Exactly. Polygraphs (and voice stress analysis, and fMRI, and any other so-called deception detecting technology) work because they frighten people into fessing up. THAT'S why police departments still use them. The science they are based upon is sketchy or misleading at best, and completely dismisses the inherent complexity of an act such as lying.
Except that (and this has been repeated time and time again above) -- it will NOT devour 'every bit of matter between the black hole and the center of the earth'. The chances of it hitting anything, even if it passes through the nucleus of an atom (which, relative to the size of the black hole, is largely empty space), is minuscule. The black hole would be so tiny, and its gravitational pull so slight, that the chances of it sweeping up any matter at all (let alone the entire planet) before it evaporated are not even worth bothering with.
There are a lot of behaviours not exhibited by babies and young children that are nonetheless not 'learned' behaviours (their brains are still developing, after all). Some behaviourists have insisted that facial expressions, and even emotions, are entirely learned, despite irrefutable evidence to the contrary. The prevalence of arachnophobia suggests that there could be an inborn tendency to develop it. This would not make it entirely unlearned (and does not mean that one could not be conditioned to overcome it), but to insist that it is an invention of western culture perpetuated by Hollywood is likely incorrect.
I have nothing against spiders. I appreciate what they do. I'm not bothered by jumping spiders (even the big ones) or daddy longlegs, or insects. But something about the way wolf spiders move, or the dangling legs of orb weavers, triggers a very powerful phobia in me, and this seems to be the quality that bothers others that I've discussed this with as well. I have family members that are afraid of snakes, or mice, or earwigs, and I never developed a phobia of any of these creatures. I'm not looking to excuse my phobia, but I hear alarm bells go off any time someone insists that a behaviour can't possibly have an inborn component.
The Y chromosome deliberately has as few genes as possible to make it a very small target for the competing X chromosome (the X chromosome having the upper hand). It doesn't count for much. The X chromosome is phenotypically much more relevant, since males do not have a backup X.
OTOH, my tropical fish would die if I left my stock water in 5 gallon jugs longer than a week or so.
Who told you THAT???
I regularly buy RO water that might sit around for months in its jug before I get around to using it in my reef tank. Of course, I oxygenate the water when I dissolve the salt mix, but suffocating your fish isn't the same thing having them poisoned by harmful plastic residue.
Alright.
But the birds didn't try to remove the dots from the 'other magpie' in the mirror. They tried to remove it from their own body. THAT is the important criteria of the mirror mark test.
The control was to determine if visibility was the true stimulus here (the dots were placed somewhere where the birds could not see them without the aid of the mirror, remember). If the birds merely felt the dots on their feathers, and removed them, then they should have reacted in the same manner regardless of dot colour.
Admittedly I have not read the actual study, but I'll assume that any animal intelligence researcher with half a brain would be careful enough to design the experiment so that a 'Clever Hans' effect was prevented.
Well, that's it right there, isn't it? A clump of cells doesn't 'feel' anything. And while the developmental line drawn between a clump of cells and a sentient being may not be an obvious one, I think we're certainly capable of determining when we're well behind it. The argument over whether terminating a developing human being is morally the same thing as murdering that potential person is another issue altogether, but deciding if a clump of cells 'wants' to live is a non-issue. Don't equate one extreme with the other simply because the transition between them gets a little fuzzy in the middle.
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Exactly. Polygraphs (and voice stress analysis, and fMRI, and any other so-called deception detecting technology) work because they frighten people into fessing up. THAT'S why police departments still use them. The science they are based upon is sketchy or misleading at best, and completely dismisses the inherent complexity of an act such as lying.
Except that (and this has been repeated time and time again above) -- it will NOT devour 'every bit of matter between the black hole and the center of the earth'. The chances of it hitting anything, even if it passes through the nucleus of an atom (which, relative to the size of the black hole, is largely empty space), is minuscule. The black hole would be so tiny, and its gravitational pull so slight, that the chances of it sweeping up any matter at all (let alone the entire planet) before it evaporated are not even worth bothering with.
Ah, the good old nature vs nurture debate.
There are a lot of behaviours not exhibited by babies and young children that are nonetheless not 'learned' behaviours (their brains are still developing, after all). Some behaviourists have insisted that facial expressions, and even emotions, are entirely learned, despite irrefutable evidence to the contrary. The prevalence of arachnophobia suggests that there could be an inborn tendency to develop it. This would not make it entirely unlearned (and does not mean that one could not be conditioned to overcome it), but to insist that it is an invention of western culture perpetuated by Hollywood is likely incorrect.
I have nothing against spiders. I appreciate what they do. I'm not bothered by jumping spiders (even the big ones) or daddy longlegs, or insects. But something about the way wolf spiders move, or the dangling legs of orb weavers, triggers a very powerful phobia in me, and this seems to be the quality that bothers others that I've discussed this with as well. I have family members that are afraid of snakes, or mice, or earwigs, and I never developed a phobia of any of these creatures. I'm not looking to excuse my phobia, but I hear alarm bells go off any time someone insists that a behaviour can't possibly have an inborn component.
The Y chromosome deliberately has as few genes as possible to make it a very small target for the competing X chromosome (the X chromosome having the upper hand). It doesn't count for much. The X chromosome is phenotypically much more relevant, since males do not have a backup X.
OTOH, my tropical fish would die if I left my stock water in 5 gallon jugs longer than a week or so.
Who told you THAT??? I regularly buy RO water that might sit around for months in its jug before I get around to using it in my reef tank. Of course, I oxygenate the water when I dissolve the salt mix, but suffocating your fish isn't the same thing having them poisoned by harmful plastic residue.
Alright. But the birds didn't try to remove the dots from the 'other magpie' in the mirror. They tried to remove it from their own body. THAT is the important criteria of the mirror mark test. The control was to determine if visibility was the true stimulus here (the dots were placed somewhere where the birds could not see them without the aid of the mirror, remember). If the birds merely felt the dots on their feathers, and removed them, then they should have reacted in the same manner regardless of dot colour. Admittedly I have not read the actual study, but I'll assume that any animal intelligence researcher with half a brain would be careful enough to design the experiment so that a 'Clever Hans' effect was prevented.
Well, that's it right there, isn't it? A clump of cells doesn't 'feel' anything. And while the developmental line drawn between a clump of cells and a sentient being may not be an obvious one, I think we're certainly capable of determining when we're well behind it. The argument over whether terminating a developing human being is morally the same thing as murdering that potential person is another issue altogether, but deciding if a clump of cells 'wants' to live is a non-issue. Don't equate one extreme with the other simply because the transition between them gets a little fuzzy in the middle.