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Share Your Most Dangerous Idea
GabrielF writes "Every year The Edge asks over 100 top scientists and thinkers a question, and the responses are fascinating and widely quoted. This year, psychologist Steven Pinker suggested they ask "What is your most dangerous idea?" The 117 respondents include Richard Dawkins, Freeman Dyson, Daniel Dennett, Jared Diamond -- and that's just the D's! As you might expect, the submissions are brilliant and very controversial."
I shall call it "thought vehicle" or short TV. - Sounds good too.. I should patent this idea.
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
I'm sorry for responding to my own post, but no argument about freedom would be complete without mentioning the "war on drugs". God forbid that people actually be "allowed" to act in ways that may not be in their own best interest. Even worse, God forbid that they might be "allowed" to decide what drugs might be in their own best interest. Yeah, if not for the war on drugs "we would have so much crime and violence" .... .... .... hmmmmmmmm.
As one glance at either (or both) Einstein and a person with a typical case of Down's syndrome will tell you, equal mental capacities are not uniformly available.
As one glance at either (or both) Arab women and US feminists will tell you, equal rights are not uniformly available.
As one glance at either Jeffery Dalmer (or both) and Martin Luther King will tell you, equal consideration is not uniformly available.
In summary, the very idea that "we are all created equal" is a mindless, pointless statement that speaks only to turning a blind eye to reality.
I have always thought that we should be saying that we would attempt to afford equal opportunity to our fellows at each set of choices in life, and let them make of it both what they may, and what they are capable of.
But as your premise is trivially demonstrated to be false, you should probably reformulate. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Because I'm sure you're serious, I'll do you the courtesy of taking your assertions at face value, and treat them one by one.
Cats affect their environment. This is obvious and trivial. They exhibit numerous traits that we would consider to be environmentally enlightened, from burying their waste to grooming themselves to rarely killing for sport.
Cats can conserve or destroy. They make choices about this as well. For instance, my couch has been conserved. The doorjamb to the bathroom, however, has not. I think this is amusing, and the cat knows this because I take care to demonstrate it to her. From my point of view, the doorjamb is trivial and inexpensive to replace; consequently, I am delighted with the cat's choice of claw-sharpening targets.
Cats have rules/law. Drag a laser pointer across the floor. The cat will follow and play and pounce. Drag the laser pointer across another cat. The original, playful cat will proceed to ignore the laser, even if it was in the midst of crazed play with the beam. There are rules, and one of them is you don't pounce on things that are on other cats. This, interestingly, is a very good rule. Humans can be distinguished, perhaps, by the number of very bad rules we make, but not by rulemaking itself. Any tribe of monkeys has rules, as do many other types of animals, including, as I have shown, cats.
Cats have technology. They will create nests out of raw materials, they utilize knocking your crap off the dresser in order to get your attention. They understand that burial is good for anything that will reveal their presence, and anything that is dead and rotting. Other animals use sticks to fetch ants from holes, and will fashion tools from rocks and sticks. Beavers build dams. Termites build, arguably, castles.
Cats have morals. Mothers rarely eat their young. Cats rarely eat their owners, unless the owner dies. Even then, some cats cannot overcome that predjudice, though they will eat other animals.
Cats don't have religion, near as I can tell, but that's a point in their favor from where I stand, quite seriously. Cats do, however, exhibit faith. Both at the habituation level (they expect their human to come home to them again, because so far, that's what has happened) and they expect their human to take care of them, again because that's been established; and at the abstract level — once trust has been established, many wary behaviours are discarded. This occurs in cat-cat relationships and cat-human relationships, and more rarely, between cats and other species.
We do have science and science is a very complex product of advanced thinking. I don't expect science from cats for that reason. Doesn't change my point; I specifically said we differ in degree here.
Cats also experience every emotion humans do, as well as numerous behaviours and traits we like to think of as our own. They can be both selfish and generous, loving and hateful, vicious and kind, protective and defensive, careless and careful, clever and witless, and so on for quite a long list.
My position is that when we have established a level of hubris that disallows seeing that we are one of the set of animals, we have taken a step back on the very path most of us wish to tread. I recognize it's a handy mental trick when the task at hand is the consumption of a hamburger, but that makes it no more respectable.
One final point: If most humans behaved as well as my cat does, we'd be a damn sight better off. Your statement, in light of this, is ludicrous.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.