Strange argument last night...

[drumguy818]

So my friend (well, I guess former friend now...) and I were arguing over something on Facebook. He made a post stating that, sometime in the future, it would be possible to genetically engineer a dragon. I commented saying that it would be too dangerous. Seeing our past and how human nature works, one of these 3 things would happen.

A) The scientist who finds this out would get power hungry and would want to make bigger and better dragons to try and keep popularity that end up getting out of hand and killing many people. B) The secret to making a dragon would be spread throughout the world, so even if the scientist never became power hungry, someone out there in the world would be stupid enough to make an unstoppable dragon. C) The military takes things not meant to kill people and finds a way to kill people with it, constantly. I think a prime example is the Maxim Gun, the first machine gun. The most the original creator, Harim Maxim, wanted it to do was to scare off trespassers and natives. Of course, we now have many different types of machine guns that are used for the sole purpose of killing things. The same thing would be for a dragon. Maybe the scientist who found out only made Puff the Magic Dragon, but the military would take this and make a giant weapon out of it to try and "kill them terrorists" or "kill them commies" or whatever the hell the military wants to kill at this point in time.

He called me a deranged psychopath comparable to Glenn Beck that needs a lobotomy. He kept on saying I only looked at the worst case scenario, and that I'm stupid for "not understanding how cool it would be to have a pet dragon". I would respond by saying that I'm not looking at the worst case scenario, you're looking at the best case scenario.

I don't believe that humans, considering our track record, would only make the Dragon Tales dragons and nothing else, it wouldn't happen, it's human nature. One person would lose control of one and thousands would end up dead. But what would you do, escapists? Would you be willing to risk thousands of deaths to have a pet dragon? or would you say "I don't want the weight of thousands of deaths on my back for the rest of my life...assuming I survive..."?

Oh yeah, he ended up deleting me because of this, which I find to be fairly ridiculous, as I was just trying to have a conversation, but I guess he just took it to heart for whatever reason (over dragons? really?) and got pissed off. whatever, someone who can't go into an argument without getting pissed off and leaving is no friend of mine, in my opinion.

tl;dr: dragons could be made in the future, I don't find that to be safe, he gets pissed, what do you think?

EDIT: I actually became friends with someone who is friends with him, so if you want to have the original conversation, let me know, I'll send it to you (I won't make you suffer another wall of text, lol)

 

[Furioso]

...wait... he deleted you off of facebook, and accused you of being like glenn beck, because you thought that fire breathing demon lizards who have only been depicted in lore (aside from some disney stuff) as being unstoppable killing machines would be dangerous... either we are missing a gargantuan amount of the story or your friend has recently been hit upside the head with a tire iron

 

[OneOfTheMichael's]

I find your former friend is a slight idiot to believe this so strongly that he would take extreme offence but you correcting or questioning his theory.
Although real life dragons would be the equalvallent of a modern day t-rex mixed with a eagle and flamethrower, which would be both awesoem and scary.

 

[Tonythion]

Dragons are actually laid back creatures unless you threaten them. So as long as we didn't fuck with them we should be alright. But like you said knowing humans one dickweed will go around abusing them, they get pissed and kill us all. Or the military decides to make Dragons the knew, cooler, scarier fighter jets.

DRAGONS WHERE/ARE REAL NOT LISTENING TO YOU LALALALALALA.

 

[SomeLameStuff]

Your friend seems to think he lives in a Disney movie. But even in Disney movies dragons kill people, so I'm not sure what he's smoking.

 

[drumguy818]

Your friend seems to think he lives in a Disney movie. But even in Disney movies dragons kill people, so I'm not sure what he's smoking.

He thinks that everyone will want Puff the Magic Dragon and the Dragon Tales...so yeah, he must be smoking something...

 

[DeckardKay]

My first post, finally! This subject is ever-so-dear to my heart (next to telekinetic powers and my son) that I was forced to dust off my old non-personal email address to verify starting this new account! WOOHOO!

(btw I'm another pulled-in fan via Zero Punctuation, the gateway drug.


Anyways, I've put far too much thought into this subject, and the first thing to mention is that genetically engineering dragons,(or through very, very long-term selective breeding) is such a far-reaching idea you have to understand that if we do one day manage, and decide to spend the time and money,(which with our human track record, eventually someone probably will) the 'dragons' we do manage to create will not hold up to all the standards that most fantasy depictions make them out to be, especially the spewing fire part. While in nature it's possible for living things to physically produce volatile chemicals,(as with the bombardier beetle) it's a fat chance we can custom-make a DRAGON to ALSO do that. They might not have scales. They may not even be able to fly.

If we were able to one day create fire-spewing, gigantic dragons the size of football fields, then it would either get heavily regulated and locked down by the highest form of government of the future, and/or completely change life as we know it, unless only a few are created. I agree that even only a few titanium-scaled flamethrower beasts that could stretch across a small village could possibly decimate the world, but chances are they won't be nearly that big, and through either genetic engineering or artifical selection, they will at least start out small, about eagle-sized at best, and pose very little threat to the world besides being an extremely expensive exotic pet that very few will try to "breed bigger and bigger" as we like to do with dogs. Elephant-sized is pushing it, and stadium-sized would probably be by the time the sun explodes.

A lot of that was free-thinking because I haven't thought about it in a while, but I know what I'mma talkin' 'bout damnit! Someone start a thread about Telekinetic powers.

 

[zama174]

Oh wow that is priceless... No seriously I'm laughing my ass off here. Don't worry you are completely right here. While having a pet dragon is the things legends and dreams are made out of, actually having dragons in the real world would be very very dangerous.

 

[drumguy818]

My first post, finally! This subject is ever-so-dear to my heart (next to telekinetic powers and my son) that I was forced to dust off my old non-personal email address to verify starting this new account! WOOHOO!

(btw I'm another pulled-in fan via Zero Punctuation, the gateway drug.


Anyways, I've put far too much thought into this subject, and the first thing to mention is that genetically engineering dragons,(or through very, very long-term selective breeding) is such a far-reaching idea you have to understand that if we do one day manage, and decide to spend the time and money,(which with our human track record, eventually someone probably will) the 'dragons' we do manage to create will not hold up to all the standards that most fantasy depictions make them out to be, especially the spewing fire part. While in nature it's possible for living things to physically produce volatile chemicals,(as with the bombardier beetle) it's a fat chance we can custom-make a DRAGON to ALSO do that. They might not have scales. They may not even be able to fly.

If we were able to one day create fire-spewing, gigantic dragons the size of football fields, then it would either get heavily regulated and locked down by the highest form of government of the future, and/or completely change life as we know it, unless only a few are created. I agree that even only a few titanium-scaled flamethrower beasts that could stretch across a small village could possibly decimate the world, but chances are they won't be nearly that big, and through either genetic engineering or artifical selection, they will at least start out small, about eagle-sized at best, and pose very little threat to the world besides being an extremely expensive exotic pet that very few will try to "breed bigger and bigger" as we like to do with dogs. Elephant-sized is pushing it, and stadium-sized would probably be by the time the sun explodes.

A lot of that was free-thinking because I haven't thought about it in a while, but I know what I'mma talkin' 'bout damnit! Someone start a thread about Telekinetic powers.

Yeah, that's kinda what I meant with my second reason behind it. The original creation would be made for research, unable to harm a fly. But, as time would go on, the idea on how to make a dragon would spread, and someone would make one that would kill thousands. As for telekinetic powers, I will say that I actually managed mildly shake my gluestick, but that's getting too off-topic, lol

 

[drumguy818]

Facebook fight... priceless.

But it wud be kewl ta hav DRAGINZ!!!

Don't worry about him, or Dragons.

that was literally one of the things they kept on going back to (there was another guy, but he wasn't a friend of mine, just a friend of his). I was just too stupid to realize that having a pet dragon would be really awesome...P, H, AIL, what's that spell? a butchered version of fail :| .

EDIT: whoops, double posted, didn't I? oh well...

 

[Guffe]

My first argument would be that dragons can't even be made, I think in this case the thought is more like "in the future when dragons are made...". Then again Dinosaurs were real so just make a Pteranadon and give it fire breathing genes.
I think that's really silly. The age doesn't come up here but if, let's say, my friend would do this (we're around 20) and he said I'd needed a lobotomy.... He should probably go abck to kindergarden, I mean dragons are cool yes, but dude, for real?

 

[drumguy818]

My first argument would be that dragons can't even be made, I think in this case the thought is more like "in the future when dragons are made...". Then again Dinosaurs were real so just make a Pteranadon and give it fire breathing genes.
I think that's really silly. The age doesn't come up here but if, let's say, my friend would do this (we're around 20) and he said I'd needed a lobotomy.... He should probably go abck to kindergarden, I mean dragons are cool yes, but dude, for real?

Well, technically, if we could mix together a bird and a lizard, well, there you go, but I'm not sure how possible that is. Boy, I wish I could message him this thread, but Facebook won't let me unless I'm friends with him, lol.

 

[Princess Rose]

tl;dr: dragons could be made in the future, I don't find that to be safe, he gets pissed, what do you think?

....

A genetically engineered dragon wouldn't breathe fire.

Mostly because breathing fire isn't really possible. It could breathe methane, which is flammable, but then it wouldn't be able to survive in an oxygen rich atmosphere.

Besides, there is no currently known genetic code for making a creature fire-proof, which you would need to do first in any case.

Creating a flying lizard creature? Sure. Those are called pterodactyls. Much easier to make, since all we'd need to do is pull a Jurassic Park and dig up some preserved DNA. We could then modify that into something akin to a dragon with some genetic adjustments.

So basically, any created dragons would pretty much just be dinosaurs. Genetic engineering couldn't really take them beyond that.

Remember - what makes Dragons able to do the cool shit they do is MAGIC. And you can't genetically engineer magic.

 

[DeckardKay]

I understand but I've put a lot of thought into it and even some research(lol) and I really dont see how they could ever take a creature so small and breed it so big as to make it big enough to massacre people, when maybe his ancestors could barely conquer stairs.

But truly, on the other hand I don't know about what genetic engineers have imagined possible; Maybe they could eventually gene-splice a whale's mass with a cow's genetic design, and soon beef prices would plummet.

 

[TilMorrow]

To be honest by the time we actually start producing dragons, we'll too busy being fire-retardant with cybernectic alloys within our bodies whilst flying around with jetpacks/telekinetic fields/winds.

Oh yeah, 'Puff the Magic Dragon'? Seriously? Your (ex-)friend is high if he thinks thats what scientists would be creating.

Also I loled at the Facebook defriend. "Imma no longer you friend cause you don't agree with me so I'll delete you off Facebook cause it's important.' Funny.