Heck, the skin cells could develop into a human being nowadays simply by removing their DNA and placing it the right sort of cell. I guess it's murder when I shave, all those potential human beings. The fact that the process might be a "natural" development or not is irrelevant.
To take this nonsense at it's word: because Hitler drew distinction across categories that had no real difference, and he had no good evidence to claim that ethnic differences had any real significance. People saying that zygotes do not merit the same sort of consideration as babies or even fetuses have plenty of reason: zygotes don't even have nervous systems. They can't feel pain, or loss, or have any opinions at all about life or death. Other beings can do all these things and more. The actual capicities of a being in question are pretty darn important, and even if you, you have to admit that this is HUGE gaping difference between Hitler's distinction and the distinction you are trying to smear with a lame Godwin.
---Getting offended does not change the logical equivalence.---
The equivalence is based on equivocation. Genetically human is not what anyone means by "human being," as I illustrated. It is neither sufficient nor complete. I'm not offended by anything other than cowardly attempt to sidestep the issue of having to defend a moral position philosophically.
Niether of my examples (they are not analougies) suffer from the problems you mention for the simple fact that they both reproduce the key factors relevant to the distinction. What relevance is "willful act" or "potential to remains alive" to something;s inherent moral status as a being? Potentiality is not actuality, and cannot be treated as such. The baby example illustrates why that is so: it doesn't matter that babies have all the needed potential to drive, and it will take willful action to prevent that potential from being fulfilled. They are not now capable or ready to drive, and so they are not afforded that right. The hard drive example demonstrates that potentiality can come in a myriad of forms, none of which you address.
That changes nothing: this would still be a descendant of early chimps, not the missing link itself. If it even was that closely related to us, of which there is still little evidence.
Can you stop this Godwinizing Hitler trope? It isn't fooling anyone, and it's utterly irrational. In ANY moral philosophy one has to take a position on the worthiness of various forms of life: there is no escaping it.
Your arguments about potential are nonsense. Potential is eternal, but not actual, and if you're going to accord moral status NOW to things which are merely as-yet-unfilled potential, then you might as well like babies have the right to drive and bear arms, or throw everyone in jail for being potential murderers.
Another example: My computer contains a copy of an entire human genome: by altering a few A and Gs, I can make it unique. That means my hard drive has the potential to create human life (it's just a matter of development in a lab). Should I be arrested for manslaughter if I crash my hard drive by playing too much Solitaire?
---We just dont know, as someone else pointed out we have difficulty forcasting the weather for the next week far less the next century.----
Two seconds of thought will show that this is VERY specious reasoning. The fact that we can't predict the motion of tiny particles in a fluid (Brownian motion) doesn't mean that more macro scale events like pouring water out of a glass into another glass (or even the fact that a volume of water conforms to the glass it's in on earth) aren't predictable.
We DO know quite a lot, and there is certainly much we don't know, but dismissive rejoinders like that don't help illustrate the specifics of the debate over whether we are controlling for all the important factors or not.
You're equivocating. Being a repository of genetically distinct human DNA is no better or more natural of a criteria of when a being has moral interests than is birth. To say that something is biologically human (i.e. the DNA contained within it is a variation of the human genome) is not enough to say that something is human in the legal and moral sense. My skin cells are biologically human. In fact, with just a few minor tweaks, I can create skins cells that are genetically human AND distinct from my own genome. Would you call it a new human?
Glib reference to Hitler aside, everyone is in the position of having to decide what the best criteria is: making your comparison a silly, inflamatory attempt at a smear without any logical basis (you ALSO maintain that you know what the proper criteria are, so how are YOU any different either?)
Tell me though: why is a zygote more worthy of life than a liver cell, or a bacteria? None of these things have any sort of nervous system or capability for any awareness at all: not even close to what even a fetus has. The mere fact that zygotes have distinct DNA is incidental: people with identical DNA are no less human because of it, so distinctness is not an enabling moral criteria. As is it's potential for becoming something else: zygotes can not only develop into multiple human beings, but unless they are put into the right environment, they won't develop at all (which happens all the time naturally).
Do we accord moral status to a computer with a complete and unique DNA sequence stored on its hard drive? Why would putting that sequence into a cell make it morally more interesting? What we are talking about in these cases is a repository for the information for the construction of a human being as well as SOME of the necessary chemical components for beginning that construction. But the being has yet to be constructed, and hence I can't see why any reasonable person could accord it different moral concern from any other potential, hypothetical state.
Stick to defending the rights of fetuses: at least there you have some legitimate grounds to assert a claim of moral interests, as fetuses have nervous systems, can feel pain, have a limited awareness, etc. In short, they have at least some capacity to have interests that are taken away.
It's mainly the speed in the increase and changes that has people worried, not the fact that it's changing. The confusion is that a) there is undoubtedly a general direction to climate change (though some actually disagree on which direction it's heading!) and b) things like pollution are undoubtedly enough of a force to be altering the climate appreciably, at least in general theory. So even if the climate is getting hotter, we may be making it hotter faster.
Certainly, there are chronic conditions which are good moneymakers. But what incentive is there to develop drugs or treatments that cure these conditions once you've got a nice maintenence program working?
If we're talking stem cell research here (i.e. zygotes and embryos) then you're being a little nutty here:
---I guess it's a good thing today's victims can't scream.---
Or think. Or feel. Or have expectations for the future. Or have nervous systems.
Even chickens can do all the above, and I doubt you have any compunction hurting or killing them.
How so? If you don't subscribe to the view that embryos have a magical device called a soul that no one can measure, detect the prescence of, or even explain what it is or does, then killing those cells is morally no different than killing the cells used in ordinary DNA research, or killing the cells that get killed when you take a step. In fact, given that it is at least theoretically possible, and perhaps one day practical, to seed a clone from ANY cell, ANY cell can be a "potential" human, not that that makes any difference (a child is a "potential" adult: should we give children driver's liscences now?)
Please use my brain? At least my brain doesn't invent imaginary positions to strive against. I never claimed that the research was banned, so why the diatribe? I was discussing the moral question, not the question of whether the feds have the power to make laws (even remarkably silly laws which it is perfectly reasonable to oppose).
Your remark about taxes pretty much proves you're a Bush fanboy, not interested in serious debate about the issue at hand. For the record, I'm a libertarian. I think Bush should have not only cut taxes, but also cut spending, instead of increasing it. Despite the ridiculous excuses given about this weaning off spending in the future, tax cuts today without spending cuts = inevitable tax hikes in the future.
---It seemed suspicious that the government would step in and ban stem cell research, and your post helps convince me that it really was just a political maneuver to appease the morally outraged.---
No kidding. Think that it was coincidence that the White House gave the NYTimes a photo-op of the entire Cabinet praying that would run on the front page the day before he announced he wouldn't completely ban it? I'm sure Jesus would have loved that: public prayer used to create an image of piety for political purposes.
They've already come under fire for:
1) manipulating studies, burying research they don't like, and basically politicizing government science and intel
2) encouraging third parties to SUE THE GOVERNMENT to get studies on things like global warming buried (that is, one branch of our government is encouraging people to sue another branch so it can spend our money defending itself)
Seriously: consider the fact that drug research for basically HEALTHY people DWARFS that for sick people. Vanity pills like Supfrexa Poplexa Dodecxla are much better profit makers than drugs that treat disease: because sick people tend to either die or better, and either way not need the medications anymore. Suckers who take "non-drowsy" allergy medicines or mood-fixers keep on buying for life.
Luckily, our President is apparently consulting nutjobs like Van Impe to help us determine our foriegn policy. Finally, a foriegn policy that attempts to bring about the events foretold in Revelations! Or, at least the war and destruction parts.
It doesn't solve the arguments, it would just make it less of an issue. If it were true that they do just as well for everything embroynic stem cells are used for (which I'm not sure is true). And morals differ. Some of us can't understand why anyone in their right mind would think that a culture of cells have moral interests when grown animals do not.
The best part of Futurama was that it retained the ability to have real emotional depth. It managed to be a goofy comedy but also actually maintain believable characters in an unbelievable world. The payoff was episodes like the one about Fry's dog, which actually pulled off a genuinely heartbreaking ending without flinching or spoiling it with a cheap gag. Futurama very obviously had someone's passion poured into it, and as goofy and geeky as it was, and maybe it didn't always work, but there was clearly someone behind the show with something more to express than just "everything is stupid and retarded!" That's probably another reason Fox hated it: it actually broke out of the format of non-stop gags and dabbled in sincerity.
It is not a missing link. The missing link would HAVE to be a fossil: a species currently living today could, at best, be as DESCENDANT of the missing link... just as we are. In any case, I don't this ape is suspected to be anywhere near our neck of the evolutionary woods. It could be an interesting wrinkle for the development of primates as a whole, but probably not the human branch.
To continue: in the other games, you don't need to strategize as much because everyone playing knows the singular objective for a map (save hostages, defend this switch/flag, etc.). In Natural Selection, the strategy and objectives have to constantly change to keep up with the tactics of the other team (did they get motion tracking? Then you need to get sensory chambers up as soon as possible. Are they assaulting the ore processing res node? Then you need to send enough troops over to stop them while not having everyone go and leave the rest of the map uncovered).
Well, most of that is the game itself (CD and DoD have voice chat as well). In those latter two games, and like TFC, you can rambo around while ignoring your team, and still make out pretty good: even capturing flag after flag or winning the map. In Natural Selection, unless you coordinate at least a little with your team, it's game over pretty quick. Especially for the marine team (aliens are a little looser). But yeah, being able to yell out "heal me!" or discuss a complex strategy (which is crucial to the alien side, which needs to combine different units to face various threats properly) hands free is pretty crucial.
Voice is pretty good and useful in FPS games. Natural Selection is a whole new game when you can give orders and organize with your team in real time without having to type.
Slashdot Mirror
Heck, the skin cells could develop into a human being nowadays simply by removing their DNA and placing it the right sort of cell. I guess it's murder when I shave, all those potential human beings. The fact that the process might be a "natural" development or not is irrelevant.
To take this nonsense at it's word: because Hitler drew distinction across categories that had no real difference, and he had no good evidence to claim that ethnic differences had any real significance. People saying that zygotes do not merit the same sort of consideration as babies or even fetuses have plenty of reason: zygotes don't even have nervous systems. They can't feel pain, or loss, or have any opinions at all about life or death. Other beings can do all these things and more. The actual capicities of a being in question are pretty darn important, and even if you, you have to admit that this is HUGE gaping difference between Hitler's distinction and the distinction you are trying to smear with a lame Godwin.
---Getting offended does not change the logical equivalence.---
The equivalence is based on equivocation. Genetically human is not what anyone means by "human being," as I illustrated. It is neither sufficient nor complete. I'm not offended by anything other than cowardly attempt to sidestep the issue of having to defend a moral position philosophically.
Niether of my examples (they are not analougies) suffer from the problems you mention for the simple fact that they both reproduce the key factors relevant to the distinction. What relevance is "willful act" or "potential to remains alive" to something;s inherent moral status as a being? Potentiality is not actuality, and cannot be treated as such. The baby example illustrates why that is so: it doesn't matter that babies have all the needed potential to drive, and it will take willful action to prevent that potential from being fulfilled. They are not now capable or ready to drive, and so they are not afforded that right. The hard drive example demonstrates that potentiality can come in a myriad of forms, none of which you address.
That changes nothing: this would still be a descendant of early chimps, not the missing link itself. If it even was that closely related to us, of which there is still little evidence.
Not to mention deadly blood clots.
Can you stop this Godwinizing Hitler trope? It isn't fooling anyone, and it's utterly irrational. In ANY moral philosophy one has to take a position on the worthiness of various forms of life: there is no escaping it.
Your arguments about potential are nonsense. Potential is eternal, but not actual, and if you're going to accord moral status NOW to things which are merely as-yet-unfilled potential, then you might as well like babies have the right to drive and bear arms, or throw everyone in jail for being potential murderers.
Another example: My computer contains a copy of an entire human genome: by altering a few A and Gs, I can make it unique. That means my hard drive has the potential to create human life (it's just a matter of development in a lab). Should I be arrested for manslaughter if I crash my hard drive by playing too much Solitaire?
---We just dont know, as someone else pointed out we have difficulty forcasting the weather for the next week far less the next century.----
Two seconds of thought will show that this is VERY specious reasoning. The fact that we can't predict the motion of tiny particles in a fluid (Brownian motion) doesn't mean that more macro scale events like pouring water out of a glass into another glass (or even the fact that a volume of water conforms to the glass it's in on earth) aren't predictable.
We DO know quite a lot, and there is certainly much we don't know, but dismissive rejoinders like that don't help illustrate the specifics of the debate over whether we are controlling for all the important factors or not.
You're equivocating. Being a repository of genetically distinct human DNA is no better or more natural of a criteria of when a being has moral interests than is birth. To say that something is biologically human (i.e. the DNA contained within it is a variation of the human genome) is not enough to say that something is human in the legal and moral sense. My skin cells are biologically human. In fact, with just a few minor tweaks, I can create skins cells that are genetically human AND distinct from my own genome. Would you call it a new human?
Glib reference to Hitler aside, everyone is in the position of having to decide what the best criteria is: making your comparison a silly, inflamatory attempt at a smear without any logical basis (you ALSO maintain that you know what the proper criteria are, so how are YOU any different either?)
Tell me though: why is a zygote more worthy of life than a liver cell, or a bacteria? None of these things have any sort of nervous system or capability for any awareness at all: not even close to what even a fetus has. The mere fact that zygotes have distinct DNA is incidental: people with identical DNA are no less human because of it, so distinctness is not an enabling moral criteria. As is it's potential for becoming something else: zygotes can not only develop into multiple human beings, but unless they are put into the right environment, they won't develop at all (which happens all the time naturally).
Do we accord moral status to a computer with a complete and unique DNA sequence stored on its hard drive? Why would putting that sequence into a cell make it morally more interesting? What we are talking about in these cases is a repository for the information for the construction of a human being as well as SOME of the necessary chemical components for beginning that construction. But the being has yet to be constructed, and hence I can't see why any reasonable person could accord it different moral concern from any other potential, hypothetical state.
Stick to defending the rights of fetuses: at least there you have some legitimate grounds to assert a claim of moral interests, as fetuses have nervous systems, can feel pain, have a limited awareness, etc. In short, they have at least some capacity to have interests that are taken away.
It's mainly the speed in the increase and changes that has people worried, not the fact that it's changing. The confusion is that a) there is undoubtedly a general direction to climate change (though some actually disagree on which direction it's heading!) and b) things like pollution are undoubtedly enough of a force to be altering the climate appreciably, at least in general theory. So even if the climate is getting hotter, we may be making it hotter faster.
Only poor people have to worry about shit like that, basically.
Certainly, there are chronic conditions which are good moneymakers. But what incentive is there to develop drugs or treatments that cure these conditions once you've got a nice maintenence program working?
If we're talking stem cell research here (i.e. zygotes and embryos) then you're being a little nutty here: ---I guess it's a good thing today's victims can't scream.--- Or think. Or feel. Or have expectations for the future. Or have nervous systems. Even chickens can do all the above, and I doubt you have any compunction hurting or killing them.
How so? If you don't subscribe to the view that embryos have a magical device called a soul that no one can measure, detect the prescence of, or even explain what it is or does, then killing those cells is morally no different than killing the cells used in ordinary DNA research, or killing the cells that get killed when you take a step. In fact, given that it is at least theoretically possible, and perhaps one day practical, to seed a clone from ANY cell, ANY cell can be a "potential" human, not that that makes any difference (a child is a "potential" adult: should we give children driver's liscences now?)
Please use my brain? At least my brain doesn't invent imaginary positions to strive against. I never claimed that the research was banned, so why the diatribe? I was discussing the moral question, not the question of whether the feds have the power to make laws (even remarkably silly laws which it is perfectly reasonable to oppose).
Your remark about taxes pretty much proves you're a Bush fanboy, not interested in serious debate about the issue at hand. For the record, I'm a libertarian. I think Bush should have not only cut taxes, but also cut spending, instead of increasing it. Despite the ridiculous excuses given about this weaning off spending in the future, tax cuts today without spending cuts = inevitable tax hikes in the future.
Have a cite for your revisionist history, or would that spoil the fun?
---It seemed suspicious that the government would step in and ban stem cell research, and your post helps convince me that it really was just a political maneuver to appease the morally outraged.---
No kidding. Think that it was coincidence that the White House gave the NYTimes a photo-op of the entire Cabinet praying that would run on the front page the day before he announced he wouldn't completely ban it? I'm sure Jesus would have loved that: public prayer used to create an image of piety for political purposes.
They've already come under fire for: 1) manipulating studies, burying research they don't like, and basically politicizing government science and intel 2) encouraging third parties to SUE THE GOVERNMENT to get studies on things like global warming buried (that is, one branch of our government is encouraging people to sue another branch so it can spend our money defending itself)
Seriously: consider the fact that drug research for basically HEALTHY people DWARFS that for sick people. Vanity pills like Supfrexa Poplexa Dodecxla are much better profit makers than drugs that treat disease: because sick people tend to either die or better, and either way not need the medications anymore. Suckers who take "non-drowsy" allergy medicines or mood-fixers keep on buying for life.
Luckily, our President is apparently consulting nutjobs like Van Impe to help us determine our foriegn policy. Finally, a foriegn policy that attempts to bring about the events foretold in Revelations! Or, at least the war and destruction parts.
It doesn't solve the arguments, it would just make it less of an issue. If it were true that they do just as well for everything embroynic stem cells are used for (which I'm not sure is true). And morals differ. Some of us can't understand why anyone in their right mind would think that a culture of cells have moral interests when grown animals do not.
The best part of Futurama was that it retained the ability to have real emotional depth. It managed to be a goofy comedy but also actually maintain believable characters in an unbelievable world. The payoff was episodes like the one about Fry's dog, which actually pulled off a genuinely heartbreaking ending without flinching or spoiling it with a cheap gag. Futurama very obviously had someone's passion poured into it, and as goofy and geeky as it was, and maybe it didn't always work, but there was clearly someone behind the show with something more to express than just "everything is stupid and retarded!" That's probably another reason Fox hated it: it actually broke out of the format of non-stop gags and dabbled in sincerity.
It is not a missing link. The missing link would HAVE to be a fossil: a species currently living today could, at best, be as DESCENDANT of the missing link... just as we are. In any case, I don't this ape is suspected to be anywhere near our neck of the evolutionary woods. It could be an interesting wrinkle for the development of primates as a whole, but probably not the human branch.
To continue: in the other games, you don't need to strategize as much because everyone playing knows the singular objective for a map (save hostages, defend this switch/flag, etc.). In Natural Selection, the strategy and objectives have to constantly change to keep up with the tactics of the other team (did they get motion tracking? Then you need to get sensory chambers up as soon as possible. Are they assaulting the ore processing res node? Then you need to send enough troops over to stop them while not having everyone go and leave the rest of the map uncovered).
A lone marine is easy pickins for the aliens.
Well, most of that is the game itself (CD and DoD have voice chat as well). In those latter two games, and like TFC, you can rambo around while ignoring your team, and still make out pretty good: even capturing flag after flag or winning the map. In Natural Selection, unless you coordinate at least a little with your team, it's game over pretty quick. Especially for the marine team (aliens are a little looser). But yeah, being able to yell out "heal me!" or discuss a complex strategy (which is crucial to the alien side, which needs to combine different units to face various threats properly) hands free is pretty crucial.
Voice is pretty good and useful in FPS games. Natural Selection is a whole new game when you can give orders and organize with your team in real time without having to type.