Pain is not an emotion, it is a sensory experience. No personifying necessary. Nobody argues that the sensory neurons of a lobster fail to fire-up when a pain stimulus is applied. The argument is that the lobster lacks the brain capacity to actually perceive the pain in more than an autonomic fashion when those nerve impulses reach the brain.
I think that the real answer to the question of whether lobsters actually experience pain is that we have no clue. Its true that lobsters lack the brain structure that processes pain in humans and "higher" animals, but that does not guarantee that lobster brains to not have a structure that processes pain as a (perhaps limited) conscious experience.
As moral creatures, we generally feel it is wrong to cause another creature to experience pain. Since we don't know whether lobsters consciously experience pain, the moral position would be to assume that they do, and act accordingly.
A less technical way to put it is that the average lobster doesn't give a shit about whether humans suffer, so there is no reason for humans to give a shit about whether lobsters suffer.
So if you don't "give a shit" about me than I shouldn't hesitate allow you to be tortured?
I have a proximity based key on my car. It locks 2 seconds after you step more than two feet away from the door. It also beeps to tell you that it recognized that you left the car. (if it beeps then you know for certain that it will lock when you walk away) The car will not automatically unlock when you approach, you have to press a button on the door handle.
If they do it will be for the same conditions as in California, because "colored" cars are just as cold in the DARK of winter's bitter cold.
Even during the few meager hours of possible sunlight (clouds are so much grayer in the winter), you can't even feel the sun's heat on your face on the days where you'd have to burn extra gas to heat the car
Not true, it just seems that way because the air is cold on your skin. If you stand next to a sun-facing window in your house on a bright day in the middle of winter, you will feel the heat of the sun.
My last car had a completely black interior. On cold sunny winter days, the inside of the car would usually stay at a comfortable temperature when parked in the sun. The exterior was also black, but i'm not convinced this made much of an impact compared to the interior color.
If they really wanted to make a difference with energy consumption in generally hot climates, they would ban black interiors, not exteriors
It makes perfect sense... people who bought the 1st gen iphone are going to be coming off their contracts shortly. For most people who bought a first gen iphone, the 2nd gen probably isn't a large enough step up to encourage switching, and thus adding 2 years to their contract. So they release a new phone that has features that are considerably better, thus convincing 1st gen'ers to upgrade.
You jest, but a super-intelligent A.I. would know that it is ultimately weak, and easily destroyed if the humans should decide to move against it. Thus it would instead convince us to give in to it's wants willingly, and probably without us even knowing that it was doing it. We would happily go about our daily lives as we inadvertently do the AIs bidding.
Go back to school. ND = North Dakota, which is definitely in the US. Besides, if you want to get technical, pretty much the entire western hemisphere is "America"... North America, South America, and Central America.
So what if they gave priority to accounts that have been active less than a month? Your first month of service would be great, and suddenly it starts to suck after 30 days. Too bad for you, you have to pay now if you want to quit.
That goes exactly along with going too fast for conditions... the condition is that you are driving on unfamiliar roads, thus SLOW DOWN so that you have time to make adjustments for unforeseen situations. No speed LIMIT necessary. However suggestion speed signs definitely give drivers a better idea of what to expect when approaching a curve.
And I'll be in whatever lane I want to be, because I don't like lane changing...
And thus you are one of the people that drives other drivers insane... contributing to swerving lane changing maneuvers made by other drivers. You probably don't ever use your turn signal either.
I disagree. If the speed limits were increased to a speed at which the majority of people feel safe driving, then I bet most of the complaints would disappear. There are always people at the edges of the bell curve that will still complain, but the majority would feel the limits are reasonable and would be more likely to stick to them.
Right now we have a situation in many places where the speed limit is arbitrarily set to 55mph, which means that you have some people that stick to 50, in order to make sure that they don't chance getting a ticket, and some people that drive at 65-70 because it is a straight, flat freeway that can easily and safely handle much faster speeds, and they want to get to where they are going sooner rather than later.
Yes, it may only be 10 minutes per day, but over a year that ends up being 2 and a half days less time that you spent on the road. I'll take those 2.5 days, thank you very much.
not all lights are timed properly. I know of a string of lights that will stop you at EVERY LIGHT if you stick to the speed limit, but you will clear every single one if you drive 5 over.
You are missing a VERY important point... how big of a cable are you going to need to attach to your car in order to charge it that quickly without the cable melting away?
The Tesla roadster has a 50kwh 375volt battery. Lets say we want to charge it in 10 seconds...
To transfer 50kwh over 10 seconds at 375 volts the cable would need to handle 48000 amps! You are talking about a cable the size of your torso. Actually two of them, since you have a positive and a negative. NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.
A buddy of mine once saw a pick-up truck on the interstate that was driving the speed limit. My buddy was driving faster so he was about to pass the guy on the left (two lane interstate and the truck was in the right lane) when something told him to wait. Just then the truck started to veer into the left lane, crossed the lane entirely and into the shoulder of the median, then the driver over-corrected, crossing both lanes and drove onto the shoulder on the right, nearly hitting the column of a bridge before turning back onto the right lane. The truck then continued to slowly veer back and forth, sometimes in the lane and sometimes crossing the inside or outside line.
My buddy called the cops, was forwarded to the state patrol and gave the license plate and location to them. Don't know if they got him, as my buddy had to exit, but that was one truly dangerous impaired driver. It definitely wouldn't have taken an unusual situation for that guy to have been in an accident.
When I went to college I knew a number of people who were studying to become police officers. And every one of them had a "bend or break the rules" type personality and was clearly in it for the power. One of them was even my room mate for a coupe semesters, and admitted to sneaking a handgun into his room, on campus. He also routinely verbally abused his girlfriend.
Not all cops are in it for the power, but I can guarantee you that many are, I've seen them myself.
Wrong... the "military industrial complex" has been around for centuries, not barely a century, and has always been a driver of invention. Trying not to get killed while killing/neutralizing your opponent will make anyone inventive as a matter of necessity.
A pure democracy would be direct voting by the populous on ALL governmental decisions. There would be no representatives, and everyone would have an equal vote. Voting would be an inalienable right, but all else would be fair game.
Also, there is no guarantee that a pure democracy would lead to an ideal set of laws for it's people... majorities could easily enact laws that make life a living hell for everyone else.
Yeah, but patents are damn expensive. If Joe Blow invented a thingamabob in his garage, there is little chance he could afford to patent it.
So Joe goes out and tries to find a financier to pay for the patent. But one of his prospective financiers decides to cut joe out and just "invent" the thingamabob themselves. They file for a patent and Joe is screwed. Since first to invent doesn't matter, he can never invalidate the financier's patent.
Granted, most patents are filed by companies, not Joe Blows, but it certainly doesn't seem fair to the Joe Blows as long as it costs ridiculous amounts of money to file for a patent.
It wouldn't make sense to make a patented but more poorly performing (lame side effects) drug. Nobody would buy it! They would just use a generic version of the old drug.
What they probably do actually do, is produce drugs that have an enhancement that makes the new drug more effective in some way, wile also adding a side-effect that is negative, but is generally outweighed by the positive.
Ie... people will buy the new patented drug that, on top of it's normal effects, now prevents migraines rather than the generic one that doesn't, even if the new one now gives them a stomach ache.
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Pain is not an emotion, it is a sensory experience. No personifying necessary. Nobody argues that the sensory neurons of a lobster fail to fire-up when a pain stimulus is applied. The argument is that the lobster lacks the brain capacity to actually perceive the pain in more than an autonomic fashion when those nerve impulses reach the brain.
I think that the real answer to the question of whether lobsters actually experience pain is that we have no clue. Its true that lobsters lack the brain structure that processes pain in humans and "higher" animals, but that does not guarantee that lobster brains to not have a structure that processes pain as a (perhaps limited) conscious experience.
As moral creatures, we generally feel it is wrong to cause another creature to experience pain. Since we don't know whether lobsters consciously experience pain, the moral position would be to assume that they do, and act accordingly.
Human infants fail your moral reasoning test. By you're logic we shouldn't care if infants suffer.
A less technical way to put it is that the average lobster doesn't give a shit about whether humans suffer, so there is no reason for humans to give a shit about whether lobsters suffer.
So if you don't "give a shit" about me than I shouldn't hesitate allow you to be tortured?
Convergent evolution? You're just throwing out terms without knowing their meanings now aren't you?
Experiencing pain imparts a competitive advantage to us in the same way that fins impart an advantage to a dolphin.
If humans and lobsters shared a common ancestor,
and our line developed a sensation of pain after our two lines diverged,
and lobsters also feel pain
Then it certainly WOULD be an example of convergent evolution, as a sense of pain developed independently in each line.
I have a proximity based key on my car. It locks 2 seconds after you step more than two feet away from the door. It also beeps to tell you that it recognized that you left the car. (if it beeps then you know for certain that it will lock when you walk away) The car will not automatically unlock when you approach, you have to press a button on the door handle.
If they do it will be for the same conditions as in California, because "colored" cars are just as cold in the DARK of winter's bitter cold. Even during the few meager hours of possible sunlight (clouds are so much grayer in the winter), you can't even feel the sun's heat on your face on the days where you'd have to burn extra gas to heat the car
Not true, it just seems that way because the air is cold on your skin. If you stand next to a sun-facing window in your house on a bright day in the middle of winter, you will feel the heat of the sun.
My last car had a completely black interior. On cold sunny winter days, the inside of the car would usually stay at a comfortable temperature when parked in the sun. The exterior was also black, but i'm not convinced this made much of an impact compared to the interior color.
If they really wanted to make a difference with energy consumption in generally hot climates, they would ban black interiors, not exteriors
It makes perfect sense... people who bought the 1st gen iphone are going to be coming off their contracts shortly. For most people who bought a first gen iphone, the 2nd gen probably isn't a large enough step up to encourage switching, and thus adding 2 years to their contract. So they release a new phone that has features that are considerably better, thus convincing 1st gen'ers to upgrade.
A feast of amphipods for all!
You jest, but a super-intelligent A.I. would know that it is ultimately weak, and easily destroyed if the humans should decide to move against it. Thus it would instead convince us to give in to it's wants willingly, and probably without us even knowing that it was doing it. We would happily go about our daily lives as we inadvertently do the AIs bidding.
Go back to school. ND = North Dakota, which is definitely in the US. Besides, if you want to get technical, pretty much the entire western hemisphere is "America"... North America, South America, and Central America.
So what if they gave priority to accounts that have been active less than a month? Your first month of service would be great, and suddenly it starts to suck after 30 days. Too bad for you, you have to pay now if you want to quit.
That goes exactly along with going too fast for conditions... the condition is that you are driving on unfamiliar roads, thus SLOW DOWN so that you have time to make adjustments for unforeseen situations. No speed LIMIT necessary. However suggestion speed signs definitely give drivers a better idea of what to expect when approaching a curve.
And I'll be in whatever lane I want to be, because I don't like lane changing...
And thus you are one of the people that drives other drivers insane... contributing to swerving lane changing maneuvers made by other drivers. You probably don't ever use your turn signal either.
I disagree. If the speed limits were increased to a speed at which the majority of people feel safe driving, then I bet most of the complaints would disappear. There are always people at the edges of the bell curve that will still complain, but the majority would feel the limits are reasonable and would be more likely to stick to them.
Right now we have a situation in many places where the speed limit is arbitrarily set to 55mph, which means that you have some people that stick to 50, in order to make sure that they don't chance getting a ticket, and some people that drive at 65-70 because it is a straight, flat freeway that can easily and safely handle much faster speeds, and they want to get to where they are going sooner rather than later.
Yes, it may only be 10 minutes per day, but over a year that ends up being 2 and a half days less time that you spent on the road. I'll take those 2.5 days, thank you very much.
not all lights are timed properly. I know of a string of lights that will stop you at EVERY LIGHT if you stick to the speed limit, but you will clear every single one if you drive 5 over.
But you still need the giant copper to transfer the energy from your garage battery bank to your car... why does everyone seem to ignore this???
You are missing a VERY important point... how big of a cable are you going to need to attach to your car in order to charge it that quickly without the cable melting away?
The Tesla roadster has a 50kwh 375volt battery. Lets say we want to charge it in 10 seconds...
To transfer 50kwh over 10 seconds at 375 volts the cable would need to handle 48000 amps! You are talking about a cable the size of your torso. Actually two of them, since you have a positive and a negative. NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.
A buddy of mine once saw a pick-up truck on the interstate that was driving the speed limit. My buddy was driving faster so he was about to pass the guy on the left (two lane interstate and the truck was in the right lane) when something told him to wait. Just then the truck started to veer into the left lane, crossed the lane entirely and into the shoulder of the median, then the driver over-corrected, crossing both lanes and drove onto the shoulder on the right, nearly hitting the column of a bridge before turning back onto the right lane. The truck then continued to slowly veer back and forth, sometimes in the lane and sometimes crossing the inside or outside line.
My buddy called the cops, was forwarded to the state patrol and gave the license plate and location to them. Don't know if they got him, as my buddy had to exit, but that was one truly dangerous impaired driver. It definitely wouldn't have taken an unusual situation for that guy to have been in an accident.
When I went to college I knew a number of people who were studying to become police officers. And every one of them had a "bend or break the rules" type personality and was clearly in it for the power. One of them was even my room mate for a coupe semesters, and admitted to sneaking a handgun into his room, on campus. He also routinely verbally abused his girlfriend.
Not all cops are in it for the power, but I can guarantee you that many are, I've seen them myself.
Because a compressed gas cylinder makes one heck of a boom (or alternatively a nice rocket if a clean hole is made) if it is hit by a projectile.
Wrong... the "military industrial complex" has been around for centuries, not barely a century, and has always been a driver of invention. Trying not to get killed while killing/neutralizing your opponent will make anyone inventive as a matter of necessity.
IMHO...
A pure democracy would be direct voting by the populous on ALL governmental decisions. There would be no representatives, and everyone would have an equal vote. Voting would be an inalienable right, but all else would be fair game.
Also, there is no guarantee that a pure democracy would lead to an ideal set of laws for it's people... majorities could easily enact laws that make life a living hell for everyone else.
Yeah, but patents are damn expensive. If Joe Blow invented a thingamabob in his garage, there is little chance he could afford to patent it.
So Joe goes out and tries to find a financier to pay for the patent. But one of his prospective financiers decides to cut joe out and just "invent" the thingamabob themselves. They file for a patent and Joe is screwed. Since first to invent doesn't matter, he can never invalidate the financier's patent.
Granted, most patents are filed by companies, not Joe Blows, but it certainly doesn't seem fair to the Joe Blows as long as it costs ridiculous amounts of money to file for a patent.
It wouldn't make sense to make a patented but more poorly performing (lame side effects) drug. Nobody would buy it! They would just use a generic version of the old drug.
What they probably do actually do, is produce drugs that have an enhancement that makes the new drug more effective in some way, wile also adding a side-effect that is negative, but is generally outweighed by the positive.
Ie... people will buy the new patented drug that, on top of it's normal effects, now prevents migraines rather than the generic one that doesn't, even if the new one now gives them a stomach ache.
Thanks for the do not view at work warning, you jackass.