Nope. That's the natural sources that they used to detect and isolate the drug before determining the gene sequence for large scale bacterial production.
Yep. Although eventually nibs do wear down and when that happens it does start to scratch no matter how lightly you write. I took all my notes in University using a fountain pen and I think I went through about 3 nibs. Medium nibs, though they produce a thicker line, take longer to wear down. Also, you have tob e more careful not to let your notes get wet since fountain pen ink bleeds more than ballpoint ink.
Apart for Congressman Freezer Bagman, the current crop of federal Dems haven't been stupid enough to get caught recently. Dem. Governors and Lieutenant Govs. are another issue entirely, but then he didn't mention Palin's investigations either.
I am under the impression that OpenBSD's chroot jails are reasonably secure when used in conjunction with OpenBSD's privilege separation and privilege revocation.
Unless you use Flo's Florist's website and many others as a conduit for deploying malware and trojans to build a botnet. If that web site nets you 1000 users over a few months, get a few dozen of those and you start having a botnet with which you can do some serious damage (and/or illegal business).
Sigh. I stated that badly so I'll try again. The GGP was indicating that lack of use of proofs in Computer Science sets that discipline aside from Mathematics. I argued that proofs, while not as common in software engineering as in mathematics, were quite possible, if not convenient. You pointed out that Goedel's incompleteness theorem indicated that not every algorithm in Computer Science could be proved and, while true, that theorem also applies to mathematics (where it originated). So while your statement is accurate, it does not serve as a distinction between Computer Science and Mathematics.
Well, if you're talking about the first incompleteness theorem, that's true. While Goedel's incompleteness theorem indicates that you can create an unprovable sentence in the same way that the Liar's paradox applies to truth, it's not clear to me that a G sentence would actually be an algorithm useful for anything other than messing up computer intelligences on SF shows. Yes, the "If I was an evil mastermind..." list should include "all my robots and computers will know to ignore G sentences", right after "all my plans will be reviewed for critical flaws by a panel of 5-year olds".
So yeah, you are theoretically correct. I haven't taken Comp.Sci. at a graduate level so it's possible there are other applications I'm not aware of. Let me know if you've run into a case in software engineering where you found an application (something other than complexity classifications that, while related, stand on their own).
I also find it somewhat ironic that, in a discussion where I'm arguing in favour of an equivalency between computer science and mathematics, you use a mathematical theorem to find fault with my argument.
From the little I know of pure math (so correct me if I'm off-base here) I would suggest that 'proofs' are fundamental to the field. This is very definitely not the case in the majority of programming. If it was, we wouldn't need much testing, and there wouldn't really be bugs.
I'm afraid you are displaying ignorance of the subject. Every algorithm and piece of software can be proven, with the use of tools like formal methods. But as the article points out, doing so is expensive and that isn't always cost effective, and it isn't "foolproof". Remember Knuth's famous note in one of his books: "Beware of the above code. I have only proven it correct, not tested it.". In case you should think that the latter is making your point, you should be aware that many modern "proofs" of complex mathematical theorems go through an iterative development process (see Fermat's last theorem for example). Similarly, basic everyday "business" mathematics can be performed in ways that minimize the chances of error and facilitate "proof" of correctness. i.e. double entry bookkeeping. It's still math and yet it doesn't stop things like Enron and Ponzi schemes. Given the appropriate input data, you can devise an algorithm which detects those pathological cases, but GIGO.
There's nothing "non-mathematical" about software, even the buggy implementations which involve very bad or very fuzzy math. A bug is like saying 2+3=6. It is still math, it's just bad/wrong math.
Using conception as a block point I can answer these questions. It is easy to tell if a cell is haploid of diploid, and the 'special' thing that occurred at the moment of conception is that the cell ceased to be a derivative of only its mother (or sperm of its father) and in it was created a genetically unique individual.
There's a fallacy there. Identical twins are genetically identical. They have different fingerprints, probably as a result of environmental variations during gestation, but they are genetically identical. Yet if I kill one identical twin, the courts aren't going to let me off because there's still another one alive.
So presumably, if we ever manage to successfully clone human beings, then the clone would also be a human being since it's effectively a time-shifted identical twin. So you couldn't kill a clone.
Now, I refer you to the first line of Terwin's post
"Oh, I see: the difference between a real person and a mass of useful cells depends on the available technology."
Well, I don't think so, and in fact that's why I'm not happy with the "viability" threshold for destruction, even though I acknowledged it as one of the possible options (I probably should have included a third option, the beginning of cell differentiation, but I consider ludicrously conservative).
That said researchers are now working turning certain specialized stem cells into types of more general (pluripotential) stem cells. Now suppose that we succeed and keep on going down this road, might we eventually be able to roll back bone marrow stem cells or even general purpose cells back to the embryonic stem cell stage? If so, then every time you have a nose bleed or cut yourself, you might be giving up cells which, with appropriate genetic manipulation and the hypothetical uterine replicators, could potentially be grown into a full separate human being.
According to your arguments, and since genetic uniqueness is not a criteria for humanity (see identical twin argument above), then in a hundred years or less somebody who cuts themselves and loses some blood and flesh might be charged with manslaughter or criminal negligence causing death because those cells were all potential human beings!
That's why I didn't list conception as an option.
So yeah, I don't know exactly what threshold level of neural complexity is an appropriate bound and we probably won't know for at least a few decades more. I think we can posit some reasonable lower bounds. Something between the neural complexity of a mouse's brain and a cat's brain. I would actually set the threshold at the size of the smallest brain of an adult mammal that would be considered an appropriate companionship pet by an adult human being (as opposed to an exotic pet like a snake). A ferret brain perhaps? How many weeks gestation does that put us at for a homo sapiens fetus?
Maye the high wind peaks in a region only happen for two weeks out of the year. Do you really want your testing staff to sit on their thumbs for 50 weeks and then test 30 model variations in two weeks? That's pricey too.
Well, that's where we fundamentally differ. I don't consider a mass of undifferentiated cells as a human being. To assert so is nonsense. Unless you've got plans for their implantation and growing into an adult (in which case they've got added value for their expected potential, but are still not a human being), it's just a small bunch of cells with human DNA and you shed more if you accidentally bite yourself while eating (or even brushing).
However, I am in favour of strong protection and limitations on the types of experimentation and uses of human DNA. Having a lot of it floating about in hybrids and chimaera would make it easier for the evolution of new dangerous pathogens that target humans (similar to how overuse/abuse of antibiotics in agriculture has accelerated the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria).
You basically got it all right. I deliberately put "self-sustaining" in quotes as an acknowledgement that premature babies, while developing independently of maternal placental support, may still need significant technological support (usually due to poorly developed lungs). I left the time range for nervous system complexity open for both reasons: an uncertainty in the actual appropriate level of nervous system complexity (insufficient data - we'll have a better idea after we develop Artificial Consciousness), as well as possible individual developmental variations (although the first criteria dominates the current error range).
And yeah, while consideration of the impact on donors is one of many important ethical considerations, the most important phrase in that whole post regarding the ethics of embryonic stem cell research is: an undifferentiated embryo has no nerve cells to feel, know, or want anything. If the belief that an embryo has a soul helps someone get to sleep at night in case they should die before they wake, then that's fine. But they can keep their unsubstantiated beliefs to themselves and out of medical/scientific ethics discussions. There are a lot of good reasons for keeping a strong ethical leash on human medical research, but that's not one of them.
Nah. The really funny thing is that Ford could have spent money 10 years ago to also develop this stuff when Toyota didn't have any patents on it. Instead they spent the money lobbying congress so that they could continue to build gas guzzlers and wouldn't be bound to California's zero emission standards. In contrast, Toyota saw the writing on the wall and used Ford/GM/Dodge's stalling tactics to get a headstart on where the market would eventually go.
The moral of the story is: don't hold long-term onto stock of blue chip "buggy whip makers", even if they do manage to lobby congress to pass laws that temporarily help their business. Is there any energy-related companies that you think that might also apply to?
So, tell me then, when do human beings earn the right to not be destroyed and experimented on?
There's a few possible candidate thresholds but, when it comes to destruction, the ones that make the most sense are:
"self-sustaining" viability outside the womb (currently around 22 weeks gestation) or
significant nervous system complexity (somewhere between 9 to 20 weeks).
Experimentation is a much broader issue with many more possible scenarios and lots of grey areas. That said, I can't see a significant ethical problem with experimentation if you're dealing with individual cells for therapeutic purposes.
As someone else pointed out, there may be significant ethical issues in how you obtained the embryos or eggs due to the risk it poses to the donor. I think some totalitarian state having "farms" with captive unwilling donor women to produce embryos for export to Western hospitals is definitely a scenario we would want to prevent through legislation, and the source tracking as with the current legislation should address that.
To use your example, experimenting with cells from low-division embryos is not significantly different from experimenting with skin or bone marrow cells. You don't have a problem with donating a few skin cells because, with a local anaesthetic, you wouldn't even feel it. On the other hand, if someone endangered your life by ripping 50% or more of your skin off for stem cell material, I expect you would be pretty upset. Conversely, an undifferentiated embryo has no nerve cells to feel, know, or want anything.
Certainly, if successful embryonic stem cell therapies actually get developed, then there will be an issue with supply vs. demand and access criteria. That said even if we don't find an ethically satisfactory technical solution for solving the supply scarcity problem, we've already got a similar issue with a limited supply in the case of organ transplants. Yet there doesn't seem to be a credible broad movement arguing for the cessation of organ transplants.
Ah but the question is: Did the VCs who invested in Netscape get to cash out when AOL bought the company and before AOL tanked in the.com bust? If they did, then that's all that matters to VCs.
The US spends more on their military than all the other nations, combined. How did that work out for them in Iraq, Vietnam, and Afghanistan, do you think? Sure they wiped the floor with the standing armies but got the death of a thousand cuts when they tried to occupy. The moral of the (hi)story is that all that military spending is never going to be enough if you're following an imperialistic policy, and you don't need to spend anywhere near as much as the US does if you're only defending.
So if one of the biggest US polluters were to lobby Congress that a proposed pollution control bill would harm them the most, you think that would be an appropriate justification for killing the bill?
A case in point, take the warrant-less wiretapping. Some think it was/is unconstitutional. You didn't have to violate the law to challenge it, you only had to show it affected you.
Except that's exactly the opposite of what did happen, isn't it? People who tried to challenge the law had their case thrown out because they couldn't prove that they had been subject to a warrantless wiretap. They were in a catch-22 because the government wouldn't confirm that the plaintiffs had been wiretapped, refusing subpoenas from the plaintiffs on national security grounds, and the court wouldn't give the plaintiffs standing unless they could prove it had happened to them.
Well, yeah. But if it had been funded by the DOD for missile tech instead of for NASA, then it would probably have been controlled like nuclear weapons info, requiring Top Secret clearance, and would have as much development as would be necessary for running an ICBM. See "controlled" missile tube/isotope centrifuge cascade metal alloys for an example. So "we" might have at best the equivalent of an Intel 8080 or 8086, and still be using large ECL-based mainframes because there would be no mass market to fund the expensive development of later generations of a DOD-supressed CMOS uprocessor technology.
OK, the Japanese might have taken over and pushed CMOS microprocessor technologies in the late 80's or 90's instead. For ignition control in their automobile industry. 'Cause Detroit sure wouldn't have worried about that. So that would give you maybe 80486's about now, or whatever MITI's equivalent would look like. At least we wouldn't still be using punched cards.
Heinlein wrote some very good stuff, but he was a bit out there sometimes too. On the one hand, you would prefer that your kid actually like learning for its own sake, instead of only being driven by greed (i.e. self-motivated rather than salary-motivated). On the other hand, how s/he does in school will impact his/her earning potential in the long run, so perhaps giving that student an up front example of it isn't such a bad thing. Who knows, maybe while they work on getting those A's, they'll figure out that this learning stuff isn't so bad and some of those subjects can be interesting and fun.
Depends, for some subjects like mathematics, the repetitious "busywork" is actually useful in that you are trying to develop brain structures for automatically performing certain types of operations and recognizing certain patterns. As anybody who has done some work with neural networks will tell you, results for that come through lots of repetition. Unlike most subjects, the material taught in one year of mathematics usually builds on the material taught the previous year too, so it's a very important subject in which to perform all the work.
The only thing that comes close might be English and other languages, and you can pick up the rules of grammar for a language in 2 to 3 years, the rest is memorization of vocabulary and verb conjugations.
So as far as I'm concerned, after Math and the prevalent 1 or 2 languages of your area, learn some history/political science and the basics of physical/economic geography for your local area/country, with the understanding that by the time you graduate (and certainly over the course of your life) the latter probably won't be that accurate anymore. The important thing to learn besides a good mathematical and communications foundation, is enough of the brush strokes of history to recognize when a politician or some other demagogue (or even an investment promoter) is trying to con you.
Outside of math and english, the memorization busywork isn't of much use beyond getting you to practice research and composition. Anything you remember of the rest is just gravy and really just there to help you figure out what you're good at and what you want to do with your life. Then learn what you need to know for what you want to do after you get out of school.
Digital works are a lot like pharmaceuticals.
Massive capital expenditure, minimal marginal cost.
"Massive capital expenditure"? For creating visual works where customer expectations of resolution and quality is steadily increasing, OK.
For most of the music the RIAA peddles? Fat chance. The advent of the digital computer has placed reasonably good quality recording capabilities at ever lower price points. Many albums now have their audio contents deliberately distorted prior to reproduction because the younger clientele has gotten used to distortion and poor reproduction from low-fidelity MP3s and earbuds. The real "costs" in music production are in marketing and access to the limited and controlled mass media outlets.
The actual creative artists who compose the music an lyrics for songs also need to be compensated for their effort, but they generally get pretty short-changed by the current system in favour of middle men and gatekeepers. Even then, the artist's capital costs are the price of keeping a roof over their head and food in their stomach while they concentrate on being creative. Those costs are significant to the artists because they generally don't make much from performing until they become popular, but compared to any physical product, the costs are really quite low these days.
Classical music is probably the most significant exception. Keeping an orchestra fed, housed, and clothed is so expensive that receipts from concerts usually don't cover it and donations have to be solicited.
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Nope. That's the natural sources that they used to detect and isolate the drug before determining the gene sequence for large scale bacterial production.
Yep. Although eventually nibs do wear down and when that happens it does start to scratch no matter how lightly you write. I took all my notes in University using a fountain pen and I think I went through about 3 nibs. Medium nibs, though they produce a thicker line, take longer to wear down. Also, you have tob e more careful not to let your notes get wet since fountain pen ink bleeds more than ballpoint ink.
Apart for Congressman Freezer Bagman, the current crop of federal Dems haven't been stupid enough to get caught recently. Dem. Governors and Lieutenant Govs. are another issue entirely, but then he didn't mention Palin's investigations either.
Well it also helped a lot that John McCain picked Bush III as his running mate.
And thanks to pageantsc you can even use it with smartcards for portable, write-only private keys.
I am under the impression that OpenBSD's chroot jails are reasonably secure when used in conjunction with OpenBSD's privilege separation and privilege revocation.
Unless you use Flo's Florist's website and many others as a conduit for deploying malware and trojans to build a botnet. If that web site nets you 1000 users over a few months, get a few dozen of those and you start having a botnet with which you can do some serious damage (and/or illegal business).
Sigh. I stated that badly so I'll try again. The GGP was indicating that lack of use of proofs in Computer Science sets that discipline aside from Mathematics. I argued that proofs, while not as common in software engineering as in mathematics, were quite possible, if not convenient. You pointed out that Goedel's incompleteness theorem indicated that not every algorithm in Computer Science could be proved and, while true, that theorem also applies to mathematics (where it originated). So while your statement is accurate, it does not serve as a distinction between Computer Science and Mathematics.
Well, if you're talking about the first incompleteness theorem, that's true. While Goedel's incompleteness theorem indicates that you can create an unprovable sentence in the same way that the Liar's paradox applies to truth, it's not clear to me that a G sentence would actually be an algorithm useful for anything other than messing up computer intelligences on SF shows. Yes, the "If I was an evil mastermind..." list should include "all my robots and computers will know to ignore G sentences", right after "all my plans will be reviewed for critical flaws by a panel of 5-year olds".
So yeah, you are theoretically correct. I haven't taken Comp.Sci. at a graduate level so it's possible there are other applications I'm not aware of. Let me know if you've run into a case in software engineering where you found an application (something other than complexity classifications that, while related, stand on their own).
I also find it somewhat ironic that, in a discussion where I'm arguing in favour of an equivalency between computer science and mathematics, you use a mathematical theorem to find fault with my argument.
I'm afraid you are displaying ignorance of the subject. Every algorithm and piece of software can be proven, with the use of tools like formal methods. But as the article points out, doing so is expensive and that isn't always cost effective, and it isn't "foolproof". Remember Knuth's famous note in one of his books: "Beware of the above code. I have only proven it correct, not tested it.". In case you should think that the latter is making your point, you should be aware that many modern "proofs" of complex mathematical theorems go through an iterative development process (see Fermat's last theorem for example). Similarly, basic everyday "business" mathematics can be performed in ways that minimize the chances of error and facilitate "proof" of correctness. i.e. double entry bookkeeping. It's still math and yet it doesn't stop things like Enron and Ponzi schemes. Given the appropriate input data, you can devise an algorithm which detects those pathological cases, but GIGO.
There's nothing "non-mathematical" about software, even the buggy implementations which involve very bad or very fuzzy math. A bug is like saying 2+3=6. It is still math, it's just bad/wrong math.
There's a fallacy there. Identical twins are genetically identical. They have different fingerprints, probably as a result of environmental variations during gestation, but they are genetically identical. Yet if I kill one identical twin, the courts aren't going to let me off because there's still another one alive.
So presumably, if we ever manage to successfully clone human beings, then the clone would also be a human being since it's effectively a time-shifted identical twin. So you couldn't kill a clone.
Now, I refer you to the first line of Terwin's post
Well, I don't think so, and in fact that's why I'm not happy with the "viability" threshold for destruction, even though I acknowledged it as one of the possible options (I probably should have included a third option, the beginning of cell differentiation, but I consider ludicrously conservative).
That said researchers are now working turning certain specialized stem cells into types of more general (pluripotential) stem cells. Now suppose that we succeed and keep on going down this road, might we eventually be able to roll back bone marrow stem cells or even general purpose cells back to the embryonic stem cell stage? If so, then every time you have a nose bleed or cut yourself, you might be giving up cells which, with appropriate genetic manipulation and the hypothetical uterine replicators, could potentially be grown into a full separate human being.
According to your arguments, and since genetic uniqueness is not a criteria for humanity (see identical twin argument above), then in a hundred years or less somebody who cuts themselves and loses some blood and flesh might be charged with manslaughter or criminal negligence causing death because those cells were all potential human beings!
That's why I didn't list conception as an option.
So yeah, I don't know exactly what threshold level of neural complexity is an appropriate bound and we probably won't know for at least a few decades more. I think we can posit some reasonable lower bounds. Something between the neural complexity of a mouse's brain and a cat's brain. I would actually set the threshold at the size of the smallest brain of an adult mammal that would be considered an appropriate companionship pet by an adult human being (as opposed to an exotic pet like a snake). A ferret brain perhaps? How many weeks gestation does that put us at for a homo sapiens fetus?
Maye the high wind peaks in a region only happen for two weeks out of the year. Do you really want your testing staff to sit on their thumbs for 50 weeks and then test 30 model variations in two weeks? That's pricey too.
Well, that's where we fundamentally differ. I don't consider a mass of undifferentiated cells as a human being. To assert so is nonsense. Unless you've got plans for their implantation and growing into an adult (in which case they've got added value for their expected potential, but are still not a human being), it's just a small bunch of cells with human DNA and you shed more if you accidentally bite yourself while eating (or even brushing).
However, I am in favour of strong protection and limitations on the types of experimentation and uses of human DNA. Having a lot of it floating about in hybrids and chimaera would make it easier for the evolution of new dangerous pathogens that target humans (similar to how overuse/abuse of antibiotics in agriculture has accelerated the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria).
You basically got it all right. I deliberately put "self-sustaining" in quotes as an acknowledgement that premature babies, while developing independently of maternal placental support, may still need significant technological support (usually due to poorly developed lungs). I left the time range for nervous system complexity open for both reasons: an uncertainty in the actual appropriate level of nervous system complexity (insufficient data - we'll have a better idea after we develop Artificial Consciousness), as well as possible individual developmental variations (although the first criteria dominates the current error range).
And yeah, while consideration of the impact on donors is one of many important ethical considerations, the most important phrase in that whole post regarding the ethics of embryonic stem cell research is: an undifferentiated embryo has no nerve cells to feel, know, or want anything. If the belief that an embryo has a soul helps someone get to sleep at night in case they should die before they wake, then that's fine. But they can keep their unsubstantiated beliefs to themselves and out of medical/scientific ethics discussions. There are a lot of good reasons for keeping a strong ethical leash on human medical research, but that's not one of them.
Nah. The really funny thing is that Ford could have spent money 10 years ago to also develop this stuff when Toyota didn't have any patents on it. Instead they spent the money lobbying congress so that they could continue to build gas guzzlers and wouldn't be bound to California's zero emission standards. In contrast, Toyota saw the writing on the wall and used Ford/GM/Dodge's stalling tactics to get a headstart on where the market would eventually go.
The moral of the story is: don't hold long-term onto stock of blue chip "buggy whip makers", even if they do manage to lobby congress to pass laws that temporarily help their business. Is there any energy-related companies that you think that might also apply to?
There's a few possible candidate thresholds but, when it comes to destruction, the ones that make the most sense are:
Experimentation is a much broader issue with many more possible scenarios and lots of grey areas. That said, I can't see a significant ethical problem with experimentation if you're dealing with individual cells for therapeutic purposes.
As someone else pointed out, there may be significant ethical issues in how you obtained the embryos or eggs due to the risk it poses to the donor. I think some totalitarian state having "farms" with captive unwilling donor women to produce embryos for export to Western hospitals is definitely a scenario we would want to prevent through legislation, and the source tracking as with the current legislation should address that.
To use your example, experimenting with cells from low-division embryos is not significantly different from experimenting with skin or bone marrow cells. You don't have a problem with donating a few skin cells because, with a local anaesthetic, you wouldn't even feel it. On the other hand, if someone endangered your life by ripping 50% or more of your skin off for stem cell material, I expect you would be pretty upset. Conversely, an undifferentiated embryo has no nerve cells to feel, know, or want anything.
Certainly, if successful embryonic stem cell therapies actually get developed, then there will be an issue with supply vs. demand and access criteria. That said even if we don't find an ethically satisfactory technical solution for solving the supply scarcity problem, we've already got a similar issue with a limited supply in the case of organ transplants. Yet there doesn't seem to be a credible broad movement arguing for the cessation of organ transplants.
Might that distinction be specific to American jurisprudence?
Ah but the question is: Did the VCs who invested in Netscape get to cash out when AOL bought the company and before AOL tanked in the .com bust? If they did, then that's all that matters to VCs.
The US spends more on their military than all the other nations, combined. How did that work out for them in Iraq, Vietnam, and Afghanistan, do you think? Sure they wiped the floor with the standing armies but got the death of a thousand cuts when they tried to occupy. The moral of the (hi)story is that all that military spending is never going to be enough if you're following an imperialistic policy, and you don't need to spend anywhere near as much as the US does if you're only defending.
So if one of the biggest US polluters were to lobby Congress that a proposed pollution control bill would harm them the most, you think that would be an appropriate justification for killing the bill?
Except that's exactly the opposite of what did happen, isn't it? People who tried to challenge the law had their case thrown out because they couldn't prove that they had been subject to a warrantless wiretap. They were in a catch-22 because the government wouldn't confirm that the plaintiffs had been wiretapped, refusing subpoenas from the plaintiffs on national security grounds, and the court wouldn't give the plaintiffs standing unless they could prove it had happened to them.
Well, yeah. But if it had been funded by the DOD for missile tech instead of for NASA, then it would probably have been controlled like nuclear weapons info, requiring Top Secret clearance, and would have as much development as would be necessary for running an ICBM. See "controlled" missile tube/isotope centrifuge cascade metal alloys for an example. So "we" might have at best the equivalent of an Intel 8080 or 8086, and still be using large ECL-based mainframes because there would be no mass market to fund the expensive development of later generations of a DOD-supressed CMOS uprocessor technology.
OK, the Japanese might have taken over and pushed CMOS microprocessor technologies in the late 80's or 90's instead. For ignition control in their automobile industry. 'Cause Detroit sure wouldn't have worried about that. So that would give you maybe 80486's about now, or whatever MITI's equivalent would look like. At least we wouldn't still be using punched cards.
Heinlein wrote some very good stuff, but he was a bit out there sometimes too. On the one hand, you would prefer that your kid actually like learning for its own sake, instead of only being driven by greed (i.e. self-motivated rather than salary-motivated). On the other hand, how s/he does in school will impact his/her earning potential in the long run, so perhaps giving that student an up front example of it isn't such a bad thing. Who knows, maybe while they work on getting those A's, they'll figure out that this learning stuff isn't so bad and some of those subjects can be interesting and fun.
Depends, for some subjects like mathematics, the repetitious "busywork" is actually useful in that you are trying to develop brain structures for automatically performing certain types of operations and recognizing certain patterns. As anybody who has done some work with neural networks will tell you, results for that come through lots of repetition. Unlike most subjects, the material taught in one year of mathematics usually builds on the material taught the previous year too, so it's a very important subject in which to perform all the work.
The only thing that comes close might be English and other languages, and you can pick up the rules of grammar for a language in 2 to 3 years, the rest is memorization of vocabulary and verb conjugations.
So as far as I'm concerned, after Math and the prevalent 1 or 2 languages of your area, learn some history/political science and the basics of physical/economic geography for your local area/country, with the understanding that by the time you graduate (and certainly over the course of your life) the latter probably won't be that accurate anymore. The important thing to learn besides a good mathematical and communications foundation, is enough of the brush strokes of history to recognize when a politician or some other demagogue (or even an investment promoter) is trying to con you.
Outside of math and english, the memorization busywork isn't of much use beyond getting you to practice research and composition. Anything you remember of the rest is just gravy and really just there to help you figure out what you're good at and what you want to do with your life. Then learn what you need to know for what you want to do after you get out of school.
"Massive capital expenditure"? For creating visual works where customer expectations of resolution and quality is steadily increasing, OK.
For most of the music the RIAA peddles? Fat chance. The advent of the digital computer has placed reasonably good quality recording capabilities at ever lower price points. Many albums now have their audio contents deliberately distorted prior to reproduction because the younger clientele has gotten used to distortion and poor reproduction from low-fidelity MP3s and earbuds. The real "costs" in music production are in marketing and access to the limited and controlled mass media outlets.
The actual creative artists who compose the music an lyrics for songs also need to be compensated for their effort, but they generally get pretty short-changed by the current system in favour of middle men and gatekeepers. Even then, the artist's capital costs are the price of keeping a roof over their head and food in their stomach while they concentrate on being creative. Those costs are significant to the artists because they generally don't make much from performing until they become popular, but compared to any physical product, the costs are really quite low these days.
Classical music is probably the most significant exception. Keeping an orchestra fed, housed, and clothed is so expensive that receipts from concerts usually don't cover it and donations have to be solicited.