When you bake a cake in an oven, it's not easy to say at which point the mixture of flour, eggs, sugar etc become cake.
But that doesn't mean an arbitrary line should not be drawn (or should be drawn for that matter) stating that a cake mixture legally becomes cake at point X.
In the real world, you will often have to draw arbitrary lines somewhere. It may be stupid to do so, but sometimes it is even more stupid to NOT do so.
And that is where we should be using our alleged intelligence and figuring out whether we should draw that arbitrary line (and if so, where), or not, or not _yet_.
Whether we should or not and where, has far less to do with the physical stuff, and more to do with the long term consequences.
If we are going to say a bunch of human cells gets a right to live just on the basis of sufficient intelligence, most people here (including me) shouldn't be alive.
"What do you think about throwing away sperm or egg?"
Well in the laws the Israelites signed up for:
Leviticus 15:16 When a man has an emission of semen, he must bathe his whole body with water, and he will be unclean till evening
Leviticus 15:19 When a woman has her regular flow of blood, the impurity of her monthly period will last seven days, and anyone who touches her will be unclean till evening.
So it seems some would consider it a bit more serious than some other loss of cells.
As for your last question:
Maybe then it would be a good idea to consider it illegal to try to make humans from warts? After all what would be the benefit to society? Do we really need more humans from warts[1]? Just because we can?
If "we'll do it because we can" is all the reason and thinking we need before we do things, it's a good thing we don't have godlike powers yet.
Imagine then what we would do if we could do anything and everything.
I think someone will press the "make billions suffer" button first, way before the "kill everyone" button.
We better start considering the long term consequences of the paths we choose.
[1] Some people might claim that humans from warts will help save the world etc. But big corporations have claimed that GM will help feed the world - but at the same time they sue farmers and make stuff like "Genetic use restriction technology". The last I checked there was plenty of food around - the problem is political.
There are already plenty of humans around. So I wonder what "humans" from "warts" technology would _really_ be used for.
Adopted kids would tend to be statistically "worse" on _average_. Why? Because they share the genes of their parents.
Their parents aren't around to take care of them, so go figure.
Yes accidents and unfortunate stuff happens through no fault of the parents (someone else killed them etc), but as I said - on _average_.
So if you are considering adopting a child, at least do it with your eyes open. If they were abandoned by their parents, don't be surprised if they are as impulsive or irresponsible as their natural parents. If they aren't, be very thankful:).
As for nature vs nurture. Don't expect oranges if it's an apple tree. Don't expect apples if you plant an apple tree in concrete. Don't expect another good apple tree just because its seed was from a good apple tree. It's just a bit more likely. That's why farmers often use grafts and cloning, instead of planting from seed.
When you do it from seed instead of cloning it's a roll of the dice, it's just a weighted dice;).
0) On many cars with DC batteries, the turn signal lights pulse on and off. So your reasoning is clearly wrong. Just because the battery is DC doesn't mean that car makers won't have lights that use PWM. It is more ridiculous to assume that there weren't any car manufacturers that decided to combine tail lights and brake lights in an annoying or crappy manner. 1) Unless you know exactly what they were looking at, how can you be so sure that they didn't see it? 2) Even if something is in the 30KHz range that doesn't mean there won't be a perceptible and annoying "beat frequency" effect. See: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel5/8099/22400/01045635.pdf?arnumber=1045635 while that is for sound, there is no reason why it would not apply to sight. And it does apply to sight. If you have two lights, one at 30000Hz and one at 30050Hz, you will get a beat frequency effect at 50Hz. Of course if the phosphors do not decay significantly in 1/30000 seconds then the following could be an explanation. 3) The lights might not be that "stable" - they might be going at 30Khz, but their brightness level could be modulated by a perceptible lower frequency. If that is impossible, AM radio would be impossible.
It could all be in their minds, but it might not be. I don't see enough proof that your former coworker's wife was imagining things or not. But it seems likely enough that some car LED tail lights flicker.
"take on those annoying audiophiles buying 1000 euro power chords."
1000? Wow they must be really big fans of European hard rock/metal.
Re:Herbal medicine has limited value
on
Trick or Treatment
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
1) You will lose weight when you excrete shit. 2) If the stuff you take that makes you shit also changes your intestinal flora, it could affect your "efficiency" of converting food into body fat.
Last summer a team headed by Professor Jeffrey Gordon at Washington University's Centre for Genome Sciences managed to narrow the strains responsible for the fat storage down to two key players: Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron (B. theta) and Methanobrevibacter smithii ( M. smithii). Rats with both strains had 13 per cent more body fat than those with only one. The possibility, some years away yet, is that researchers may discover how to manipulate your gut bacteria population so less fat gets stored.
And the darn cancer detecting dogs get bored, or die after a few years, and then you have to train their replacements from scratch all over again.
But yeah, it's amazing that dogs can smell cancer, and they can detect bladder cancer just by smelling the pee. Or lung cancer by smelling the breath.
As for some of the false positives, who is to say they didn't actually smell a cancer - just that it was too small to detect by normal means (and your immune system might manage to deal with it).
If conventional treatment is considered acceptable at those efficacy rates, then placebo treatment should be considered acceptable as well.
After all if the placebo effect is as powerful as conventional treatment and has fewer side effects, why is it better for the patient to give them conventional treatment?
What you need is to find out which patients it works better on, and what sort of conditions placebo treatments are good for.
Personally, if placebo works on me for a particular problem, I'm fine with receiving placebo treatment - as long as it works better than other treatment that I would pay for.
If the person has had a long, full and good life then yes it's easy enough to celebrate.
It's usually harder to celebrate if the person died way sooner than "normal" (unless that person somehow managed to drastically overstay his/her welcome;) ).
Not too soon after the creator's death. Otherwise creators might somehow die from mysterious heart attacks or car crashes.;).
That said, copyrights should last maybe 7 years or so.
Why? Because supposedly technology, communication, marketing and distribution has improved, and also the pace of "progress" .
If that is the case, then protection terms for patents and copyrights should be getting shorter and shorter, in line with the pace of progress, distribution etc.
They most certainly shouldn't be getting longer and longer.
It may be more profitable for the poor farmer to grow stuff to feed a rich american or western european's car than to feed the poor in his country.
Compare how much a car driver is can pay per litre, and how much a poor person in Africa/India etc can afford to pay for the equivalent calories in food.
Some areas don't support edible crops and so there won't be competition there. But in many cases land for food crops can be used for fuel crops.
In theory in the long term there could be a "economic correction", but people might die or riot before that.
One litre of petrol is 35 megajoules (8300 kcal). 50 litres (13 gallons) = 2000kcal for 200 people.
If I fill up my car with 50 litres once a week, it means my car eats about as much as a small village of 30 people.
So either we need new/better fuel crops or someone's got to figure out this nuclear power thing soon.
Yep, I'm a nonsmoker and I'm not fond of breathing in second hand smoke, BUT I really don't see why all those governments on one hand worry about an "aging population" and on the other hand insist on banning smoking, junk food etc.
Yes, we must educate[1] everybody of the dangers, advantages and disadvantages but to ban the stuff seems a bit silly.
Say you want to discourage smoking in restaurants/etc, tax establishments that allow smoking more than those that don't.
Nonsmokers aren't forced to work in places that allow smoking. If that's where the money is, well too bad - it means the smokers are good customers, so put up with it, or earn less.
Get a bunch of economists and actuarists to help work out the taxes so that it's a net gain.
In fact I told a smoker friend that smokers could be a net benefit to society and after hearing my explanation, he tried to quit;).
[1] BTW seems it might be a good idea to offer help to educate parents to educate children - seems most parents don't have a clue about that. Not all of them think it's somebody else's job, many know it's their job but they don't know what to do.
Dying soon after you start being less productive reduces costs for everyone in the long run.
You are going to die of something in the end.
At the rate medical technology is progressing, tell me honestly what are the odds you are going to die of something cheap?
They are likely to be able to keep you alive as long as someone pays the bill.
So it's best you try to die suddenly not too long after you start going downhill. Get a massive heart attack or something, and try your best to not to be resuscitated[1].
But don't die too early. If you die too early (say before you are 30) that's a net loss since you've taken out more than you put in.
[1] If you succeed in a valiant manner, maybe the State/Gov should award you a White Fatty Heart medal or something, and present it posthumously in a nice ceremony for your family and friends to attend - and family members get a free super size meal on the anniversary of your death. For smokers who somehow sacrifice themselves similarly and not too expensively, they get the Black Lung medal- maybe their family members get free cartons of cigarettes instead.
Be grateful for those who sacrifice their lives for their country:).
0) The number of nonvoters in both the 2008 and 2004 elections outnumbered those that voted for Obama/McCain and Bush/Kerry. Go look it up. 1) There were other candidates. 2) If you don't like the candidates, either be a candidate or convince others to be.
So basically those nonvoters abdicated.
If they actually bothered voting for somebody else (even if it wasn't for the same candidate), the Two Parties would start to notice.
Otherwise, it just means those nonvoters don't count, and the Two Parties can ignore them.
As it is, the two parties have got the votes of 98.6-99.1% of the voters who bother to vote - just go look at the statistics.
Why should they change? The two of them have 99% of the votes! If they changed, it would just reduce their odds of winning. There are no perfect candidates who can satisfy everyone. 99% is pretty good already. Yes it's split in two, but that's the way the voters have voted.
So whether you like it or not, unless the elections got diebolded, the voters have got what they voted for.
If they wanted something different, they should have voted different.
So whatever the US Gov publicly and officially does, the US voters (and abdicate voters) are significantly responsible.
It's not like Myanmar or North Korea where you can't blame the poor people there.
Then having to pay taxes to pay for it isn't that bad. Since you kind of own it in a way[1].
Some people might not like paying for an internet connection for someone in a farm miles away from everyone else. But: 1) you're living in a society and you need farmers/ranchers etc. If it helps them do their part (instead of going to the city to look for a job), a subsidized internet connection is quite cheap in comparison. 2) the value of the _your_ network increases as you add more participants.
[1] In a Democracy, in theory you're the boss of the Government.
Of course lots of people choose to abdicate instead and then blame the government for everything, when half the problem is the fault of the voters (or those who can vote but can't be bothered to vote).
Just a looking at the spam I get: Fake subject line. Fake date sometimes Fake From: field Garbage text in body to try to fool antispam stuff. As for the actual claims and promises in the email body, after all that deception why do people still believe them and buy?
As you said, it's not all that out of reach. Just follow the money trail - pick the top offenders that are easy to track down (credit card etc).
People who believe that the worst that can happen to them is they die and it's all over, can also be very very dangerous.
It all depends on what they believe and what the scenario is.
For instance, many Christians believe they have assurance of salvation, and that nonbelievers will go to hell forever (which is considered to be a very bad place/state to be in). They also believe that christians are supposed spread the "good news" to nonbelievers, do good, love others etc etc.
So logic has it that if one of those Christians had to make a choice between the nonbeliever's life and a christian's life, they should choose to let the nonbeliever live. (of course it's a harder choice if that nonbeliever might kill other nonbelievers too...)
Go tell one of those Christians that:).
Don't try that on a Muslim, what they believe is significantly different.
Lastly - imagine if you were one of those "highlander" immortals who can't die but can still suffer. Imagine what would happen if a sadist captured you and found out that you can't die.
Nowadays technology is such that you can be kept alive even after all sorts of terrible things have happened to you.
If everything really ends at death, then death is far from the worst thing that could happen to you.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems that a lot of people don't get it.
When you bake a cake in an oven, it's not easy to say at which point the mixture of flour, eggs, sugar etc become cake.
But that doesn't mean an arbitrary line should not be drawn (or should be drawn for that matter) stating that a cake mixture legally becomes cake at point X.
In the real world, you will often have to draw arbitrary lines somewhere. It may be stupid to do so, but sometimes it is even more stupid to NOT do so.
And that is where we should be using our alleged intelligence and figuring out whether we should draw that arbitrary line (and if so, where), or not, or not _yet_.
Whether we should or not and where, has far less to do with the physical stuff, and more to do with the long term consequences.
If we are going to say a bunch of human cells gets a right to live just on the basis of sufficient intelligence, most people here (including me) shouldn't be alive.
"What do you think about throwing away sperm or egg?"
Well in the laws the Israelites signed up for:
Leviticus 15:16
When a man has an emission of semen, he must bathe his whole body with water, and he will be unclean till evening
Leviticus 15:19
When a woman has her regular flow of blood, the impurity of her monthly period will last seven days, and anyone who touches her will be unclean till evening.
So it seems some would consider it a bit more serious than some other loss of cells.
As for your last question:
Maybe then it would be a good idea to consider it illegal to try to make humans from warts? After all what would be the benefit to society? Do we really need more humans from warts[1]? Just because we can?
If "we'll do it because we can" is all the reason and thinking we need before we do things, it's a good thing we don't have godlike powers yet.
Imagine then what we would do if we could do anything and everything.
I think someone will press the "make billions suffer" button first, way before the "kill everyone" button.
We better start considering the long term consequences of the paths we choose.
[1] Some people might claim that humans from warts will help save the world etc. But big corporations have claimed that GM will help feed the world - but at the same time they sue farmers and make stuff like "Genetic use restriction technology". The last I checked there was plenty of food around - the problem is political.
There are already plenty of humans around. So I wonder what "humans" from "warts" technology would _really_ be used for.
Adopted kids would tend to be statistically "worse" on _average_.
:).
;).
Why? Because they share the genes of their parents.
Their parents aren't around to take care of them, so go figure.
Yes accidents and unfortunate stuff happens through no fault of the parents (someone else killed them etc), but as I said - on _average_.
So if you are considering adopting a child, at least do it with your eyes open. If they were abandoned by their parents, don't be surprised if they are as impulsive or irresponsible as their natural parents. If they aren't, be very thankful
As for nature vs nurture.
Don't expect oranges if it's an apple tree.
Don't expect apples if you plant an apple tree in concrete.
Don't expect another good apple tree just because its seed was from a good apple tree. It's just a bit more likely. That's why farmers often use grafts and cloning, instead of planting from seed.
When you do it from seed instead of cloning it's a roll of the dice, it's just a weighted dice
0) On many cars with DC batteries, the turn signal lights pulse on and off. So your reasoning is clearly wrong. Just because the battery is DC doesn't mean that car makers won't have lights that use PWM. It is more ridiculous to assume that there weren't any car manufacturers that decided to combine tail lights and brake lights in an annoying or crappy manner.
1) Unless you know exactly what they were looking at, how can you be so sure that they didn't see it?
2) Even if something is in the 30KHz range that doesn't mean there won't be a perceptible and annoying "beat frequency" effect. See: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel5/8099/22400/01045635.pdf?arnumber=1045635 while that is for sound, there is no reason why it would not apply to sight. And it does apply to sight. If you have two lights, one at 30000Hz and one at 30050Hz, you will get a beat frequency effect at 50Hz. Of course if the phosphors do not decay significantly in 1/30000 seconds then the following could be an explanation.
3) The lights might not be that "stable" - they might be going at 30Khz, but their brightness level could be modulated by a perceptible lower frequency. If that is impossible, AM radio would be impossible.
It could all be in their minds, but it might not be. I don't see enough proof that your former coworker's wife was imagining things or not. But it seems likely enough that some car LED tail lights flicker.
"take on those annoying audiophiles buying 1000 euro power chords."
1000? Wow they must be really big fans of European hard rock/metal.
1) You will lose weight when you excrete shit.
2) If the stuff you take that makes you shit also changes your intestinal flora, it could affect your "efficiency" of converting food into body fat.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/could-friendly-bacteria-hold-the-key-to-weight-control-457625.html
Last summer a team headed by Professor Jeffrey Gordon at Washington University's Centre for Genome Sciences managed to narrow the strains responsible for the fat storage down to two key players: Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron (B. theta) and Methanobrevibacter smithii ( M. smithii). Rats with both strains had 13 per cent more body fat than those with only one. The possibility, some years away yet, is that researchers may discover how to manipulate your gut bacteria population so less fat gets stored.
And the darn cancer detecting dogs get bored, or die after a few years, and then you have to train their replacements from scratch all over again.
But yeah, it's amazing that dogs can smell cancer, and they can detect bladder cancer just by smelling the pee. Or lung cancer by smelling the breath.
As for some of the false positives, who is to say they didn't actually smell a cancer - just that it was too small to detect by normal means (and your immune system might manage to deal with it).
FYI: one study claims conventional treatment for chronic headaches is only as a good as a placebo whereas acupuncture is better.
See: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/health/research/16regi.html
If conventional treatment is considered acceptable at those efficacy rates, then placebo treatment should be considered acceptable as well.
After all if the placebo effect is as powerful as conventional treatment and has fewer side effects, why is it better for the patient to give them conventional treatment?
What you need is to find out which patients it works better on, and what sort of conditions placebo treatments are good for.
Personally, if placebo works on me for a particular problem, I'm fine with receiving placebo treatment - as long as it works better than other treatment that I would pay for.
To me it depends.
;) ).
If the person has had a long, full and good life then yes it's easy enough to celebrate.
It's usually harder to celebrate if the person died way sooner than "normal" (unless that person somehow managed to drastically overstay his/her welcome
"I sure hope his delivery was good... either that, or you have a simpleton's sense of humor."
:)
If he's easily amused, he might be in for a life full of amusement.
You on the other hand should lighten up. Seriously.
Not too soon after the creator's death. Otherwise creators might somehow die from mysterious heart attacks or car crashes. ;).
That said, copyrights should last maybe 7 years or so.
Why? Because supposedly technology, communication, marketing and distribution has improved, and also the pace of "progress" .
If that is the case, then protection terms for patents and copyrights should be getting shorter and shorter, in line with the pace of progress, distribution etc.
They most certainly shouldn't be getting longer and longer.
Yeah, and maybe someone will also make Louis Vuitton more "open".
There were many portable music players before the iPod.
But none that captured the public's mind share quite as much and in such a great way.
Here are more of their plans:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0jgZKV4N_A
On the bright side at least they won't be losing any planes when their aircraft carriers sink - because they can't afford to buy the planes now ;).
How about this instead? http://www.flickr.com/photos/rowandw/2276721446/
Seems more appropriate given the topic.
Biofuels aren't necessarily a godsend.
It may be more profitable for the poor farmer to grow stuff to feed a rich american or western european's car than to feed the poor in his country.
Compare how much a car driver is can pay per litre, and how much a poor person in Africa/India etc can afford to pay for the equivalent calories in food.
Some areas don't support edible crops and so there won't be competition there. But in many cases land for food crops can be used for fuel crops.
In theory in the long term there could be a "economic correction", but people might die or riot before that.
One litre of petrol is 35 megajoules (8300 kcal). 50 litres (13 gallons) = 2000kcal for 200 people.
If I fill up my car with 50 litres once a week, it means my car eats about as much as a small village of 30 people.
So either we need new/better fuel crops or someone's got to figure out this nuclear power thing soon.
Yep, I'm a nonsmoker and I'm not fond of breathing in second hand smoke, BUT I really don't see why all those governments on one hand worry about an "aging population" and on the other hand insist on banning smoking, junk food etc.
;).
Yes, we must educate[1] everybody of the dangers, advantages and disadvantages but to ban the stuff seems a bit silly.
Say you want to discourage smoking in restaurants/etc, tax establishments that allow smoking more than those that don't.
Nonsmokers aren't forced to work in places that allow smoking. If that's where the money is, well too bad - it means the smokers are good customers, so put up with it, or earn less.
Get a bunch of economists and actuarists to help work out the taxes so that it's a net gain.
In fact I told a smoker friend that smokers could be a net benefit to society and after hearing my explanation, he tried to quit
[1] BTW seems it might be a good idea to offer help to educate parents to educate children - seems most parents don't have a clue about that. Not all of them think it's somebody else's job, many know it's their job but they don't know what to do.
Ah, but is she better in bed than you?
;).
If she is, then maybe she being better in so man things isn't so bad
Dying soon after you start being less productive reduces costs for everyone in the long run.
:).
You are going to die of something in the end.
At the rate medical technology is progressing, tell me honestly what are the odds you are going to die of something cheap?
They are likely to be able to keep you alive as long as someone pays the bill.
So it's best you try to die suddenly not too long after you start going downhill. Get a massive heart attack or something, and try your best to not to be resuscitated[1].
But don't die too early. If you die too early (say before you are 30) that's a net loss since you've taken out more than you put in.
[1] If you succeed in a valiant manner, maybe the State/Gov should award you a White Fatty Heart medal or something, and present it posthumously in a nice ceremony for your family and friends to attend - and family members get a free super size meal on the anniversary of your death. For smokers who somehow sacrifice themselves similarly and not too expensively, they get the Black Lung medal- maybe their family members get free cartons of cigarettes instead.
Be grateful for those who sacrifice their lives for their country
As I already said, fraud isn't just about being dishonest.
It includes the stuff they are talking about here:
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/fraud/internet/
Maybe they should stop wasting time busting people for smoking cannabis or similar stupidity and start working harder on catching the swindlers.
The nonvoters are just as much to be blamed.
0) The number of nonvoters in both the 2008 and 2004 elections outnumbered those that voted for Obama/McCain and Bush/Kerry. Go look it up.
1) There were other candidates.
2) If you don't like the candidates, either be a candidate or convince others to be.
So basically those nonvoters abdicated.
If they actually bothered voting for somebody else (even if it wasn't for the same candidate), the Two Parties would start to notice.
Otherwise, it just means those nonvoters don't count, and the Two Parties can ignore them.
As it is, the two parties have got the votes of 98.6-99.1% of the voters who bother to vote - just go look at the statistics.
Why should they change? The two of them have 99% of the votes! If they changed, it would just reduce their odds of winning. There are no perfect candidates who can satisfy everyone. 99% is pretty good already. Yes it's split in two, but that's the way the voters have voted.
So whether you like it or not, unless the elections got diebolded, the voters have got what they voted for.
If they wanted something different, they should have voted different.
So whatever the US Gov publicly and officially does, the US voters (and abdicate voters) are significantly responsible.
It's not like Myanmar or North Korea where you can't blame the poor people there.
Then having to pay taxes to pay for it isn't that bad. Since you kind of own it in a way[1].
Some people might not like paying for an internet connection for someone in a farm miles away from everyone else.
But:
1) you're living in a society and you need farmers/ranchers etc. If it helps them do their part (instead of going to the city to look for a job), a subsidized internet connection is quite cheap in comparison.
2) the value of the _your_ network increases as you add more participants.
[1] In a Democracy, in theory you're the boss of the Government.
Of course lots of people choose to abdicate instead and then blame the government for everything, when half the problem is the fault of the voters (or those who can vote but can't be bothered to vote).
But why aren't they considered criminals?
Isn't fraud basically deception for gain?
Just a looking at the spam I get:
Fake subject line.
Fake date sometimes
Fake From: field
Garbage text in body to try to fool antispam stuff.
As for the actual claims and promises in the email body, after all that deception why do people still believe them and buy?
As you said, it's not all that out of reach. Just follow the money trail - pick the top offenders that are easy to track down (credit card etc).
Torture one NPC = squeamish. :).
;).
Kill thousands or even hundreds of thousands of NPCs = levelling up, etc
I guess it's the thought that counts eh?
So if you don't think about it too much it's AOK
It's not so simple as you think.
:).
People who believe that the worst that can happen to them is they die and it's all over, can also be very very dangerous.
It all depends on what they believe and what the scenario is.
For instance, many Christians believe they have assurance of salvation, and that nonbelievers will go to hell forever (which is considered to be a very bad place/state to be in). They also believe that christians are supposed spread the "good news" to nonbelievers, do good, love others etc etc.
So logic has it that if one of those Christians had to make a choice between the nonbeliever's life and a christian's life, they should choose to let the nonbeliever live. (of course it's a harder choice if that nonbeliever might kill other nonbelievers too...)
Go tell one of those Christians that
Don't try that on a Muslim, what they believe is significantly different.
Lastly - imagine if you were one of those "highlander" immortals who can't die but can still suffer. Imagine what would happen if a sadist captured you and found out that you can't die.
Nowadays technology is such that you can be kept alive even after all sorts of terrible things have happened to you.
If everything really ends at death, then death is far from the worst thing that could happen to you.