Strange argument last night...

[Torrasque]

How DARE you defame the righteous honor of DRAGONS!!!!!
MAY YOU BE CONSUMED BY THEIR FIRES FOR ALL TIME!!!!!1!!!1

Tbh, I agree with what you said. People are stupid, and Dragons would be abused to fuck if they were made.
Also, please try to refrain from posting like you just did
Have breaks in paragraph, sentence, etc.
More people will be likely to read your wall of text if it doesn't look like a WALL of text.

 

[k-ossuburb]

Snip.

I'm looking at this from a scientific point of view and to be honest, you're both wrong.

First of all, scientists are not a bunch of crazy people who'll become "power hungry" and try to become popular; they're intellectuals and academics, just because they could create a dragon doesn't mean they would because, believe it or not, they're smart enough to figure out how completely pointless an exercise it would be. It serves no utility for the human race and it does not give us any information other than how to genetically alter a species, which we are studying and already have done already with rats, sheep and bacteria.

Scientists aren't anything like how they're portrayed in the movies, science is very refined and highly focused, due to the scientific method, such an idea would never even come close to fruition because whoever proposes it will be laughed right out of the community and most likely forfeit any future job prospects in the process.

Another thing is, hypothetically speaking, if a "dragon" was created (which, as I've pointed out, it would not) it wouldn't breathe fire, you can't just hand-craft an organ like you're making an engine part, something as complicated as creating life is a painfully slow and meticulous process and would likely fail countless amounts of times before you even get something close to what you want. Since there is no creature on earth that breathes fire there will be no fire-breathing dragons because the genetic "information" required just does not exist, the closest you'd probably get is somehow tweaking the genetics of some of the lizards in the draco family, like draco blanfordii, maculatus, norvillii or volans and trying to make them a little bit bigger somehow.

Although, with the size they are and how their size is a factor in how they're capable of gliding for long distances (due to being so light) I'd guess you probably wouldn't be able to get them much bigger than a bearded dragon before "flight" becomes impossible, in no way would you be able to engineer one the size of a komodo dragon, so trying to get one the size of one of the dragons of myth is nothing more than a pipe-dream.

Also, what the hell are the military going to do with dragons anyway? A bunch of uncontrollable carnivores aren't exactly the best weapon. For one thing they'll be extremely expensive to keep because of waste disposal and having to constantly keep them fed on meat which is not readily available in most war zones especially in the quantities required to feed something of the size of the dragons of myth, for another they'll be completely useless considering we've got incendiary devices already which are not only cheaper but a hell of a lot more reliable than a gigantic lizard.

 

[Scorekeeper]

First, that wall o' text melted my eyes. Second, your (former) friend has issues. Third, fire-breathing terrors of the skies would be totally badass...from a continent away.

 

[drumguy818]

Wall-o-text it burns, it burns my eyes!

Anyway I presume you and your friend are fairly young? At early ages hotheadedness is to be expected.
Simply move on to new friends and let him cool off.

lol, I'm fine, I wasn't really getting angry at him, I thought we were having a discussion, but he decided to get pissed at me for whatever reason, and, yeah.

tldr; Nowhere in the future will it be possible to engineer a dragon. Both you and your friend's opinion therefore don't matter, so you both should find a way to get over it.

Well, yeah, I've mentioned before that it's a little ridiculous, and I myself am completely over it (I wasn't necessarily angry to begin with, I just found it odd that he would stop being friends with me over this stupid thing, so I thought I would get the Escapist's opinion.

As for the people saying that I just rained on this guy's parade, well, I guess, but that wasn't exactly my intention. I didn't make my first post on his status "um, dragons would be incredibly dangerous and you can't see this..." His original status was "You know, with proper research, resources, and funding, it may be possible to genetically create dragons and chimeras." I just said "why would anyone *want* this?" thinking that he was already aware of this possibility. Then one of his friends came on and said "why *wouldn't* you want this?" And it went on from there after my former friend jumped in. I was never really pissed at him over this to begin with, I even sent him another friend request (which he promptly deleted).

And, geez, I'll edit the OP, sorry, lol. I guess I was tired at the time and didn't think to use paragraphs, lol

 

[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.

How do you know this?

OP is so ridiculous, I don't know where to begin.

The book of the Dragon of course! and some old Dragon folk tales...

 

[thedeathscythe]

So you fought about something completely fictitious and now you are on rough terms, "unfriending" each other on an online social networking site, and you are wondering what to do next, am I right? I would talk to him telling him how silly this is and that you both got carried away on something really ridiculous and just bury the hatchet on it.

 

[ShadowsofHope]

..genetically engineer a dragon.

..That is all I had to read of that post to classify your friend as patently insane. Has no one ever watched and learned from the movie "Reign of Fire"?

Dragons + Humans = Very Bad Shit

This is a life lesson, people! Not just a clever one-liner from your standard fantasy genre! /sigh

 

[Loonyyy]

If he's willing to compare you to Glenn Beck over something as pointless as this, I'd say you were well shot of him when he deleted you. To my mind, that's almost Godwin-ing a conversation, and over something so trivial as that? Wow...

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

What do I think of this topic?

The fact that as soon as I could genetically engineer dragons in Civilization 2 and then used them to burn the ever loving crap out of anything that dared insult me kind of answers the question of "what impact would dragons have on the world today?"....

Yes, I agree that it's too dangerous. And even if humans don't abuse the power of the dragons, the dragons themselves will revolt, and we'll have rogue dragons to worry about.

Dragons are awesome and I'd love to befriend one, or gain the power to transform into one......but Really? With the way this world is...Too freakin dangerous.

 

[drumguy818]

So you fought about something completely fictitious and now you are on rough terms, "unfriending" each other on an online social networking site, and you are wondering what to do next, am I right? I would talk to him telling him how silly this is and that you both got carried away on something really ridiculous and just bury the hatchet on it.

Well, I wasn't really trying to be incredibly serious to begin with. I thought it was just an interesting discussion, but I guess he took it to heart for whatever reason. I even tried refriending him, and he denied it. If you asked me, I would've said that there wasn't a hatchet to bury, but I guess that's not the case with him, idk.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I can see where you're coming from. As awesome as it would be to have a dragon, I would rather they continue to not exist than live in a world where I read about (or listen to) news reports about a PMC or, rouge government using Dragons as wildly successful war machines (or beasts of war) in exchange for a pocket-dragon I could keep in an aquarium tank. As for your former friend, I say good riddance. If he can't take being on the loosing side of an argument than let him go.

 

[Tselis]

Throughout the history of man we have sought to weaponize every new discovery and stride forward in technology that we make. You friend should brush up on his history.

 

[Roy Smith]

I've been clawed by my cats and bit once or twice by my dogs - a creature just as intelligent that can spit fire is likely not a good house pet.

 

[Gamblerjoe]

I understand what you are saying. Disregard everything we know about dragons' motives, mannerisms, and intelligence, and just take their physical characteristics. Then say for arguments sake that we genetically engineer one. One would at least have to entertain the notion that they could be a dangerous and unhinged threat to humanity.

I dont think that the military would actually waste their limited funding on this(I know its a lot, but it still finite, and military R&D is expensive.) But for the sake of a really really hypothetical conversation, your thought are not crazy at all. The fact that he's comparing you to Glenn Beck is totally out of left field and has nothing to do with any part of the argument.

I had a friend like that who I just had to cut off. Some people just completely lose their heads when you do anything short of bowing to them and telling them they're right about everything. We had an argument about DnD one time. He thought that intermediate gods were more powerful than greater gods. I told him the definition of the word intermediate, and he told me that that had no bearing on the conversation (though he said it in a profoundly less intelligent manner.) Then he freaked out and told me I was an asshole, which is pretty much what he did every time I ever tried to introduce logic into a discussion. His mother did a real number on him.

 

[hazabaza1]

To be honest, I gotta agree with him. Having a dragon would be fuckin' cool.

 

[Womplord]

I find his reaction to be unreasonable but I think you're argument was dumb all the same. Really? Creating dragons to kill people? I'm sure that there would be far, far more efficient methods of killing people by the time we could make a dragon from scratch, and far better creatures for killing than dragons. Not psychopathic, but still just pretty ridiculous to be honest.

 

[hooksashands]

Facebook: Making people un-friends since 2004.

 

[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.

How do you know this?

OP is so ridiculous, I don't know where to begin.

The book of the Dragon of course! and some old Dragon folk tales...

If we're even going to have this conversation about made-up creatures, you should get it right. Dragons are self-absorbed, high and mighty pricks (even the nice ones) who don't give a shit about lesser creatures like humans.

I never said anything about them being NICE or SELFLESS or even HUMBLE its actually as you said since they don't give a damn about humans they don't go out of their way to kill us. If you try to kill them or steal their loot they'll kill you.

If you try to trick them you have to tell them how great they are or how beautiful. I never said anything about them being nice creatures.

 

[FilipJPhry]

I imagine that if it were to happen, it might wind up like this

Well, your friend kinda overreacted, but let fuck that guy.

 

[the rye]

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?

The entire thing is too speculative, things could go bad thing could go good who the fuck knows. Even if dragons were genetically engineered they would not be sold as pets to the public. Your talking about a fantasy creature so there is no knowing for sure how it would impact life. But if scientists did want to genetically engineer a dragon i say go for it. Science isn't about why it's about why not.