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Boiling Down the Meaning of Life
Shipud writes "A recent article in Journal of Biomolecular structure and Dynamics proposes to define life by semantic voting [Note: open-access article]: 'The definitions of life are more than often in conflict with one another. Undeniably, however, most of them do have a point, one or another or several, and common sense suggests that, probably, one could arrive to a consensus, if only the authors, some two centuries apart from one another, could be brought together. One thing, however, can be done – short of voting in absentia – asking which terms in the definitions are the most frequent and, thus, perhaps, reflecting the most important points shared by many.' The author arrives at a six-word definition, as explained here."
Monty Python already knew what it was: look here for some quotes.
Life may have many definitions but no meaning at all.
Insert self-referential sig here.
Seriously, what's wrong with having a bunch of competing definitions?
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
An entity that a) reduces local entropy, and b) came into existence via being replicated from and by another similar entity. Thus, you have the requirement of self replication, consuming resources, etc., which allows for those who can't reproduce, and rules out fire.
"Undeniably, however, most of them do have a point, one or another or several, and common sense suggests that, probably, one could arrive to a consensus, if only the authors, some two centuries apart from one another, could be brought together."
Forget water boarding: just use that sentence.
damaged by dogma
Are you trying to create a modern equivalent to the Nazi song "Das ist kein Mensch, das ist ein Jude"?
And not all life is human. Whether they believe in any variant of a certain dominant monotheistic faith system or not. So you totally missed what the point was. My suggestion: Stay anonymous and stay coward.
Can be done with just one, and you also get the universe and everything to boot! 42
"Life is self-reproduction with variations"
If the RSS feed actually had the link to TFA in it, I wouldn't have had to come here to get it, and then spoil it all for you.
This points to the distinction between "life" and "alive". Is roast beef life? No. It was once life.
So, is a virus life?
Is a bacterium or spore floating in space at super-low temperature alive? What if it has had 10 percent of genetic information damaged by cosmic radiation?
"Service Temporarily Unavailable"... nah, its just three words based on my definition of counting :)
But if we look deep into the message and add "try again later", i think author is spot on.
everyone downmodding this post will be prosecuted for reading my post without first buying a license!!!
When you have a hammer all problems look like nails... or something
another Roadkill on the Information Superhighway
By the way, I support abortion for the same reason I support the Death Penalty: Necessary in a practical sense, but over all pretty gross...
That's probably raising lots of flames and will burn some karma, but I find it difficult to see practicality in the death penalty. Abortion now, at least indeed has undeniable practicality in some cases, like where the birth would simply kill the mother. It's hard to argue against that point.
But the death penalty -- at least in its incarnation where you don't just shoot/hang/burn the first person you think is guilty -- seems awfully impractical. Compared to life imprisonment it costs the same (or sometimes even more) and has the same outcome of preventing recidivism (re-offending). But, unfortunately it does cause psychological strain on those having to dish out the penalty (that life imprisonment certainly doesn't) and prevents any sort of future moral insight in the guilty, no matter how unlikely you deem it.
A further difference is what some victims feel, namely the warm gut feeling of satisfied murderous revenge ... which is most likely what the person who got the penalty also got at some point and is even maybe what they might have gotten the penalty for to begin with. But since the logical outcome of life and death penalty is ultimately the same anyway (death); only one with more delay than the other, you can't really say that the latter is more practical in that regard either. In both cases, they will never see freedom again or get a chance to repeat their action until they die (and if you're not religious and there's no after-life, this lack is permanent).
As such, I see no reason how practicality could decide the question of the use of the death penalty, as it seems to me just as practical (or even a smidgeon less practical, I admit) than real life imprisonment.
Of course, practicality and morality are two different things that need to be evaluated differently, and thus -- at least for me -- the question is a moral, and not a practical one.
Language is just a way to put boundaries on the usualy continious things in the universe. Why even attempt to do this?
...it's probably not alive any more.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
"it's like a box of chocolates"
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Life: something which defies the apparent path of least resistance (which would be to sit down and do nothing/die.)
Conciousness, of course, is much more involved.
Uhm... one punctuation symbol and one word?
!dead
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
I like Mike Russell's ultra reductive statement,
"The purpose of life is to hydrogenate carbon dioxide."
or Schrödinger's tongue in cheek definition,
Matter is alive “when it goes on doing something” longer than we would expect it to."
I like a quote I read recently:
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I am constantly incereasing local entropy around me, so you say I am not alive?
The definition I like came from NASA astrobio asking the question, what would be an observable indication of life on a remote planet. That what might exist in spectra, or surface photos or any remote observation that would be a hallmark of life.
One definition promoted by David Wolpert was the notion of self dissimilarity across scales. Consider that perfectly organized things (crystals) and perfectly disorganized things (gas) are both dead. So a hallmark of life is not entropy. Gas and crystals are dead because as you zoom out on them, their organizational simmilarity does not change (seen a small region of gas or a small region of a crystal, and you can extrapolate or predict all properties of the organization at a larger scale.). On the otherhand life has organizations that change as you zoom out. atoms become become proteins, become complexes, become organelles, become single cells. Single cells become organs. Organs organize into animals. Animals organize into packs. Different kinds of animals form an eco system. And so on.
At each scale, the organization observed remains predictable for a while as you zoom then it abruptly shifts to a new one. The idea is that a hallmark of life is that if you look how each scale can be predicted from the scales below it, that this predictcablilty, perhaps measured as information surprisal, is nearly constant over a range, and then abruptly goes to zero at some scale.
You should therefore look for this same scaling phenomena in spectra or sand dunes or whatever you can remotely observe. A planet that displays anomolies in this probably has some sort of activity that is partially organizing it.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
"The author arrives at a six-word definition, as explained here."
Life is autonomous self-reproduction with variations.
(Thanks for not mentioning it in the summary, sigh.)
Challenge accepted! It would kill the mother, but it would produce new life, which would go on to live another 20 ~ 40+ years longer than the mother would live. Replace one life with another, in total longer lived life.
Your turn.
Thanks, you've just vindicated my first point. As I said, practicality does undeniably enter into the pro-life/pro-choice debate. If, without abortion, death for both is certain; pure practicality demands to save the mother's life. If the mother's death is certain (for example in the most extreme case of her being already brain-dead), practicality demands to save the child, even if this will kill the mother.
But of course, as your point also shows, the very last sentence of my posting is also true: Even in questions where practicality is a useful criterion, others -- like morality -- have to be considered to cover the myriad of cases where pure practicality fails or gives an inconclusive or incomplete answer.
And in some cases -- like the death/life penalty debate -- I personally see all situations as being either uncovered by pure practicality or very slightly in favour of life-penalty.
a huge success.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
Hmm.. So you favour killing a human for no fault of theirs (abortion) but oppose killing as just punishment for an unjustified murder (say the murderer of a child... or a baby)?
Hmm...
!dead
Necrophiles agree.
Life is paradoxically coincidental to the ironical tyranny applicable to the unparalleled definition of reverse entropy.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
In an extensional definition (exemplar listing) of the "over-definition" flaws inherent in intensional definition (attribute listing), one might cite this..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZXAA5YQ0Js&feature=related
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
For instance, one suggestion for such a classification would be:
The definition of protolife is wide enough to envelop both normal chemical systems (fire and crystals) and certain computer systems, but it has to be wide in order to cover protocells and possibly some lifeforms that we haven't encountered yet. When you get to the class I definition, a virus would qualify due to its genetic material. Class II covers most plants and microorganisms. The last class covers humans and animals due to (i) our ability to move around and (ii) our ability to transform our environment.
If we try to look at artificial life forms, then a lot of software would register as protolife. Software that modifies itself to adapt to environmental requirements, would register as class I. I believe hooking up to the electrical grid should count as metabolism, so hardware with mutating software would go as class II. The last class would cover reproducing robots with mutating software.
who the fuck are those "medical professionals"? people who sell medical rubber gloves?
george carlin set the bar pretty high by pointing out that "life started millions of years ago and hasn't stopped since".
and the death penalty isn't good for anything, at all? that it's gross is not really a convincing argument for it, either.
But he's counting "self-reproduction" as two words.
for the same reason I support the Death Penalty: Necessary in a practical sense, but over all pretty gross...
There's at least one good reason I will never support the death penalty, and that is that the justice system is imperfect. Probably the best example are rape cases where DNA has shown they were in fact innocent many years later, but we've had murder sentences lifted based on deathbed confessions. Sometimes they've even confessed because they were half retarded, they were misidentified by witnesses and wrongly picked out in a lineup, beyond reasonable doubt does not mean beyond and and all doubt. Currently the US is executing around 50 people a year, if we say they live on average 60 years in prison instead that's 3000 people in a population of 300 million or 0.0001% the population. I'm prettty sure the justice system would not collapse over that, particularly since you would free up many other resources too.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Heh. Have you even *read* the comment you replied to? How about in some cases, like where the birth would simply kill the mother. How does that constitute the child having no "fault"? Of course it's impossible to lay blame here, but that's hardly the point, since abortions aren't some sort of moral punishment. But let's say you'd detect something that means the child will kill the mother, then die, if brought to term. Sure, that may not be the common case. But to call it killing a human in any and all cases is just silly.
And you might even argue that as long as it's connect to the mother, it's part of her organism, to do with as she pleases. I don't agree with nilly-willy abortions, but you know what, neither does any woman I ever spoke to about the subject. I have not met a single woman who shrugged off having had an abortion. Those may exist, but personal anecdotal evidence suggests they take it more seriously than men (who would have thought). However, for other people to dictate them what to do with their womb, or to imply they are murderers without knowing anything about the specific circumstances, that's just not on. Fuck that.
Compared to life imprisonment it costs the same (or sometimes even more) and has the same outcome of preventing recidivism (re-offending).
Not really.
The costs of the death penalty are externally elevated. The cost of a bullet is quite cheap.
As far as re-offending-
The murder is not kept in perfect isolation (cruel and unusual), and has the opportunity to re-offend with what are essentially other wards of the state (not to mention prison guards). Anyone who has been around prisons knows there is far more crime in prison than outside.
So what do you do with a person with a life sentence who rapes/kills another prisoner? You have already invoked the worst punishment your scenario allows, and it has failed.
And what of the safety of the other prisoners? Is the state not obliged to keep them safe from further crime? The death penalty ends all future recidivism from this individual permanently.
(It should be noted I generally oppose the death penalty, but as a practical matter understand that it is, and should be, a method of last resort).
Oh, and the conflating with abortion? Pure ideological claptrap.
I don't think the search for a single definition of the word "Life" is a fruitful endeavour, even within the field of Evolutionary Biology. (A Doctor, for instance, will have an equally technical but distinct understanding of "living" in accordance with the use to which that notion is going to be put)
Perhaps we are interested in focusing on the evolution of a particular genus of plant. In this case, our theories may be overdetermined if we insist that it should account for how living plants have something in common with humans and something distinguishing it from this wine bottle.
On the other hand, if we think that we should restrict what we say about living things in this model because of the possibility of treating digital life, then this might well negatively impact what we can do in this theory. I don't mean any kind of ethical restriction; I just mean that weakening assumptions about what it takes for a plant to be considered alive could skew our models of how they react and respond to environmental effects.
The search for a "single definition" through consensus is a sign of very bad metaphysics if we have importantly distinct notions at work. If this is taken seriously, we should be looking for philosophers of biology to fire for not doing their job properly.
Myu:
This is spectacular. And it reminds me of researchers Cindy Meston and David Buss' 237 reasons for sex. They similarly tried to semantically define why people have sex and along those lines interviewed thousands of undergrads. The results? The stereotype that men have sex for pleasure while women have sex for love is unfounded. Also, some great answers like one woman saying, "I'd rather spend five minutes having sex with him than spend five days listening to him whine about how horny he is." Good stuff.
GeekDad, TED speaker, Wipeout loser, author of Brain Trust
Guess how many characters there are in the above sentence? (between the quotes)
Okay, you don't have to guess... you can count them.
- Mike
... is not obligated to supply phenomena that fit neatly into our preconceived ontological categories.
It is quite possible that any possible definition of life either includes things we don't think of as "alive" or excludes things we do.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Your argument assumes that 'total longer lived life' is most important when determining the practicality of an action. By that reasoning it would be best to force everyone to reproduce as often as possible (e.g. by banning contraceptives) and to keep brain-dead people on life-support indefinitely.
I think it's obvious there are more issues to consider than just 'total lived life'. For instance, the effect of losing the mother on her friends and family. The effect on the child that has to grow up without a mother (and perhaps with the thought that they were to some degree complicit in her death). And, from a very heartless economic perspective, it would mean the loss of a tax-payer, likely before she had the chance to pay back (through taxes) the money that society had invested in raising and educating her.
Jappus argued:
I find it difficult to see practicality in the death penalty. Abortion now, at least indeed has undeniable practicality in some cases. It's hard to argue against that point.
But the death penalty -- at least in its incarnation where you don't just shoot/hang/burn the first person you think is guilty -- seems awfully impractical. Compared to life imprisonment it costs the same (or sometimes even more) and has the same outcome of preventing recidivism (re-offending). But, unfortunately it does cause psychological strain on those having to dish out the penalty (that life imprisonment certainly doesn't) and prevents any sort of future moral insight in the guilty, no matter how unlikely you deem it.
A further difference is what some victims feel, namely the warm gut feeling of satisfied murderous revenge ... which is most likely what the person who got the penalty also got at some point and is even maybe what they might have gotten the penalty for to begin with. But since the logical outcome of life and death penalty is ultimately the same anyway (death); only one with more delay than the other, you can't really say that the latter is more practical in that regard either. In both cases, they will never see freedom again or get a chance to repeat their action until they die (and if you're not religious and there's no after-life, this lack is permanent).
As such, I see no reason how practicality could decide the question of the use of the death penalty, as it seems to me just as practical (or even a smidgeon less practical, I admit) than real life imprisonment.
Of course, practicality and morality are two different things that need to be evaluated differently, and thus -- at least for me -- the question is a moral, and not a practical one.
I agree that the death penalty is impractical, but for entirely different reasons than the ones you put forth.
You admit that your objection to the death penalty is a moral one, and your arguments all flow from that. Mine are entirely practical ones:
Basically, it costs too much, it doesn't actually deter criminals from committing murder or high treason, and it is provably misapplied from time to time. It's past time we did away with it, and saved the taxpayer the expense of an expensive, ineffective, and occasionally supremely unjust Medieval legal sanction.
Check out my novel.
Life is a sexually transmitted disease with a 100% fatality rate.
Life is self-reproduction with variations
IMHO, without including the concept of 'self-awareness' (includes self-preservation at one end and empathy at other) the definition of Life will remain incomplete.
Not really.
The costs of the death penalty are externally elevated. The cost of a bullet is quite cheap.
That's why I specifically stated: [...] But the death penalty -- at least in its incarnation where you don't just shoot/hang/burn the first person you think is guilty ---[...].
Just like in physics (or anything, really), the practicality of something depends on its entire cost and not just its cost in part of the system.
As far as re-offending-
The murder is not kept in perfect isolation (cruel and unusual), and has the opportunity to re-offend with what are essentially other wards of the state (not to mention prison guards). Anyone who has been around prisons knows there is far more crime in prison than outside.
I never said that the lock-away-and-forget approach is completely practical either. Most capital offenses occur on the spur of the moment -- even some cases of rape. For most people thus jailed, there is not a particularly high chance of them doing it again, if the situation in the prison is not living hell.
If it is, then you have a wholly different slew of problems. Someone greater than me (Dostojevski) once said, that "“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons". He was right, you know. As such, it does not help the argument for the death penalty to point out that you can make prison itself a place worse than death.
Of course, there are people usually falling into the blurry category of "criminally insane". These of course need a different treatment, but "off-with-their-head" is a highly unilluminating one. Instead, it is far more helpful to try to understand what made them do what they did and what causes them to do it again and again. As horrible as their crimes are, learning what caused them is a far more useful approach for society. You know, maybe you will find a cure and prevent future murders, either by treating the condition or at least recognizing it earlier from small warning signs. If you ask me, that sounds much more practical.
Of course, that too ultimately enters territories that go beyond mere practicality. Crime and Punishment is simply a far too encompassing problem to be treated with just one approach to analysis and judgement -- which was the entire point of my initial posting.
So what do you do with a person with a life sentence who rapes/kills another prisoner? You have already invoked the worst punishment your scenario allows, and it has failed.
And what of the safety of the other prisoners? Is the state not obliged to keep them safe from further crime? The death penalty ends all future recidivism from this individual permanently.
(It should be noted I generally oppose the death penalty, but as a practical matter understand that it is, and should be, a method of last resort).
I quoted this separately, because while all the above applies, too, there's another hidden insight here in regard to the "practicality argument" and why it seems inapplicable to me:
As a deterrent, the death penalty is just as effective as life imprisonment. Either you're doing the crime out of affect, in which case you do not think about the consequences by definition; or you do it pre-mediated, in which case your intention is to not get caught; again making deterrence pointless.
In cases where you are aware of the punishment and do it nevertheless; deterrence was again pointless. Only in the remaining few cases where you fear being punished enough, to not do the crime, deterrence plays a role. And in that state of mind: How many people are additionally deterred by being killed versus how many are deterred by being imprisoned permanently? Remember the restrictive set of circumstances: It has to be a pre-mediated crime, with the expectation of being caught, made by someone not essentially mad (apart from even considering the crime to begin with).
Given that, I find it hard to believe how
Sorry, I mangled the formatting a bit in the previous posting without noting it.
Everything after the "(It should be noted" line is my answer up until the last properly quoted part.
One of these days, Slashdot should allow you to edit your posting again for a short while after you've hit submit. :)
As such, I see no reason how practicality could decide the question of the use of the death penalty, as it seems to me just as practical (or even a smidgeon less practical, I admit) than real life imprisonment.
I myself have no defined position on the death penalty, but I know more or less the different arguments, and it seems to me they all can be reduced to two basic and incompatible opinions regarding what the punitive branch of the justice branch is for.
The first, and oldest, is the notion that the punitive branch goal is simply to protect society, what it accomplishes by removing from it those who violate (that) society rules. In this case society, which is what MUST be defended, is understood as a set of agreements on how one person should behave with another so that everyone can go on with their lives without causing trouble for each other and helping each other so that the end result is a net gain for everyone. So, if someone is being problematic, you punish him lightly so that he notices he's being a jerk and start behaving; if he does something more serious, you ostracize him temporarily (this ostracism can be literal in small enough societies, as you literally make the person get out of the village/tribe/whatever and taste living on his own, without the benefit of community support, so that he can start grasping how very much important being in it is -- and if he dies while "out", well, that's his problem); if he does something much more serious, you either ostracize him permanently (which, depending on context, is about equal to killing him), or disable him so that he cannot do that kind of damage to society anymore (this can take the form of amputation/castration, which, in more civilized societies, takes the form of lobotomy, chemical castration, inserting sensors to track the person every move, telling everyone who he is via public sex offender list etc.); and if his danger to society is understood be so extreme that you absolutely cannot take the risk of him remaining around, the next logical step is the death penalty, as it's the definite form of removal. Notice then that, from this perspective, being in any way nice to the criminal isn't part of the requirements at all. In fact, as long as he's being punished, or is an illegal alien, he's thought of as someone from without society, hence not deserving of any of societies niceties, which only actual society members deserve.
The second, and newest, is the notion that the punitive branch goal is to reform the criminal. This is similar to the above in many practical matters, since in many cases you remove the person from society, but the difference is that he's still considered part of it, hence deserving of protections, rights etc. As for the punishments, they're thought of as a means to an end whose focus is first the individual, and only secondarily society proper. As such, harsh punishments are usually frown upon and go unused, since they're not seen as conducive to any kind of individual reforming. As an obvious and necessary consequence of this point of view, the death penalty gets rejected, since if there's one thing that doesn't help one to become reformed it's being dead. Now, it's important to understand that this whole notion depends, to be valid, on the possibility of the majority of criminals reforming, which is something the defendants of the first approach don't think possible, or at least think possible only for a small minority of cases.
The current US system is clearly modeled on the first approach, with a few touches of the second one here and there. As such, even though on a moral basis alone it could reject the death penalty, keeping it around isn't incoherent, even the cost being the same. But where the overall approach to be change to the second one then sure, employing it wouldn't make sense, from any perspective, even a purely practical one.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
So you favour killing a human for no fault of theirs (abortion)
The person you responded to already answered that (As a "no")
When you have a person alive for a number of years, who would be able to live another many decades, if not for one medical issue going wrong...
You have two outcomes to choose between:
1) The baby dies, and the mother lives
or
2) The baby dies, and the mother dies too.
So as the baby is already going to die, and there is nothing you can do to change that, all that's left on the table is if the mother dies or not, which you have full control over.
Your view suggests that the mother should die, as well as the baby.
The person you replied to suggests that the mother should live, while the baby dies.
Only person here making the choice of killing a person is you.
At least the GP is trying to save the one and only life that can be saved in the situation given.
Then there is the point on the death penalty.
As happens very frequently, it is discovered after the fact that the person originally arrested and tried for the crime turns out to be proven innocent, or another person is proven to be guilty and acting alone, which is itself proof the former person is innocent.
When you put someone to death, as you feel should be done, you can never fix the mistake once found out. With life imprisonment you can.
If it turns out the person is guilty after the fact, then they have been in prison all that time and will continue to be.
So once again, you have just put every wrongfully accused person to death, despite evidence after the fact that you got the wrong person.
The person you are responding to suggests once evidence comes to light that the one imprisoned was the wrong person, you let them go and attempt to make amends for the time stolen from their life.
So you just put to death many innocent people that did nothing wrong, as well as killed an innocent mother.
The person you responded to did neither of those things.
Hmm indeed!
His definitions require replication with variations. So if someone found a way to suppress genetic mutation in humans, we would not be alive right? An artificial creation can also not be alive unless it can reproduce? Does factory production count? It seems we can shorten his definition even more if we embrace his bias:
Life is: from evolution.
I don't object to evolution, but I don't think it's correct to define life by this existing process. Or am I missing something?
But the death penalty -- at least in its incarnation where you don't just shoot/hang/burn the first person you think is guilty -- seems awfully impractical
- that's a strange argument. It's much more practical to kill somebody and stop wasting resources trying to do some real justice, definitely cheaper that way. I have a different understanding of the word 'practical' from yours - in fact trying to achieve some form of justice is much less practical than just putting together a case against somebody and quickly executing them.
I mean think of all the resources that go into proving someone's innocence - why bother, if you are only concerned with the 'practical' side of things? Whoever you can frame the crime upon (without getting caught, that's important) practically speaking should be immediately executed and case should be closed.
Now, morally it's a completely different story. If you are concerned with the morality of the matter rather than practical side of it, then you can't use capital punishment at all, because you can never be either sure of total guilt nor can you create a 'just' society applying capital punishment. It's just not going to be a 'just society', because even one killing of an innocent means the society is unjust.
So if you care about morality, you can't have capital punishment.
If you care about practicality you shouldn't let anybody go, who you can simply frame for a crime, it's very practical.
You can't handle the truth.
The first law of logic is that you must know what you're talking about. Without an agreed upon definition, any use of the word "life" invalidates logical arguments containing it.
"What is the meaning of life?"
What is the meaning of that question? I take particular issue with "Meaning".
Does it mean "purpose"? If so, life's purpose is defined by its creator; if there is no creator, it's purpose is self-defining; empirically, the one we've decided on is "keep reproducing until you deplete all available means to do so and/or come up with something else to do".
Does it really mean "Meaning" as in "This means something"? A creator may have intended some meaning; if there is no creator, I'm afraid all it can mean is "Stuff can successfully self-reproduce for at least a few billion years on this particular rock". Any other meaning is entirely made up by us.
I suppose in that sense data mining the meaning of life is as good an answer as any.
Personally, I think "Meaning" is a worthless question, and "Purpose"... well, it's only what you make of it. Mine is to try to make this world a better place for it's inhabitants at least until we can make contact with and/or go somewhere more exciting. I accept that this may take a while.
.. In cases where you are aware of the punishment and do it nevertheless; deterrence was again pointless...
Logic flaw. All we know from this statement, is that the deterrent was insufficient, and the perp decided he could afford it. Pointless implies a value of zero; when in reality, the value was somewhere between zero and adequate deterrence.
Only in the cases of true lunatics, such as those that kill themselves at the end of their spree, or try for death by cop (Jared Loughner); can it be reasonably argued that no deterrent would have sufficed.
The fact that most murderers attempt to get away with it, proves that there was some deterrent that would have worked. Apparently, they feel that they do, indeed, have something to lose by getting caught.
> So, if someone is being problematic, you punish him lightly so that he notices he's being a jerk and start behaving; if he does something more serious, you ostracize him temporarily (this ostracism can be literal in small enough societies, as you literally make the person get out of the village/tribe/whatever and taste living on his own, without the benefit of community support, so that he can start grasping how very much important being in it is -- and if he dies while "out", well, that's his problem);
You do realize you are describing reform, right? Becoming less of a jerk and grasping the importance of being part of society are both ways for the problematic person to change for the better (from society's perspective).
> The second, and newest, is the notion that the punitive branch goal is to reform the criminal.
"Reforming the criminal" is not a new notion, the new notion is that increasingly severe punishment alone is not sufficient to lead to effective reform.
So you favour killing a human for no fault of theirs (abortion) but oppose killing as just punishment for an unjustified murder (say the murderer of a child... or a baby)?
I see the baby, while it's still in the mother's body, as a mere parasite. If she wants to remove it, I think she should be able to do that. I do not believe the unborn baby has any rights if the mother wishes to remove them.
On the other hand, the death penalty is killing someone who isn't part of someone else's body (a free human). Not to mention that there is a chance (however slim) that they might be innocent. You can let someone out of prison after 20 years if they're found innocent, but not if you kill them beforehand. Additionally, whether the killing is "just" and whether the murder was "unjustified" is, I believe, subjective.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
and the baby has the right to live
It does? I disagree. I think rights are defined by law. If unborn babies had no rights in the eyes of the law, that would not be true (at least to me).
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Many religious people who believe in infinite punishment (hell) still sin. If the prospect of infinite punishment can be insufficient deterrence, wouldn't it be reasonable to conclude that increasing punishment does not always make a deterrent significantly more effective? Would it not be better to research ways to increase deterrence that do not rely on merely increasing punishment?
You do realize you are describing reform, right? Becoming less of a jerk and grasping the importance of being part of society are both ways for the problematic person to change for the better (from society's perspective).
Yes, but my point wasn't that in practical matter both perspectives diverged much. The practice in both many times overlap, although where they diverge, they do diverge a lot. It's more a question of focus as well as opportunity really: the first approach wants to protect society despite potentially damaging the individual, while the second wants to reform the individual despite potentially damaging society (in the sense that softer/smaller/shorter punishments many times allow a criminal to go back and commit more crimes, thus damaging society).
"Reforming the criminal" is not a new notion, the new notion is that increasingly severe punishment alone is not sufficient to lead to effective reform.
The new notion is that reforming should be the goal. Reforming was observed before, sure, but it was taken more as a lucky by-product in the law enforcement activity than something that could be systematically employed, as the goal of said activities wasn't (and usually isn't) this. There's also a difference in both approaches as to what is considered a small enough crime to warrant a not so severe punishment. The first approach considers the effect in society, period, so a lot of things warrant extremely harsher punishments than the second approach, who thinks first on the feasibility of reforming the criminal, would employ in a similar case. So it's important to distinguish eventual softenings of the former as a change towards the later. Being less severe because you have lots of surplus money and can thus afford being magnanimous isn't the same as being softer because that's more conducive to reforming the criminal.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
I wonder, perhaps, if the author, maybe due to spending too much time in academia, has forgotten how to properly compose his thoughts, thus leading to, in my humble opinion, far too many commas in his sentences.
Who's to say it isn't or wasn't? For all we know, outside the observable universe is just more universe infinitely scaling up to a large organism that is fighting another large organism made up of like universes fighting each other with giant disintegration rays that make their target expand until they break apart. Maybe we are a particle in a creature who has been hit by such device..
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
An underlying theme is that part of the definition of the human experience is that we can never know what our purpose is
At least in Christianity, the book of Job makes the purpose clear: Satan has bet God that he can make humanity turn away from God's rulership, and the purpose of human life is to prove Satan wrong.
I see the baby, while it's still in the mother's body, as a mere parasite.
Why is the baby not a parasite after it is born?
If she wants to remove it, I think she should be able to do that.
Starting in roughly the third trimester, removal of a parasite becomes feasible without causing the parasite's death. A third-trimester parasite extracted intact (let's call this organism a "preemie") can survive on its own to virtually the same extent as a full-term newborn. So why kill such a parasite instead of extracting it intact?
Sorry, but that is just what I see it as. To me, it's like a parasite. But I guess thinking something is similar to something else is impossible because if you compare two things, you're actually claiming that they are exactly alike!
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Of course, that's not to say that someone who was born can't be considered a parasite
For example, a newborn is still a parasite sucking the mammaries of its mother.
but they aren't the ones I think you should be allowed to kill.
Why should birth be the line if both fetuses and unweaned infants are parasites?
If you're using the term figuratively, or making an analogy, fine.
And I was.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
nooooo! thank you :) you said some very true things there. heartfelt rants for the win, "rants" about gentleness doubly so. gentleness, I lack it, but I appreciated your reply muchly.
Six Word Definition as explained here
I think rights are defined by law. If unborn babies had no rights in the eyes of the law, that would not be true (at least to me).
I don't think that's true, at least in the United States. The whole concept of "natural rights" in the Bill of Rights is that they exist prior to law and are recognised by law, not created by law, and that the law is always subject to being superseded by actual rights. Hence why you all had a revolution against your duly constituted legal monarch and felt justified in doing so, because you believed that the natural right of being born in a country was more important than some piece of paper saying that you were a subject. The Bill of Rights enumerates rights to clarify things, but only as an example, not as a limiting set.
But the US founding fathers did literally say "born", not "conceived", so the idea of an unborn person having rights seems like it would require reading a "penumbra" into the Constitution just like the "mother's right of privacy". It seems a logical extrapolation, but not quite derivable from the Constitution as written.
Abortion still seems squicky to me, as does the death penalty and the "right to bear guns" and corporate personhood. Where does that put me politically? Nowhere at home in either major US political wing, (so thank goodness I'm not an American).
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Basically, it costs too much, it doesn't actually deter criminals from committing murder or high treason, and it is provably misapplied from time to time. It's past time we did away with it, and saved the taxpayer the expense of an expensive, ineffective, and occasionally supremely unjust Medieval legal sanction.
Arguably, from a purely practical standpoint, you could take the Judge Dredd option and remove objections A and B at the expense of increasing C: make executions so cheap and so common that even if they don't deter, they stop reoffending. And if you decide that the worth of a human life isn't that big after all - or if you just don't bother to investigate the false positive rate - you don't have to worry about C. This is the route that a lot of dictatorships ended up going.
This is why I prefer a moral objection rather than a "practical" one. Because entirely practical arguments historically haven't stopped the practice.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
I don't think that's true, at least in the United States.
I think the bill of rights is nice and all, but I do not believe in natural rights.
Hence why you all had a revolution against your duly constituted legal monarch and felt justified in doing so, because you believed that the natural right of being born in a country was more important than some piece of paper saying that you were a subject.
They could've had a revolution whether or not they believed in natural rights. If they felt the laws were oppressive and unjust (in their opinions), then it would not matter whether they believed in natural rights or not. That's essentially what they did, anyway, since as far as I know, there is no evidence for the existence of natural rights.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
It's that cereal Mikey likes!
Forget everything else. I'm just against the government being able to take its own citizens' lives.
As an autonomous life-form, l request political asylum.
A life-form?
Ridiculous! You're merely a self-preserving program!
By that argument, l submit the DNA you carry is
nothing more than a self-preserving program itself.
Life is like a node which is born within the flow of information.
As a species of life that carries DNA as its memory system
man gains his individuality from the memories he carries.
While memories may as well be the same as fantasy
it is by these memories that mankind exists.
When computers made it possible to externalize memory
you should have considered all the implications that held.
Nonsense! No matter what you say
you've no proof that you're a life-form!
lt is impossible to prove such a thing.
Especially since modern science cannot define what life is.
As seen in dialogue between the puppeteer and section 9 member in ghost in the shell, it's very dificult if not imposibble to define life.
Life can have many forms, it can be silicon-based and non-replicating.
Take for example human-made conscious inteligent robot - should it be considered alive? I would certainly treat it as alive.
Basically, it costs too much, it doesn't actually deter criminals from committing murder or high treason, and it is provably misapplied from time to time. It's past time we did away with it, and saved the taxpayer the expense of an expensive, ineffective, and occasionally supremely unjust Medieval legal sanction.
Arguably, from a purely practical standpoint, you could take the Judge Dredd option and remove objections A and B at the expense of increasing C: make executions so cheap and so common that even if they don't deter, they stop reoffending. And if you decide that the worth of a human life isn't that big after all - or if you just don't bother to investigate the false positive rate - you don't have to worry about C. This is the route that a lot of dictatorships ended up going.
This is why I prefer a moral objection rather than a "practical" one. Because entirely practical arguments historically haven't stopped the practice.
I opined:
Basically, it costs too much, it doesn't actually deter criminals from committing murder or high treason, and it is provably misapplied from time to time. It's past time we did away with it, and saved the taxpayer the expense of an expensive, ineffective, and occasionally supremely unjust Medieval legal sanction.
Leading lennier to argue:
Arguably, from a purely practical standpoint, you could take the Judge Dredd option and remove objections A and B at the expense of increasing C: make executions so cheap and so common that even if they don't deter, they stop reoffending. And if you decide that the worth of a human life isn't that big after all - or if you just don't bother to investigate the false positive rate - you don't have to worry about C. This is the route that a lot of dictatorships ended up going.
This is why I prefer a moral objection rather than a "practical" one. Because entirely practical arguments historically haven't stopped the practice.
Here's the thing, though: there's a significant fraction of the population - and I would argue that it's currently a solid majority in the USA - that has no moral objection to the death penalty (I am part of that fraction - I happen to think that killing a person is a lot less morally objectionable than imprisoning him for life). For those people, purely moral arguments against the death penalty are a complete waste of breath. Practical arguments, however - and especially cost-based arguments - carry weight with death penalty proponents.
Now, granted, a certain proportion of death penalty advocates base their position on the notion that it is a Good Thing that society exact revenge on those evil enough to commit crimes that expose them to the death penalty. For them, neither moral nor practical arguments will make any impression - they want payback, and will settle for nothing less. (Personally, I view appropriate application of the death penalty as more in the line of pesticide: I think the world is better off without people like Charles Ng, for instance, and his death at the hands of society wouldn't bother me in the slightest, morally, ethically, or otherwise. I don't want revenge against him for his heartless string of torture-murders, I'd just like to see him permanently absent.) But the majority of death penalty advocates are, I think, amenable to the practical arguments I outlined above.
As I see it, you can choose to stand on the moral high ground, and have no meaningful effect on the debate, or you can choose to push practical reasons to eliminate the death penalty, and thereby potentially effect actual change in society's attitudes and policies. After all, there's no inherent conflict between your moral objections and my practical ones. The only real question is: Which is the most effective argument in winning hearts and minds?
BTW - as a Babylon 5 fan, I admire your handle - and your arguments are exactly those I'd expect from your namesake.
Check out my novel.
The described process sounds like it will attempt to discover what most people think and call that the definition. It ignores larger facets that go beyond mankind's limited way of thinking about things.
And the mother can give away the newborn, right?
Correct. The mother can also choose, while the parasite is still developing, to give away the newborn at birth.
my goal is to ensure the ability of the mother to get rid of unwanted pregnancies while saving as many lives as possible.
I agree with this goal. It's just that "saving as many lives as possible" means getting rid of the result of unwanted pregnancy after the pregnancy unless the pregnancy threatens the mother's life.
Hmm.. So you favour killing a human for no fault of theirs (abortion) but oppose killing as just punishment for an unjustified murder (say the murderer of a child... or a baby)?
Absolutely.
You aren't actually making any argument, which is a little weird, so I'm going to have to guess what your premises would be if you were making an argument.
My first guess is that you believe it's only OK to kill a human if you feel good about it. By "feel good about it" I mean whatever it is when people say that someone "deserves" to die. As near as I can tell the entire meaning of "deserves to die" is "I would feel morally satisfied if this person died". Since moral satisfaction is a good feeling, this amounts to believing it is OK to kill a person if and only if you feel good about it.
I make this guess because you seem to think that "fault" is somehow the sole arbiter of moral killing, and I've noticed that people with primitive, punishment-based social responses tend to regulate their behaviour according to the "fault" they perceive in others, so they feel good about hurting or killing someone who is "at fault" and badly about killing or hurting someone who is not "at fault".
This emotional, unreasoning, non-rational, hormone-driven moral calculus is responsible for a vast amount of evil in the world, from war to hitting your kids, and I am imputing it to you, so please feel free to clarify if I am incorrect in this regard.
Since I reject that emotional, unreasoning, non-rational, hormone-driven moral calculus, I am open to reasons for killing people (or not) that have nothing to do with "fault", and am free to adopt a position that is simply orthogonal to your emotional, hormone-driven categorizations regarding whose death would make you feel good (who "deserves" to die.)
All human societies have some means of killing unwanted children, and I am in favour of giving pregnant women the choice of avoiding bringing unwanted children into the world only to be destroyed in other ways, either through lack of love (they are, after all, unwanted) or more mundane material wants. You are apparently in favour of such unwanted children being born, which seems to me a hideous, anti-human belief, a desire to maximize human misery and pain. Giving mothers the choice to kill their children in the early stages of pregnancy minimizes the human cost of our poor choices, and that's what any humane, rational moralist should be seeking with regard to this question, I think.
Since the child's mother has both the most information about the child's life and prospects and the greatest interest in the child's well-being she should make the decision in this matter, and I think anyone who believes they know more about the reality of the mother and child's situation or claims they are more interested in the child's welfare than its mother is a dangerous moral degenerate.
Since you appear to be not very intelligent I'll mention some obvious consequences of these beliefs: since giving mothers the choice to kill their children late in pregnancy or after they are born would not minimize the human cost of our poor choices there is no slippery slope here. Nor is the precise moment of minimization particularly at issue: any time before 12 weeks is certainly OK, and arguably up to 24 weeks. There is simply no interesting "where do you draw the line" question.
With regard to killing people who have been convicted of some crimes, this is known to increase human misery relative to lifetime incarceration, so I am against it. The wrong people get killed, and all possibility of redemption and rehabilitation is lost even in the cases when the person killed actually committed the act they were accused of.
Likewise, mass organized killing ("war", which I assume you oppose absolutely since most of the people killed are not at fault in any way) is something I oppose because it is the least efficient, least effective means of solving any human problem. It creates vast misery for less than zero gain in the general case. There are always more efficient, more effective, more humane alternatives, so I favour them and oppose war.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
I wish that I had moderation points or even anything to add to this response. You have summed up quite nicely the flaws of taking a 'United States conservative' stance on abortion and the death penalty, and how entirely arbitrary the basis of our current worldly disposition to warring is. But why do we put up with imperialistic ruling castes? Is this simple insecurity, wanting to believe there is someone strong enough to protect us despite all costs and consequences?
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
Indeed. Even a village stoning is in many ways far more sane than the actions of the prison/police industrial complex.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman