Synthia: “a new, entirely artificial life form created in a laboratory”. Is it fuck.

Today superbly illustrates the idiocy and herd-like mentality of the media. Take these two opening paragraphs from the BBC’s story on Synthia, Craig Venter’s new baby:

Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first synthetic living cell.

The researchers constructed a bacterium’s “genetic software” and transplanted it into a host cell. 

Note how the second para contradicts the first? The world’s media, as one, doesn’t seem to have spotted this. Makes you proud dunnit?

I don’t decry Venter’s work, and I *love* that it’s private enterprise doing this, but Synthia is *not* artificial life. They’ve grabbed a bacterium, slipped this synthically mastered DNA in (and that’s the innovation, almost “printing” the genome up), it ousted the indigenous DNA and took over – viruses do this kind of thing all day, every day. What’s occurred is a hijacking, not a genesis. At no point was the cell “dead”, so at no point could “new” life have been triggered. They have changed the lifeform.

So why have the media, once again, got it so wrong? Why the uniformity of the error?

Well, of course, there is the need for sensationalism, there is the need to spread fear, there is the usual dullard crowd of arts grads either unable or unwilling to read beyond a 50 word exec summary. But is there also a little more?

 I am rather tired of the materialist hordes. I’m not religious, I’m a five nines atheist. But I do get a little fed up with the suggestion that science really has it all covered, now we’re just tying up loose ends, everything is either explained, or is on the cusp of explanation. No – it isn’t. As a significant example, we’re as far today from a theory of Mind as we have ever been. Theorising may have dashed down many avenues, but the level of scientific understanding remains exactly as it was in Descartes day. And not for lack of trying. The dogged determination to find a materialist model has just not delivered.

Similarly, and directly relevant here, the notion of the origins of life is also problematic. If life just came about, if a billion years of bubbling soup produced life, should we be able to do it in the lab? We know the answer, we know what we’re trying to make, shouldn’t’ we be able to short cut that room full of typing monkeys, and just bang out a familiar limerick or two? Doesn’t seem to be happening, does it? I get the feeling this really bothers some people – and as with the whole Mind/Brain malarkey, we so see a sleight of hand. The suggestion is being made that oh yeah, we can do that, yeah we know all about that… Life in a lab? Didn’t you hear, Craig Venter did that. The Mind? Oh yeah, it was figured out, just an emergent phenomena – all down to a phase shift in magnesium apparently, it was on Newsnight…

What we see is not just ignorant and sensationalist reporting, it is wishful thinking, mocked up into news. A sidestepping of scientific process to slip out the ginnel off a cul de sac and leave the scent, if not the reality, of a materialist breakthrough…

Not yet fellers. For a Brave New World to come about, it takes a little bit more than a news report headed “Brave New World!”…

NB: No calls on theology or suggestions of supernatural beings were made during the course of this posting. No requirement exists in my own rather half-arsed theory of Mind for a God/Gods or Goddesses. All opinions are unverified speculation, all assertions unfounded. Terms and conditions apply.

UPDATE – After me ranting at them, the BBC have now changed their story as follows:

Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first living cell to be controlled entirely by synthetic DNA.

The researchers constructed a bacterium’s “genetic software” and transplanted it into a host cell.

See? Whining does work…

Tags: brain, craig venter, descartes, duality, idiocy, life, media hype, mind, morons, motherfuckingbbc, post-election whimsy, quantum brain, synthia