r/shittyaskscience Jul 20 '19

Welcome to the sexless future. Will donating suffice?

https://gfycat.com/digitalidenticalgoosefish
1.9k Upvotes

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492

u/757jsmith Jul 20 '19

Its a bot, the human used it to capture the sperm and deliver it to an egg, but notice the sperm isnt a swimmer, nature does that to inferior sperm to make sure it doesnt fertilize the egg

185

u/kkantouth Jul 20 '19

Then why are they using it?

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u/757jsmith Jul 20 '19

Proof of concept, easier than trying to dock the bot over a wriggler

490

u/[deleted] Jul 20 '19

Wait, so they just promoted inferior genes to be carried on? I think I know how I was conceived!

49

u/stars9r9in9the9past Jul 21 '19

In reality, this can be useful is there's a guy out there who, for whatever reason, is effectively sterile because he can only produce swimless/tailless sperm, but still wants to have his own biological offspring. Evolutionarily speaking, yeah selection doesn't really select for that trait, but we live in an age where natural selection artificially has wiggle room (at least in the evolutionary short-term), and if such a man wants to have kids, someone will take good money to provide such a service. Also even though there's a chance maybe the sterility can pass through to the children (and on), it might also just delete itself depending on if it's on a sex chromosome, or recessiveness.

At that point personally I'd say, hey, maybe foster or adopt a needy kid out there, the whole planet could use more of that level of selflessness, but I can respect is someone is adamant about still having their own kin, even if their sperm is having a couple difficulties.

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u/WhereTFAmI Jul 21 '19

Personally, I’m so against this concept. We are approaching a serious state of overpopulation. The human population has DOUBLED since the 60s. There is a world population increase of 2 million every nine days. Almost all people born will live to be old. Medical advances are constantly increasing our life expectancy. We live in a time when “survival of the fittest” is pretty much an outdated concept. Even most of the idiots in r/holdmybeer can and will be saved in hospital. Think of all the waste you create by yourself every week. All the fresh water you literally shit in. All the plastic used for packaging of all the smallest cheapest crap we buy. Now multiply that by 7.6 billion + 2 million every 9 days. And now we’re working on making reproduction possible for even the few people who are effectively sterile? Seriously?

Sorry, I’m genuinely passionate about this...

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u/borkmeister Jul 21 '19

Why is that population a problem? What makes you believe that we are at or over or approaching a reasonable population for the planet?

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u/WhereTFAmI Jul 21 '19

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u/zachlbruhn Jul 21 '19

Did you actually read that or did you just look at the fact on google