Grand Canyon, but I've only seen photos
of it. It looks really cool in the photos, but
everyone will tell you that's been there, that the photos
just don't cut it. That you don't really like understand
the Grand Canyon until you see it, which which I
totally buy because I mean, that's that's how seeing anything,
you know, amazing works. It's like the photo, the video.
You can really capture a moment or a string of moments,
(31:53):
but it's not the same as being there. Yeah. Yeah,
but then you know, I don't know, I think about that.
S robots makes so much more sense. But you know,
it seems like I've been bringing this up a lot.
But like the exo skeletons we talked about the military
is using, you know, is there a way to combine
that technology as well as the carbon nanotube muscles that
(32:15):
they're trying to create to glomb that onto the human too,
to again make them more of this um the cyborg
in reality as opposed to the future that we keep
pointing to. Yeah, so, one of the big questions that
comes to mind when we talk about all these different
variations on the cyborg is is that if we change
humans to live in space or live in another world,
(32:38):
at what point are they no longer human? You know,
like what you know, you get to where you're adding
a lot of hardware, you're genetically altering somebody and then
you're sending them out. And is that a human being anymore?
Is that something else? Is it a subspecies? I don't know.
Paul Davies of Study has actually said that biological intelligence
is only a transitory phenomenon of leading phase in the
(33:00):
evolution of the universe. And so his feeling is that
the supplies to humans and and if there are indeed
in uh, extraterrest extraterrestrial life out there, that it's uh,
it's got to be some sort of machine hybrid mhm.
So this is an idea that's come up before. Is
aliens Is these more evolved UM replications are iterations of
(33:24):
ourselves that are the sort of machine cyborg being. Yeah,
and uh, and it falls back in line with what
we were talking about earlier, Like it comes to like
the like the like say Cyborg five was talking about
UM like basically machines with human intellects, you know, it
becomes more of a I mean again, just look at
what we've sent out, We've sent machines. Machines have been
(33:44):
the first to land on on, on Mars, on on
the moon first, I'm going to be the first to
leave the Solar system. So it says the definition then
if the brain is intact, then we're still human. But well,
I think we would kind of like that to be
the case. But again, we're not just our brains. It's
like we're you know, we're We're a much more complicated
(34:05):
system than that up the gut. So anyway, it's an
interesting question at what point, at what point do do
have At what point would we not be human anymore?
At what point are we already not human? Um? This
there's a n stat that and this ISNT seven which
which argued that that of the human population was already
(34:28):
a cyborg just counting like everything from you know, pacemakers
to prosthetics. Two Denture's that there was just a huge,
huge population segment of the population that was already not
fully human. And certainly, I mean if you start counting clothing,
like none of us are except for those those few
nudists out there, they're keeping it real for the for
(34:49):
the original humans. Hey guys, thanks for listening in. If
you'd like to check out more from us, think sure
to visit stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com. Hang
with us on Facebook, Tumbler, and Twitter, and send us
your episode suggestions that blow the mind at Discovery dot com.
(35:14):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff Works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hey there, welcome to Stuff about your mind.
Julie Here. Robert is out this week with his son
who has undergone surgery and is doing well. So we
decided to present a classic episode The Werewolf Principle, in
(00:24):
which we discussed the ideal astronaut and how we can
tinker with our humanness to adapt ourselves to space. Latest
will be discussed a positive attitude, of course, not to
mention becoming a cyborg. Julie. There is a book I
read a little while back, and it's reference to the
(00:44):
title of this podcast, UM The Werewolf Principle by Clifford D. Simmic,
and I find it really interesting. It's not perhaps not
Simmic's best works, and he's probably best known for a
book called City, which one Hugo Award, But it's kind
of like they came up to the Clifford, you know,
(01:04):
really established us sci fi dude, and they said, hey,
we want you to write, um a novel about wherewolves
from space? And then he set out and wrote the
most intelligent, interesting take on that concept possible, instead of
it just being where wolves landing and running around howling
it things, um it involved a guy. Yeah, yeah, which
(01:26):
gets into the interesting argument that I've always wondered. It's like,
what if what would happen to a werewolf landed on
the moon. Would they be aware a wolf all the time?
Would they be affected by what the Earth was doing?
Would it be howling all the time? Yeah? Yeah, interesting
But but but Clifford, the simics, the whole take was
that he decided to make this a person who had
been engineered to adapt to different environments and sent off
(01:50):
into space. So he goes to, if you were to
land on Mars, his body would rapidly change so that
he could know live on Mars, um et cetera. And anyway,
he's returned to Earth and he's he keeps changing into
these previous forms. Uh, And that's the base. There's also
something really like that, like humans live in houses that
can fly around and there, and they're brownies like little
(02:11):
um creatures that live in the woods. So isn't he
like two hundred years old or something by the time
he returns. Yeah yeah, yeah, so he's got he's got
a lot of living. Yeah, but it's it's such a form.
But at hard it's such a fascinating concept because, uh,
we're we still talk about tera forming a lot. We
talk about I mean, one of the basic models of
(02:33):
space flight is let's take a little bubble of our
environment and let's blast it up into into orbit. Because
we are ultimately we're creatures that can that are that
have evolved to live only in a very small region
of our own atmosphere, just a small portion of of
the Earth's crust, because the crust also some definitions includes
(02:55):
the atmosphere. So so we're only really supposed to live
in this one little section. But we keep pushing the boundaries.
You know, we want to climb on Everest, we want
to to live in space, and then we want to
have our little environment when we're in orbit. We want
to turn Mars into Arizona. Uh and uh and and
and and and you see these fantastic science fician visions, um,
(03:17):
where we've gone out and done that to all these
different worlds where we we just find you know, exo
planet after exo planet, change it into into Florida, change
it into a vacationville, right right. Um, we're looking at you,
Richard Branson. But and then do you think, okay, well,
I mean fish. They're not doing this. They're not saying, Wow,
I wish I could live on land run and have
these gills. You know, how do I come up with
(03:39):
some sort of lung situation here? Right? They ended up evolving,
adapting over time and uh and reaching the point where
they where something could not return to the water. Uh.
And and so you run into this interesting argument of
what should we be doing to evolved to our setting
and as opposed to changing our setting to to to
(04:03):
adhere to our demands? Right, And of course the astronaut
is like the perfect specimen to look at this whole
argument with, right, Yeah, it's they're not very ideal in
terms of trying to actually explore space and nothing against them, yeah,
getting in the way. Well, that's actually a good place
to start, Like what is the ideal astronaut given what
we currently know about you know about about sending people
(04:26):
into orbit um. One of the more interesting things is
that you want somebody with ideal methane output of course. Yeah.
And of course, for I think we all know what
I'm talking about farts of course in space. And when
you see ideal, I think you mean minimum minimum um. Yeah,
because at first of the methane is it's flammable, so
(04:48):
you don't want you have a closed environment. You don't
want like a lot of gas going off in there
and potentially catching on fire while guys are carrying off
you know, experiments, etcetera, plus the whole psychological thing. If
you're going to be stuck in a spacecraft for six months,
you don't necessarily want to be gas and people out
right right right. There's a govern name of Edwin Murphy,
(05:10):
and he did some he conducted some research on this.
Uh and this is this is really anoting it was.
It was. There's a whole chapter dealing with with this
topic and Mary Roach's latest book UM about Mars and
the Space the space program. So Murphy used an experimental
bean meal and he fed it to volunteers who had
been rigged to a erectal catheter uh to uh and
(05:33):
and to to measure how much gas was going out
uh and he was he was interested in individual differences,
not just the the overall volume, but in you know,
the percentage of methane in the game in the the
the flattest I believe it's the flattest technical term for it,
because if you're writing a scientific you know, um, discussion
(05:55):
on something you don't want to just you know, keep
saying the farts over again part doesn't cut it. Yeah
in sert cheese joke here Yeah, uh so. Um, but
what he found was really interesting. Uh he found out
that about half the population doesn't produce methane in there. Um.
I thought that was incredible because it was something about
like their their bacterial flora. Yeah, it's and it's great,
(06:17):
and it's important to know that methane itself is like
a it's not methane doesn't stink. Okay, there are other
things at work in one's digestion besides methane production. Um.
So it's not something where you can where where these
people are not creating or uh you know, emanating or
expressing express thing flattist, though he did apparently claim that
(06:40):
one he found one individual who was quote flattist free,
which just sounds I just I don't I didn't even
think that was possible. I mean, can you imagine, I
mean you can put that on your resume? Yeah, I
mean people would or would they hate you? I don't know.
I would kind of I would feel like like if
someone if I was in a position to hire somebody
and be like, oh, by the way, I'm flattist free.
I would be like, well, I'm not hiring you, jerk.
(07:01):
You're gonna set around just make us look bad. Yeah, yeah,
you're right. Yeah, we could never blame anything on you. Yeah, yeah,
I just can't. It would happen and like we do.
We just said they're all smug like and just it
would be horrible. Yeah, but you could always be an astronaut. Yes,
being an astronaut would be great because because there wouldn't
be any concerned with methane at all. Um. So, Murphy's
(07:24):
whole argument was, hey, NASA, you need to focus on
getting astronauts who have the proper um flattest output for space.
You want to want people that are that are producing
the less hostile flattest and only those people. Everybody else
you're you're out of the pool. Yeah. And then NASA
was like, no, we're just gonna not serve beans, that's right,
No cabbage, broccoli. I think we're going to get the
(07:47):
go the easier route. Yeah. And actually, this guy to um,
if I understand this correctly from Mary Riches book, he
was like a flattest researcher, Like he was employed as
a flattest reacher researcher, and only a plattest research. This
was his life work. Yes, yeah, so you can can
imagine why he took it so seriously and and didn't
(08:08):
he even uh insert the rectal cath Yes, she actually
talked about that, the rectal catheter. Yeah. I mean it's
we're we're laughing, but it's you know, it's a it's
an important area of study if you're talking about sending
guys up in gals up into space in this little,
tiny environment. But it's but this is cost it's also
like one of the first like real you know moments
(08:30):
like which way are we gonna go? Are we gonna
gonna gonna change our environment? Are gonna change us? And
this was a chance to not really change us, but
to you know, selectively choose. And I mean granted there
there are you know, minimal requirements for for astronauts and
and uh members of any you know, space program stuff
like um you know, you know, I sight blood pressure height. Um.
(08:53):
You know obviously that they tend to go for people
who have at least a bachelor's degree in some sort
of science or engineering. Our mathews. Yeah, so and and
you have to have kind of a happy, go lucky disposition, right. Yeah,
and even like space tourism, most of them models we're
looking at, even the ones like you know, even like
the Branson's whole whole space tourm tourism deal. As as
(09:14):
much as they're going to try and cater that to
to make make it available to everybody, Uh, the certain
people are just not going to be eligible to go
into space, right, So people who have a fear of flying, right,
I think are going to be cut off the list. Yeah.
But but this is a case where where NASA could
could either have have have said, yes, we're gonna go
after the people who who have minimal flatt us you
(09:34):
know in our o methane producers um, and they said, no,
we're going to change the meal plant. So it's so practical.
So so other areas that the mary roach brings up.
Bone mass, of course is a big deal if you're
gonna lose bone mass if the more you're in a
in a in a microgravity environment. Yeah, and actually that
I mean the staff that I saw in that was
(09:56):
astronauts lose one to two percent of their bone mass
for each month they spend in spe that's quite a bit. Yeah,
and uh and but but the interesting thing is that
black women, for instance, are seven to denser in their
bones than than than wider Asian women. And uh, of
course Mary didn't have the the data for men, just
(10:16):
for the women, and I've seen that's tied to osteoporosis research.
But but conceivably, um black men would also have better
bone density than wider Asian men. So so it ends
up creating an interesting argument there should we only be
using um minimal flatt us black astronauts, you know? Why not?
(10:39):
Why not? Yeah, if they're gonna be more suited for space.
And you can take this even one step farther, and
that is that maybe they should all be deaf, because
because you know, if anybody's ever had motion sickness, be
it on a boat, in the car, etcetera, you know,
it's you get kind of nauseous. Next thing, you know,
you're throwing up into the the floorboard of the vehicle.
(11:00):
And it's an inner ear thing. And I think it
used to think it was tied to the stomach, but
it's not. It's tied to inner ear and uh and
and many people argue that it's kind of a mistake
of evolution, because vomiting, as much as we may hate it,
does serve a number of really key functions. You know,
you eat something and it's bad, it's poisonous, you barf
it up, start over um and and actually animals that
(11:22):
don't vomit, I mean that becomes a problem because if
they eat something they should eat a belief. Horses are
like this, Uh, they eat something they shouldn't eat. They
can't vomit it up. It's it's you know, it's more
of a it becomes a real problem with discomfort, right, Yeah,
because like with kids, right, if a kid eats something
they're not supposed to. A child, not a goat. If
a child eat something that he or she is not
(11:43):
supposed to, you can always there's the vomiting, right, you
can give them epicac or something, right. Uh. And I'm
thinking about this too, like this is sort of accident
of nature, right, because whatever controls our vomiting response is
near our inner ear or function or something along this time. Sorry,
I don't have the correct terminology, but I sort of
scan that remembering. Okay, so that's why we sometimes vomit
(12:04):
because we're Yeah, but it serves no evolutionary you know,
there's no reason for it. It's like I'm feeling kind
of motion sickness and my body's like we have to
vomit now, you know, there's no Yeah, it serves no
like evolutionary advantage. UM. So the only way to a
completely get rid of motion sickness is um is for
(12:24):
the human have a non functioning inner ear. And uh
so you we can see within go for deaf people.
So all black death astronaut crew with minimal flattus, all right,
I mean it could happen. I guess the problem is
is that you just keep narrowing the pool to the
point where it's probably harder and harder to get astronauts
right unless you create and this is I'm throwing this
(12:46):
out there is like a future kind of thing and
and and kind of a potentially scary eugenics kind of thing.
But like then you create a breeding program, right just
for astronauts, just to encourage the traits. I mean, we
do it. We've done it with dogs and that has
some horrible effects and many times. But conceivably, it seems
to me you could you could have a breeding program
(13:07):
similar to the you know, like something out of dune
where you're just breeding for ideal astronauts and and so
it's like a genetic, you know, hereditary thing. You create
an entire cast or subspecies of astronauts. I know. And
I'm just thinking now, like the Island of Misfits and
we have bread nose reindeer in the elphit wanted to
be a dentist, Like there might be that person that's
(13:28):
bread to you know, do this and guess you know what,
I don't want to. I really want to go to space. Thanks. Yeah,
but then when you have to sit down with and
be like like but dude, listen, listen like you well,
don't listen, like read the words from the writing because
you're deaf, because we bread for that. You know. It's
like your your death, your bone density is incredible, your
(13:48):
you have no methane when you when you when you
break wind, like this is this is for you. But
they're like, no, I really really want to be an artist.
But what do you do? Yeah? Right, I guess what
it's time to take a break. We get back. We
will talk more about the werewolf persiple. So there's that
(14:10):
that viewpoint like what if we so you know, step
one we we only choose the people that are ideal
for space. And then okay, we can take that a
step farther. What if we we bred people for space?
But then then the next step is, what if we
engineered people for space? What if we made them, um
adapt or made them better? We adapted them and to
(14:31):
the cyborg yes, um, And like a simple version of
it would be like if you just made people deaf
before we sent into space, which is kind of horrifying,
but I'm not sure a lot of people go for that.
They might, I don't know, but there are a number
of interesting changes that could that could take place that
would be less scary, though some of them are pretty scary. Um.
So let's look get the cyboard now that this is
(14:54):
a term that is preloaded these days, because when when
when I say cyborg, what do you think of? Well,
I think of the terminating I think he's technically yeah,
he was more of a robot covered with flesh, with
flesh um Darth Vader. Yeah, I think Darth Vader was
pretty cybernetic in his state. Um RoboCop. Perhaps the cyborg.
(15:15):
I'm I'm kind of foggy on the explanations in the
first two movies. But but yeah, you get this idea.
It's like a human being that has been augmented terrifically
or terrifyingly with machines. Six million dollar Man, six million
dollar man is is a prime example on the cyborg Yeah.
But but again, this is kind of a term that's
gon been taken by by science fiction and and just
(15:35):
sort of they run wild with it. So now you
just think of like man with half metal face kind
of thing. The term actually originates back in nineteen sixty
September of nineteen sixty in UH an edition of Astronautics.
And this was an article by men manfred E. Kleins
and Nathan S. Klein uh one with a C, the
second with a K, and it was titled Cyborgs in
(15:58):
Space and it's a great read. I will have to
throw up a link to it on the the accompanying
blog post when this podcast comes out. Um, but they may,
they just may. May. They make the huge argument that
like here's just a quote from it. It It really sums
it up. In the past, evolution brought about the altering
of bodily functions to suit different environments. Starting as of now,
(16:18):
it will be possible to achieve this to some degree
without alteration of heredity by suitable biochemical, physiological, and electronic
modifications of man's existing um bodies. So and so, what
I thought was kind of cool about this too is
that it's not necessarily that they felt like they were
changing humans, but that they were improving humans so that
(16:41):
they could explore more and they could have more independence
to to create more and to think more if they
if they weren't um burdened by their own physicality. Right,
and you in pulinding, people make the argument that the
cyborg has been around for ages. Right, the second that
we skinned an animal and started wearing its fur cyborg. Second,
with the second we strapped or wristwatch to our to
(17:03):
our arm cyborg dentures exactly, Yeah, how are you gonna chew?
You know, you throw the dentres in. You've augmented the
individual with technology to better enable them for their environment.
You've become something more than human. Right and and certainly
we went into a number of of these possibilities on
the previous uh UM Accessorizing podcast about you know, somebody
(17:26):
can wear flippers, They're gonna they're gonna swim faster. Um,
you know, we we wear about computers, are you know,
are our iPhones? It's like there's there's so much technology. Eyeglasses, contacts, um, lasers.
These are all examples of something where technology changes the
person to better suit them for their environment. You may
think of it as just your everyday life, but your
(17:46):
everyday life is here on earth. But what if the
everyday life was in space? So clients and client took
that and then they looked at all the problems facing
us and trying to exist in space or explore space.
And I thought that the solutions they came up with
were incredible. I mean, they're they're really creative, and they're
really interesting ways to to approach the problem. Yes, And
(18:09):
I have to tell you though, to like reading this,
I thought, God, this is this is so crazy, Like
this is the Madman era. Can you imagine them like
sitting in a cocktail party saying, well, I've got an
idea about this whole problem of the lungs in space? Yeah? Yeah,
or I mean it reminds me a little bit. In
Mary Roach's book, she talks about like when you would
have scientists, the scientists that designed space travel and the
(18:32):
jock afternaughts that would do it, like sitting in the
same room and the and she pointed out how that
the scientists would be like, you know, we could develop
a way for the for them to actually eat parts
of the ship on the return trip from Mars, and
maybe there's a way we can make it to where
they can eat eat pooh or something. You know. It's
like they're actually beginning to think along those lines. And
the astronauts were like, no, no no, no, no, we're not
(18:54):
doing that because it's something about like the scientific mindset
when you really get into it from a just a pure,
purely logical problem solving, uh you know, frame of mind. Right.
So so there's a hint of that, more than a
hint of that in this in their original article, because
it's some of the possibilities are a little uh uh,
you know, they make you shake your head a little,
(19:14):
but but but they're but the logic of it is
is interesting and intensive. For instance, they pointed out that
we could have osmotic pressure pump capsules, um and sensing
and controlling mechanisms in our bodies, like implanted to give
us medications for blood pressure to give us basically speed
if we need to to stay awake um, which you know,
(19:37):
they have various medications on space UM any kind of
a space mission these days, but you generally have to
pop the pills yourself. But what if it was an
automatic thing. And that's one of the huge key um
you know, aspects of of what was basically cyborg one
um as outlined in this proposal, and that was that
we were taking these different things and turning them over
(19:59):
to subconscious functions, so automating the right Yeah. So it
wouldn't be like like, oh, I'm getting a little sleepy
and I've got the high pressure job ahead of me.
I better you know, pop some of this uh this
NASA speed Uh No, you would just it would just
kick in ums all these sensors that are taking the
data and recalibrating your body based on that. Yeah. And
and other things too in this situation, would be like
(20:21):
any radiation medications, uh, pituitary drugs to help induce hibernation.
That was a big key too, because you get into
the issue of how are you going to worry about
sending people on long space voyages where you know they're
gonna be that they're going to be setting around doing
nothing for you know, years. What if you can we
could learn something from bears. Well, bears don't technically hibernate,
(20:44):
I remember correctly, it's a different Well, I think that
they are interested in pairs. It's something that when they hibernate,
they're actually redistributing the calcium back to their bones or
something nuh like that, that which they thought. Well, if
we could just replicate that humans would be great. Yeah, yeah,
because bears are sitting around doing nothing for for the
period of their of their their winning nap time. But
(21:06):
they're not they're not losing a bone in their bone
density and their their muscles. They can still walk at
the end of it. The human lad in bed for
X number of months here, she would not necessarily be
able to move when I got it when they woke up.
And the crux of the problem too is that yeah,
you can you might have muscle atrophy atrophy, but you
can get your muscles back afterward, right, And you'll have
(21:28):
some bone loss, but you may not be able to
recoup actually all of the bone density that you lost
in particularly um the area and your hips. So if
you're an astronaut and you reach retirement age, then it's
not a great scenario for you, because that's like the
number one thing that happens to people in your older
years is that they fall and break their hips. So
it's actually like a real problem for Yeah, yeah, totally.
(21:50):
Here are a few other things from the Cyboard paper.
They suggested replacing them, along with an inverse fuel cell
um altering your intestinal plumbing so that don't love this
waste water goes through a filter and right back into
your blood, which which this is one of those where
you can just imagine it coming up in in the
(22:10):
Madman era where it's like, you know, we're wasting a
lot of water when we go to the bathroom. I
think we can we can probably pump that through a
filter right back into the bloodstream. Yes, yes, And to
your point to about redistributing the poop so to speak, Um,
there's a quote from the paper that says sterilization of
the gas show intestinal tract plus intravenous or direct intra
(22:31):
gastric feeding could reduce fecal elimination to a minimum, and
even this might be reutilized. So yes, to your point,
they're absolutely thinking about this eating your own Well, well
that's kind of the you're putting the dark spin on
it do it that we'll put the light spin on it,
minimizing and hate. You know, I'm a dreamer one day
eliminating pooping, just completely get rid of it. What a
(22:55):
world we would live in? Um So. I mean that
most assuredly be the death knell for the newspaper industry. Um.
The of course, the whole idea of like a recycling
like urine. Of course, we're already doing that in space.
We we have water filtration systems and uh and and
(23:17):
and of course everybody has the the idea of the
still suit from from the dune novels, you know, the
idea that you could pee in the suit and it
would turn back into water. So um So, some of
the ideas are like I would not be opposed to
wearing a still suit to you know, or or two
or someone said hey, this this water was p an
hour ago. I'd be like, well, you know, a lot
of water was p at some point, so it's good.
(23:38):
But the whole idea of like we're now gonna re
reroute your intestinal system so that the waste water goes
back into your bloodstream. That's a little more extreme, but
it's an interesting solution. Um let's see a few other
ones here enzyme tinkering to create uh anaerobic organisms in
other words, astronauts that don't require air or can live
(24:00):
in different atmospheres. So that's some extreme makeover right there. Yeah,
And for those types of solutions, I can't help but think, like,
how do you recircuit the autonomous part of your body,
like your lungs that want to breathe? Like and I do.
I think that all of their solutions are really fascinating,
but that's to me, those are the sticking points like that, well,
(24:23):
the humanness part of our body that wants to do this.
How do you shut that off? Um? They go back
to the inner ear thing and and getting a little
motion sick and weight business. They proposed either draining ear
fluid or filling them up. So there you go. Um
they said electric slash drug cardiovascular control. They recommended drugs
(24:45):
to preventing a muscle atrophy, which sounds perfectly reasonable except
in their in their argument, would probably just happen on
its own through something implanted in you, which I guess
you would have to get like a refill pack. You'd
be kind of like a printer. I'm thinking on your
back where you have like the cyan and the magenta
and all this. You suddenly you get like a little
light would show up and it's like, oh, I'm running
(25:05):
low on anti radiation medicine. Yeah, and I wonder if
there'd be one that would run out the fastest, you know,
because it seems like we're always having to replace cian.
I don't know it's true. Why is that? Yeah, it's
a weird color. But they also recommended lowering body pressure
to facilitate better facilitate space walks, perhaps naked space walks.
(25:26):
I'm thinking like, like, basically they're saying we we would
we would just remove some of the necessary functions of
a space suit. So that's that's pretty wild. They also
talked about engineering humans to have a light sensitive, chemically
regulated system that would change their reflecticity. In other words,
(25:47):
you wear you know, you wear a black shirt on
a bright day, you end up being hotter and you
have a lot more of that heat you were a
white shirt reflects. So in space you're gonna have situations
where where you need to eat or don't need the heat,
because it can make a difference between cooking and freezing.
Is this the protective plastic sponge clothing they were talking about. Yes, yeah,
(26:08):
which sounded um, sounded like I don't know something in
my attic right. They also brought up anti basically anti
space madness medications, anti psychosis medications, because you're gonna be
up there for a while in this cramp space. You
don't want your fellow astronauts going crazy. Yeah. So yeah, actually,
(26:28):
and I noticed that that drugs were huge part of
the solution here for a lot of this stuff. Yeah,
which makes sense at the time, but I guess not
knowing as much about the side effects now. Well, well,
the thing is they keep a lot of these type
medications on the spaceship. I have a blog post on this,
which will also link to when I get around and
doing the the accompanting blog post for this. But but
(26:50):
there are a number of different medications that they keep
on on the shuttle. So it's not not just the
idea of using them, but having them where they kick
in automatically, where it's like you start feeling a little
crazy and then you're the system that's implanted in your
side like checks you, you know, so you only feel
crazy for a second. That now, oh it's interesting this, uh,
(27:13):
if I remember correctly, this features into n and Banks
culture series. We have the humans have been augmented over time,
so everybody has like all these systems that are either
subconsciously or consciously control so they can they can feel
less psychotic or or you know, crank up there. They're
sort of caffeine level without actually uh, you know, having
something to drink. She's actually made me think about this
(27:35):
book that I just read, Super Sad True Love Story.
I believe this is the title. And they talk about
everybody has something called an apparette, which is they wear
around their neck and it basically will tell you every
bit of data about yourself, will communicate it to another person,
so you could feasibly see what my cholesterol level is
and you know whether or not I need to adjust
(27:56):
that or if I even have like little nano robots
going through my blood like cleaning things up as well
as my credit score. It's good stuff, but just reminded
me of that. Um. They also talked about prolo using
pharmaceuticals too, to have to kick in some prolonged sleep
if you get injured. Like they're all deals. Like you're
on your return trip from Mars and you, I don't know,
(28:19):
you step into really badly, or more likely you're injured
on a space walk, etcetera. You might need to just
be able to put that person under for the ride home.
It might maybe a condition that can't be or an
injury that can't be treated reasonably on the ship. That
was another hallmark. Yeah, putting people inder and um so yeah,
those are some of the key arguments that they made. Um.
(28:40):
From there, they went on to do a number of
other cyborg studies, where each one dealt with another level
like cyborg to dealt with the manipulation of human emotions
through mental exercises. Um. And and this this one involved
like a lot of hypnosis, like like the idea of
using using hypnosis to and uh and I could see
like like meditation being a big thing too. Yeah. They
mentioned in yoga too in the paper Yoga in space?
(29:03):
Can you do what here? You will have done more
yoga than me. Could you do yoga without gravity? I
assume you could do some of the postes, right, um,
I mean never having done it and then gravity free environment,
I'm not quite sure, but yeah, like I mean, I
don't know, it seems like the different balancing poses would
be kind of pointless and like down dog. I don't know.
(29:25):
I think the down dog even count if there's no gravity. No,
it doesn't. I mean I think you'd have to have
your compression suit on, and perhaps you'd have to do
like partner yoga with one person holding you down. This
would be interesting if if anybody out there has any
thoughts and what a micro gravity yoga technique would consist of.
I have to ask my yoga teacher. Um, so there's
(29:46):
that level. Maybe I will No, I will do it, okay,
Um maybe alright. So then Cyberg through his genetic alterations
to enhance the human emotional range uh Cyberg four deeper
genetic changes, and then uh Cyborg five. Ultimately, they were
talking about the separation of mind from body, um, which
(30:07):
you know, the ideas like, perhaps instead of sending humans
to this hostile environment, you can fall back on the
human creation that is best suited for space travel, the machine.
If we could just simply put our consciences in it,
or somehow experience what the machine is experiencing. Uh, you know, remotely,
we could have some sort of implant that tied into
the Yeah. Yeah, like it more or less an extension
(30:29):
of what we're already doing, right, we just more data. Yeah,
we talked a big game, you know about sending humans
to Mars, but ultimately we can send robots there and
we can you know, move our hands on a on
a keyboard and move things on Mars. We can we
can look through a screen and see what's happening on Mars.
And as that technology improves, and I mean it's it's
(30:50):
basically like we're there and without having to worry about
how you're gonna feed this person, how are you gonna
keep them alive, how are you gonna you know, tackle
the the the huge obstacles of engineering a person that
can or buy this environment. That makes sense to me.
I mean, to to do the sort of surveillance that
you need, right to to have nano robots or robots
go out and accumulate all that data. The thing that
(31:11):
I think about is what what's missing there? Is um
like the overview effect, right that the reporting back of
the the human part of it. Yeah. So yes, the
We've talked about this before in a podcast about overview
ef fact that since the beuphoria, you get in this
deeper better understanding of the planet that you live in. Yeah,
like the Grand Canyon example is great. Like, I've never
(31:32):
been to the Grand Canyon, but I've only seen photos
of it. It looks really cool in the photos, but
everyone will tell you that's been there, that the photos
just don't cut it. That you don't really like understand
the Grand Canyon until you see it, which which I
totally buy because I mean, that's that's how seeing anything,
you know, amazing works. It's like the photo, the video.
You can really capture a moment or a string of moments,
(31:53):
but it's not the same as being there. Yeah. Yeah,
but then you know, I don't know, I think about that.
S robots makes so much more sense. But you know,
it seems like I've been bringing this up a lot.
But like the exo skeletons we talked about the military
is using, you know, is there a way to combine
that technology as well as the carbon nanotube muscles that
(32:15):
they're trying to create to glomb that onto the human too,
to again make them more of this um the cyborg
in reality as opposed to the future that we keep
pointing to. Yeah, so, one of the big questions that
comes to mind when we talk about all these different
variations on the cyborg is is that if we change
humans to live in space or live in another world,
(32:38):
at what point are they no longer human? You know,
like what you know, you get to where you're adding
a lot of hardware, you're genetically altering somebody and then
you're sending them out. And is that a human being anymore?
Is that something else? Is it a subspecies? I don't know.
Paul Davies of Study has actually said that biological intelligence
is only a transitory phenomenon of leading phase in the
(33:00):
evolution of the universe. And so his feeling is that
the supplies to humans and and if there are indeed
in uh, extraterrest extraterrestrial life out there, that it's uh,
it's got to be some sort of machine hybrid mhm.
So this is an idea that's come up before. Is
aliens Is these more evolved UM replications are iterations of
(33:24):
ourselves that are the sort of machine cyborg being. Yeah,
and uh, and it falls back in line with what
we were talking about earlier, Like it comes to like
the like the like say Cyborg five was talking about
UM like basically machines with human intellects, you know, it
becomes more of a I mean again, just look at
what we've sent out, We've sent machines. Machines have been
(33:44):
the first to land on on, on Mars, on on
the moon first, I'm going to be the first to
leave the Solar system. So it says the definition then
if the brain is intact, then we're still human. But well,
I think we would kind of like that to be
the case. But again, we're not just our brains. It's
like we're you know, we're We're a much more complicated
(34:05):
system than that up the gut. So anyway, it's an
interesting question at what point, at what point do do
have At what point would we not be human anymore?
At what point are we already not human? Um? This
there's a n stat that and this ISNT seven which
which argued that that of the human population was already
(34:28):
a cyborg just counting like everything from you know, pacemakers
to prosthetics. Two Denture's that there was just a huge,
huge population segment of the population that was already not
fully human. And certainly, I mean if you start counting clothing,
like none of us are except for those those few
nudists out there, they're keeping it real for the for
(34:49):
the original humans. Hey guys, thanks for listening in. If
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