The rubric under which all the actions prohibited on the Sabbath fall is referred to as melakhah. It is an expansive term, first used in the Hebrew Bible to describe the full range of activities which God engaged in to create the world. The only term which really approximates its scope is Jacques Ellul’s la technique, defined as “the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity.” The heuristic which the rabbis of the Talmud used to determine melakhah is simple: if the action was performed in the course of the building of the Tabernacle, which after all functioned both as a mikrokosmos in the technical sense and as a microcosm of human society, it was forbidden on the Sabbath.
There's truth to this, but in a time and place. There are times being very specific about what you know and don't know is important, but most of the time we are learning little by little, and we benefit from saying things we aren't entirely comfortable with, if only to figure out whether they are true and/or socially acceptable.
My guess: if non-genetic heritable elements -- epigenetics (such as modifications to DNA) -- are necessary for proper development, then the DNA sequence alone will not be enough to develop thylacines. (There are caveats, notably that some modifications can be inferred). However, the scientists will also be experimenting with gestation and creating embryos from modified cells, so whether epigenetics specifically is a limiting factor will be hard to tell.
Domestication and breeding/husbandry aren't always done consciously, but even when they are, people produce selective pressures (e.g. selective breeding). Evolution is ambivalent to intelligent, conscious choice or natural selection, as long as the next generation's heritable traits are different.
I've seen similar things. Besides many experiments not being remotely worth the harm they cause (poor design, niche topics without applications, dead end checking-all-the-boxes, etc.), they leave a mark on the people who conduct them. Some leave that sort of research out of distaste or disgust, and some become callous. It struck me that it inculcates an inhumane indifference to suffering. And numb scientists. It ultimately damages both the people and the science. Yet incentives (monetary, career progression) can push people past boundaries, and with time, erase them.
The issue isn't with machines, but humans as just machines. You rightly point to the assumption: "If we built a human from scratch at atom level detail then it would be reasonable assume it would experience the world as we would." What's the reason the clone has to have experience?
I'm not sure whether this clone would or not, but we don't have a good basis for either. If we built one, we should act like it does experience things, but that's on moral, not scientific grounds.
If I had to guess: "You are a machine." It's reminiscent of Victorian authors describing the heart as pistons or the brain as strings being pulled. Less of a fact and more of a metaphor, a poetic interpretation.
Then, add on the entirely subjective experience each of us has of consciousness: it's not obvious that subjectivity is created or come from machines. Each of us has one good example, and the rest is intuition, induction. At best, "You can build machines like us, because we ourselves are the proof," is a wishful project, rather than a proof.
More horrifying is that our subjective experience is all that there is. Luckily, neither is easy to square with what we experience, and we probably shouldn't try to horrify ourselves anyhow
What's wrong with helping consciousness in the realm of poetry and religion? It's the most humanistic thing we can know, after all.
Consciousness, being internal and subjective, exists at odds with anything else that science considers. Sure, study cognition and neurology, but there's an ontological gap between those and experience.
Or at least tends to increase. Entropy can always spontaneously decrease, or can simply not increase for a moment. This was actually discussed a week ago! [1] As discussed in those comments, entropy isn't well-formulated outside of equilibrium states, and is subjective: it is a function of an observer's knowledge of the system (particularly microstates).
I'd say time is very real, and an inescapable part of experience (no experience without change). As for time being the most real, we only know it through experience, so I think of it as secondary, along with space, etc.
I'm not sure what sort of data could support this, but I'll just say this: there is a difference between reading quantity and quality. I'm merely echoing greater critics, but the quantity of books sold says little about their quality (markets see books as commodities and try to make make profit rather than spreading good literature, and this is understandable). Plus, judging by the number of unread books on my shelf, buying a book doesn't mean reading it. There is an aesthetic appeal to books, and though I want to read all I own, there will inevitably be books printed and sold but unread.
There are high literacy rates, but this says little about whether material has been grasped and digested. References to classics (e.g. in the English tradition, Milton, Shakespeare, Dickens) or even religious texts (e.g. Exodus) are rarely recognized, in my experience. Given how freely great orators of the recent past drew from these (e.g. the speeches of MLK Jr.), this is surprising.
For the entire US, the rate is not very high, and has been decreasing over the last few decades; it's similar to rates in the UK and France.
There's likely more variance, though, since some groups and individuals are much less likely to abort, whereas others are much more likely. The latter involves, partly: contraceptive perceptions, access, poverty, among others.
This is maybe similar to some Jewish equivalents to mediation. The focus is ultimately on better action (the concept of commandments places an emphasis on doing over having the correct mindset or beliefs). These forms of meditation range from contemplative (of the characteristics of G-d, mystical concepts, etc.) to self improving (e.g. going out alone in nature and just saying to G-d whatever comes to mind, or visualizing what one learned to engage again in the topic, for understanding or building virtues). Jewish prayer and study can also be meditative, and can be either communal or secluded, verbalized or silent. [0] [1]
There are certainly parallels in other Western traditions, particularly in Sufism [2] [3]. Personally, I think that the most effective form would be the one closest to a person's tradition; ideally, meditation is a practice that's embedded in a wider setting (of legends, language, ideas).
I read this coming from a very different background (secular), but I've seen a lot of these issues around me too. Especially among people raised MO (the chasidish and litvish have similar problems, but frame them differently).
for what it's worth, 18forty has done several discussions on these themes, and they resonated with me: 18forty.org/rational (in particular, with Shmuel Phillips. Their discussions of OTD and mysticism are also very relevant.)
https://www.athwart.org/notes-on-judaic-political-economy/