As mentioned elsewhere, electric cars are actually more energy efficient, decreasing pollution.
What nobody else has mentioned yet, though, is the greater ability to control pollution of power plants compared to cars. Power plants nowdays install scrubbers and all sorts of apparatuses to reduce or remove many of the major pollutants, to a degree that cannot be practically implemented in cars, both because these devices are not economically feasible on that scale, and because it would be virtually impossible to implement. Imagine that tomorrow a scientist develops a new device to decrease the pollutants from exhaust by 95%, that is practical to produce both for power plants and cars. The U.S. Government would likely require all power plants to be retrofitted with it within ~3 years. The average age of cars being driven today exceeds that, and there would be no feasible way to retrofit all those cars. That is, of course if the device can be operate efficiently on the scale of a car, which remains highly unlikely.
Additionally, electric cars are typically designed such that standard braking recharges the battery, whereas in conventional cars, energy is not recovered in braking. Similarly, many electric and hybrid cars spend a negligible amount of energy when sitting idle at a stop light, whereas conventional cars must remaining running at a significant fraction of standard power output.
Either electric or hybrid cars are where the future is.
That may be the intention of the government, but this will most likely prove completely unenforceable. Somebody will set up a very well written article about DeCSS that I happen to like on a server outside the US, so that they are legally able to link to DeCSS source. My intent by posting a link on my web page to that web page was merely intended to educate others about DeCSS. (of course) My ability to link to a web page that has relevant content and does not display anything illegal is (I hope) protected. It will be impossible for anyone to prove that my real intent was not simply to point to an informative site on the internet, but to point to a site that could point to a site that is illegal.
the societal reasons that someone would be cloned are the concern.
The major issue that concerns me regarding cloning is not whether it is possible, or whether clones would be soulless robots, or whether we would create an army of clones that think and act exactly alike. localroger's post is a typical counterexample that effectively dispels these concerns, at least for me. The major concern that I have is why would we want to create a clone?
I have followed the issue of cloning for a while, and I have seen several major reasons advocated for cloning, all of which deeply concern me.
The most common reason I have seen for advocating cloning is to create a genetic duplicate of someone who has a dehabilitating injury to provide tissue for transplantation. Let us say for example that an illness (not a genetic condition) has resulted in the failure of a patient's kidneys. Biologically, there is no problem with causing a genetic duplicate of the individual to be made, and transplanting one of their kidneys. Psychologically, however, there are some serious implications. The clone to be created will be an individual, a person, and his future feelings need to be considered in the equation. This individual will grow up knowing that he was born with one single purpose in the world, to save his duplicate's life. He will have the feeling that he was not actually wanted by his parents. Even if his parents actually did want another child at the time, he will know that they chose to have him with an ulterior purpose. Look at the emotional trauma suffered by many individuals who were placed up for adoption, thinking that their biological parents did not want them. I imagine that clones created for the purpose of saving another's life will suffer from similar agony.
Another reason that I forsee clones being created would be in cases where a child died tragically early, say in a car accident. The distraught parents decide that they want to have another child, a copy of their dead child. Currently, this already goes on, with parents who have lost children sometimes trying to replace them. They have another child, and they ignore that this child is a distinct individual, that this child is not their dead child. These children grow up continuously having to struggle under the burden of their parents expectations of them, expecting them to like the same things that their deceased sibling did, trying to force them in directions that they would not have chosen for themselves. How much worse would the burden be if they were physically identical to their sibling, especially if their parents were unaware enough to believe that clones are also mentally identical?
Likely, some people would also create clones of themselves. The reasons behind this could be many, including a desire to live vicariously through a child. How many times do children today have trouble with conflicts between themselves and their parents about the path their life should take? How many children are told by their parents that they have to be a doctor or a lawyer? How many times are children told by their parents that their parents know what is in their best interests, or that their parents understand exactly what they are going through and what they are thinking. How much harder would it be for a child to argue with the lawyer parent he was cloned from and convince his parent that being a lawyer is not the path for him? How much harder would it be for a child to convince his parent that the parent does not automatically understand the thoughts and feelings going on in the child's head because he is older, and has gone through more, if they are genetically identical and the parent has a basis for arguing that they should have similar thought processes? (Note, I said a basis. I am not saying it is valid, only that the argument would be used to the child's detriment.) What about the difficulties of convincing a parent who had a 4.0 in school that even though you have the same genetic coding, the "same brain", you were trying your hardest when you got only a 3.7?
My concerns about cloning have nothing to do with the concerns that we often see put forward and the concerns most commonly debunked, the concerns of superstition and misunderstanding of what cloning means. I recognize that a clone would be a distinct individual. I have enough understanding of biology and medicine to recognize that cloning could have many beneficial applications. However, my concern is that because the clone is a distinct individual, the needs and rights of that individual cannot be ignored. I am greatly concerned that those rights will be ignored because the decisions that would infringe upon those needs and rights would be made in the act of cloning, long before that individual is recognized as an entity by the law, and even longer before that individual has the ability to defend his rights. As shown in my examples above, several of the most common reasons given for why someone should be cloned could result in serious psychological harm to the clone. Before I could ever advocate cloning, I would have to have some explanation of how these problems could be prevented.
This is intended to fix the security holes of people who are completely clueless...people dumb enough to run something from an unknown source. People with any common sense wouldn't trust the "benign virus" they received to be a benign virus. They, however, also would not accept a real virus, so their computers aren't the ones that need fixing. People without common sense would run the benign virus or a real virus, which is the whole point. And whether or not a benign virus is created is unlikely to affect the number of viruses those users receive, and they aren't likely to pay enough attention to news about viruses to realize there is a benign virus out there. (If they paid attention to news about viruses, they would not run a supposedly benign program without absolutely knowing it was benign, and there is no problem. Any conscientious news program mentioning there was a benign virus would also warn not to believe that was what you received.)
I assume that you aren't trying to argue that this provides people important code to work with to create viruses. That code is already out there. In fact, this virus would likely be constructed using known code that any cracker can alrady access.
So... affects the intended targets
no increased threat to anyone
Slashdot Mirror
What nobody else has mentioned yet, though, is the greater ability to control pollution of power plants compared to cars. Power plants nowdays install scrubbers and all sorts of apparatuses to reduce or remove many of the major pollutants, to a degree that cannot be practically implemented in cars, both because these devices are not economically feasible on that scale, and because it would be virtually impossible to implement. Imagine that tomorrow a scientist develops a new device to decrease the pollutants from exhaust by 95%, that is practical to produce both for power plants and cars. The U.S. Government would likely require all power plants to be retrofitted with it within ~3 years. The average age of cars being driven today exceeds that, and there would be no feasible way to retrofit all those cars. That is, of course if the device can be operate efficiently on the scale of a car, which remains highly unlikely.
Additionally, electric cars are typically designed such that standard braking recharges the battery, whereas in conventional cars, energy is not recovered in braking. Similarly, many electric and hybrid cars spend a negligible amount of energy when sitting idle at a stop light, whereas conventional cars must remaining running at a significant fraction of standard power output.
Either electric or hybrid cars are where the future is.
That may be the intention of the government, but this will most likely prove completely unenforceable. Somebody will set up a very well written article about DeCSS that I happen to like on a server outside the US, so that they are legally able to link to DeCSS source. My intent by posting a link on my web page to that web page was merely intended to educate others about DeCSS. (of course) My ability to link to a web page that has relevant content and does not display anything illegal is (I hope) protected. It will be impossible for anyone to prove that my real intent was not simply to point to an informative site on the internet, but to point to a site that could point to a site that is illegal.
The major issue that concerns me regarding cloning is not whether it is possible, or whether clones would be soulless robots, or whether we would create an army of clones that think and act exactly alike. localroger's post is a typical counterexample that effectively dispels these concerns, at least for me. The major concern that I have is why would we want to create a clone?
I have followed the issue of cloning for a while, and I have seen several major reasons advocated for cloning, all of which deeply concern me.
The most common reason I have seen for advocating cloning is to create a genetic duplicate of someone who has a dehabilitating injury to provide tissue for transplantation. Let us say for example that an illness (not a genetic condition) has resulted in the failure of a patient's kidneys. Biologically, there is no problem with causing a genetic duplicate of the individual to be made, and transplanting one of their kidneys. Psychologically, however, there are some serious implications. The clone to be created will be an individual, a person, and his future feelings need to be considered in the equation. This individual will grow up knowing that he was born with one single purpose in the world, to save his duplicate's life. He will have the feeling that he was not actually wanted by his parents. Even if his parents actually did want another child at the time, he will know that they chose to have him with an ulterior purpose. Look at the emotional trauma suffered by many individuals who were placed up for adoption, thinking that their biological parents did not want them. I imagine that clones created for the purpose of saving another's life will suffer from similar agony.
Another reason that I forsee clones being created would be in cases where a child died tragically early, say in a car accident. The distraught parents decide that they want to have another child, a copy of their dead child. Currently, this already goes on, with parents who have lost children sometimes trying to replace them. They have another child, and they ignore that this child is a distinct individual, that this child is not their dead child. These children grow up continuously having to struggle under the burden of their parents expectations of them, expecting them to like the same things that their deceased sibling did, trying to force them in directions that they would not have chosen for themselves. How much worse would the burden be if they were physically identical to their sibling, especially if their parents were unaware enough to believe that clones are also mentally identical?
Likely, some people would also create clones of themselves. The reasons behind this could be many, including a desire to live vicariously through a child. How many times do children today have trouble with conflicts between themselves and their parents about the path their life should take? How many children are told by their parents that they have to be a doctor or a lawyer? How many times are children told by their parents that their parents know what is in their best interests, or that their parents understand exactly what they are going through and what they are thinking. How much harder would it be for a child to argue with the lawyer parent he was cloned from and convince his parent that being a lawyer is not the path for him? How much harder would it be for a child to convince his parent that the parent does not automatically understand the thoughts and feelings going on in the child's head because he is older, and has gone through more, if they are genetically identical and the parent has a basis for arguing that they should have similar thought processes? (Note, I said a basis. I am not saying it is valid, only that the argument would be used to the child's detriment.) What about the difficulties of convincing a parent who had a 4.0 in school that even though you have the same genetic coding, the "same brain", you were trying your hardest when you got only a 3.7?
My concerns about cloning have nothing to do with the concerns that we often see put forward and the concerns most commonly debunked, the concerns of superstition and misunderstanding of what cloning means. I recognize that a clone would be a distinct individual. I have enough understanding of biology and medicine to recognize that cloning could have many beneficial applications. However, my concern is that because the clone is a distinct individual, the needs and rights of that individual cannot be ignored. I am greatly concerned that those rights will be ignored because the decisions that would infringe upon those needs and rights would be made in the act of cloning, long before that individual is recognized as an entity by the law, and even longer before that individual has the ability to defend his rights. As shown in my examples above, several of the most common reasons given for why someone should be cloned could result in serious psychological harm to the clone. Before I could ever advocate cloning, I would have to have some explanation of how these problems could be prevented.
Is there any chance that you were one of the jurors for the O. J Simpson case?
So?
This is intended to fix the security holes of people who are completely clueless...people dumb enough to run something from an unknown source. People with any common sense wouldn't trust the "benign virus" they received to be a benign virus. They, however, also would not accept a real virus, so their computers aren't the ones that need fixing. People without common sense would run the benign virus or a real virus, which is the whole point. And whether or not a benign virus is created is unlikely to affect the number of viruses those users receive, and they aren't likely to pay enough attention to news about viruses to realize there is a benign virus out there. (If they paid attention to news about viruses, they would not run a supposedly benign program without absolutely knowing it was benign, and there is no problem. Any conscientious news program mentioning there was a benign virus would also warn not to believe that was what you received.)
I assume that you aren't trying to argue that this provides people important code to work with to create viruses. That code is already out there. In fact, this virus would likely be constructed using known code that any cracker can alrady access.
So... affects the intended targets
no increased threat to anyone