Whats an unethical or dangerous experiment that you would like to see performed or perform (if it werent for the ethics/danger)

Isolate a bunch of babies together, with food etc, and see how they develop their own language and society.

Not exactly the same, but suggests probably it would not turn out well. https://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/capsules/histoire_bleu06.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_deprivation_experiments

I already knew about Psamtik's experiment but I thought I had a bigger memory of it than what I was able to find quickly. There's a good starting place if you want to look deeper but I'm not that interested
I silently lament that this experiment cannot be done at least once every couple weeks. I think it would be the most fascinating experiment to observe. Watching a new language develop naturally in real time!
Really interesting idea.

It may not be possible, but I want to gradually replace a person's brain piece-by-piece with the same areas from other brains and see if they retain their sense of self when none of the original brain remains.

The brain of Theseus!
And keep the old pieces, in the end assemble them back together and see what the differences are
We can satisfy this curiosity with a fair amount of scientific evidence.

Of course, most regions of the brain are so densely and variably interconnected that the technical difficulty of “replacing parts” precedes the ethical consideration by many, many years. But we do have a great deal of evidence for how our subjective sense of self is affected by “losing/removing parts” of the brain. Patients are often unaware of change unless evidence for it is overwhelming, and even then are adept at healing/reconciling instinctively. It appears that this is just something brains have evolved to do.

So while the technology (and sheer artistry) required to match and “stitch” these networks is quite staggering, basically magic, it is theoretically possible that a patient could have every part replaced without recognizing any continuity errors in the chimeric stages, until one day they wake up as a completely different person.
How would you know if your sense of self is changing? Surely you always feel like yourself else you wouldn't be you..?
- Surely you always feel like yourself
  
  This is disproven by considering dysphoria exists

Raise a kid in a sensory deprivation chamber, with one exception: a monitor that only shows gen alpha brainrot videos. When they're like 14 drop them off in a populated area and see what happens

Realistically would just end up a developmentally stunted invalid. There was an example from some book, I don't remember which, where there was a SE Asian woman who lived with her family and had a baby.

The family was ashamed, so they forced the girl to keep the baby by itself in the attic. She would go to work most of the day, and come back to take care of it when home. That was the total extent of interaction and stimulation the baby got. It ended up being severely stunted and never learned to talk.

Essentially young children need human interaction which includes warmth and constant validation, caring for, etc

If you interrupt that in any way, you end up with a feral child who is permanently stunted.
They wouldn't be able to walk at all because of floating in water for their entire life.

I want to totally impoverish the 50 richest capitalists to see if they could "bootstrap" themselves out of it for real.

Okay, so there's nothing unethical or dangerous about that (they are capitalist parasites, not humans), but it would still be interesting to see.

Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd already published the definitive paper on this.
Only unethical if you oppose animal testing.

Cyborg-like implants. I want titanium joints and UV vision and magnetic field sensors and charging my phone by laying it on my belly. Uncap each finger to reveal a small tool: screwdriver, USB key, cutting blade, etc.

Note that none of that includes or requires a constant connection to a network/internet. I want to augment my interactions with the real world, not replace them with a virtual world.

Oh boy do I have an 80's cartoon for you…
- Go-go-gadget...
I've looked forward to this most of my life, but given how things have changed, I would never do it. There's no way these implants wouldn't be subscription based, and spy on everything you do. Oh, you forgot to pay your enhanced eyeball subscription? Now you're blind, motherfucker!
Biohackers have been toying with very primitive versions of this for over a decade.

Things like implanting RFID capsules in their hands or fingers to act as credit cards or key fobs... lots of fun infections.

I am fairly sure the movement has basically died out since bluetooth became widespread.

On the other hand, you can always sign up as a test subject for neuralink rofl.
- It's still a thing
  
  https://dangerousthings.com/
What would power these implants?

How far can you strip down the human body until it can't survive anymore. Assisted feeding and breathing is okay. Adjustable room temperature too.

Arms, Legs? Gone. Can we get rid of the skin? Probably, if the room is the right temperature? Bones? Most of them aren't needed, are they? Some organs surely can go too.

Basically, what is the bare minimum needed so the body and the mind still more or less work.

For this you don't need a human, Can start with monkeys.

Disclaimer: I don't want this experiment to happen.
You should watch Johnny Got His Gun if you haven't. Not quite as extreme but kind of similar theme.
- That's what the video to One by Metallica is based on, isn't it?
So, firstly, may I suggest you check youtube for one of the now many 'Adventures of Torso' type videos done in Kenshi.

But as far as keeping a 'minimum viable' human actually alive?

You could remove limbs, but you would still have to have a method for them to eat and urinate and deficate.

You... almost certainly could not remove all skin and keep someone alive for very long.

For starters, they'd bleed to death. Secondly, the pain of existing without skin would probably literally kill them or drive them to try to kill themselves. Thirdly: Skin prevents infections, you'd have to keep them in basically a totally hermetically sealed room or container.

Bones? A de-boned human?

Well there's almost certainly not a way to remove all of your spinal bones and skull without causing death or immensely serious paralysis and/or brain damage.

Sure you could remain alive without all your limbs if you have caretakers, you can survive without your lower jaw as well... You can maybe? survive with the loss of a certain high percentage of your ribcage, but probably not with the entirety of it and your sternum removed.

Organs? Well, brain, heart and liver are almost certainly mandatory.

Though you can remove portions of your liver and it can still function and regrow to some extent...

...and portions of your brain... though you'll lose cognitive abilities, memories and basically become braindead but still technically alive at some point.

Assuming we are just removing things and maybe hooking you up to various kinds if life support tubes and not replacing organs with some kind of mechanical or genetically engineered equivalent:

I think you can survive without any kidneys if you are constantly on dialysis, but its far better to have at least one.

Similarly: Lungs, you need at least one.

You can have your stomach and intestines and bladder partially removed or reshaped, but not entirely.

You can survive without eyes... and a gallbladder and a thymus and a spleen and an appendix and your tonsils... and your adenoids, and your sex organs, but you're gonna need a great deal of monitoring and bloodwork and hormone balancing and what not.
- How do I unimagine that?
This was the topic of an episode of the podcast That's Absurd, Please Elaborate, which I highly recommend. Unfortunately I can't find the episode right now. https://thatsabsurdshow.com/
Hey! Somebody figured out the plot of the seminal sci-fi novel, "Don't create the torment Nexus"!
Yo, same what I was gonna to comment.

It would be fascinating to see if we could archive a "brain in a jar" by this.
Even more when considering that a big bunch of non-brain neurons are in the belly-area. So would it affect how we think?

I want to see how far you can push performance of the human body, and make the results compete against each other. All the bonkers whacky surgeries you can think of: limb lengthening, bone strengthening, replace their organs with bigger, stronger versions.

All the drugs: hgh, steroids, any performance enhancing substance you can pump into an athlete.

Have sports scientists raise children so that they're born into a dedicated training regime for running or swimming.

Then make them compete against each other in the trans-human olympics. I want to see someone do the 100m in 3 seconds, I want to see someone not have to come up for air during the freestyle, I want someone to throw a javelin 2 miles, I want bioengineered mutants doing gymnastics routines

So basically unit 731 stuff
- Unit 731 was garbage science. About the only thing worthwhile that came from that was learning how better to treat hypothermia. Most of their experiments boiled down to "If we do terrible things to people, how much will they suffer?" with the answer being "A lot."
  
  It doesn't take live experiments to learn things like surgery without anesthesia is less effective, or that not treating people infected with horrible diseases causes them to die in agony.
You've got some close competition, but I think you win the most Mengele response of the thread.
This sounds like something in the dystopian future where they take volunteers from "the poors" so thier families can survive if they win...

Gorillas on steroids. How bulky can these magnificent already bulky beasts get?

Oh, I like this one.

Mind you Ive seen a cranky Silverback at the zoo, one with an extra gram of test and tren a day would be utterly fucking terrifying, also the roadrage would be something to behold... dibs not being the poor fucker giving it its shots.
- Roid rage comes from excess estrogen production, not from testosterone. I'd assume that a managed steroid treatment for a gorilla would include estrogen blockers.
- Look up a shaved silverback.. them mofos are scary.

I’d give everyone a device that allows them to take photos of themselves and their lives, and then instantly post them online. Other people would be able to rate and comment on how well or badly they think someone is doing, based on these curated snapshots of their existence. In this experiment, people could also scroll through endless streams of these 'highlights,' constantly comparing their lives to others. To spice it up, I’d introduce a feature that allows people to see how many likes or comments other posts are getting, so they can feel great or miserable about themselves in real-time.

Oh boy, have I got good news for you!
That's fucking stupid, and you're stupid, and you should feel bad, because you're bad.

Did I do it right?
Interesting twist... Its now mandatory.

A bit contemporary, but I'd like to have studied what it takes to break someone of illusions that were fed and forced on them externally, e.g. schooling, TV, social media and other forms of cultural imprinting and propaganda.

We've all had that "what would it take to get this person to realize how far off base they are?" question, it would be fascinating, in a no-holds barred experiment testing various solutions and combinations to find out which is the most effective.

E.g. someone believes climate change isn't real because (x,y,z irrelevant). No amount of written evidence is effective to people who don't understand the scientific method, so would it be videos, traveling to acutely affected places, having polar bears removed from all zoos, baseball bats on their knuckles when they make a logical fallacy?

It would be interesting to then categorize the types of delusions or illusions and then prescribe treatment based on these results.

I think this one could be done ethically, even make a good TV show.
- Parts of it could be done, but it would always stop at "the subject is uncomfortable", which is the whole point of why changing someone's mind against delusions, illusions and propaganda is hard. They don't want to, so without some treatment experiments that would certainly not meet today's medical and/or psychological standards, we wouldn't get an answer to many questions.
  
  You could make a TV show sure, but all the wrong people would tune in.

Tons of drug tests on children to know the exact effect they have on development. Also anti-aging research to see how much you can potentially slow down aging and how the self repair mechanism of children works with respect to aging. The results could really give us a great insight into aging well and being healthy later in life.

To clarify, I don't want to see them done, performed, do them myself or anything adjacent because they're deeply wrong and dangerous.

Isn't the main issue in aging the limit of cell division? Cells can only divide a certain number of times.

Maybe find some crazy ass backwards way to produce more stem cells in a person that the body delivers to key areas?
- That theory is very outdated. People found out that telemeres are important but not the main driver of aging. A lot of research is Nov going on with senescent cells and epigenetics which looks more promising.

I'd like an extensive dietary breakdown of the potential benefits or harms of eating the flesh and organs of humans with net worths of over 10 million, 100 million, 1 billion, 10 billion, 100 billion dollars.

That would need to be a wide ranging study with a very large sample size, just to be sure we get the most robust dataset we can. Better to use all of them than just a small sample.

What happens when we reverse Earth's rotation.

I'm fairly certain that there's a What If video on this by the XKCD guy, Randall Munroe.
Lois Lane gets rescued.
While interesting I feel that one is more "Hilarously impractical" than anything else.
- I'm pretty sure an experiment that kills everyone would be considered immoral but we'd have to ask the IRB to be sure ;)

It would also require centuries, so it's not as possible, but breeding people for very specific traits and features. Whether appearance, physical strength, overall intelligence, specifically being great in mathematics, great smell, great sight.

Basically, control the evolution by favoring very specific features and outright disallowing others (like hereditary diseases/disorders) that would be unacceptable in the mix.

Since this requires a lot of time which I'd somehow theoretically have (I know, this wasn't in the post, but anyway...), I'd want to try yet another thing. Breeding at the most late age possible, then continuing with that and extending it. Perhaps it would lead to increased lifespan, or at least lesser effects of aging in the far far offsprings. At least physically. These experiments don't exactly favor mental health of the subjects.

We already did this unintentionally during our natural evolution. All we really got out of it were a group of humans who can run slightly faster on average, and a group of humans who can drink milk as adults without shitting themselves.

I imagine the timeframe to get any noticable results would be in the thousands of years, even with deliberate selection for specific genes.
This was done to some extent, slave in early america were bred like cattle for specific traits, primarily strength and endurance for tilling fields.

I've broken traffic laws most of my life, and I still have a driver's license. So, you can drive like a partially reasonable asshole indefinitely if you have the skill to pull it off.

I'd like to see GMO humans. I want to see how far we can elevate our species using science. It's completely unethical, but there it is.

How is that unethical? If anything i say it's unethical to let us languish in these horrible bodies when we can work towards something better.
- Most people are very opposed to eugenics and genetic modification of humans. There is infinite opportunity for unexpected disasters along the way to perfection, and it's extremely apathetic to be okay with subjecting a sentient creature to the possible ramifications of unexpected outcomes.
Oh I'm no saint. I set my cruise control at 10km/h over the speed limit, I punch it through orange lights and I sometimes roll through stop signs.

I'm talking about full blown fast and furious wannabe swerving lanes, running reds and racing literally everywhere.
- This describes my brother in law. Granted, he's better than he used to be about 10 years ago, but he grew up in a small town, got to know all the cops pretty quickly, did a little jail time here and there but still has his license. He's totalled many vehicles, spent some time in ICU and still drives like a bat out of hell.
The movie gattaca does this well. No murder or cleansing. But you can have a natural birth or IVF with the Impurities stripped out. "The best of you."

"Dirty" people were limited to shit like janitors and all high paying jobs would sneak a test in to filter out anyone "un-pure"
- Gattica is a great movie, and a compelling story about the power of determination.

Genetic engineering. We have the technology at this, point. What's getting in the way are some very dated ideas of ethics.

I'd like to experiment with other non-capitalist based systems in various points of infra-structure of my country.

I don't think this "only make money in all things, all the time" shit is a smart way to manage numerous complex systems.

I don't have all the answers on how that shakes out, but I think the first move would be to only allow professionals experienced in respective fields to set up these experiments. Existing profitable systems and overseeing corporations be damned.

Remember: Infinite growth is not sustainable in any natural system!

Raise a child on their own without any exposure to language. Could be interesting to see how their perspective on the world develops.

I think this was done? Long time ago, maybe in an Russian orphanage or something? If my memory serves me well, those kids all died, despite even having food etc...

Edit: might be confusing that with lack of social interaction. But either way, here's some reading for you
- Yes that experiment was raising babies without human touch. Apparently it's essential for development.

make a fallout shelter and have some isolated communities there live off purely of either one of meta, apple, or alphabet products (or any large enough multinational like nestle).

all for the science of understanding addiction and brand cultism.

Human genetic engineering. I'm sure governments are already doing this, because the technology is already here.

You could create super soldiers or very intelligent people. You could then copy them in cloning vats and have an army of people you could shape and mold to your will.

Could experiment with all sorts of stuff. For example they've put biiluminescent genes from certain fish into frogs to make glowing frogs. Now imagine giving humans the raw power of chimps. Or the ability to see UV light like birds. Or venomous spit. Or the power to smell like dogs.

the power to smell like dogs

I know how it was meant, but imagine a new X-men hero who has only the ability to smell like a wet dog. That's some Deadpool level of absurdity.
- I was imagining a human who is constantly shoving his face in other people's butts and crotches for a good sniff.
- I think I sat next to him on the bus once

Eugenics taken to their logical conclusion.

As the parent of a child on the spectrum that is very aware of what such practices would mean for him, I would never agree with it in real life. But I do have a fascination with what we could do if we just said the hell with ethics and started trying to breed "perfect" people.

The movie gattaca does this well. No murder or cleansing. But you can have a natural birth or IVF with the Impurities stripped out. "The best of you."

"Dirty" people were limited to shit like janitors and all high paying jobs would sneak a test in to filter out anyone "un-pure"
- Nice, thanks for the movie recommendation. Gonna have to check that one out.
Like, ok, let's try to breed the perfect person--fine. But do we have to kill everyone else? Why is genocide seemingly always on the agenda? Lol
- Eugenics doesn't mean killing anyone, just improve the genetic qualities of humans.
  
  You could do selective breeding, incentivized breeding (entice the right candidates with whatever) ,gene manipulations, etc..
  
  But I understand that proponents of eugenics usually have extreme right wing views, and why you would come to that conclusion.

Eugenics. Not the racist BS that was done in the past, but really pushing the limit to see if we can breed super humans. Genetic editing to make humans immune to cancer or disease. Increased lifespan. Resistance to radiation. Smarter. Stronger. Better.

Arguably, this kind of thing is actually somewhat of a necessity if we ever want to explore the stars. We are far too fragile in our current bodies to survive the difficulties and vastness of space.

Honestly, I'd be super stoked if we could just get rid of all the actual serious defects, just, whack a few moles that really super suck for anyone who gets the short end of the genealogical stick.

And by that I mean like

Huntington's Disease

Early onset and regular non early onset Arthritis

My entire family bloodline is prone to heart issues/cancer type beat

Crohn's

Testing a ton of medication for pregnant/breastfeeding women. So much medication I couldn’t take, simply because it’s not considered ethical to have the studies done, since it could affect the baby in all sorts of ways. Which we can’t clear up without the studies. So annoying.

Nice try Elon

How many clowns can you fit inside an unmodified VW Bug if survivability is no longer a concern.

What happens if you put a lightbulb in your ass

Nothing until you start rubbing your feet on the carpet to generate current to light it up.
Nothing of note until you try to take it out

Forgot the name, but the one where they had a mock prison where half the subjects were guards with special treatment and the other half were prisoners. Though I'd be trying to figure out how to eliminate the whole "power corrupts" stuff, not just sitting back watching what happens as people die.

The Stanford Prison Experiment. But it shouldn't be taken seriously, it was terribly done, biased and unscientific

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31380664/

Could be interesting to run something similar under actual experimental conditions, if that was doable
- It's regrettable that it became part of "psychology 101" (in a general sense).
  
  Can you imagine how much misinformation is piggybacking off these "facts" about human nature?

Cloning is the first one that comes to mind for me. If you could somehow avoid the horrors of the process of learning a reliable methodology the result wouldn't necessarily be unethical.

We can do sheep. And thus pretty much know how that would go for humans.

I'd want to know how many people would continue eating meat if they had to kill the animal themselves after getting trained how to do it. Or as an alternative instead of doing the killing yourself being physically present while someone else does it for you and you have to watch, smell, and hear them prepare it for you.

Is it really unethical though?

Developing a wireless brain-electronic interface. I believe it will be not so bad if the development is non intrusive.

All natural eugenics. No drugs or engineering, just good old fashioned artificial selection driven by fully consenting paid volunteers.

Probably seeing what amount of pain each asshole driver can suffer before they die. Hope you're at least a 9, OP!