You're argument might be more convincing if you talked about personhood rather than whether something is human. Singer has never said "infants aren't human". That would be patently absurd - human just means a member of the human species (though it can be used in a metaphorical/rhetorical sense against people who do really monstrous things, that's not the meaning at issue here). So all infants are human.
The question is whether fetuses or infants or whatever are people yet. Singer thinks newborns aren't people yet. This is a matter of definition, and the definition may depend on the context.
If you show an average person a microsope displaying a single fertilized human egg cell (which by definition is human, there is no debate here!), I really doubt anyone but the totally brainwashed, would say that is a person. To me that is quite absurd - and so is the idea that a single cell, on the order of complexity of a bacteria, has some kind of a "right to life". I don't know where personhood begins, but it sure ain't at conception.
This is a problem with the app author, not with NT.
And the app author often happens to be Microsoft...
If you don't like it, lock down your System directory so that it can't be modified. Also, Windows 2000 fixes this so that only service packs can change system components.
Um, wouldn't this mean you couldn't install Office? Or does Office get around security restrictions? Either way, not a very helpful solution. The design is essentially broken.
I don't think he missed the joke, I think he just posted there to get near to the top of a "sort by score" view like I have. If one person does that it's okay in theory but if everyone does it, that's abuse.
I liked "Science of Discworld", but I think they are dead wrong that "forests are the lungs of the planet" is a myth. They are! Where would we be without enough plants to recycle our carbon dioxide? And as for laying down tarmac being really green, well, that just beggars belief...
And later in life Einstein understood that God does throw dice, as far as Heisenbergs unceratinty principle was concerned. (AFAIK)
I'm not sure that's true. Einstein was one of the founders of quantum theory, as well as special and general relativity, so he certainly understood the theory. I think he meant, when he said "God does not play dice", that although the experiments indicated entirely probabilistic effects at the fundamental level of Nature, he thought that if only we could understand it a little better, perhaps by uncovering something even more fundamental, we would see that the apparent "probabilities" are just due to our lack of knowledge. This hasn't happened yet!
David Bohm's book "Wholeness and the Implicate Order" presents a version of quantum theory that is non-probabilistic and non-local at root, using hidden variables, and there are some others as well. But the vast majority of physicists reject these.
...somehow when it comes to biology and biochemistry it is a scientific heresy to consider intelligent design.
Indeed it is not heresy to consider it. If you read something by Richard Dawkins, say Blind Watchmaker, you'll find he goes to great pains to tackle the design argument head on. He shows scientifically how evolution explains the available facts much better.
Sorry if this was mentioned already, but there is a brilliant book by John Holt called "How Children Fail". This is the logical conclusion of some of the things he describes.
I once tried to get a computing teacher sacked who literally read every lesson from a book and literally never knew the answer to any significant computing question. Unfortunately the dept head said "Nothing I can do". It would have been hilarious if it weren't so sad. Mind you, it also demonstrated that most teachers make less difference than they'd like to believe - while the results weren't good, they weren't disastrous either.
You're comparing apples and oranges. Basically, I would say that the closer a subject gets to Maths, the more accurate testing becomes. Maths tests are actually quite good at measuring ability to do sums, algebra, integrations, etc. (not that this is necessarily best for pedagogy or psychological well-being, both of which are very important, but it's best for accurate measurement of ability.) The closer you get to fine art, the worse tests are.
Anyway, I've never understood literary criticism, but if it did have a point it would surely be nowhere near maths, and thus pointless to measure with a test.
But I don't believe in IQ tests. Though IQ tests are something like maths, they don't actually measure anything tangible other than the ability to pass IQ tests. Intelligence shouldn't be confused with this or any other specific ability. Intelligence is non-algorithmic, a very profound truth which Roger Penrose shows beyond reasonable doubt in his very rigorously argued "Shadows of the Mind".
Machine-specific problems are a fact of life, and you can't expect open source programs to be free of them.
The more apps are written in truly cross-platform languages like Java, the less problems like this you'll see. Yes, I said less problems, not no problems!
saying that it adds nothing to the debate is a rather foolish thing to say
I understood what ESR meant, and it wasn't foolish at all. The author obviously hadn't bothered to read ESR's papers properly at all, and neither had the peer reviewers, if any. In the event, it got posted on/. and did spark some interesting further debates (I don't know whether this "added anything to the debate" but it might have done). So in that sense it might have added something to the debate, but only in the very weak sense that a bomb attack adds something to the Israel/Palestine debate.
Can you point out one valid, original point in the entire journal article?
I entirely agree with ESR that, though it was both true and original, where it was true, it was not original, and where it was original, it was not true.
On British libel laws - absolutely. That's why McDonalds picked Britain as a stage for the famous McLibel suit - Britain isn't the only country with anti-McDonalds activism going on, but they thought they had an easy target with the UK's libel laws. How spectacularly wrong they were!:)
Tim wrote: In the United States, literally anyone who works hard can become independantly wealthy.
Excuse me, but that is one of the most amazing statements I have ever read in my entire life. I just cannot believe that you really believe that.
What evidence do you have to support that assertion? Do you have any evidence whatsoever, or is it just your own blind prejudices speaking?
What if (hypothetically) I am a black man born to a ghetto area with huge unemployment, terrible schooling, lucky to reach 21 without being shot (perhaps I exaggerate a little, but you get the gist), and the only jobs I can get are crap like flipping burgers, sweeping streets? Do you think I can get independently wealthy flipping burgers my entire life? Man, what planet are you on?
Maybe you're thinking I can start my own business or something? How am I going to do anything like that when I have no money, no good opportunities, and am faced by endemic racism? Even if I somehow manage to start a business and work hard for 60 hours a week and die young from a heart attack caused by overwork, isn't it very possible I'll never be "independently wealthy"?
Do you know anything about what it is really like to be poor?
I'll stop there. You realise I'm being very restrained here.
I don't know whether you suffer. It is impossible for me to get inside your head and know what it feels like to be you. If we're talking about absolutely sure knowledge, the only suffering I can be absolutely sure of is my pain at the moment I experience it. But that's clearly a ridiculous position to take. It would mean, by an extension of your argument, that it's not wrong to stab you. Saying that we can't know whether animals suffer, however much evidence there is, is equally ridiculous.
We have good reason to believe animals suffer as we do, therefore (to simplify slightly) I decided to become vegan. We do not have good evidence to believe plants suffer in any way. Yes, I have read "Secret Life of Plants", and some experiments look quite convincing, but the conclusion that plants feel pain is utterly unwarranted and a leap in the dark.
In any case, if plants could suffer we should still be vegan (I'm not seriously suggesting plants do feel pain, this is just for people with over-open minds). A pound of beef requires 10 pounds of grain to produce. Assuming plants feel, less suffering is incurred by eating them directly rather than pumping them through extremely inefficient processing machines (which, incidentally, contributes to children dying of malnutrition and related diseases. The West wastes grain on animal feed while children die. We are exporting the meat culture to other countries around the world yet the current world population cannot possibly be supported on a beef-rich American diet. McDonalds et al fuel starvation and poverty, and if you buy from them you support that process)
Thank you for being brave and coming out in support of Singer.
That's why we need AC posting.
The problem is that most people are in the grip of an irrational, non-utilitarian way of thinking that ignores the horrible consequences of inaction. I know that we have very strong intuitions against killing babies - I have them myself - but a previous poster was spot on in saying that the moral distinction between babies and foetuses is very shaky. In some cases, permitting a baby to live that would suffer horribly, cause others to suffer horribly, and not contribute anything to the world to make up for that suffering, is a monstrous decision. Yet those advocating infanticide are seen as the monsters. No, we are only being compassionate. It's monstrous to put people through so much suffering for no good purpose.
It's the fallacy of "the default option cannot be immoral, because it is the default" (the default option being letting the baby live). It's akin to saying "it cannot be immoral to eat meat, because that is the default option in our culture". The latter is not a rational argument for the former. If a billion people say a false thing, it is still false.
I wish someone would explain why infanticide is always morally worse than ANY amount of suffering.
Slashdot Mirror
The question is whether fetuses or infants or whatever are people yet. Singer thinks newborns aren't people yet. This is a matter of definition, and the definition may depend on the context.
If you show an average person a microsope displaying a single fertilized human egg cell (which by definition is human, there is no debate here!), I really doubt anyone but the totally brainwashed, would say that is a person. To me that is quite absurd - and so is the idea that a single cell, on the order of complexity of a bacteria, has some kind of a "right to life". I don't know where personhood begins, but it sure ain't at conception.
Then you say But the idea is fine and dandy
It can't be both at once. Please explain the contradiction.
And the app author often happens to be Microsoft...
If you don't like it, lock down your System directory so that it can't be modified. Also, Windows 2000 fixes this so that only service packs can change system components.
Um, wouldn't this mean you couldn't install Office? Or does Office get around security restrictions? Either way, not a very helpful solution. The design is essentially broken.
See deism.org which claims that believing in the Bible is against reason.
I'm not sure that's true. Einstein was one of the founders of quantum theory, as well as special and general relativity, so he certainly understood the theory. I think he meant, when he said "God does not play dice", that although the experiments indicated entirely probabilistic effects at the fundamental level of Nature, he thought that if only we could understand it a little better, perhaps by uncovering something even more fundamental, we would see that the apparent "probabilities" are just due to our lack of knowledge. This hasn't happened yet!
David Bohm's book "Wholeness and the Implicate Order" presents a version of quantum theory that is non-probabilistic and non-local at root, using hidden variables, and there are some others as well. But the vast majority of physicists reject these.
That's right. See Forgery in Christianity - Chapter 3
Indeed it is not heresy to consider it. If you read something by Richard Dawkins, say Blind Watchmaker , you'll find he goes to great pains to tackle the design argument head on. He shows scientifically how evolution explains the available facts much better.
It really says that as well!
For goodness sakes don't anyone email them. Just let it stay there for ages. What a sad reflection on their site! :-)
I once tried to get a computing teacher sacked who literally read every lesson from a book and literally never knew the answer to any significant computing question. Unfortunately the dept head said "Nothing I can do". It would have been hilarious if it weren't so sad. Mind you, it also demonstrated that most teachers make less difference than they'd like to believe - while the results weren't good, they weren't disastrous either.
Anyway, I've never understood literary criticism, but if it did have a point it would surely be nowhere near maths, and thus pointless to measure with a test.
But I don't believe in IQ tests. Though IQ tests are something like maths, they don't actually measure anything tangible other than the ability to pass IQ tests. Intelligence shouldn't be confused with this or any other specific ability. Intelligence is non-algorithmic, a very profound truth which Roger Penrose shows beyond reasonable doubt in his very rigorously argued "Shadows of the Mind".
It's amazing how many people who claim to be scientists don't follow the scientific method at all. Like, simple pedantic stuff like evidence.
The more apps are written in truly cross-platform languages like Java, the less problems like this you'll see. Yes, I said less problems, not no problems!
I understood what ESR meant, and it wasn't foolish at all. The author obviously hadn't bothered to read ESR's papers properly at all, and neither had the peer reviewers, if any . In the event, it got posted on /. and did spark some interesting further debates (I don't know whether this "added anything to the debate" but it might have done). So in that sense it might have added something to the debate, but only in the very weak sense that a bomb attack adds something to the Israel/Palestine debate.
Can you point out one valid, original point in the entire journal article?
I entirely agree with ESR that, though it was both true and original, where it was true, it was not original, and where it was original, it was not true.
Excuse me, but that is one of the most amazing statements I have ever read in my entire life. I just cannot believe that you really believe that.
What evidence do you have to support that assertion? Do you have any evidence whatsoever, or is it just your own blind prejudices speaking?
What if (hypothetically) I am a black man born to a ghetto area with huge unemployment, terrible schooling, lucky to reach 21 without being shot (perhaps I exaggerate a little, but you get the gist), and the only jobs I can get are crap like flipping burgers, sweeping streets? Do you think I can get independently wealthy flipping burgers my entire life? Man, what planet are you on?
Maybe you're thinking I can start my own business or something? How am I going to do anything like that when I have no money, no good opportunities, and am faced by endemic racism? Even if I somehow manage to start a business and work hard for 60 hours a week and die young from a heart attack caused by overwork, isn't it very possible I'll never be "independently wealthy"?
Do you know anything about what it is really like to be poor?
I'll stop there. You realise I'm being very restrained here.
"Women should be made continuously pregnant because otherwise a Stephen Hawkin might miss being conceived."
That's the logical extension of the argument.
We have good reason to believe animals suffer as we do, therefore (to simplify slightly) I decided to become vegan. We do not have good evidence to believe plants suffer in any way. Yes, I have read "Secret Life of Plants", and some experiments look quite convincing, but the conclusion that plants feel pain is utterly unwarranted and a leap in the dark.
In any case, if plants could suffer we should still be vegan (I'm not seriously suggesting plants do feel pain, this is just for people with over-open minds). A pound of beef requires 10 pounds of grain to produce. Assuming plants feel, less suffering is incurred by eating them directly rather than pumping them through extremely inefficient processing machines (which, incidentally, contributes to children dying of malnutrition and related diseases. The West wastes grain on animal feed while children die. We are exporting the meat culture to other countries around the world yet the current world population cannot possibly be supported on a beef-rich American diet. McDonalds et al fuel starvation and poverty, and if you buy from them you support that process)
That's why we need AC posting.
The problem is that most people are in the grip of an irrational, non-utilitarian way of thinking that ignores the horrible consequences of inaction. I know that we have very strong intuitions against killing babies - I have them myself - but a previous poster was spot on in saying that the moral distinction between babies and foetuses is very shaky. In some cases, permitting a baby to live that would suffer horribly, cause others to suffer horribly, and not contribute anything to the world to make up for that suffering, is a monstrous decision. Yet those advocating infanticide are seen as the monsters. No, we are only being compassionate. It's monstrous to put people through so much suffering for no good purpose.
It's the fallacy of "the default option cannot be immoral, because it is the default" (the default option being letting the baby live). It's akin to saying "it cannot be immoral to eat meat, because that is the default option in our culture". The latter is not a rational argument for the former. If a billion people say a false thing, it is still false.
I wish someone would explain why infanticide is always morally worse than ANY amount of suffering.