You got modded "funny" but I'll try to answer you seriously, just in case you're actually curious.
First off, Wikipedia will probably tell you everything you might want to know about it and more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet
In short, UseNet is what we had before the web was interactive and thus had things like forums - hell, before there was a web. It functions something like a mailing list. Basically, a big network of news servers all act as mirrors for a vast collection of categorized forums ("groups"). For example, there is the comp group, about computers; comp.sys about specific computer systems; comp.sys.mac about Mac computer systems, comp.sys.next about NeXT computer systems, etc; comp.sys.mac.advocacy, comp.sys.mac.programming, and so on and so on, about more specific topic.
You use your news client to "subscribe" to a group or more, which means that it will contact the news server you use (which may be a free or pay service, may or may not require username and password, and so on) and download all the messages from them, so you don't have to browse through the entire massive collection of groups each time to find the one you want to read. Basically like a bookmark. This makes it different from a mailing list in that there is no actual list of subscribers anywhere - you just tell your client to retrieve messages from that group on your news server. Any messages posted to that group on your server get shared with all the others and mirrored in their copies of that group.
The actual news client and post/response system functions almost identically to email, and a lot of the old traditional nettiquite rules were invented there. Unfortunately thanks to the combined efforts of Microsoft and AOL, and most of the rest of the mainstream email/usenet client makers, most of those rules have been thrown away completely, leading to practices like top replying, which in turn does not encourage people to trim their quotes properly, and encourages people to think in flat (instead of threaded) discussions, and so on... sigh. I miss the old days.
It's a great big universe, and we're all really puny We're just tiny little specks about the size of Mickey Rooney It's all big and black and inky, And we're just small and dinky It's a big universe, And we're not!
I've been saying this about Microsoft for a while now, but now that I think about it it applies to all corporations as well. Nobody in charge, making ruthless decisions with no regard for the profit of the company, is really in it for the money. They've all got more money than they could ever use already.
It's about power. It's a game and it's all about winning no matter the cost. The more money you make, the higher your score, and maybe you'll feel a little better about yourself. But I don't think someone caught in that treadmill will ever be truly happy, because it's a game that you can never win. Maybe you've got the current high score - someone else will beat it later, or you'll spend forever scrambling to stay on top. But all of it is just a meaningless number.
I think an apt analogy may be Evercrack addicts who neglect their friends, their family, their own health and all their other interests to devote all their time to getting a bigger Level number next to their character. What's the point?
"And, of course, technically, a black hole is just a point, it has no dimensions."
This was the point of my original post... a SINGULARITY is by definition a point, which may or may not be what is at the center of a black hole. A "black hole" is this big volume in space from which light cannot escape, marked at it's edges by an event horizon. That is why it's a _black hole_. If there were something other than a gravitational singularity causing an identical effect, it too would be a black hole.
The point is that what is inside the event horizon of a black hole is not an undisputed fact, and theories about it are changing all the time. But one way or another, the shape that the area inside the event horizon - the 'hole' itself - encompasses, is three-dimensional.
Not like they'd be reading this or anything, but I would propose to Mr. Britt and all those astronomers out there wanting a phrase to describe more succinctly "a star and the system of other bodies associated with it", that they use the similar-sounding term "stellar system" instead. Stellar, being a word for things relating to stars in general, and not necessarily to our star, The Sun (which, contrary to the OP, is not actually called Sol in any scientific circles, as much as you and I might wish it were. Likewise, it's The Moon, not Luna, and The Earth, not Terra).
A singularity, if such actually exists, is by definition a null-dimensional object; it is a point. However, the more useful definition for the size of a "black hole" (not necessarily the gravitiational singularity that may lie at it's center) is the size of it's event horizon, which is indeed a three dimensional volume.
This is especially significant if recent theories that black holes are actually hollow shells of matter at the event horizon are correct, or if the matter within the event horizon is otherwise not a singularity (as, if I understand the implications correctly, Hawking's recent concession about information loss indicates).
"Do you say "If there was ever a single Dt-Dt reaction, it's a star", or do we require continuous reactions?"
If you were to say so, then the Earth is a star by that definition. Some of the more complex electrochemical reactions taking place there have resulted in a number of Dt-Dt reactions in the past century or so.
"Dark matter" is dark because we can't see it. It's matter postulated to account for the large-scale motions of galaxies that seem to defy the normal gravity of the luminous matter that we can see.
"Dark energy" is what they call whatever the force is that is pushing the universe apart at an ever faster rate. It too is "dark" because we can't see it in any way, but it is by definition anti-gravitic; that's the only reason we have to think it exists, is that SOMETHING seems to be exhibiting antigravitic properties.
I've always been a bit confused - how exactly can one logically consider "dark energy", whatever it is that has these antigravitational properties, as counting toward the positive mass of the universe? Wouldn't having antigravitational properties give it a NEGATIVE mass? Thus, if the "stuff" of the universe is 25% (matter + dark matter) and 75% dark energy, you wind up with a net negative mass for the universe, which thus does not collapse but acceleratingly expands, exactly as it seems to be.
Like with electricity, we say that something with a lot of electrons compared to protons has "a lot" of charge, but specifically, a lot of negative charge; while something with the opposite ratio still has "a lot" of charge, but this time, positive charge. Between the two the net charge is negated. So dark energy may be "a lot" of the mass in the universe but if it it antigravitic then it must be a lot of NEGATIVE mass, and it seems wrong to count it along with all the regular (incl. dark matter) mass of the universe. Say we've got 100% of the regular mass of the universe in regular + dark matter, and 300% as much negative mass in dark energy.
I think a lot of this may be confusion on the part of laymen authors, not the scientists themselves. I've known so many people (including jr college physics teachers) who thought there was some paradox involved between the distribution of mass causing gravity but gravity causing the distribution of mass, when if you read Einstein's original work on it (he even wrote laymens' versions of his theories), he makes it clear that the mass of something and it's gravitational effects are one and the same. So if dark energy has anti-gravity, then it must have 'anti-mass', or more aptly put 'negative mass'.
I knew a girl once who could text-message on a cell phone about as fast as most people type in IM. She had AIM on her phone. I messaged her once, asked what's up. She says she's driving. It's pouring rain outside so I say I should probably let her go. She says it's fine. Ok...
So latter in the conversation she IMs me "brb accident". Then a minute later, "back". I ask if she's OK, someone run into someone?. She says she's fine. On the side of the road now. Backwards. Still right-side-up at least.
Driving more slowly can be dangerous as well. I've seen many accidents nearly causes and a number actually occur right in front of me because somebody unneccesarily slowed down *far* too much than was necessary, i.e. when making turns, etc. What's worse is people who slow when merging (instead of just meeting the speed of the lane they're merging into), who slow *before* going up hills (wtf?), people who drive 50 in a 65mph fast lane (in otherwise safe conditions) and force traffic to swerve around them, and so on.
It's far safer to keep with the flow of traffic, even if it's what you might consider 'fast', than to be the one car out there interrupting the rest of traffic. And if you really can't drive that fast safely, then take another lane or another route where you can safely drive slower.
Although written in the exact format as the traditional Slashdot "such-and-such is dead" offtopic trolls, and posted by a GNAA member no less... Johnny Carson is actually dead according to MSNBC which makes the parent post actually quite funny, in an ironic sense.
Slashdot: Where explaining the joke still won't make it funny, but it might make it +1 Funny.
It's the same reason that snooty academics automatially assume someone who says "y'alls" is an utter moron. We associate certain types of languages with certain people. In my experience most folks who call Apple the company "MAC" are a certain unsavory type of computer-uneducated people who want to appear smart by proclaiming that the one bit of computing they DO know about is so superior to everything else - and often the same type of people who enjoy pissing people off for fun (trolls). So, you see "MAC" and subconciously expect the person to be an asshole.
I'm waiting for the day that machines come built such that when the power dies, an emergency battery kicks in just long enough to dump the RAM state to a nonvolatile cache, and then when power resumes, restore the system from there. Like VirtualPC.
Heck, having that be a user-accessible feature supported by the OS ("Save and Shutdown") would make a lot of sense too.
You are fortunate enough to have a job that pays well enough that you *could* work it part-time, if allowed.
I don't consider myself wealthy at all, but most of my family and peers think I make a lot for my age group, and I'm still making barely half of what I'd need to survive working a half-time job. I'm essentially working full time just to barely break even. I don't live an extravagent lifestyle either - I rent a room in a house, and spend the rest of my money on groceries and gas.
I have the skills needed for a higher-paying job, but cannot find one because the labor market is saturated.
Perhaps the solution to both our problems is the same. If the employers of people like you would let you work your job half-time, that would free up your free time, and free up job opportunities for people like me.
On a related note, I have often noticed that I am far more efficient when working short hours than long ones. If I know I'm coming in for a two-hour job on something, I come in, get to it, and get it done. If I'm settling in for an eight hour day, I feel more concerned with not running out of things to do before the day is over. If paid more, I could afford work less, and still get just as much work done, more efficiently. Everybody wins.
I think perhaps mandating a shorter work-week and a higher minimum wage could in fact increase efficiency for businesses and increase free time for individuals, many of which would then be spent doing hobbies (increasing the creativity and individual productivity of the populace), and probably spending more money on service-oriented businesses (movies, dining out, etc), stimulating the whole economy and improving lifestyle in one fell swoop.
The Unexpected War Year: 2075 It was a time nobody really expected, excepting the organizations up North planning the whole thing. See, what happened was that Canada, tired of the way the US was running their country, sent wave after wave of genetically modified dinosaurs trained to attack only military targets. Not one non-resistant was killed, and all of the states that bordered Canada became provinces. Word is people living there don't really mind, which is one of main reasons it was so successful. The other was, of course, that the US was so busy protecting themselves against Weapons of Mass Destruction that they never made anything to protect against dinosaur attacks.
This whole debate about proof of macro-evolution is rather silly, however. It only matters if you think that proof of macro-evolution would disprove the existence of God, and that it is important to you to prove that. Since I don't think that proof of macro E would disprove God's existence (talking about my personal beliefs now, not what you may believe), then macro is a non-issue.
Of course macroevolution being true would not disprove God. It is not logically possible to disprove God's existence, and that is why God is not a matter of science - it's not falsifiable. Anything science can come up with, one can claim "God made it work that way". It doesn't add anything useful to the theory, and since most true scientists try to rest their theories on as few axioms as possible, they don't consider whether or not God had anything to do with their theories unless there is some evidence to suggest that he did.
Now, if archaeologists discovered some walled-in garden in the middle of Iraq, blocked from the east by a giant flaming sword, that might be reason to start considering whether certain ancient texts mentioning such things might have some contribution to the theories proposed about it. But unless you've found something like that, there's no need to suppose God had anything to do with anything - but if it makes you feel better to take whatever science and add "because God said so", go right ahead.
I think you're missing the GP's point. He is saying that given:
A) Organisms are expressions of their genes. B) Genes are inherited. and C) Genes mutate.
That it must logically follow D) Evolution work. In order to claim "evolution doesn't work", then either A, B, or C must be false.
Let me give you a simpler, abstract example:
X) All 'foos' are also 'bars'. Y) I am a 'foo'.
It logically follows then that: Z) I am also a 'bar'.
If you want to dispute that I am a 'bar', then you must disagree either with X (me being a 'foo'), or with Y (all 'foos' being 'bars'). But if you accept both X and Y, the Z has to be true.
That said, the GP's logic was missing a step:
L) Organisms follow their genes. M) Genes are inherited. N) Genes mutate. O) Beneficial mutations increase survival.
Therefore, P) Some organisms who inherited beneficial mutations will out-survive other organisms who didn't.
That is called evolution. If you disagree with it, then either L, M, N, or O must be false.
And this is why I argue against the establishment of corporations. Let there be companies, sure, but companies composed of PEOPLE working for other PEOPLE until ultimately some PERSON is accountable.
Would make companies behave much more responsibly, if those calling the shots were held personally accountable for actions carried out at their behest.
An addendum: I don't mean to say that something must be functionally equal to be to be of equal value to me. It needs to only meet certain criteria - sensory observation, logical reasoning, emotion expression, and social behavior - at any level, to qualify as a person.
Just because something's senses may be more or less accurate than mine, or it may be better or worse at logical reasoning, have inappropriate (or more appropriate) emotions, or behave in socially unapproved (or more approved) ways, does not make it any more or less equal *in value*, as a consideration for my choice-making process, however inequal in function we may be.
I find that a good abstract definition of a "person" is something equal to me in the capacities of thought and action.
That is so say, on the thought end, something which is capable of both sensory observation and logical reasoning, able to aquire ideas about the world around it. Something capable of having beliefs, of testing those beliefs to determine knowledge, and of proof.
And on the action end of it, something which is capable of both emotional expression and social behavior, able to perform deeds in the world around it. Something capable of having whims, of considering those whims to determine will, and of choice.
If something matches these criteria, I would say that both its thoughts and actions deserve equal consideration to my own, and anything which matches these criteria I would call a person.
Slashdot Mirror
You got modded "funny" but I'll try to answer you seriously, just in case you're actually curious.
First off, Wikipedia will probably tell you everything you might want to know about it and more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet
In short, UseNet is what we had before the web was interactive and thus had things like forums - hell, before there was a web. It functions something like a mailing list. Basically, a big network of news servers all act as mirrors for a vast collection of categorized forums ("groups"). For example, there is the comp group, about computers; comp.sys about specific computer systems; comp.sys.mac about Mac computer systems, comp.sys.next about NeXT computer systems, etc; comp.sys.mac.advocacy, comp.sys.mac.programming, and so on and so on, about more specific topic.
You use your news client to "subscribe" to a group or more, which means that it will contact the news server you use (which may be a free or pay service, may or may not require username and password, and so on) and download all the messages from them, so you don't have to browse through the entire massive collection of groups each time to find the one you want to read. Basically like a bookmark. This makes it different from a mailing list in that there is no actual list of subscribers anywhere - you just tell your client to retrieve messages from that group on your news server. Any messages posted to that group on your server get shared with all the others and mirrored in their copies of that group.
The actual news client and post/response system functions almost identically to email, and a lot of the old traditional nettiquite rules were invented there. Unfortunately thanks to the combined efforts of Microsoft and AOL, and most of the rest of the mainstream email/usenet client makers, most of those rules have been thrown away completely, leading to practices like top replying, which in turn does not encourage people to trim their quotes properly, and encourages people to think in flat (instead of threaded) discussions, and so on... sigh. I miss the old days.
Thought I'd mention for those curious, that's from the old cartoon Animaniacs. Let me see if I can Google a complete transcript:
_ Universe/yakkos_universe.html
Hey, I'm Feeling Lucky works:
http://alpha.lasalle.edu/~smithsc/Astronomy/Yakko
All togther now!
It's a great big universe, and we're all really puny
We're just tiny little specks about the size of Mickey Rooney
It's all big and black and inky,
And we're just small and dinky
It's a big universe,
And we're not!
I've been saying this about Microsoft for a while now, but now that I think about it it applies to all corporations as well. Nobody in charge, making ruthless decisions with no regard for the profit of the company, is really in it for the money. They've all got more money than they could ever use already.
It's about power. It's a game and it's all about winning no matter the cost. The more money you make, the higher your score, and maybe you'll feel a little better about yourself. But I don't think someone caught in that treadmill will ever be truly happy, because it's a game that you can never win. Maybe you've got the current high score - someone else will beat it later, or you'll spend forever scrambling to stay on top. But all of it is just a meaningless number.
I think an apt analogy may be Evercrack addicts who neglect their friends, their family, their own health and all their other interests to devote all their time to getting a bigger Level number next to their character. What's the point?
That's nice for them. In English they insist on using these special case the-This and the-That names.
Personally I'm rooting for the Latin derivatives (Sol, Terra, Luna) but I don't expect it to catch on in English any time soon.
"And, of course, technically, a black hole is just a point, it has no dimensions."
This was the point of my original post... a SINGULARITY is by definition a point, which may or may not be what is at the center of a black hole. A "black hole" is this big volume in space from which light cannot escape, marked at it's edges by an event horizon. That is why it's a _black hole_. If there were something other than a gravitational singularity causing an identical effect, it too would be a black hole.
The point is that what is inside the event horizon of a black hole is not an undisputed fact, and theories about it are changing all the time. But one way or another, the shape that the area inside the event horizon - the 'hole' itself - encompasses, is three-dimensional.
I appreciate the karma, but that was meant to be Funny, not Interesting....
Not like they'd be reading this or anything, but I would propose to Mr. Britt and all those astronomers out there wanting a phrase to describe more succinctly "a star and the system of other bodies associated with it", that they use the similar-sounding term "stellar system" instead. Stellar, being a word for things relating to stars in general, and not necessarily to our star, The Sun (which, contrary to the OP, is not actually called Sol in any scientific circles, as much as you and I might wish it were. Likewise, it's The Moon, not Luna, and The Earth, not Terra).
A singularity, if such actually exists, is by definition a null-dimensional object; it is a point. However, the more useful definition for the size of a "black hole" (not necessarily the gravitiational singularity that may lie at it's center) is the size of it's event horizon, which is indeed a three dimensional volume.
This is especially significant if recent theories that black holes are actually hollow shells of matter at the event horizon are correct, or if the matter within the event horizon is otherwise not a singularity (as, if I understand the implications correctly, Hawking's recent concession about information loss indicates).
"Do you say "If there was ever a single Dt-Dt reaction, it's a star", or do we require continuous reactions?"
If you were to say so, then the Earth is a star by that definition. Some of the more complex electrochemical reactions taking place there have resulted in a number of Dt-Dt reactions in the past century or so.
"Dark matter" is dark because we can't see it. It's matter postulated to account for the large-scale motions of galaxies that seem to defy the normal gravity of the luminous matter that we can see.
"Dark energy" is what they call whatever the force is that is pushing the universe apart at an ever faster rate. It too is "dark" because we can't see it in any way, but it is by definition anti-gravitic; that's the only reason we have to think it exists, is that SOMETHING seems to be exhibiting antigravitic properties.
I've always been a bit confused - how exactly can one logically consider "dark energy", whatever it is that has these antigravitational properties, as counting toward the positive mass of the universe? Wouldn't having antigravitational properties give it a NEGATIVE mass? Thus, if the "stuff" of the universe is 25% (matter + dark matter) and 75% dark energy, you wind up with a net negative mass for the universe, which thus does not collapse but acceleratingly expands, exactly as it seems to be.
Like with electricity, we say that something with a lot of electrons compared to protons has "a lot" of charge, but specifically, a lot of negative charge; while something with the opposite ratio still has "a lot" of charge, but this time, positive charge. Between the two the net charge is negated. So dark energy may be "a lot" of the mass in the universe but if it it antigravitic then it must be a lot of NEGATIVE mass, and it seems wrong to count it along with all the regular (incl. dark matter) mass of the universe. Say we've got 100% of the regular mass of the universe in regular + dark matter, and 300% as much negative mass in dark energy.
I think a lot of this may be confusion on the part of laymen authors, not the scientists themselves. I've known so many people (including jr college physics teachers) who thought there was some paradox involved between the distribution of mass causing gravity but gravity causing the distribution of mass, when if you read Einstein's original work on it (he even wrote laymens' versions of his theories), he makes it clear that the mass of something and it's gravitational effects are one and the same. So if dark energy has anti-gravity, then it must have 'anti-mass', or more aptly put 'negative mass'.
I knew a girl once who could text-message on a cell phone about as fast as most people type in IM. She had AIM on her phone. I messaged her once, asked what's up. She says she's driving. It's pouring rain outside so I say I should probably let her go. She says it's fine. Ok...
So latter in the conversation she IMs me "brb accident". Then a minute later, "back". I ask if she's OK, someone run into someone?. She says she's fine. On the side of the road now. Backwards. Still right-side-up at least.
Driving more slowly can be dangerous as well. I've seen many accidents nearly causes and a number actually occur right in front of me because somebody unneccesarily slowed down *far* too much than was necessary, i.e. when making turns, etc. What's worse is people who slow when merging (instead of just meeting the speed of the lane they're merging into), who slow *before* going up hills (wtf?), people who drive 50 in a 65mph fast lane (in otherwise safe conditions) and force traffic to swerve around them, and so on.
It's far safer to keep with the flow of traffic, even if it's what you might consider 'fast', than to be the one car out there interrupting the rest of traffic. And if you really can't drive that fast safely, then take another lane or another route where you can safely drive slower.
Damn right we are.
(Disclaimer: I have never lived in Rome, but my ancestors ruled parts of it).
Although written in the exact format as the traditional Slashdot "such-and-such is dead" offtopic trolls, and posted by a GNAA member no less... Johnny Carson is actually dead according to MSNBC which makes the parent post actually quite funny, in an ironic sense.
Slashdot: Where explaining the joke still won't make it funny, but it might make it +1 Funny.
It's the same reason that snooty academics automatially assume someone who says "y'alls" is an utter moron. We associate certain types of languages with certain people. In my experience most folks who call Apple the company "MAC" are a certain unsavory type of computer-uneducated people who want to appear smart by proclaiming that the one bit of computing they DO know about is so superior to everything else - and often the same type of people who enjoy pissing people off for fun (trolls). So, you see "MAC" and subconciously expect the person to be an asshole.
I'm waiting for the day that machines come built such that when the power dies, an emergency battery kicks in just long enough to dump the RAM state to a nonvolatile cache, and then when power resumes, restore the system from there. Like VirtualPC.
Heck, having that be a user-accessible feature supported by the OS ("Save and Shutdown") would make a lot of sense too.
You are fortunate enough to have a job that pays well enough that you *could* work it part-time, if allowed.
I don't consider myself wealthy at all, but most of my family and peers think I make a lot for my age group, and I'm still making barely half of what I'd need to survive working a half-time job. I'm essentially working full time just to barely break even. I don't live an extravagent lifestyle either - I rent a room in a house, and spend the rest of my money on groceries and gas.
I have the skills needed for a higher-paying job, but cannot find one because the labor market is saturated.
Perhaps the solution to both our problems is the same. If the employers of people like you would let you work your job half-time, that would free up your free time, and free up job opportunities for people like me.
On a related note, I have often noticed that I am far more efficient when working short hours than long ones. If I know I'm coming in for a two-hour job on something, I come in, get to it, and get it done. If I'm settling in for an eight hour day, I feel more concerned with not running out of things to do before the day is over. If paid more, I could afford work less, and still get just as much work done, more efficiently. Everybody wins.
I think perhaps mandating a shorter work-week and a higher minimum wage could in fact increase efficiency for businesses and increase free time for individuals, many of which would then be spent doing hobbies (increasing the creativity and individual productivity of the populace), and probably spending more money on service-oriented businesses (movies, dining out, etc), stimulating the whole economy and improving lifestyle in one fell swoop.
From Antihero For Hire:
The Unexpected War
Year: 2075
It was a time nobody really expected, excepting the organizations up North planning the whole thing. See, what happened was that Canada, tired of the way the US was running their country, sent wave after wave of genetically modified dinosaurs trained to attack only military targets. Not one non-resistant was killed, and all of the states that bordered Canada became provinces. Word is people living there don't really mind, which is one of main reasons it was so successful. The other was, of course, that the US was so busy protecting themselves against Weapons of Mass Destruction that they never made anything to protect against dinosaur attacks.
This whole debate about proof of macro-evolution is rather silly, however. It only matters if you think that proof of macro-evolution would disprove the existence of God, and that it is important to you to prove that. Since I don't think that proof of macro E would disprove God's existence (talking about my personal beliefs now, not what you may believe), then macro is a non-issue.
Of course macroevolution being true would not disprove God. It is not logically possible to disprove God's existence, and that is why God is not a matter of science - it's not falsifiable. Anything science can come up with, one can claim "God made it work that way". It doesn't add anything useful to the theory, and since most true scientists try to rest their theories on as few axioms as possible, they don't consider whether or not God had anything to do with their theories unless there is some evidence to suggest that he did.
Now, if archaeologists discovered some walled-in garden in the middle of Iraq, blocked from the east by a giant flaming sword, that might be reason to start considering whether certain ancient texts mentioning such things might have some contribution to the theories proposed about it. But unless you've found something like that, there's no need to suppose God had anything to do with anything - but if it makes you feel better to take whatever science and add "because God said so", go right ahead.
I think you're missing the GP's point. He is saying that given:
A) Organisms are expressions of their genes.
B) Genes are inherited.
and C) Genes mutate.
That it must logically follow D) Evolution work. In order to claim "evolution doesn't work", then either A, B, or C must be false.
Let me give you a simpler, abstract example:
X) All 'foos' are also 'bars'.
Y) I am a 'foo'.
It logically follows then that:
Z) I am also a 'bar'.
If you want to dispute that I am a 'bar', then you must disagree either with X (me being a 'foo'), or with Y (all 'foos' being 'bars'). But if you accept both X and Y, the Z has to be true.
That said, the GP's logic was missing a step:
L) Organisms follow their genes.
M) Genes are inherited.
N) Genes mutate.
O) Beneficial mutations increase survival.
Therefore,
P) Some organisms who inherited beneficial mutations will out-survive other organisms who didn't.
That is called evolution. If you disagree with it, then either L, M, N, or O must be false.
And this is why I argue against the establishment of corporations. Let there be companies, sure, but companies composed of PEOPLE working for other PEOPLE until ultimately some PERSON is accountable.
Would make companies behave much more responsibly, if those calling the shots were held personally accountable for actions carried out at their behest.
An addendum: I don't mean to say that something must be functionally equal to be to be of equal value to me. It needs to only meet certain criteria - sensory observation, logical reasoning, emotion expression, and social behavior - at any level, to qualify as a person.
Just because something's senses may be more or less accurate than mine, or it may be better or worse at logical reasoning, have inappropriate (or more appropriate) emotions, or behave in socially unapproved (or more approved) ways, does not make it any more or less equal *in value*, as a consideration for my choice-making process, however inequal in function we may be.
I find that a good abstract definition of a "person" is something equal to me in the capacities of thought and action.
That is so say, on the thought end, something which is capable of both sensory observation and logical reasoning, able to aquire ideas about the world around it. Something capable of having beliefs, of testing those beliefs to determine knowledge, and of proof.
And on the action end of it, something which is capable of both emotional expression and social behavior, able to perform deeds in the world around it. Something capable of having whims, of considering those whims to determine will, and of choice.
If something matches these criteria, I would say that both its thoughts and actions deserve equal consideration to my own, and anything which matches these criteria I would call a person.