While I'm glad to see this "news" hit Slashdot, I have to wonder why it wasn't considered newsworthy back in July. Check out the old news at sciencenews.org.
What about the sweat shops of the early industrial revolution? They employed, among the lower classes, many women of child-bearing age.
Yes they did. These women were usually fired immediately if they became pregnant (sometimes even if they got married, pregnant or not). It was assumed that a pregnant woman - not to mention a woman with an infant or young child in tow - would be an unreliable worker, and that a married woman (esp. if she was white) would have her husband to support her and would neither want nor need employment.
Exceptions were made for (surprise!) minority women, because they tended to work in non-industrial jobs (maids, nannies, farm laborers etc.) that allowed their children to remain with them as they worked.
so the civilizations of ancient Rome, China, Persia, Inca, etc. and modern civilizations like the British Empire were the size of small city states?
No, but many if not all of them (Rome and London for sure) had sanitation. I'm not talking elaborate sewage-treatment methods, but some system of canals or ducts or something to keep the sewage away from the drinking water.
up until the 1900s all civilizations used the same form of waste disposal: dump it in the nearest river.
That's the same river they drink from and bathe in. That system works for low population densities (most of those ancient empires would have been low-density). But for the empires' urban administrative centers, sanitation becomes vital.
If you were to actually read [the Kansas school board decision], you would see that it doesn't throw one thing out and replace it with another, it states that you can't teach one viewpoint without teaching the other.
But they're teaching this stuff in a science class, right? And the other viewpoint you speak of - biblical creation - is not science. And it should not be taught in science classes. Nor should science be taught in religion classes. Science can't tell you what to believe in, and religion can't tell you how the physical world works. The Kansas school board failed to see the difference.
So tell me, if your reaction to anything you disagree with is to launch into a diatribe against an entire state, how do you logically claim to be tolerant?
Did I claim to be tolerant? Actually, while I think tolearance is a virtue, it's not always possible. Sometimes you can't do what's right; you have to do what's necessary. The question was about how to attract geeks to a particular geographic region. My answer was that it might require some intolerance. In this case intolerance of geek-hostile individuals. I don't like it - I'd much prefer that everyone just get along. But I don't see any need to tolerate those who won't tolerate me and the things that are important to me. Science is important to me. I will not tolerate its being corrupted by unscientific dogma.
Nor do I rail against an entire state - just its shortsighted school board. I even pointed out that Kansas has a lot going for it, like clean air and low crime. But those things may not be as important to the average geek (if there is such a thing) as a school board that's hostile toward science.
Not just indoor plumbing, but outdoor plumbing as well, was vital for civilization. Without proper waste disposal, civilizations would not advance beyond the size of a smallish city/state before disease brought the whole works crashing down. Proper waste disposal is easy in low-density rural populations (the old open-holer was quite adequate for disposal of small amounts of sewage) but for larger cities it becomes quite a problem. Grand projects - even gadgets - are developed to deal with it.
Indoor plumbing is one form of this in the same way that the Zippo lighter is one form of portable fire. Sewage sanitation definitely belongs on the top 10 list!
Birth control is just what it sounds like - control over whether and when to give birth. It includes such things as abortion and even fertility treatments, which do nothing to prevent (the latter may even encourage) conception.
Contraception includes only those birth control methods which work by preventing conception. It includes methods like abstainance, chemicals like "the pill", and gadgets like condoms and IUDs.
Did birth control really free half the population to "reliably join the work force?"
Depends on which work force. Throughout most of history, women of childbearing age have worked. They have worked whether or not they had young children. The babies and/or children accompanied their mothers as they worked. This tended to keep women out of jobs that required a lot of travel, or long hours without a break, or dangerous (to children if not adults) conditions. With a few exceptions, it was the same work men did. For most men and women, work meant farming. With the industrial revolution, more jobs required long hours away from home, and women (esp. those with children) were largely excluded.
Why is artificial contraception necessary to hold down a job?
It's not. But without it, most women of childbearing age would be effectively kept out of most jobs. Exceptions would be women who remain childless, either by choice or by biology. Birth control (including contraception) vastly increases the jobs available to women. And it's all but neccesary for survival in a world where most children survive to adulthood. Without some kind of birth control, it's not all that unusual for a woman to have a dozen kids in a lifetime. This might have been a good thing when most of the kids died in infancy, but if we're going to have nice things like low infant mortality, we're going to have to breed less kids. That means birth control, whether by low-tech methods like abstainance (how many guys are going to applaud that decision?) or inventions like pills, condoms, and abortions.
Perhaps things like maternity laws and day care would better qualify under that criteria.
What criteria? Those are even less like gadgets than birth control is. Maternity laws and day care are nice things, but they're hardly necessary for women to enter the work force. Like birth control, they broaden the choices available to women, but in the absence of birth control, they become quite unworkable. Who's going to grant maternity leave to someone every time they get knocked up, just because they won't use some kind of birth control? Who's going to pay for day care for a dozen or so kids?
Perhaps what is needed is not any one particular geek-attractant, but something that repels those who are hostile to geeks and geek pastimes.
There's a wide variety of things that geeks like and some of them are mutually exclusive. But I suspect very few geeks would enjoy living or working in an environment where a majority (or even a vocal minority) see science and technology as the literal or figurative work of the Devil.
Kansas springs to mind. Whatever its virtues (clean air, low crime, etc.), they fade because of the Kansas school board and its decision regarding the teaching of science.
I'm horrified to see that none of you included duct tape on your list of things to have for Y2K (especially so soon after the Slashdot 10 Ten Hacks story).
Maybe that's because they already have a couple pallet-loads of duct tape lying around the compound. That way there's no need to buy more at the last minute.
Does pushing the limits make one a great human being? Seems that's about all Kaufman did. That he may have been trying to be funny is immaterial. He was offensive but not particularly funny.
All comics try to be funny. Some comics push the limits of what is acceptable. Some manage to do both. I know it's just my opinion (well not just mine, as lots of SNL viewers apparently felt the same way), but Kaufman did not do both. He was just not very funny.
Don't be too hard on Science News
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Science in 1999
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Science News is a publication for those people interested in intellectual pursuits, but who are not technical enough in nature to read a peer-reviewed journal such as Science or Nature. Science News, IMHO, is a very good publication for children, as it will keep them intellectually stimulated every week.
Now while I agree that it's a good publication for children (bright ones over about 12 or so anyway) I also think that Science News is good reading for adults. And not just those who aren't technical enough to read peer-reviewed journals.
The wonderful thing about Science News is how it covers events from all areas of science. You can find articles about parallel processing on one page, and something about Neanderthal cave paintings or the sense organs of honey bees on the next. I doubt there are many people who would be willing to struggle through the peer-reviewed journals of computing, paleoanthropology and entomology, but lots of us have at least a passing interest in all of those subjects - and the many others that Science News covers.
Science and Nature are also fine periodicals, but they're not weekly, and they cost a good deal more than Science News. And the articles in Science News are shorter, so I can read them in the bathroom, or on my break at work.
...Cye is selling in great numbers, so it must be effective.
I realize that the robot-buying public may be a wee bit savvier than the general buying public, but isn't the above sentiment hopelessly naive? Does anyone believe that everything that sells in great numbers "must be effective"? Ever heard of Windows?
I understand that Cye's navigation probably is remarkably effective, but offering big sales as evidence is poor logic.
Coders are asked to 'love your user as yourself', to consider good design a moral issue....
Those certainly sound like decent suggestions on the surface, but are they? And are the two suggestions contradictory?
Good design can be rather subjective. One user's favorite navigation tool is painful for another to use. Just as in art - people never seem to agree on what good art is. But even art lovers can find more to agree on than users. They may disagree about whether a painting is good art, but both would probably prefer to put the painting on the wall (good design) rather than on the floor, where people would have to step carefully to avoid tripping over it (bad design). But users can't even seem to agree on what constitutes good design, other than maybe "the program should not crash."
And "love thy user as thyself" might make for some really user-hostile programs. Should programmers follow the golden rule, and treat users as they (the programmers) would like to be treated? Just because lots of programmers like command lines does not mean that ordinary users will. Programmers (and many experienced users) don't usually like to be spoon-fed their instructions. Figuring them out for oneself is fun! But not for everyone. Some people will want - and need - a lot of hand-holding.
I would certainly agree that it's immoral to deliberately code a program poorly, but beyond that it's hard to pin down the morality of bad code. Is there room for honest mistakes? Even if one is sincerely trying? What if there's a deadline, and quick-n-dirty is the order of the day?
I agree with much of what I see in the above post, but one thing grates:
If you see your kids making pipe bombs, stop them. If you see your kids playing a game you don't like, stop them. If you see your kids downloading hardcore porn, stop them.
No. It's not quite that simple. But in the next sentence, Redking gets it right.
Talk to them. Geez, I thought it was obvious.
How many here reading this played with explosives in their youth? Would you have stopped just because mom or dad told you to stop? Probably not. Would you have used those explosives to kill or maim? Probably not deliberately (accidents happen). Telling the kids to stop, or trying to make them stop, is useless by itself. They'll just try (harder) to hide it from you, and it'll be more dangerous than ever. Talking to the kids is required. Listening to the kids is even more important. Find out why they're making explosives (or playing violent games, or downloading porn). Determine for yourself whether the kid is showing healthy curiosity or dangerous violent tendencies, and then act accordingly.
If the kid really is dangerously disturbed, there will be other signs, and you might miss them if you just flat-out ban (explosives, shoot-em-up games, porn) without some serious two-way communication first. If the kid's mostly okay, but likes (to blow things up, deathmatches, porn sites) some guidance might be in order, to keep him/her from hurting self or others. Get the otherwise-normal kid who's fascinated with explosives some safety equipment and a long talk with a chemistry teacher. Make sure the underage porn fan knows the difference between fantasy and reality, and some of the basic "facts of life".
Communication is vital before deciding on a course of action.
P.S. The real question is, how can you know I am really a woman?:)
That's easy. You seem to care about women (smart ones anyway). If you were a man, all you would care about is getting one of those robot vacuum cleaners that gives head.
Besides, you say things like: Robotics cannot make a man feels super smart or super capable. Only a dumb woman can.
Real men already feel super smart and super capable all the time (they also feel super hot-looking, and they know they're best driver in the world). They don't need robots or dumb women to make them feel that way.
I don't want to get off topic, but...man continues to disgust me.
You and me both. Not so much because humans are arrogant and ignorant (although too often we are), but because there's too damn many of them. If we'd concentrate on quality instead of quantity like the K-strategists that we supposedly are, we wouldn't have such problems. But I digress.
Every day we cut down tons of trees for wood in order to keep industry alive.
The vast majority of the trees that are destroyed are not even used for wood. They're burned in order to clear the land to make room for more people. The wood isn't even used! I say again there's too damn many people on this rock!
When will we realize that these very trees are what supply us with oxygen?
It's not quite that simple. When forests (and kelp beds, and wheat fields) are growing, O2 is released into the atmosphere, and CO2 is removed and its carbon incorporated into the plants' structures. When they are burned, or decompose, or are harvested, O2 is removed from the atmosphere, and CO2 is released. It's a somewhat stable cycle. What really messes up the CO2/oxygen balance is not the destruction of forests (though that has an impact) but the burning of fossil fuels. Plants can grow back, but oil and coal don't. That carbon has been added to the atmosphere and it won't be coming out again.
While I agree with you that humans are disgusting, and that they're trashing the planet big-time, I don't think the answer to that is to put limits on science. More than anything else, science has the potential to get us out of this mess we're currently in, if we'll just stop putting short-term profits first and let it. For better or for worse, humans got the big brains. It's time we used them.
We create another organism anytime a mother has a child.
Yup. So by the "only God can create life" argument, mothers (and not just human mothers either) are Gods. This biotechnology thing is just a new way to create life. One that scientists (of either gender) can attempt, without all that noisy, undignified, and unhygenic exchange of body fluids.
Of course if you don't buy the "only God can create life" argument (and I don't), all bets are off. Mothers and scientists become mere mortals once again, and creating life is just business as usual on Planet Earth.
Why should they care what the religious leaders think?
Because only a sociopath doesn't care what other people think. Religious leaders are other people.
This does not mean one should always give in to the will of other people - only that it's usually a good thing to give it at least a passing consideration. I hope they don't only consider what religious leaders think about this. A great many people, from all walks of life, might have objections, concerns, or even just questions that should be answered.
Not that it matters a whole lot - these things will be attempted whether there is objection or not. Anyone who has ever been told they're not supposed to even try to do that with a computer knows what I'm talking about. Gene hackers can be every bit as compulsive as computer hackers. Right now it just costs too much to attempt projects like this one without the monetary support of large universities, corporations, or governments.
You can play God all you want thinking that you can create life.
Since when is thinking that you can create life == playing God? People have been accused of "playing God" long before biotechnology. Frinstance when they determine who shall live and who shall die, as in executions and triage wards. It's a trendy phrase, used to dis those who make unpopular decisions about life and death.
But you will NEVER BE God.
That depends on your definition of God. In the JudeoChristian tradition, it's true. Humans can never be God, because there can be only one God, and that job's taken. The best we can hope for is to be with God someday.
But there are other approaches to consider. In some traditions, humans are already Gods, or at the very least carry a part of the divine within them. Still others claim that some humans are Gods (f'rinstance the king, the emperor, etc.) but most are not and can never be. Who's right? I've got my own beliefs, but I can't say that I know.
It's yet another waste of your tax dollars.
That does not follow from your initial argument. If you think it's a waste of tax dollars, please tell why. Offer some reason. If it's only because we won't become Gods as a result, then all spending is a waste of money. You can't buy Godliness, at least not in any religion that I'm aware of.
I have to wonder about the "soul" of these new genetic beings that we are going to create.
We're creating creatures now? Possibly soulless ones? Golly. I thought we were just mapping human chromosomes. Maybe (if we're lucky) finding ways to treat genetic diseases. AFAIK the only "creatures" being made are being made the old fashioned way. Y'know... with a mommy, and a daddy, and they... aw, go look it up.
What about him? He still would be born, only not paralyzed.
Actually, he probably would not be. But that's not the fault of the human genome project, or the gene therapy that might someday result from it. It's the fault of biological testing. Nothing new there.
When and if gene therapy becomes available, it will still be difficult and expensive. Parental and prenatal screening are already available, and are far easier and cheaper. The world's wealthiest parents might opt to have a child even with a prenatal diagnosis of a devastating genetic defect. They know they could afford treatment. Everyone else would be advised to abort, and probably to avoid future pregnancies. If Hawking's parents had had such tests available, it's reasonable to assume he'd never have been born.
That having been said, I still don't think that genetic testing (or the human genome project for that matter) is a bad thing. It sounds cold, but for every Hawking that's never born as a result of genetic testing, there are countless others who would have done nothing but suffer. And drain the resources of the health care and education systems.
If you disagree, that's fine too. Don't get tested. But if your kid turns out to have a genetic disease that could have been prevented with screening and a judicious application of contraception, don't expect me to be happy about paying for the kid's lifetime stay in an institution. Or (if we're lucky) the kid's gene therapy.
Suppose that she got cancer because she carries a genetic predisposition for it (this is entirely possible). Now if she's been cured of this cancer and goes on to reproduce, she may pass this "bad" gene on to future children, who may not be so fortunate with the placement and treatment of their tumors. If she hadn't had surgery or radiation therapy, she may well not have survived long enough to reproduce, thereby removing her icky genes from the gene pool.
Bad news, buddy. If your sister does carry this genetic predisposition for cancer, there's a pretty good chance that you've got it too. She'd have inherited it from her parents, and they're your parents too, so into the euthanasia chamber you go. It's for the good of the species, you know - gotta remove those "icky" genes before they damage yet another generation.
Another point about genetic predispositions... we don't know how many of these predispositions would be rendered insignificant if environmental causes were removed. What about people predisposed to cancer if and only if they contact some particular chemical, or (this one is documented) elevated dosages of X rays. "In the wild", these people would not be selected against, but in our modern world, where we have industrial sovents and chest X rays, they get cancer. Technology has not eliminated selection - it has just changed its form. Some people who would have died (or at least not bred) now survive and pass on their genes. Others who would have lived and passed on their genes now die childless. It's been going on since time immemorial, and the world hasn't ended because of it.
Certainly we ought to be wary of what can go wrong with gene therapy, but this notion that humans are doomed because they've used technology to thwart natural selection is hooey. Humans are doomed because EVERYTHING is doomed. Lets at least enjoy our time here, and do what we can to minimise suffering. Sometimes that means saying yes to biotechnology, and sometimes it means saying no. You'll have to use your own judgement.
Or let your leaders use theirs, and make your decisions for you. Personally I prefer to use my own.
Those that can achieve in our societies have less children than those that don't.
I think it's a lot more likely that cause and effect are reversed here (if indeed there is any cause-and-effect relationship at all). Those that have more children in our society achieve less. Because the resources that they could have devoted to creativity and achievement are instead used to care for their (many) children.
How much code could you write if there were six or seven children running around your house or apartment? If you couldn't buy the tools you needed for work because you had to pay for diapers and formula and babysitting and college tuition for all the young 'uns?
Gaia's hands have been (to some minimal extent) tied ever since humans learned to control fire. Would you have it otherwise?
...I suspect it will be the realization of just how little (in humans anyway) in under the complete control of genes.
How many parents will choose ugly kids when they can be assured attractive ones? Why have an idiosyncratic or rebellious offspring when you can choose a cheerful and pliant one?
Few, perhaps. But will it matter? Parents who select the genes for cheerful and compliant offspring will quickly come to realize that these things are not controlled by genes. Look at dogs. Dogs would seem to be far more under the control of their genes than humans are (they don't have a culture, at least not to the extent that humans do). And yet dogs bred for generations to be vicious attack dogs (I'm thinking of Doberman pinschers, pit bull terriers and the like) can, with the proper upbringing, become gentle, loving, even compliant pets. Similarly, dogs bred for gentleness (retrievers and the like) can very quickly become vicious if they are abused as puppies, or trained as attack dogs.
Gene therapy may offer the chance to control those things that are strictly - or even mostly - under the control of genes. When a gene is missing or damaged, and a disease is the result, gene therapy may help. This does not seem (to me) to be a bad thing. But behavior is not under the control of genes. Aspects of it may be (as when brain chemistry is altered as the result of a missing or damaged gene), but most brain chemistry is under the control - in large part anyway - of the environment.
People who want good behavior from their children will not get it from gene therapy. They will get it from raising their children right.
Excellent example (I love a good analogy)! And it's good in more ways than you elaborated on.
The reason for doing it is the same reason that when i was 10 and got a little Star Wars walking robot toy (I think it was star wars..probably wasn't) I grabbed a screw driver and opened it up and took all the gears out....cuz I wanted to see how it worked
That last bit is your motive. And it does matter. You wanted to see how the robot toy worked. In that instance there is nothing wrong (and a lot right) with opening it up, taking it apart, and attempting to find out. If your motive had been different (say, you worked for a rival toy company and wanted to find out how it worked so that your company could duplicate the mechanism) then there would be a problem. But the "crime", if any, would not be in cracking open the toy and finding out how the mechanism was made, but in duplicating and distributing it... at the expense of the creative folks who invented it in the first place.
(never did get that damned thing back together...)
Here's another potential problem with hacking... what if you're unsuccessful? In the example above, you and only you suffered the consequences (the toy didn't work right anymore). Other hacks may have worse consequences, and this is where the ethics get a little hairy. While there may be nothing wrong and a lot right with attempting to find out how something works, ferchissakes be careful. Doubly so if what you're taking apart doesn't belong to you. Even if you do own the thing you're hacking (the DVD example) there may be consequences for others. Like the delay of DVD audio. To the standard hacker ethic I would add something like the Wiccan Rede. "An ye harm none, do as ye will."
Slashdot Mirror
While I'm glad to see this "news" hit Slashdot, I have to wonder why it wasn't considered newsworthy back in July. Check out the old news at sciencenews.org.
You can listen to Bruce Sterling in RealAudio on NPR's All Things Considered here.
What about the sweat shops of the early industrial revolution? They employed, among the lower classes, many women of child-bearing age.
Yes they did. These women were usually fired immediately if they became pregnant (sometimes even if they got married, pregnant or not). It was assumed that a pregnant woman - not to mention a woman with an infant or young child in tow - would be an unreliable worker, and that a married woman (esp. if she was white) would have her husband to support her and would neither want nor need employment.
Exceptions were made for (surprise!) minority women, because they tended to work in non-industrial jobs (maids, nannies, farm laborers etc.) that allowed their children to remain with them as they worked.
so the civilizations of ancient Rome, China, Persia, Inca, etc. and modern civilizations like the British Empire were the size of small city states?
No, but many if not all of them (Rome and London for sure) had sanitation. I'm not talking elaborate sewage-treatment methods, but some system of canals or ducts or something to keep the sewage away from the drinking water.
up until the 1900s all civilizations used the same form of waste disposal: dump it in the nearest river.
That's the same river they drink from and bathe in. That system works for low population densities (most of those ancient empires would have been low-density). But for the empires' urban administrative centers, sanitation becomes vital.
If you were to actually read [the Kansas school board decision], you would see that it doesn't throw one thing out and replace it with another, it states that you can't teach one viewpoint without teaching the other.
But they're teaching this stuff in a science class, right? And the other viewpoint you speak of - biblical creation - is not science. And it should not be taught in science classes. Nor should science be taught in religion classes. Science can't tell you what to believe in, and religion can't tell you how the physical world works. The Kansas school board failed to see the difference.
So tell me, if your reaction to anything you disagree with is to launch into a diatribe against an entire state, how do you logically claim to be tolerant?
Did I claim to be tolerant? Actually, while I think tolearance is a virtue, it's not always possible. Sometimes you can't do what's right; you have to do what's necessary. The question was about how to attract geeks to a particular geographic region. My answer was that it might require some intolerance. In this case intolerance of geek-hostile individuals. I don't like it - I'd much prefer that everyone just get along. But I don't see any need to tolerate those who won't tolerate me and the things that are important to me. Science is important to me. I will not tolerate its being corrupted by unscientific dogma.
Nor do I rail against an entire state - just its shortsighted school board. I even pointed out that Kansas has a lot going for it, like clean air and low crime. But those things may not be as important to the average geek (if there is such a thing) as a school board that's hostile toward science.
Not just indoor plumbing, but outdoor plumbing as well, was vital for civilization. Without proper waste disposal, civilizations would not advance beyond the size of a smallish city/state before disease brought the whole works crashing down. Proper waste disposal is easy in low-density rural populations (the old open-holer was quite adequate for disposal of small amounts of sewage) but for larger cities it becomes quite a problem. Grand projects - even gadgets - are developed to deal with it.
Indoor plumbing is one form of this in the same way that the Zippo lighter is one form of portable fire. Sewage sanitation definitely belongs on the top 10 list!
Birth control is just what it sounds like - control over whether and when to give birth. It includes such things as abortion and even fertility treatments, which do nothing to prevent (the latter may even encourage) conception.
Contraception includes only those birth control methods which work by preventing conception. It includes methods like abstainance, chemicals like "the pill", and gadgets like condoms and IUDs.
Did birth control really free half the population to "reliably join the work force?"
Depends on which work force. Throughout most of history, women of childbearing age have worked. They have worked whether or not they had young children. The babies and/or children accompanied their mothers as they worked. This tended to keep women out of jobs that required a lot of travel, or long hours without a break, or dangerous (to children if not adults) conditions. With a few exceptions, it was the same work men did. For most men and women, work meant farming. With the industrial revolution, more jobs required long hours away from home, and women (esp. those with children) were largely excluded.
Why is artificial contraception necessary to hold down a job?
It's not. But without it, most women of childbearing age would be effectively kept out of most jobs. Exceptions would be women who remain childless, either by choice or by biology. Birth control (including contraception) vastly increases the jobs available to women. And it's all but neccesary for survival in a world where most children survive to adulthood. Without some kind of birth control, it's not all that unusual for a woman to have a dozen kids in a lifetime. This might have been a good thing when most of the kids died in infancy, but if we're going to have nice things like low infant mortality, we're going to have to breed less kids. That means birth control, whether by low-tech methods like abstainance (how many guys are going to applaud that decision?) or inventions like pills, condoms, and abortions.
Perhaps things like maternity laws and day care would better qualify under that criteria.
What criteria? Those are even less like gadgets than birth control is. Maternity laws and day care are nice things, but they're hardly necessary for women to enter the work force. Like birth control, they broaden the choices available to women, but in the absence of birth control, they become quite unworkable. Who's going to grant maternity leave to someone every time they get knocked up, just because they won't use some kind of birth control? Who's going to pay for day care for a dozen or so kids?
Perhaps what is needed is not any one particular geek-attractant, but something that repels those who are hostile to geeks and geek pastimes.
There's a wide variety of things that geeks like and some of them are mutually exclusive. But I suspect very few geeks would enjoy living or working in an environment where a majority (or even a vocal minority) see science and technology as the literal or figurative work of the Devil.
Kansas springs to mind. Whatever its virtues (clean air, low crime, etc.), they fade because of the Kansas school board and its decision regarding the teaching of science.
I'm horrified to see that none of you included duct tape on your list of things to have for Y2K (especially so soon after the Slashdot 10 Ten Hacks story).
Maybe that's because they already have a couple pallet-loads of duct tape lying around the compound. That way there's no need to buy more at the last minute.
Does pushing the limits make one a great human being? Seems that's about all Kaufman did. That he may have been trying to be funny is immaterial. He was offensive but not particularly funny.
All comics try to be funny. Some comics push the limits of what is acceptable. Some manage to do both. I know it's just my opinion (well not just mine, as lots of SNL viewers apparently felt the same way), but Kaufman did not do both. He was just not very funny.
Science News is a publication for those people interested in intellectual pursuits, but who are not technical enough in nature to read a peer-reviewed journal such as Science or Nature. Science News, IMHO, is a very good publication for children, as it will keep them intellectually stimulated every week.
Now while I agree that it's a good publication for children (bright ones over about 12 or so anyway) I also think that Science News is good reading for adults. And not just those who aren't technical enough to read peer-reviewed journals.
The wonderful thing about Science News is how it covers events from all areas of science. You can find articles about parallel processing on one page, and something about Neanderthal cave paintings or the sense organs of honey bees on the next. I doubt there are many people who would be willing to struggle through the peer-reviewed journals of computing, paleoanthropology and entomology, but lots of us have at least a passing interest in all of those subjects - and the many others that Science News covers.
Science and Nature are also fine periodicals, but they're not weekly, and they cost a good deal more than Science News. And the articles in Science News are shorter, so I can read them in the bathroom, or on my break at work.
...Cye is selling in great numbers, so it must be effective.
I realize that the robot-buying public may be a wee bit savvier than the general buying public, but isn't the above sentiment hopelessly naive? Does anyone believe that everything that sells in great numbers "must be effective"? Ever heard of Windows?
I understand that Cye's navigation probably is remarkably effective, but offering big sales as evidence is poor logic.
Coders are asked to 'love your user as yourself', to consider good design a moral issue....
Those certainly sound like decent suggestions on the surface, but are they? And are the two suggestions contradictory?
Good design can be rather subjective. One user's favorite navigation tool is painful for another to use. Just as in art - people never seem to agree on what good art is. But even art lovers can find more to agree on than users. They may disagree about whether a painting is good art, but both would probably prefer to put the painting on the wall (good design) rather than on the floor, where people would have to step carefully to avoid tripping over it (bad design). But users can't even seem to agree on what constitutes good design, other than maybe "the program should not crash."
And "love thy user as thyself" might make for some really user-hostile programs. Should programmers follow the golden rule, and treat users as they (the programmers) would like to be treated? Just because lots of programmers like command lines does not mean that ordinary users will. Programmers (and many experienced users) don't usually like to be spoon-fed their instructions. Figuring them out for oneself is fun! But not for everyone. Some people will want - and need - a lot of hand-holding.
I would certainly agree that it's immoral to deliberately code a program poorly, but beyond that it's hard to pin down the morality of bad code. Is there room for honest mistakes? Even if one is sincerely trying? What if there's a deadline, and quick-n-dirty is the order of the day?
I agree with much of what I see in the above post, but one thing grates:
If you see your kids making pipe bombs, stop
them. If you see your kids playing a game you don't like, stop them. If you see your kids downloading hardcore porn, stop them.
No. It's not quite that simple. But in the next sentence, Redking gets it right.
Talk to them. Geez, I thought it was obvious.
How many here reading this played with explosives in their youth? Would you have stopped just because mom or dad told you to stop? Probably not. Would you have used those explosives to kill or maim? Probably not deliberately (accidents happen). Telling the kids to stop, or trying to make them stop, is useless by itself. They'll just try (harder) to hide it from you, and it'll be more dangerous than ever. Talking to the kids is required. Listening to the kids is even more important. Find out why they're making explosives (or playing violent games, or downloading porn). Determine for yourself whether the kid is showing healthy curiosity or dangerous violent tendencies, and then act accordingly.
If the kid really is dangerously disturbed, there will be other signs, and you might miss them if you just flat-out ban (explosives, shoot-em-up games, porn) without some serious two-way communication first. If the kid's mostly okay, but likes (to blow things up, deathmatches, porn sites) some guidance might be in order, to keep him/her from hurting self or others. Get the otherwise-normal kid who's fascinated with explosives some safety equipment and a long talk with a chemistry teacher. Make sure the underage porn fan knows the difference between fantasy and reality, and some of the basic "facts of life".
Communication is vital before deciding on a course of action.
P.S. The real question is, how can you know I am really a woman? :)
That's easy. You seem to care about women (smart ones anyway). If you were a man, all you would care about is getting one of those robot vacuum cleaners that gives head.
Besides, you say things like:
Robotics cannot make a man feels super smart or super capable. Only a dumb woman can.
Real men already feel super smart and super capable all the time (they also feel super hot-looking, and they know they're best driver in the world). They don't need robots or dumb women to make them feel that way.
I don't want to get off topic, but...man continues to disgust me.
You and me both. Not so much because humans are arrogant and ignorant (although too often we are), but because there's too damn many of them. If we'd concentrate on quality instead of quantity like the K-strategists that we supposedly are, we wouldn't have such problems. But I digress.
Every day we cut down tons of trees for wood in order to keep industry alive.
The vast majority of the trees that are destroyed are not even used for wood. They're burned in order to clear the land to make room for more people. The wood isn't even used! I say again there's too damn many people on this rock!
When will we realize that these very trees are what supply us with oxygen?
It's not quite that simple. When forests (and kelp beds, and wheat fields) are growing, O2 is released into the atmosphere, and CO2 is removed and its carbon incorporated into the plants' structures. When they are burned, or decompose, or are harvested, O2 is removed from the atmosphere, and CO2 is released. It's a somewhat stable cycle. What really messes up the CO2/oxygen balance is not the destruction of forests (though that has an impact) but the burning of fossil fuels. Plants can grow back, but oil and coal don't. That carbon has been added to the atmosphere and it won't be coming out again.
While I agree with you that humans are disgusting, and that they're trashing the planet big-time, I don't think the answer to that is to put limits on science. More than anything else, science has the potential to get us out of this mess we're currently in, if we'll just stop putting short-term profits first and let it. For better or for worse, humans got the big brains. It's time we used them.
Bingo! Score a point for UnknownSoldier!
We create another organism anytime a mother has a child.
Yup. So by the "only God can create life" argument, mothers (and not just human mothers either) are Gods. This biotechnology thing is just a new way to create life. One that scientists (of either gender) can attempt, without all that noisy, undignified, and unhygenic exchange of body fluids.
Of course if you don't buy the "only God can create life" argument (and I don't), all bets are off. Mothers and scientists become mere mortals once again, and creating life is just business as usual on Planet Earth.
Why should they care what the religious leaders think?
Because only a sociopath doesn't care what other people think. Religious leaders are other people.
This does not mean one should always give in to the will of other people - only that it's usually a good thing to give it at least a passing consideration. I hope they don't only consider what religious leaders think about this. A great many people, from all walks of life, might have objections, concerns, or even just questions that should be answered.
Not that it matters a whole lot - these things will be attempted whether there is objection or not. Anyone who has ever been told they're not supposed to even try to do that with a computer knows what I'm talking about. Gene hackers can be every bit as compulsive as computer hackers. Right now it just costs too much to attempt projects like this one without the monetary support of large universities, corporations, or governments.
But it's getting cheaper all the time.
You can play God all you want thinking that you can create life.
Since when is thinking that you can create life == playing God? People have been accused of "playing God" long before biotechnology. Frinstance when they determine who shall live and who shall die, as in executions and triage wards. It's a trendy phrase, used to dis those who make unpopular decisions about life and death.
But you will NEVER BE God.
That depends on your definition of God. In the JudeoChristian tradition, it's true. Humans can never be God, because there can be only one God, and that job's taken. The best we can hope for is to be with God someday.
But there are other approaches to consider. In some traditions, humans are already Gods, or at the very least carry a part of the divine within them. Still others claim that some humans are Gods (f'rinstance the king, the emperor, etc.) but most are not and can never be. Who's right? I've got my own beliefs, but I can't say that I know.
It's yet another waste of your tax dollars.
That does not follow from your initial argument. If you think it's a waste of tax dollars, please tell why. Offer some reason. If it's only because we won't become Gods as a result, then all spending is a waste of money. You can't buy Godliness, at least not in any religion that I'm aware of.
I have to wonder about the "soul" of these new genetic beings that we are going to create.
We're creating creatures now? Possibly soulless ones? Golly. I thought we were just mapping human chromosomes. Maybe (if we're lucky) finding ways to treat genetic diseases. AFAIK the only "creatures" being made are being made the old fashioned way. Y'know... with a mommy, and a daddy, and they... aw, go look it up.
What about him? He still would be born, only not paralyzed.
Actually, he probably would not be. But that's not the fault of the human genome project, or the gene therapy that might someday result from it. It's the fault of biological testing. Nothing new there.
When and if gene therapy becomes available, it will still be difficult and expensive. Parental and prenatal screening are already available, and are far easier and cheaper. The world's wealthiest parents might opt to have a child even with a prenatal diagnosis of a devastating genetic defect. They know they could afford treatment. Everyone else would be advised to abort, and probably to avoid future pregnancies. If Hawking's parents had had such tests available, it's reasonable to assume he'd never have been born.
That having been said, I still don't think that genetic testing (or the human genome project for that matter) is a bad thing. It sounds cold, but for every Hawking that's never born as a result of genetic testing, there are countless others who would have done nothing but suffer. And drain the resources of the health care and education systems.
If you disagree, that's fine too. Don't get tested. But if your kid turns out to have a genetic disease that could have been prevented with screening and a judicious application of contraception, don't expect me to be happy about paying for the kid's lifetime stay in an institution. Or (if we're lucky) the kid's gene therapy.
Suppose that she got cancer because she carries a genetic predisposition for it (this is entirely possible). Now if she's been cured of this cancer and goes on to reproduce, she may pass this "bad" gene on to future children, who may not be so fortunate with the placement and treatment of their tumors. If she hadn't had surgery or radiation therapy, she may well not have survived long enough to reproduce, thereby removing her icky genes from the gene pool.
Bad news, buddy. If your sister does carry this genetic predisposition for cancer, there's a pretty good chance that you've got it too. She'd have inherited it from her parents, and they're your parents too, so into the euthanasia chamber you go. It's for the good of the species, you know - gotta remove those "icky" genes before they damage yet another generation.
Another point about genetic predispositions... we don't know how many of these predispositions would be rendered insignificant if environmental causes were removed. What about people predisposed to cancer if and only if they contact some particular chemical, or (this one is documented) elevated dosages of X rays. "In the wild", these people would not be selected against, but in our modern world, where we have industrial sovents and chest X rays, they get cancer. Technology has not eliminated selection - it has just changed its form. Some people who would have died (or at least not bred) now survive and pass on their genes. Others who would have lived and passed on their genes now die childless. It's been going on since time immemorial, and the world hasn't ended because of it.
Certainly we ought to be wary of what can go wrong with gene therapy, but this notion that humans are doomed because they've used technology to thwart natural selection is hooey. Humans are doomed because EVERYTHING is doomed. Lets at least enjoy our time here, and do what we can to minimise suffering. Sometimes that means saying yes to biotechnology, and sometimes it means saying no. You'll have to use your own judgement.
Or let your leaders use theirs, and make your decisions for you. Personally I prefer to use my own.
Those that can achieve in our societies have less children than those that don't.
I think it's a lot more likely that cause and effect are reversed here (if indeed there is any cause-and-effect relationship at all). Those that have more children in our society achieve less. Because the resources that they could have devoted to creativity and achievement are instead used to care for their (many) children.
How much code could you write if there were six or seven children running around your house or apartment? If you couldn't buy the tools you needed for work because you had to pay for diapers and formula and babysitting and college tuition for all the young 'uns?
Gaia's hands have been (to some minimal extent) tied ever since humans learned to control fire. Would you have it otherwise?
Creativity, not procreativity!
...I suspect it will be the realization of just how little (in humans anyway) in under the complete control of genes.
How many parents will choose ugly kids when they can be assured attractive ones? Why have an idiosyncratic or rebellious offspring when you can choose a cheerful and pliant one?
Few, perhaps. But will it matter? Parents who select the genes for cheerful and compliant offspring will quickly come to realize that these things are not controlled by genes. Look at dogs. Dogs would seem to be far more under the control of their genes than humans are (they don't have a culture, at least not to the extent that humans do). And yet dogs bred for generations to be vicious attack dogs (I'm thinking of Doberman pinschers, pit bull terriers and the like) can, with the proper upbringing, become gentle, loving, even compliant pets. Similarly, dogs bred for gentleness (retrievers and the like) can very quickly become vicious if they are abused as puppies, or trained as attack dogs.
Gene therapy may offer the chance to control those things that are strictly - or even mostly - under the control of genes. When a gene is missing or damaged, and a disease is the result, gene therapy may help. This does not seem (to me) to be a bad thing. But behavior is not under the control of genes. Aspects of it may be (as when brain chemistry is altered as the result of a missing or damaged gene), but most brain chemistry is under the control - in large part anyway - of the environment.
People who want good behavior from their children will not get it from gene therapy. They will get it from raising their children right.
Excellent example (I love a good analogy)! And it's good in more ways than you elaborated on.
The reason for doing it is the same reason that
when i was 10 and got a little Star Wars walking
robot toy (I think it was star wars..probably
wasn't) I grabbed a screw driver and opened it up
and took all the gears out....cuz I wanted to see how it worked
That last bit is your motive. And it does matter. You wanted to see how the robot toy worked. In that instance there is nothing wrong (and a lot right) with opening it up, taking it apart, and attempting to find out. If your motive had been different (say, you worked for a rival toy company and wanted to find out how it worked so that your company could duplicate the mechanism) then there would be a problem. But the "crime", if any, would not be in cracking open the toy and finding out how the mechanism was made, but in duplicating and distributing it... at the expense of the creative folks who invented it in the first place.
(never did get that damned thing back together...)
Here's another potential problem with hacking... what if you're unsuccessful? In the example above, you and only you suffered the consequences (the toy didn't work right anymore). Other hacks may have worse consequences, and this is where the ethics get a little hairy. While there may be nothing wrong and a lot right with attempting to find out how something works, ferchissakes be careful. Doubly so if what you're taking apart doesn't belong to you. Even if you do own the thing you're hacking (the DVD example) there may be consequences for others. Like the delay of DVD audio. To the standard hacker ethic I would add something like the Wiccan Rede. "An ye harm none, do as ye will."