What the hell is "humanity" supposed to mean? Consciousness? No one is arguing for "humanity" being an emergent property because nobody knows what "humanity" is supposed to refer to, and if anything it only means our innate human tendencies and behavior and that is hardly emergent.
Consciousness "emerging" suddenly due to amount of neurons is silly. It is like magic--have enough of something and all the sudden an immeasurable, undefinable quality suddenly pops into being. I don't think so, and that's certainly not testable. Unless you have a way to test for consciousness that is other than detecting behaviorally in some aspect...? It sure seems to imply dualism there, and you can't quite get passed the problem of other minds unless you strictly adhere to materialism (then it's a non-problem). Simply asking a machine "Are you conscious?" reveals more more than asking a parrot of it is conscious (is it..?)
Unless you mean "emerging" in the same sense that software "emerges" from hardware, then OK, I will grant you that. But strong emergence seems more like hocus-pocus.
Indeed, Star Wars' Force was a sci-fantasy element that didn't need to be explained because it was just part of the universe. It wasn't a big central mystery. Head six and Baltar were, and they turned out to just be angels? Everything happened because of magic? The tone of the show indicated that real explanations would be given, not "Oh just God that doesn't like to be called God" which is a huge cop-out.
Finally someone else noted the retarded spiritualism. I was hoping they'd end with a sci-fi explanation for all the "religious" stuff, but nope. "GOD DID IT, AND HE LOVES YOU. WHAT IS GOD? WE WON'T SAY HURRR"
Ah, but did they have to make the big reveal actually be what they thought it was--God, the divine, etc--or could they have been INTERESTING and had this all have a neat sci-fi explanation instead of Ron Moore's half-baked theology?
I agree. I'm sure you noticed how the only atheist was Gaius Baltar, and how all the logical, scientific cylons were, of course, THE BAD GUYS.
Not to mention "It was all God and he loves you!" was just plain bad deus ex machina-type storytelling. "We were... Angels the entire time!" What a satisfying explanation that is on a sci-fi show!
The Sopranos ending was brilliant; if you don't understand it, you weren't paying enough attention to the theme of the final season, some things that were said, and some of the very intelligent and subtle camera work. Hint: The camera is following someone in the background
"I was hoping for a MUCH better explanation of Baltar's hallucination."
You mean "God did it" wasn't a good enough explanation of you? You seriously think that "God loves you" should not be the end moral of a sci-fi show that throughout never took sides or preached from a soapbox?
Telepathy and stuff can be done right in sci-fi, if you look at something like Mass Effect. The Force in Star Wars had some hokey aspects but otherwise was executed well and put star wars more in "sci-fantasy" than "sci-theology". Sci-fantasy is OK. Sci-theology is just plain terrible. I don't want to watch "Jesus in Space."
And the whole, "Well maybe god is a really advanced entity" is so played out it should never be used. Ever.
I agree entirely. Also, I was not pleased with the "Oh it's all God!" explanation. I was hoping all those mysteries would have a sci-fi explanation, not a theological one, despite all the references to god and gods throughout the show. Should've seen it coming with how they handled the single atheist on the show (Gaius) and how all the scientific, logical cylons happen to be the evil ones.
But are you begging the description by defining the group in terms of those very traits?
I didn't say that. Shared ancestry. My point is the categorization is not perfect, it's sloppy, always will be, but then as we see with ring species so is the idea of species itself.
Which is precisely why these constructs exist--to illuminate these differences. I still don't know how you think that these constructs and gropus exist without your inference that they exist.
And yet people claim race is meaningless, an useless cultural construct used to divide people. Until of course the discussion shifts to affirmative action.
I never said the groups exist without my inference that they exist. That is the central point of my post! They -are- in many ways social constructs, but again, so is the divide between species! You didn't watch the youtube video, the point there was that species itself is a human categorical construct. Yet, we all recognize that there is some use to classifying varying species, even if there are many fuzzy areas.
And read more into his post. "Ideas you are peddling"...? That has a rather specific (negative) connotation...
He set up a false dichotomy, in which I'm either too stupid to see that I'm breaking some sacred and unquestionable norms of society where lies must be told for the greater good (of which the whole point of my post was to challenge the popular but wrong "race is a myth" myth) or I'm secretly a racist boogeyman.
I happen to think that the idea that we shouldn't challenge ideologically-based "truths" to be an erroneous one.
I know what he meant. I'm not going to appeal to ideological attempts to stifle the truth just because it's an inconvenient truth for some. I'm fully aware people like you think I should shut up for the greater good.
Nope. It was decided because a majority wanted to legalize abortion. Period. After that it was just coming up with some bullcrap to justify that decision. The Constitution says nothing about abortion. Every doctor who took the Hippocratic Oath at the time of the writing of the document swore NOT to be involved in the practice so the Founders certainly were aware of the concept. So since they knew of it and failed to enumerate it as a power of the Federal government there should be zero argument that the 10th Amendment makes it an issue for the States.
Had they been actually doing their job the ruling would have consisted of the following and nothing more:
"The only guidance the Constitution provides is mentioning "Born or naturalized" in relation to citizenship. Thus the Constitution implies Birth as the dividing line between having rights and not having them. Therefore this Court has no grounds to rule that the States must forbid abortion. Since a fetus is thus not a person for purposes of Federal Law and the Constitution is silent on the issue the 10th Amendment reserves the regulation of abortion to the States and thus this Court has no power to require a State to permit, forbid or otherwise control the availibility, price or anything else related to the practice."
I am not talking about WHY it was "made legal", I am merely saying that a more secular case for abortion does exist. That is, abortion is not as easy as just saying "Women have the right!" because the status of the fetus is what the anti-abortionists are calling into question.
I agree with you completely on the issue. Abortion should be up to the states.
So for example Roe v Wade was clearly a violation. If as a country we want the Federal government to take a position one way or the other on the issue we should have had to amend the Constituition. That would have forced a huge messy public debate on the issue and we would have settled the issue back in the 1970's and not still be fighting it out now. The way it is now everyone realizes that five Supremes ARE the law so both sides fight to get five of theirs on, thus the issue hinges of the power balance of the day.. i.e. on the MEN who hold the office not the LAW they uphold. To others reading this, please note you don't have to be against abortion to think Roe vs. Wade was done on ideological and not legal grounds. Abortion is an issue more complicated than "women's rights!" because the question also involes whether the fetus is "alive"/a person/etc or not.
I am staunchly in favor of abortion. But it really should be a state's issue, legally speaking.
Most people don't even realize that R v. W was decided based on the issue of -privacy-. What a farce!
I'm not advocating anything. At all. I'm merely pointing out that the whole "all the races are equal" is built on fallacy, a different definition, or often ideology. The fact that you are kneejerking and saying my ideas are repugnant despite being true shows just why I need to bring it up--because people like you will try to silence fact in the name of social convenience.
Here I am not advocating a single thing, and went through great pains to say so, yet here you are bashing me and questioning my character. Typical of someone who thinks in terms of ideology and not simply taking the facts and dealing with them as they are.
Apparently you've never heard of this little thing called the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The question of whether Jewish people are genetically distinct from, and must therefore be segregated from, other people (e.g the Palestinians) is not entirely without controversy.
That comment was directed towards American audiences, and my point is that if you had legitimate scientific findings showed that a racial group tended towards a "negative" trait, you'd still be branded a racist.
Certainly height is an advantage in basket ball but height is hardly the exclusive province of black people. It's not totally impossible that being black correlates with skill in basketball (in the same way that it's not totally impossible that Elvis was abducted by aliens). It's much more likely, though, that it's not genetics, per se - for example, that both black people and basketball courts are correlated with the inner city.
The NBA is a bit different from inner city basketball courts. I'm not talking about skill, I'm not talking about just height. They are overall just better built for the spot, so they tend to be selected on teams. You going to pick someone short or someone tall and lanky to play on the court?
I never said anything about Jewish people actually being smarter than black people. I was giving a hypothetical about how people respond to different claims about possible heritable differences towards the average population.
BINGO! You've got exactly my interpretation which means you're probably right. The show is great precisely because it is realistic in the sense that their problems, like real-world problems, never have an elegant solution that'll please everyone and make everything all better.
Fact: race is a social construct, or better put, genome variation research does not support the existence of human races (races being defined as genetic subspecies' of humans).
And are dogs and wolves different species? They're thought of as such, yet they can breed amongst each other. The whole point of my argument is that categorizing things the way we do does not necessarily reflect reality.
Fact: there is more genetic variation within groups thatn there is between groups. This is easily tested: If you are "white," simply go out to a public place, get a "white" person and a "black" person, and all three of you go get DNA tests. There is a high probability that you will share a closer genetic makeup with the "black" person than with the "white" person. I would personally not take offense to the theory that people with a certain amount of melanin share traits, except that it IS NOT TRUE.
I'm not saying it is true. However, you are committing Lewtonin's fallacy here. Overall makeup may be variable but a certain trait or groups of traits may be more prominent in a particular group. Again, some racial groups may be identifiably taller or shorter compared to others.
For example, you take as given that theere are certain "racial groups" that are more at risk for certain type of diseases. I have to assume that you are referring to sickle-cell anemia, although you might be referrring to Tay-Sachs. Sickle-cell has been shown to correlate with trade routes in Africa, and has no higher occurrence among those with a higher skin melanin content in the regions where it has occurred more frequently.
The fact that a specific example may be wrong does not dismiss my overall argument. And anyway, I am not denying that race is largely a human categorical construct. What I am saying, though, that there is still remains some tendencies towards biological differences within those constructs. There is no such things as a "pure" race, no such thing as a set of genes that make one "White" or "Black" or "Chinese" or "Japanese". But as we see with ring species, so too is differences within other organisms. And note, I am not even saying humans are as varied as ring species.
Slashdot Mirror
What the hell is "humanity" supposed to mean? Consciousness? No one is arguing for "humanity" being an emergent property because nobody knows what "humanity" is supposed to refer to, and if anything it only means our innate human tendencies and behavior and that is hardly emergent.
Consciousness "emerging" suddenly due to amount of neurons is silly. It is like magic--have enough of something and all the sudden an immeasurable, undefinable quality suddenly pops into being. I don't think so, and that's certainly not testable. Unless you have a way to test for consciousness that is other than detecting behaviorally in some aspect...? It sure seems to imply dualism there, and you can't quite get passed the problem of other minds unless you strictly adhere to materialism (then it's a non-problem). Simply asking a machine "Are you conscious?" reveals more more than asking a parrot of it is conscious (is it..?)
Unless you mean "emerging" in the same sense that software "emerges" from hardware, then OK, I will grant you that. But strong emergence seems more like hocus-pocus.
You're both right, you know :)
Looks like it's time to change into my "Tasmanian Devil with huge friggin' tumor at the mouth" costume for the "I'm Linux" competition.
Cavil, Simon, and the other guy were not so religious. "The other guy" was told by one six that he could "barely speak God's name," in fact.
Indeed, Star Wars' Force was a sci-fantasy element that didn't need to be explained because it was just part of the universe. It wasn't a big central mystery. Head six and Baltar were, and they turned out to just be angels? Everything happened because of magic? The tone of the show indicated that real explanations would be given, not "Oh just God that doesn't like to be called God" which is a huge cop-out.
Finally someone else noted the retarded spiritualism. I was hoping they'd end with a sci-fi explanation for all the "religious" stuff, but nope. "GOD DID IT, AND HE LOVES YOU. WHAT IS GOD? WE WON'T SAY HURRR"
First hour good, second hour oh jesus christ no
Oh come on, that quip was obviously to create ambiguity so they wouldn't isolate all the fans, particularly the more secular ones.
Ah, but did they have to make the big reveal actually be what they thought it was--God, the divine, etc--or could they have been INTERESTING and had this all have a neat sci-fi explanation instead of Ron Moore's half-baked theology?
I agree. I'm sure you noticed how the only atheist was Gaius Baltar, and how all the logical, scientific cylons were, of course, THE BAD GUYS.
Not to mention "It was all God and he loves you!" was just plain bad deus ex machina-type storytelling. "We were... Angels the entire time!" What a satisfying explanation that is on a sci-fi show!
Since you are very small, utmostly microscopically small, your opinion is of too little value for me to care.
The Sopranos ending was brilliant; if you don't understand it, you weren't paying enough attention to the theme of the final season, some things that were said, and some of the very intelligent and subtle camera work. Hint: The camera is following someone in the background
"I was hoping for a MUCH better explanation of Baltar's hallucination."
You mean "God did it" wasn't a good enough explanation of you? You seriously think that "God loves you" should not be the end moral of a sci-fi show that throughout never took sides or preached from a soapbox?
Yeah me too.
Telepathy and stuff can be done right in sci-fi, if you look at something like Mass Effect. The Force in Star Wars had some hokey aspects but otherwise was executed well and put star wars more in "sci-fantasy" than "sci-theology". Sci-fantasy is OK. Sci-theology is just plain terrible. I don't want to watch "Jesus in Space."
And the whole, "Well maybe god is a really advanced entity" is so played out it should never be used. Ever.
I agree entirely. Also, I was not pleased with the "Oh it's all God!" explanation. I was hoping all those mysteries would have a sci-fi explanation, not a theological one, despite all the references to god and gods throughout the show. Should've seen it coming with how they handled the single atheist on the show (Gaius) and how all the scientific, logical cylons happen to be the evil ones.
But are you begging the description by defining the group in terms of those very traits?
I didn't say that. Shared ancestry. My point is the categorization is not perfect, it's sloppy, always will be, but then as we see with ring species so is the idea of species itself.
Which is precisely why these constructs exist--to illuminate these differences. I still don't know how you think that these constructs and gropus exist without your inference that they exist.
And yet people claim race is meaningless, an useless cultural construct used to divide people. Until of course the discussion shifts to affirmative action.
I never said the groups exist without my inference that they exist. That is the central point of my post! They -are- in many ways social constructs, but again, so is the divide between species! You didn't watch the youtube video, the point there was that species itself is a human categorical construct. Yet, we all recognize that there is some use to classifying varying species, even if there are many fuzzy areas.
And read more into his post. "Ideas you are peddling"...? That has a rather specific (negative) connotation...
He set up a false dichotomy, in which I'm either too stupid to see that I'm breaking some sacred and unquestionable norms of society where lies must be told for the greater good (of which the whole point of my post was to challenge the popular but wrong "race is a myth" myth) or I'm secretly a racist boogeyman.
I happen to think that the idea that we shouldn't challenge ideologically-based "truths" to be an erroneous one.
I know what he meant. I'm not going to appeal to ideological attempts to stifle the truth just because it's an inconvenient truth for some. I'm fully aware people like you think I should shut up for the greater good.
Nope. It was decided because a majority wanted to legalize abortion. Period. After that it was just coming up with some bullcrap to justify that decision. The Constitution says nothing about abortion. Every doctor who took the Hippocratic Oath at the time of the writing of the document swore NOT to be involved in the practice so the Founders certainly were aware of the concept. So since they knew of it and failed to enumerate it as a power of the Federal government there should be zero argument that the 10th Amendment makes it an issue for the States.
Had they been actually doing their job the ruling would have consisted of the following and nothing more:
"The only guidance the Constitution provides is mentioning "Born or naturalized" in relation to citizenship. Thus the Constitution implies Birth as the dividing line between having rights and not having them. Therefore this Court has no grounds to rule that the States must forbid abortion. Since a fetus is thus not a person for purposes of Federal Law and the Constitution is silent on the issue the 10th Amendment reserves the regulation of abortion to the States and thus this Court has no power to require a State to permit, forbid or otherwise control the availibility, price or anything else related to the practice."
I am not talking about WHY it was "made legal", I am merely saying that a more secular case for abortion does exist. That is, abortion is not as easy as just saying "Women have the right!" because the status of the fetus is what the anti-abortionists are calling into question.
I agree with you completely on the issue. Abortion should be up to the states.
So for example Roe v Wade was clearly a violation. If as a country we want the Federal government to take a position one way or the other on the issue we should have had to amend the Constituition. That would have forced a huge messy public debate on the issue and we would have settled the issue back in the 1970's and not still be fighting it out now. The way it is now everyone realizes that five Supremes ARE the law so both sides fight to get five of theirs on, thus the issue hinges of the power balance of the day.. i.e. on the MEN who hold the office not the LAW they uphold.
To others reading this, please note you don't have to be against abortion to think Roe vs. Wade was done on ideological and not legal grounds. Abortion is an issue more complicated than "women's rights!" because the question also involes whether the fetus is "alive"/a person/etc or not.
I am staunchly in favor of abortion. But it really should be a state's issue, legally speaking.
Most people don't even realize that R v. W was decided based on the issue of -privacy-. What a farce!
I'm not advocating anything. At all. I'm merely pointing out that the whole "all the races are equal" is built on fallacy, a different definition, or often ideology. The fact that you are kneejerking and saying my ideas are repugnant despite being true shows just why I need to bring it up--because people like you will try to silence fact in the name of social convenience.
Here I am not advocating a single thing, and went through great pains to say so, yet here you are bashing me and questioning my character. Typical of someone who thinks in terms of ideology and not simply taking the facts and dealing with them as they are.
Apparently you've never heard of this little thing called the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The question of whether Jewish people are genetically distinct from, and must therefore be segregated from, other people (e.g the Palestinians) is not entirely without controversy.
That comment was directed towards American audiences, and my point is that if you had legitimate scientific findings showed that a racial group tended towards a "negative" trait, you'd still be branded a racist.
Certainly height is an advantage in basket ball but height is hardly the exclusive province of black people. It's not totally impossible that being black correlates with skill in basketball (in the same way that it's not totally impossible that Elvis was abducted by aliens). It's much more likely, though, that it's not genetics, per se - for example, that both black people and basketball courts are correlated with the inner city.
The NBA is a bit different from inner city basketball courts. I'm not talking about skill, I'm not talking about just height. They are overall just better built for the spot, so they tend to be selected on teams. You going to pick someone short or someone tall and lanky to play on the court?
I never said anything about Jewish people actually being smarter than black people. I was giving a hypothetical about how people respond to different claims about possible heritable differences towards the average population.
But it's not like the Sopranos. People are good, but they are hypocrites, or they don't follow the same idea of "good" as everyone else.
*SPOILERS*
Gaeta for example thought he was doing good when he tried to take over the BSG.
Caprica?
BINGO! You've got exactly my interpretation which means you're probably right. The show is great precisely because it is realistic in the sense that their problems, like real-world problems, never have an elegant solution that'll please everyone and make everything all better.
Fact: race is a social construct, or better put, genome variation research does not support the existence of human races (races being defined as genetic subspecies' of humans).
And are dogs and wolves different species? They're thought of as such, yet they can breed amongst each other. The whole point of my argument is that categorizing things the way we do does not necessarily reflect reality.
Fact: there is more genetic variation within groups thatn there is between groups. This is easily tested: If you are "white," simply go out to a public place, get a "white" person and a "black" person, and all three of you go get DNA tests. There is a high probability that you will share a closer genetic makeup with the "black" person than with the "white" person. I would personally not take offense to the theory that people with a certain amount of melanin share traits, except that it IS NOT TRUE.
I'm not saying it is true. However, you are committing Lewtonin's fallacy here. Overall makeup may be variable but a certain trait or groups of traits may be more prominent in a particular group. Again, some racial groups may be identifiably taller or shorter compared to others.
For example, you take as given that theere are certain "racial groups" that are more at risk for certain type of diseases. I have to assume that you are referring to sickle-cell anemia, although you might be referrring to Tay-Sachs. Sickle-cell has been shown to correlate with trade routes in Africa, and has no higher occurrence among those with a higher skin melanin content in the regions where it has occurred more frequently.
The fact that a specific example may be wrong does not dismiss my overall argument. And anyway, I am not denying that race is largely a human categorical construct. What I am saying, though, that there is still remains some tendencies towards biological differences within those constructs. There is no such things as a "pure" race, no such thing as a set of genes that make one "White" or "Black" or "Chinese" or "Japanese". But as we see with ring species, so too is differences within other organisms. And note, I am not even saying humans are as varied as ring species.