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.

Nice try Elon

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

What happens when we reverse Earth’s rotation.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.