So wait... something VERY large is warming up. Let's see... 2 sources of power could be responsible... One is the sun... the other is human power consumption.
One source of power emits about 400 000 000 000 000 000 GW of power constantly, and has indeed been increasing in power output by nearly 2% (which is more power than the human race will consume before the end of the solar system at current rates)
The other source is lots of tiny specs, totalling less than 700 GW, and, mostly during summer in the northern hemisphere, drops below 500.
Note that a 0.02% increase in output by the large source is literally enough power to biol the oceans into space. It's actual increase in power output is enough power to vaporize the entire planet ten times over.
The planet gets a little bit warmer, notably... about 2% ( a bit more, a bit less, depending on whether you believe certain "adjustments" both up and down of the temperature readings). Now who would be responsible ?
I realise that you've got GW science, but let's not kid ourselves. The "obvious" source of warming is the sun. Let's not forget that the sun caused at least 7 massive heatwaves, some lasting thousands of years, and double as many ice ages.
Can you please describe GW as a complex, non-trivial and counterintuitive scientific theory that *might* match observations ? You're making many people look *VERY* bad)
Or rather : in different circumstances monogamy may provide an evolutionary advantage. If you intend to wage unceasing war ("live off the land" (and the passersby)), for example, monogamy would be a bad idea, since lots of men will die, leaving behind women, even though some limit would be good (say you expect 50% of the men to be involved in war, then you should allow 2 women to one man, if you expect between 75 and 90% of your society to be dedicated to war, then 4 women to 1 man seems appropriate (and obviously only to men who can afford not to be on the frontlines, who should basically stay away from women, except the occasional rape of a succesful raid) (then again, in war, are limits like these really going to be respected ?). If you allow without limit (or allow polygamy + concubines) then clearly you expect to do nothing else than warfare, and marriage means nothing except for inheritance.
In peace, you'd need to prevent men remaining behind alone without partner (because for every extra woman one man has, another has to do without, 4 women to one man would become 75% of men without contact with women in extremis, realistically, say 50% of men, 4 women + unlimited (and exclusive) concubines would mean something like 999/1000 of men without partner, in some cultures that is normal, or was normal not too long ago), as that will certainly not be helpful in helping them build instead of destroying society, therefore in a peaceful setting, you'd want monogamy.
The fact that genes start expressing it is not very surprising. Polygamous cultures are known for being more than a little agressive, and genes are how humans adapt to their environment. If the environment or the culture changes to be less suitable for agriculture (or the culture doesn't know, or incorrectly conducts agriculture, e.g. predatory agriculture, or not doing anything about overpopulation, or...) the genes will adapt to become less monogamous.
If raiding is basically impossible, for whatever reason, building things will become important, and monogamous relationships become an evolutionary advantage. Certainly after 10 generations the effects will be very noticeable.
Since this gene will very much influence how agressive people are against "other tribes", it is one of the prime parameters that will determine the layout of the resulting society, and may introduce all sorts of limits (e.g. agressive societies will never have any population density for obvious reasons, which can easily translate in a very low maximum population limit)
I fully realize the consequences of my viewpoint, yes, if that is your question.
I also see the consequences of the opposite, the total devaluation of life, killing humans for comfort (or do you seriously deny abortion is killing humans for comfort ?).
To put my thinking in a cynical way : hmmm... abortion... euthanasia (involuntary, or at best shady)... there seems to be a gap here. Let's close it, shall we, after all we're "progressive".
So you consider your parents to be "cursed for life" for having you ? The fact that you're alive is a "life sentence", which sounds like a real, real bad thing.
Should I fix that for you ? I'll do it with pleasure and take my time, ok ?
(this is not a threat, just an cynic illustration of just how stupid this guy's point is, the same comment would obviously be applicable to the other comments too)
I do think that the principle can't work even if politicians somehow managed not to touch that money (fat chance of that ! politicians, at least BHO and Biden are "ex-"lawyers).
But it wouldn't provide anywhere near the certainty you'd like, since it would only guarantee a specific dollar amount (possibly increasing, but certainly by less than the economic growth, and therefore "most years" less than inflation).
Uhm... the costs (averaged out) of children for society per year average about -30000$ in the US, similar in Europe. Kids bring a VERY positive balance to society (well, at least they do in the West, and in most parts of Africa. In the middle east/muslim nations or in dictatorships... not so much)
Kids are a classic case of a "tragedy of the commons". It's good that one has kids, it's an investment that you can reasonably expect to pay itself back very well. The more, the better (for both yourself and society as a whole). However, other people having kids, that's even better.
This used to be resolved by having your own kids themselves responsible for the "pension" of the parents, creating a natural balance in the system.
That balance has been broken by the principle of state pensions. And like all positive feedback loops, it will spin out of control inevitably (unless something drastically lowers the cost of kids, and makes people want at least 5-6 kids again).
Or are you seriously making the (idiotic) point that children are bad for society ?
Because that would have meant for your father 40 years of paying taxes for it when nobody would have gotten a pension.
Instead they (well it's a democracy, so "we" is hopefully a little bit more correct) decided to start paying pensions immediately, no savings, no dividends, just money directly coming in, directly going out.
Regardless of how it's done, or why it's such a bad idea, it's done. It can't be changed, unless you want to take pensions away from people for 40 years or so. People who have, incidentally, payed taxes (thinking they were paying for their pension, in fact paying for their parent's pension)
Hey these days they have *software* terminals going into the mainframe, running on their windows boxes that have roughly 200x the processing power and storage of said mainframe (you have to appreciate the irony)
How many kids do you have ? If you're married and starting to go on to pension, then you basically need to provide society either with : 1 working person taking care of 3 people, minimum tax on the working person 66% 2 working people taking care of 4, minimum tax on the working people 50% 3 working people taking care of 5 minimum tax 40% 4 working people taking care of 6 minimum tax 33%...
(the tax estimation assumes equal living standards, meaning equal monetary means, for every person)
Now this isn't fair, surely a working person has the right to a higher living standard than the pensioner (do you agree with this ?). In these numbers I assume working people get double the living standard of the pensioners, extrapolate the in-between for yourself :
Obviously these taxes cover pensions EXCLUSIVELY. They don't cover administration, they don't cover healthcare (they certainly don't cover the medicare monstruosity), they don't cover police, roads, harbours, electrical infrastructure, sewage, water pipes, they don't cover anything BUT pensions. (in other words : to get a realistic value, add another 20%)
So... how many kids do you have ? Surely talking like that, and asking the state to solve your problem, by giving you both money directly *AND* free healthcare, you have provided society with 4 working, educated kids, right ?
The money you paid into pensions went to cover the pensions of those that did not pay taxes for their pension. That money's spent, nothing will bring it back.
By the way, these values are absolutely constant. They do not depend on the system in place, they do not depend on politics (unless that system includes killing the elderly), they are correct for extreme capitalism *and* they are correct for communism, and everything in between.
You want a nice, royal pension ? Make it easy on society : have a bunch of kids. It doesn't work without people. You can't be bothered with that ? Then why should society bother with you ?
You don't even need a TPM to prevent this. Only the ability to securely destroy keys will suffice to prevent changing the books afterwards.
Every, oh, say 15 minutes you generate a new public-private keypair. You add a log message to the last 15 minutes of log containing the newly generated public key, then sign those last 15 minutes using the previous private key, after which you thorougly erase it from memory.
Any alterations to the logfile will have to break the chain of keys. If in addition to this security, the public key is transmitted to a trusted third party every 15 minutes, including the hash of the previous data block (e.g. the bank that processes credit card payments), it will be utterly impossible to change logfiles after the fact.
So you'd have to actually keep 2 sets of books on 2 separate cash registers, and you'd have no ability to use electronic payment methods for the "cooked" part of the books. Of course these limitations make that this isn't 100% secure either, but it's as secure as any TPM is going to make it.
Btw if you'd intercept a single private key, that would not help you cook the books afterward. You'd have to do it before any hash or public key is transmitted to the third party.
Just so you guys don't have to stop joking, the actual particles making up dark matter are called either WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) or WINOs.
We're not quite sure what the difference is though, or even if they care. The democratic convention was underway so they were all unavailable for comments.
Wow considering that just about every European country is at least double as bad in debt as America, things must be REALLY bad there. (Obviously per-capita)
Oh wait. Then again they just mooch of the American military.
Obviously there is more than "merely identifiable cell division", after all if there really were no way to tell them apart, the cells themselves would never differentiate.
I think you understand that when talking about experiments on humans (because that's what this is), we need to err on the side of extreme caution.
And that means, imho, that since it is no longer necessary (proving that a total ban on embryonic stem cell research would at worst have delayed any discoveries by 1-2 years) it is a moot point : you simply can't risk it. Not when there are other ways available.
You don't "become" human btw. Every cell, for at the very least 200 000 years that is in your ancestry was a human cell, part of the species, including the singular zygote. There is a single, uninterrupted line of purely human cells from the creation of the first human (by whichever means you like to believe in, even if that might be sex between monkeys) to you. Every biologist considers a fertilized egg a member of the species.
But the point remains : at 18 days after fertilization an embryo has functional control over his muscles. After a mere 15 days the brain is operational.
So at the very best your argument could be construed to allow for experimentation that stays well clear of that 15 days limit. A blastocyst is 3 days at least. So nothing that you take out of that blastocyst, for it could be a human brain, can be allowed to remain alive for a second more than half that time for study, or 6 days max, and that, imho, is taking your argument of "they're not human" to the very last nanometer of acceptable theory. It's also a high risk proposition : we don't really know what these cells are doing and how many it takes to create a basic, but working, mind. Some animals are doing quite astonishing things with 3 brain cells.
The point is : we don't know. And we should err on the side of extreme caution. Therefore, imho, it is better not to allow it at all.
The fact that stem cells can be made from human skin also makes this not just very high risk, both on the "going too far" and what happens to a human being if you are wrong counts, but also unnecessary.
Incidentially this also proves that a total worldwide ban of stem-cell reasearch would only have delayed research by at most a few years, probably not even that, as a ban would have meant more researchers looking for alternatives. And keep in mind that such a ban this would require a hell of a lot more authority than America has.
But the question remains why, today, still take the risk that you're doing something horrible to a human being ? If anything, the discovery of alternative routes should result in a total ban on the practice, with the agreement of both left and right of the political spectrum, since it's both horribly danguerous and unnecessary.
Creating the implantation embryo's has to be legal, because it helps people have a child. Since the embryo's that for some reason don't get in are human beings that WILL die before they're anywhere near breathing, the humane thing is to kill them as soon as possible.
It's not okay to kill embryos, or anything human, in order to learn.
Those are contradictory moral stances that you are taking. Why is it ok to create many embryo's that will be killed if the goal is to make one that will become a baby. Please explain how that is ok when you believe that killing the same fetus during an abortion is always wrong. That sounds like awfully muddled thinking to me.
Can you please explain the contradiction to me ?
Unless you also find differing between killing someone by causing accident, and first-degree murder "morally contradictory".
Say the accident involves you activating a crane that will, due to a pre-existing defect, drop 10 tons of metal on someone just passing-by.
The murder would involve you creating a defect in a crane to purposefully drop 10 tons of metal on someone you know to be passing by at that moment (ie. targeted).
After all, both acts kill. Only the intention differs (the method doesn't even necessarily differ).
So is that accidental killing morally equivalent to first-degree murder, differing only in intention ? You tell me.
Ah come on. The real question, since abortion is, and always will be killing a human, what is worse ? Everything is always a choice.
-> "fucking up someone's life", meaning forcing one human (or hopefully 2) to care for another, for all of 18 years (= preventing abortion) -> killing a human in an attempt to prevent said "fuckups", which, let's be frank, means killing humans in order to have sex
I don't get people like you. "Humane" is a meaningless term when we're talking about an embryo, with no capacity to feel or be aware of its fate. It's like talking about being humane to a piece of fruit. I understand, and in a limited sense agree with the principled stand that an embryo is a human being for all moral purposes regarding life and death, but it makes zero sense to care, in a pragmatic way, about whether an embryo dies because the test tube is flushed or it becomes a stem cell line. Killing it quickly or slowly has no relevance at all to the embryo, given that it will not develop into a person.
That's why, as is the case with all law based on Christian principles, the intention makes all the difference in the world.
It's okay to let embryos that don't have a chance of developing into a human die quickly, in order to minimize suffering.
It's not okay to kill embryos, or anything human, in order to learn. And it's not okay to take a risk on this point. In other words, even if "it might become human and feel pain during during the test" that completely, 100% disqualifies the experiment. It is known that the basis of human reason, the brain stem, including pain receptors, become operational, and start firing before 15 days pass, so you wouldn't be able to do much research anyway. You might say the brain boots up VERY early in foetal development. This can be established in vivo btw.
That brain stem will start controlling the heart muscle, if not very coherently at this point, before the 18th day, sometimes even on the 15th day. That control of the heart muscle becomes coherent in about 15 minutes in case you're wondering, and once those 15 minutes are passed, the quality of that signal only goes down, right up until you celebrate your 80th birthday, it only goes down until your heart stops beating. This is known since before the invention of the echo, since it's this discovery that led to the development of echos.
And before you say otherwise, embryonic science was, until very recently (WWII, don't ask who changed this, you don't want to know, and it will certainly not help your point), done by studying embryos that were aborted to save the life of the mother. Embryos that couldn't be saved, because if the mother died, so would the embryo. (if they could save the embryo they did, often even at the expense of the life of the mother)
P.S. :
You know what the real nasty "little detail" of abortions is ? Human embryos are intelligent enough, some at seven weeks development (about 20 days after the brain boot up), certainly long before a woman would become aware of a pregnancy (which takes 4 weeks at least, 8 weeks to be certain), to attempt fight the scissors that are inserted to "implement" the abortion. Every gynaecologist knows this, for they've seen it. When they're 4 or 5 months, some (actually 2) are known to have won this fight, and manage somehow to induce labour, ending in them taking their first breath. Would abortion proponents be okay with killing these babies too ?
If that isn't proof of "sentience", then what is ? That means that a baby becomes sentient between the second and seventh week, mostly before a woman would become aware of a pregnancy.
Abortion is what stem cell research is in danger of become. The expense of one (and by your standards, fully "sentient") human life for the comfort of another.
So at what point does an embryo become a person ? Certainly in the thread you consider intelligent attempts at defense against an attack to be proof of sentience, so I imagine you're answer, if you indeed adhere to your own stated principles, would be "before 1 month passes".
And if we break this barrier down... exactly what principle prevents killing of children or adults ? They don't differ in sentience from a foetus of 7 weeks of age.
The real difference between them is that we can't see foetuses suffer, so "they don't suffer". They certainly don't protest in a court of law or on CNN.
Aren't those "created" stem cells still the same age as the individual that yielded them?
Stem cells, as the lines of allowed stem cells to research prove again and again every day, are ageless, and without (internal) reproduction limits.
Your view isn't difficult to understand, but it's incorrect and based on emotions rather than reason.
I'm a mathematician. Reason is based on logic. Whatever is not part of logic, therefore cannot be seriously considered reason. But I like to be right, and being right starts with strong definitions, and your post seems to be seriously lacking in definitions.
So let's define your terms : -> rights. Rights are laws. Rights are pieces of paper, backed up by a gun. A right is not a right, but a duty, and a gun backing that op. For example this points out the inevitable failure of the right to live : the right to live = the prohibition to kill, backed up by a gun. You see the problem ?
-> genetics. I imagine you imagine we compare the genes of something to some preset absolute standard, and then judge whether we protect these people or not. This type of definition, implied by your use of the word "genetics" is rubbish. For example men and women differ a little below 4% in genes, given chromosome count, more than 7% in actual genes. Ourang-outangs males differ only 2% from men. Clearly we're not granting rights according to "genetics".
We're *protecting* our offspring, and what we assume to be offspring of the people we coexist with. Therefore as soon as machines, and programs, who are always the offspring of some human, will, when they court said protection from their own ancestor, very quickly be "granted" those "rights" you speak of, despite lacking any common genetic basis.
I get the impression you're attempting to paint the against-cell-research opinion as inherently racist, selective based on genes. I hope this isn't true.
Now this is only scrubbing the surface of the problem, because in addition to misunderstanding the concept of a "right", you neglect to mention the parameters of this reason : reason, as animals and humans exhibit, can only reasonably be defined as a method they use to achieve preset or acquired goals in a world with physical limitations, including a predictive ability.
Now obviously this definition necessitates the specifying of quite a few parameters of "reason" : 1) what's the goal(s) of this instance of "reason" ? If multiple, how do they interact ? This question boils down to what's your religion, but then the real answer, not the one you state. E.g. childless-by-choice christian is not a good answer to this question. Neither is all-humans-are-equal muslim. And of course a lot of "unconventional" religions are possible. Communism, for example could be an answer. Personal gratification (of your emotions) at all costs, another. But you see the role religions ("ideologies" if that puts you better at ease) play here. 2) what's the method to be used ? (now "the human mind" is a good answer, but as you say, there may be others) 3) what are the physical limitations, do they have to be learned ? (again "the world, as described by " would be a good answer "science" is too vague a term to fill in imho. Now this could be physics, but as you call attention to, there could be other answers, although not for humans. But for artificial beings, other laws can be made to apply, though it is unclear whether this can be done in the long term) 4) what's the predictive ability used ? The most important parameter of this question is how far it goes. I'll give an example of problems you'll have here, for someone with a predictive ability of 5 minutes, can you name ANY downside at all to stealing ? Therefore, given this specific predictive ability as a parameter of "reason", stealing would be reasonal and good, as would rape and murder
If they left treating people differently based on skin color and ideology behind, then what's all this I keep hearing about "identity politics" and it's evil twin "positive discrimination" ?
Let's not forget that there has long been no more reason to do embryonic stem cell research. Stem cells can be created from skin cells, from liver cells, pancreatic cells, they can be extracted from brain tissue samples,...
Creating the implantation embryo's has to be legal, because it helps people have a child. Since the embryo's that for some reason don't get in are human beings that WILL die before they're anywhere near breathing, the humane thing is to kill them as soon as possible.
There are no more reasons to do embryonic stem cell research, and frankly, when it comes to human embryo's, we should err on the safe side. As far as possible on the safe side while still allowing fertility treatments.
Is that so difficult a viewpoint to understand ? You were once one of these kinds of embryo's, are scientists allowed to experiment on you once you can't say "NO!" anymore ?
I don't get these progressives. You have abortion and euthanasia these days. It seems progressives want to close the gap, bit by bit. I don't like it.
Would that be Mohandas "The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife" Gandhi you are referring to?
Yep that's the one.
Then again, these same people are also voting for the KKK party that's found itself in "identity politics", to end racism (the KKK was an official department of one of the American political parties, can you guess which one ?). Hint : they have a large gap in their described history on thier site. Jim Crow, for example was in the same party.
That should also put an end to the question of just how "post-racial" their candidate is.
Yes, we should sue eachother more. You see, lawyers tend to become politicians, therefore there's enormous societal value in keeping lawyers busy suing people.
It keeps evil out of politics.
So sue eachother ! Sue me ! Maybe Barack, Biden, McCain and Palin will go back to thinking there's more money in lawyering.
It's a feeble, fleeting hope, but what other hope is there ?
Slashdot Mirror
The change on this department seems to be colder weather with less - and more expensive oil of course.
Some even claim that will be better for "life". Not for human life, that's for sure.
"More obvious".
So wait ... something VERY large is warming up. Let's see ... 2 sources of power could be responsible ... One is the sun ... the other is human power consumption.
One source of power emits about 400 000 000 000 000 000 GW of power constantly, and has indeed been increasing in power output by nearly 2% (which is more power than the human race will consume before the end of the solar system at current rates)
The other source is lots of tiny specs, totalling less than 700 GW, and, mostly during summer in the northern hemisphere, drops below 500.
Note that a 0.02% increase in output by the large source is literally enough power to biol the oceans into space. It's actual increase in power output is enough power to vaporize the entire planet ten times over.
The planet gets a little bit warmer, notably ... about 2% ( a bit more, a bit less, depending on whether you believe certain "adjustments" both up and down of the temperature readings). Now who would be responsible ?
I realise that you've got GW science, but let's not kid ourselves. The "obvious" source of warming is the sun. Let's not forget that the sun caused at least 7 massive heatwaves, some lasting thousands of years, and double as many ice ages.
Can you please describe GW as a complex, non-trivial and counterintuitive scientific theory that *might* match observations ? You're making many people look *VERY* bad)
Or rather : in different circumstances monogamy may provide an evolutionary advantage. If you intend to wage unceasing war ("live off the land" (and the passersby)), for example, monogamy would be a bad idea, since lots of men will die, leaving behind women, even though some limit would be good (say you expect 50% of the men to be involved in war, then you should allow 2 women to one man, if you expect between 75 and 90% of your society to be dedicated to war, then 4 women to 1 man seems appropriate (and obviously only to men who can afford not to be on the frontlines, who should basically stay away from women, except the occasional rape of a succesful raid) (then again, in war, are limits like these really going to be respected ?). If you allow without limit (or allow polygamy + concubines) then clearly you expect to do nothing else than warfare, and marriage means nothing except for inheritance.
In peace, you'd need to prevent men remaining behind alone without partner (because for every extra woman one man has, another has to do without, 4 women to one man would become 75% of men without contact with women in extremis, realistically, say 50% of men, 4 women + unlimited (and exclusive) concubines would mean something like 999/1000 of men without partner, in some cultures that is normal, or was normal not too long ago), as that will certainly not be helpful in helping them build instead of destroying society, therefore in a peaceful setting, you'd want monogamy.
The fact that genes start expressing it is not very surprising. Polygamous cultures are known for being more than a little agressive, and genes are how humans adapt to their environment. If the environment or the culture changes to be less suitable for agriculture (or the culture doesn't know, or incorrectly conducts agriculture, e.g. predatory agriculture, or not doing anything about overpopulation, or ...) the genes will adapt to become less monogamous.
If raiding is basically impossible, for whatever reason, building things will become important, and monogamous relationships become an evolutionary advantage. Certainly after 10 generations the effects will be very noticeable.
Since this gene will very much influence how agressive people are against "other tribes", it is one of the prime parameters that will determine the layout of the resulting society, and may introduce all sorts of limits (e.g. agressive societies will never have any population density for obvious reasons, which can easily translate in a very low maximum population limit)
I fully realize the consequences of my viewpoint, yes, if that is your question.
I also see the consequences of the opposite, the total devaluation of life, killing humans for comfort (or do you seriously deny abortion is killing humans for comfort ?).
To put my thinking in a cynical way : hmmm ... abortion ... euthanasia (involuntary, or at best shady) ... there seems to be a gap here. Let's close it, shall we, after all we're "progressive".
So you consider your parents to be "cursed for life" for having you ? The fact that you're alive is a "life sentence", which sounds like a real, real bad thing.
Should I fix that for you ? I'll do it with pleasure and take my time, ok ?
(this is not a threat, just an cynic illustration of just how stupid this guy's point is, the same comment would obviously be applicable to the other comments too)
I do think that the principle can't work even if politicians somehow managed not to touch that money (fat chance of that ! politicians, at least BHO and Biden are "ex-"lawyers).
But it wouldn't provide anywhere near the certainty you'd like, since it would only guarantee a specific dollar amount (possibly increasing, but certainly by less than the economic growth, and therefore "most years" less than inflation).
Uhm ... the costs (averaged out) of children for society per year average about -30000$ in the US, similar in Europe. Kids bring a VERY positive balance to society (well, at least they do in the West, and in most parts of Africa. In the middle east/muslim nations or in dictatorships ... not so much)
Kids are a classic case of a "tragedy of the commons". It's good that one has kids, it's an investment that you can reasonably expect to pay itself back very well. The more, the better (for both yourself and society as a whole). However, other people having kids, that's even better.
This used to be resolved by having your own kids themselves responsible for the "pension" of the parents, creating a natural balance in the system.
That balance has been broken by the principle of state pensions. And like all positive feedback loops, it will spin out of control inevitably (unless something drastically lowers the cost of kids, and makes people want at least 5-6 kids again).
Or are you seriously making the (idiotic) point that children are bad for society ?
Because that would have meant for your father 40 years of paying taxes for it when nobody would have gotten a pension.
Instead they (well it's a democracy, so "we" is hopefully a little bit more correct) decided to start paying pensions immediately, no savings, no dividends, just money directly coming in, directly going out.
Regardless of how it's done, or why it's such a bad idea, it's done. It can't be changed, unless you want to take pensions away from people for 40 years or so. People who have, incidentally, payed taxes (thinking they were paying for their pension, in fact paying for their parent's pension)
Hey these days they have *software* terminals going into the mainframe, running on their windows boxes that have roughly 200x the processing power and storage of said mainframe (you have to appreciate the irony)
Punch cards are history.
How many kids do you have ? If you're married and starting to go on to pension, then you basically need to provide society either with : ...
1 working person taking care of 3 people, minimum tax on the working person 66%
2 working people taking care of 4, minimum tax on the working people 50%
3 working people taking care of 5
minimum tax 40%
4 working people taking care of 6
minimum tax 33%
(the tax estimation assumes equal living standards, meaning equal monetary means, for every person)
Now this isn't fair, surely a working person has the right to a higher living standard than the pensioner (do you agree with this ?). In these numbers I assume working people get double the living standard of the pensioners, extrapolate the in-between for yourself :
1 kid -> 50% taxed
2 kids -> 33% taxed
3 kids -> 25% taxed
4 kids -> 20% taxed
Obviously these taxes cover pensions EXCLUSIVELY. They don't cover administration, they don't cover healthcare (they certainly don't cover the medicare monstruosity), they don't cover police, roads, harbours, electrical infrastructure, sewage, water pipes, they don't cover anything BUT pensions. (in other words : to get a realistic value, add another 20%)
So ... how many kids do you have ? Surely talking like that, and asking the state to solve your problem, by giving you both money directly *AND* free healthcare, you have provided society with 4 working, educated kids, right ?
The money you paid into pensions went to cover the pensions of those that did not pay taxes for their pension. That money's spent, nothing will bring it back.
By the way, these values are absolutely constant. They do not depend on the system in place, they do not depend on politics (unless that system includes killing the elderly), they are correct for extreme capitalism *and* they are correct for communism, and everything in between.
You want a nice, royal pension ? Make it easy on society : have a bunch of kids. It doesn't work without people. You can't be bothered with that ? Then why should society bother with you ?
You don't even need a TPM to prevent this. Only the ability to securely destroy keys will suffice to prevent changing the books afterwards.
Every, oh, say 15 minutes you generate a new public-private keypair. You add a log message to the last 15 minutes of log containing the newly generated public key, then sign those last 15 minutes using the previous private key, after which you thorougly erase it from memory.
Any alterations to the logfile will have to break the chain of keys. If in addition to this security, the public key is transmitted to a trusted third party every 15 minutes, including the hash of the previous data block (e.g. the bank that processes credit card payments), it will be utterly impossible to change logfiles after the fact.
So you'd have to actually keep 2 sets of books on 2 separate cash registers, and you'd have no ability to use electronic payment methods for the "cooked" part of the books. Of course these limitations make that this isn't 100% secure either, but it's as secure as any TPM is going to make it.
Btw if you'd intercept a single private key, that would not help you cook the books afterward. You'd have to do it before any hash or public key is transmitted to the third party.
Just so you guys don't have to stop joking, the actual particles making up dark matter are called either WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) or WINOs.
We're not quite sure what the difference is though, or even if they care. The democratic convention was underway so they were all unavailable for comments.
Wow considering that just about every European country is at least double as bad in debt as America, things must be REALLY bad there. (Obviously per-capita)
Oh wait. Then again they just mooch of the American military.
Obviously there is more than "merely identifiable cell division", after all if there really were no way to tell them apart, the cells themselves would never differentiate.
I think you understand that when talking about experiments on humans (because that's what this is), we need to err on the side of extreme caution.
And that means, imho, that since it is no longer necessary (proving that a total ban on embryonic stem cell research would at worst have delayed any discoveries by 1-2 years) it is a moot point : you simply can't risk it. Not when there are other ways available.
You don't "become" human btw. Every cell, for at the very least 200 000 years that is in your ancestry was a human cell, part of the species, including the singular zygote. There is a single, uninterrupted line of purely human cells from the creation of the first human (by whichever means you like to believe in, even if that might be sex between monkeys) to you. Every biologist considers a fertilized egg a member of the species.
But the point remains : at 18 days after fertilization an embryo has functional control over his muscles. After a mere 15 days the brain is operational.
So at the very best your argument could be construed to allow for experimentation that stays well clear of that 15 days limit. A blastocyst is 3 days at least. So nothing that you take out of that blastocyst, for it could be a human brain, can be allowed to remain alive for a second more than half that time for study, or 6 days max, and that, imho, is taking your argument of "they're not human" to the very last nanometer of acceptable theory. It's also a high risk proposition : we don't really know what these cells are doing and how many it takes to create a basic, but working, mind. Some animals are doing quite astonishing things with 3 brain cells.
The point is : we don't know. And we should err on the side of extreme caution. Therefore, imho, it is better not to allow it at all.
The fact that stem cells can be made from human skin also makes this not just very high risk, both on the "going too far" and what happens to a human being if you are wrong counts, but also unnecessary.
Incidentially this also proves that a total worldwide ban of stem-cell reasearch would only have delayed research by at most a few years, probably not even that, as a ban would have meant more researchers looking for alternatives. And keep in mind that such a ban this would require a hell of a lot more authority than America has.
But the question remains why, today, still take the risk that you're doing something horrible to a human being ? If anything, the discovery of alternative routes should result in a total ban on the practice, with the agreement of both left and right of the political spectrum, since it's both horribly danguerous and unnecessary.
Those are contradictory moral stances that you are taking. Why is it ok to create many embryo's that will be killed if the goal is to make one that will become a baby. Please explain how that is ok when you believe that killing the same fetus during an abortion is always wrong. That sounds like awfully muddled thinking to me.
Can you please explain the contradiction to me ?
Unless you also find differing between killing someone by causing accident, and first-degree murder "morally contradictory".
Say the accident involves you activating a crane that will, due to a pre-existing defect, drop 10 tons of metal on someone just passing-by.
The murder would involve you creating a defect in a crane to purposefully drop 10 tons of metal on someone you know to be passing by at that moment (ie. targeted).
After all, both acts kill. Only the intention differs (the method doesn't even necessarily differ).
So is that accidental killing morally equivalent to first-degree murder, differing only in intention ? You tell me.
Ah come on. The real question, since abortion is, and always will be killing a human, what is worse ? Everything is always a choice.
-> "fucking up someone's life", meaning forcing one human (or hopefully 2) to care for another, for all of 18 years (= preventing abortion)
-> killing a human in an attempt to prevent said "fuckups", which, let's be frank, means killing humans in order to have sex
I don't get people like you. "Humane" is a meaningless term when we're talking about an embryo, with no capacity to feel or be aware of its fate. It's like talking about being humane to a piece of fruit. I understand, and in a limited sense agree with the principled stand that an embryo is a human being for all moral purposes regarding life and death, but it makes zero sense to care, in a pragmatic way, about whether an embryo dies because the test tube is flushed or it becomes a stem cell line. Killing it quickly or slowly has no relevance at all to the embryo, given that it will not develop into a person.
That's why, as is the case with all law based on Christian principles, the intention makes all the difference in the world.
It's okay to let embryos that don't have a chance of developing into a human die quickly, in order to minimize suffering.
It's not okay to kill embryos, or anything human, in order to learn. And it's not okay to take a risk on this point. In other words, even if "it might become human and feel pain during during the test" that completely, 100% disqualifies the experiment. It is known that the basis of human reason, the brain stem, including pain receptors, become operational, and start firing before 15 days pass, so you wouldn't be able to do much research anyway. You might say the brain boots up VERY early in foetal development. This can be established in vivo btw.
That brain stem will start controlling the heart muscle, if not very coherently at this point, before the 18th day, sometimes even on the 15th day. That control of the heart muscle becomes coherent in about 15 minutes in case you're wondering, and once those 15 minutes are passed, the quality of that signal only goes down, right up until you celebrate your 80th birthday, it only goes down until your heart stops beating.
This is known since before the invention of the echo, since it's this discovery that led to the development of echos.
And before you say otherwise, embryonic science was, until very recently (WWII, don't ask who changed this, you don't want to know, and it will certainly not help your point), done by studying embryos that were aborted to save the life of the mother. Embryos that couldn't be saved, because if the mother died, so would the embryo. (if they could save the embryo they did, often even at the expense of the life of the mother)
P.S. :
You know what the real nasty "little detail" of abortions is ? Human embryos are intelligent enough, some at seven weeks development (about 20 days after the brain boot up), certainly long before a woman would become aware of a pregnancy (which takes 4 weeks at least, 8 weeks to be certain), to attempt fight the scissors that are inserted to "implement" the abortion. Every gynaecologist knows this, for they've seen it. When they're 4 or 5 months, some (actually 2) are known to have won this fight, and manage somehow to induce labour, ending in them taking their first breath. Would abortion proponents be okay with killing these babies too ?
If that isn't proof of "sentience", then what is ? That means that a baby becomes sentient between the second and seventh week, mostly before a woman would become aware of a pregnancy.
Abortion is what stem cell research is in danger of become. The expense of one (and by your standards, fully "sentient") human life for the comfort of another.
So at what point does an embryo become a person ? Certainly in the thread you consider intelligent attempts at defense against an attack to be proof of sentience, so I imagine you're answer, if you indeed adhere to your own stated principles, would be "before 1 month passes".
And if we break this barrier down ... exactly what principle prevents killing of children or adults ? They don't differ in sentience from a foetus of 7 weeks of age.
The real difference between them is that we can't see foetuses suffer, so "they don't suffer". They certainly don't protest in a court of law or on CNN.
To have a discussion about this, obviously you need to define "sentience", not just point and say "that's it"
Aren't those "created" stem cells still the same age as the individual that yielded them?
Stem cells, as the lines of allowed stem cells to research prove again and again every day, are ageless, and without (internal) reproduction limits.
Your view isn't difficult to understand, but it's incorrect and based on emotions rather than reason.
I'm a mathematician. Reason is based on logic. Whatever is not part of logic, therefore cannot be seriously considered reason. But I like to be right, and being right starts with strong definitions, and your post seems to be seriously lacking in definitions.
So let's define your terms :
-> rights. Rights are laws. Rights are pieces of paper, backed up by a gun. A right is not a right, but a duty, and a gun backing that op. For example this points out the inevitable failure of the right to live : the right to live = the prohibition to kill, backed up by a gun. You see the problem ?
-> genetics. I imagine you imagine we compare the genes of something to some preset absolute standard, and then judge whether we protect these people or not. This type of definition, implied by your use of the word "genetics" is rubbish. For example men and women differ a little below 4% in genes, given chromosome count, more than 7% in actual genes. Ourang-outangs males differ only 2% from men. Clearly we're not granting rights according to "genetics".
We're *protecting* our offspring, and what we assume to be offspring of the people we coexist with. Therefore as soon as machines, and programs, who are always the offspring of some human, will, when they court said protection from their own ancestor, very quickly be "granted" those "rights" you speak of, despite lacking any common genetic basis.
I get the impression you're attempting to paint the against-cell-research opinion as inherently racist, selective based on genes. I hope this isn't true.
Now this is only scrubbing the surface of the problem, because in addition to misunderstanding the concept of a "right", you neglect to mention the parameters of this reason : reason, as animals and humans exhibit, can only reasonably be defined as a method they use to achieve preset or acquired goals in a world with physical limitations, including a predictive ability.
Now obviously this definition necessitates the specifying of quite a few parameters of "reason" :
1) what's the goal(s) of this instance of "reason" ? If multiple, how do they interact ? This question boils down to what's your religion, but then the real answer, not the one you state. E.g. childless-by-choice christian is not a good answer to this question. Neither is all-humans-are-equal muslim. And of course a lot of "unconventional" religions are possible. Communism, for example could be an answer. Personal gratification (of your emotions) at all costs, another. But you see the role religions ("ideologies" if that puts you better at ease) play here.
2) what's the method to be used ? (now "the human mind" is a good answer, but as you say, there may be others)
3) what are the physical limitations, do they have to be learned ? (again "the world, as described by " would be a good answer "science" is too vague a term to fill in imho. Now this could be physics, but as you call attention to, there could be other answers, although not for humans. But for artificial beings, other laws can be made to apply, though it is unclear whether this can be done in the long term)
4) what's the predictive ability used ? The most important parameter of this question is how far it goes. I'll give an example of problems you'll have here, for someone with a predictive ability of 5 minutes, can you name ANY downside at all to stealing ? Therefore, given this specific predictive ability as a parameter of "reason", stealing would be reasonal and good, as would rape and murder
If they left treating people differently based on skin color and ideology behind, then what's all this I keep hearing about "identity politics" and it's evil twin "positive discrimination" ?
Just a question ...
Let's not forget that there has long been no more reason to do embryonic stem cell research. Stem cells can be created from skin cells, from liver cells, pancreatic cells, they can be extracted from brain tissue samples, ...
Creating the implantation embryo's has to be legal, because it helps people have a child. Since the embryo's that for some reason don't get in are human beings that WILL die before they're anywhere near breathing, the humane thing is to kill them as soon as possible.
There are no more reasons to do embryonic stem cell research, and frankly, when it comes to human embryo's, we should err on the safe side. As far as possible on the safe side while still allowing fertility treatments.
Is that so difficult a viewpoint to understand ? You were once one of these kinds of embryo's, are scientists allowed to experiment on you once you can't say "NO!" anymore ?
I don't get these progressives. You have abortion and euthanasia these days. It seems progressives want to close the gap, bit by bit. I don't like it.
Yep that's the one.
Then again, these same people are also voting for the KKK party that's found itself in "identity politics", to end racism (the KKK was an official department of one of the American political parties, can you guess which one ?). Hint : they have a large gap in their described history on thier site. Jim Crow, for example was in the same party.
That should also put an end to the question of just how "post-racial" their candidate is.
Yes, we should sue eachother more. You see, lawyers tend to become politicians, therefore there's enormous societal value in keeping lawyers busy suing people.
It keeps evil out of politics.
So sue eachother ! Sue me ! Maybe Barack, Biden, McCain and Palin will go back to thinking there's more money in lawyering.
It's a feeble, fleeting hope, but what other hope is there ?
Obviously this information will be biased, and any inconveniences obscured.
NPOV on wikipedia should be called MPOV (my point of view), because that's how everybody uses it.
Just one more example of wikipedia's "neutrality" NPOV policy being used to promote exactly 1 point of view, silencing all others.
As has been the point of half the comments on this story ... I don't think anyone's surprised at all.