I think we've ended up at the same page here, if by an indirect route. My initial post was challenging the basic argument that the ultra-rich can get "burned" in the same sense as people losing their homes to the financial crisis got "burned", and therefore they are fully justified by this notion alone to use such mechanisms as off-shore tax havens or other means of mitigating their "risk".
I agree fully. Middle-class people can get hurt, and whatever the absolute dollars may be, the ultra-rich are not "burned" in any sense that implies actual hardship. To suggest they are equally vulnerable to that, is the OP's implication that I was contending with.
For one, it provides a reason that we should even have any discussion about the scientific work being done, rather than skipping all the effort and expense and simply ripping your still-beating heart out of your chest if somebody richer than you wants to buy it for himself.
Unless you have a basis to say you are categorically distinct in some way from a chimera or animals in general, you presently have no valid objection to that by reference to science alone.
I suggest getting one.
As for the rest, yes, you can detect the soul, with personal effort. "Detectable" is not limited to "detectable with scientific instruments". That is your position, not mine, and you have the consequences of that stance--I do not.
So, you're going with the blatantly false and absurd assertion that people are their children, rather than admit you personally interpret natural selection in a fuzzy-headed "somehow my children surviving would mean I survive" mystical way, with zero scientific rationale, and merely soft personal feelings of dread at your inevitable elimination?
Nothing survives but information, ever. I imagine this is particularly unpleasant if you acknowledge only scientific materialism. But let's stick to science, and reality.
Strange when I get responses suggesting I am wrong, then explain specifically why I am right.
You say rights are not scientific concepts. So, if you limit yourself to a material (scientific) worldview as representing what exists, you do not have them.
So, you have a "concept". There are a million subjective "concepts" on the subject, varying from yours, equally backed, and contradicting yours, on the subject. I want to know if you have basis to saying your concept is real, within the limits of what you acknowledge is real. If you get that far, bonus points for showing your concept is specifically the right one among the alternative conceptions, by reference to physical reality alone.
You have given no evidence it does not require it, and there is a great deal of reason to think it does. For starters, I'd look at the history of attempts to develop "strong AI". For something longer-standing, the "mind-body problem" (easy summary) has remained unresolved for the last 500 years, which presents you with quite an array of questions that must be resolved to even think your claim is logically possible.
In other words, the current evidence is against you. Show otherwise, if you can.
And "metaphysics" is a core branch of philosophy acknowledged and used the entirely of the last 2500 years, by religious and secular sources. There is no question that metaphysics exists, even if one's metaphysics is "only material things exist".
Okay. A human is a biological entity that has a soul.
Reality will make the "point" manifestly clear when it eliminates you, which you can refer to as "natural selection" if you prefer to remain committed to your material-reductionist stance.
No, I am talking precisely about science. And limiting my scope to it, which I presume is your preference.
There's no rational justification to your criterion of rights being granted to pigs, dolphins and elephants "when they make their voices heard". You've provided no rationale whatsoever on why, whatever you even mean there, that confers rights. Not even a remote attempt at a scientific one.
If you have no actual, material basis for it within your worldview, you have no reason to claim it exists, and thus cannot claim it for yourself. If you want to present a causal chain from DNA to a biological organism generating the attribute of "rights" (in the case of "human", which you don't even have an objective definition for), and show the corresponding animal DNA as encoding "no rights", something measurable and verifiable, do so. Otherwise you are invoking metaphysics as surely as any theist--the difference being you are without a rationale for doing so. And yes, that you have a rationale for doing so is required--insofar as you claim you should have them.
Well, step one is the question of whether you feel there's a practical usefulness to having some way to differentiate yourself from any other animal--that is, that you have any justifiable reason to think you should have "rights" beyond the animal you recently ate between hamburger buns.
Would that be useful to you? I'll hold you to your answer.
I suggest, for a substantial number of the Slashdot readership, getting a functional definition of "human" from a material-reductionist, i.e. scientific, context, first.
This means you, atheists. Those that instead acknowledge a wider metaphysical context containing science--no worries.
There is no "whining" here, nor am I personally concerned about my financial state. As I said at the outset, the argument can indeed be made that such financial disparities are necessary, or even a net benefit. I am not making a stance on that here, I'm arguing toward using valid criteria to make such determinations.
Avoid the unnecessary, inapplicable, and off-point ad hominem. At issue here is whether the current trend to automatically agree that, almost axiomatically, anything good for the wealthy is by definition good for the middle class, is logical and accurate. It isn't.
If you think any financial issue the fact one owns some relatively-marginal amount of stock, they are equivalently "burned" by a negative financial policy or outcome, you are precisely a successful result for the mental hijacking noted earlier.
I do admire your optimism, though, that those 100 million are immune.
Stockholders ARE the middle class, all middle-class people who aren't ignorant or irresponsible invest for retirement.
Again, though, it ends up being a false equivalence due to scale. A Bill Gates or Eric Schmidt in no case are "burned" in the same sense as someone having a questionable path to a livable retirement based on stock or mutual fund investments, those investments being a tiny fraction of the scale.
There is no way such people can be "burned" in a practical personal sense by a financial downturn of their company. It means maybe one less personal jet. There is no personal risk, for any meaningful definition of "risk", whatsoever, in reality.
So, when the argument is made trying to appeal to the average person that the wealthy have the same chance of getting "burned" as the reader/viewer, so the same policies should be applied in a facade of "objectivity", that is simply an emotional appeal that is directly false and misrepresentative of reality.
Sorry, but I'm now too old and too experienced with actual business to let this "assumed conceptual buy-in" to pass without noting it.
Using terms like "burned" (or for that matter arguments based on "risk") simply are not the same meaning as applied to the financial sector or successful high-tech companies, as to 99% of the readership you are addressing.
When a Google gets "burned", that means potentially the stockholders end up moving from rich to slightly less rich. For the middle class, "burned" means, as you've noted, losing their homes and their families potentially being on the street.
While the argument can be made this is an acceptable state of affairs, using terminology that gives a false sense of equivalence to all parties (like the egregious "job creators") ends up simply misrepresenting reality for the benefit of a highly selective group of people, who are not the ones you are addressing. Though I realize it isn't your intent, the terminology is basically an attempt to hijack the reader's mind to evaluate the situation against reality and against their own interests. And that by now has become the standard form of media interaction, with predictable effects.
No other species works to "reduce their impacts". They seek to survive in the immediately optimal way, period.
Curious how some insist we are special, while denying we are special.
If we are impacting the environment, we are doing it within the context of a lot of other biological actors, within the same system as those actors. An with us "in" that system, there is no non-subjective basis for claiming X degrees is the "right amount of impact".
If there's a wider metaphysical system than that, that imposes legitimate moral imperatives due to us being unique... well, this is Slashdot, so we know how an introduction of the only supportable basis for that, theism, will go.
Your opinion on me or the topics you presume to address, cluelessly, means nothing, and has no effect anywhere other than as a typical time-wasting internet troll. Obviously, and even you are not too stupid to know this clearly while you state otherwise, I was posting AC due to device convenience, and absoluely obviously not an attempt to conceal who was responding.
Your goalless, pointless trolling cannot mean anything or have any consequence, even theoretically. According to either of our worldviews. If you are wrong, you are wrong. If you were right, then--nothing.
Lie on about my dishonesty you've yet to cite a single example of. Lie on about how science works.
Get deselected, troll. Preferably sooner rather than later.
So, nothing you claim you can "prove". Nothing citing where I've exhibited any dishonesty whatsoever. Just empty claims of my lack of understanding of science or "rational thought". I assure you, as a professional software developer, I demonstrate my understanding of both daily. Your parroted overextension of the domains to which "proof" applies, though, is neither novel nor scientifically sound.
Any time you want to back up anything you've said, feel free. It's optional for now.
And no, your inability to comprehend informal usage of terms will not save you. Lawyer your way out, if you can.
And do be aware that for anyone but an utter neophyte on the subject, nothing is "provable" outside of mathematics.
As I'm sure you have the typical profound ignorance of science as the one domain you can even poseur having worthwhile understanding of, typical of those with your worldview, understand that a "theory" is indeed just that. A provisional model permanently open to revision based on new evidence.
Slashdot Mirror
I think we've ended up at the same page here, if by an indirect route. My initial post was challenging the basic argument that the ultra-rich can get "burned" in the same sense as people losing their homes to the financial crisis got "burned", and therefore they are fully justified by this notion alone to use such mechanisms as off-shore tax havens or other means of mitigating their "risk".
I agree fully. Middle-class people can get hurt, and whatever the absolute dollars may be, the ultra-rich are not "burned" in any sense that implies actual hardship. To suggest they are equally vulnerable to that, is the OP's implication that I was contending with.
Find it ridiculous. Be wrong.
For one, it provides a reason that we should even have any discussion about the scientific work being done, rather than skipping all the effort and expense and simply ripping your still-beating heart out of your chest if somebody richer than you wants to buy it for himself.
Unless you have a basis to say you are categorically distinct in some way from a chimera or animals in general, you presently have no valid objection to that by reference to science alone.
I suggest getting one.
As for the rest, yes, you can detect the soul, with personal effort. "Detectable" is not limited to "detectable with scientific instruments". That is your position, not mine, and you have the consequences of that stance--I do not.
So, you're going with the blatantly false and absurd assertion that people are their children, rather than admit you personally interpret natural selection in a fuzzy-headed "somehow my children surviving would mean I survive" mystical way, with zero scientific rationale, and merely soft personal feelings of dread at your inevitable elimination? Nothing survives but information, ever. I imagine this is particularly unpleasant if you acknowledge only scientific materialism. But let's stick to science, and reality.
Strange when I get responses suggesting I am wrong, then explain specifically why I am right.
You say rights are not scientific concepts. So, if you limit yourself to a material (scientific) worldview as representing what exists, you do not have them.
So, you have a "concept". There are a million subjective "concepts" on the subject, varying from yours, equally backed, and contradicting yours, on the subject. I want to know if you have basis to saying your concept is real, within the limits of what you acknowledge is real. If you get that far, bonus points for showing your concept is specifically the right one among the alternative conceptions, by reference to physical reality alone.
You have given no evidence it does not require it, and there is a great deal of reason to think it does. For starters, I'd look at the history of attempts to develop "strong AI". For something longer-standing, the "mind-body problem" (easy summary) has remained unresolved for the last 500 years, which presents you with quite an array of questions that must be resolved to even think your claim is logically possible.
In other words, the current evidence is against you. Show otherwise, if you can.
Oh, empirical evidence absolutely exists for the existence of a God and a soul.
Here's a peer-reviewed, quantified, eye-witness (empirical) study, for one.
And "metaphysics" is a core branch of philosophy acknowledged and used the entirely of the last 2500 years, by religious and secular sources. There is no question that metaphysics exists, even if one's metaphysics is "only material things exist".
Okay. A human is a biological entity that has a soul.
Reality will make the "point" manifestly clear when it eliminates you, which you can refer to as "natural selection" if you prefer to remain committed to your material-reductionist stance.
No, I am talking precisely about science. And limiting my scope to it, which I presume is your preference.
There's no rational justification to your criterion of rights being granted to pigs, dolphins and elephants "when they make their voices heard". You've provided no rationale whatsoever on why, whatever you even mean there, that confers rights. Not even a remote attempt at a scientific one.
If you have no actual, material basis for it within your worldview, you have no reason to claim it exists, and thus cannot claim it for yourself. If you want to present a causal chain from DNA to a biological organism generating the attribute of "rights" (in the case of "human", which you don't even have an objective definition for), and show the corresponding animal DNA as encoding "no rights", something measurable and verifiable, do so. Otherwise you are invoking metaphysics as surely as any theist--the difference being you are without a rationale for doing so. And yes, that you have a rationale for doing so is required--insofar as you claim you should have them.
Evolution has already spoken on the outcome for Flying Spaghetti Monkeys.
I see. So, your progeny are you. Scientifically speaking.
Well, step one is the question of whether you feel there's a practical usefulness to having some way to differentiate yourself from any other animal--that is, that you have any justifiable reason to think you should have "rights" beyond the animal you recently ate between hamburger buns.
Would that be useful to you? I'll hold you to your answer.
What do I need to do if I just don't give a shit?
In that case, you only need to do what you already expect to do. Get naturally deselected. We'll take it from there.
I know, I know... it's against my personal interests to point out the implications prematurely.
File this one under "charity". At least I only stated the first in the chain of insights.
I suggest, for a substantial number of the Slashdot readership, getting a functional definition of "human" from a material-reductionist, i.e. scientific, context, first.
This means you, atheists. Those that instead acknowledge a wider metaphysical context containing science--no worries.
There is no "whining" here, nor am I personally concerned about my financial state. As I said at the outset, the argument can indeed be made that such financial disparities are necessary, or even a net benefit. I am not making a stance on that here, I'm arguing toward using valid criteria to make such determinations.
Avoid the unnecessary, inapplicable, and off-point ad hominem. At issue here is whether the current trend to automatically agree that, almost axiomatically, anything good for the wealthy is by definition good for the middle class, is logical and accurate. It isn't.
If you think any financial issue the fact one owns some relatively-marginal amount of stock, they are equivalently "burned" by a negative financial policy or outcome, you are precisely a successful result for the mental hijacking noted earlier.
I do admire your optimism, though, that those 100 million are immune.
Stockholders ARE the middle class, all middle-class people who aren't ignorant or irresponsible invest for retirement.
Again, though, it ends up being a false equivalence due to scale. A Bill Gates or Eric Schmidt in no case are "burned" in the same sense as someone having a questionable path to a livable retirement based on stock or mutual fund investments, those investments being a tiny fraction of the scale.
There is no way such people can be "burned" in a practical personal sense by a financial downturn of their company. It means maybe one less personal jet. There is no personal risk, for any meaningful definition of "risk", whatsoever, in reality.
So, when the argument is made trying to appeal to the average person that the wealthy have the same chance of getting "burned" as the reader/viewer, so the same policies should be applied in a facade of "objectivity", that is simply an emotional appeal that is directly false and misrepresentative of reality.
Sorry, but I'm now too old and too experienced with actual business to let this "assumed conceptual buy-in" to pass without noting it.
Using terms like "burned" (or for that matter arguments based on "risk") simply are not the same meaning as applied to the financial sector or successful high-tech companies, as to 99% of the readership you are addressing.
When a Google gets "burned", that means potentially the stockholders end up moving from rich to slightly less rich. For the middle class, "burned" means, as you've noted, losing their homes and their families potentially being on the street.
While the argument can be made this is an acceptable state of affairs, using terminology that gives a false sense of equivalence to all parties (like the egregious "job creators") ends up simply misrepresenting reality for the benefit of a highly selective group of people, who are not the ones you are addressing. Though I realize it isn't your intent, the terminology is basically an attempt to hijack the reader's mind to evaluate the situation against reality and against their own interests. And that by now has become the standard form of media interaction, with predictable effects.
No other species works to "reduce their impacts". They seek to survive in the immediately optimal way, period.
Curious how some insist we are special, while denying we are special.
If we are impacting the environment, we are doing it within the context of a lot of other biological actors, within the same system as those actors. An with us "in" that system, there is no non-subjective basis for claiming X degrees is the "right amount of impact".
If there's a wider metaphysical system than that, that imposes legitimate moral imperatives due to us being unique... well, this is Slashdot, so we know how an introduction of the only supportable basis for that, theism, will go.
There is no dishonesty, and you know it, idiot.
It's natural, and you're already clear that it's to absolutely everyone's benefit. Let evolution work. Soon.
(waits)
Your opinion on me or the topics you presume to address, cluelessly, means nothing, and has no effect anywhere other than as a typical time-wasting internet troll. Obviously, and even you are not too stupid to know this clearly while you state otherwise, I was posting AC due to device convenience, and absoluely obviously not an attempt to conceal who was responding.
Your goalless, pointless trolling cannot mean anything or have any consequence, even theoretically. According to either of our worldviews. If you are wrong, you are wrong. If you were right, then--nothing.
Lie on about my dishonesty you've yet to cite a single example of. Lie on about how science works.
Get deselected, troll. Preferably sooner rather than later.
So, nothing you claim you can "prove". Nothing citing where I've exhibited any dishonesty whatsoever. Just empty claims of my lack of understanding of science or "rational thought". I assure you, as a professional software developer, I demonstrate my understanding of both daily. Your parroted overextension of the domains to which "proof" applies, though, is neither novel nor scientifically sound.
Any time you want to back up anything you've said, feel free. It's optional for now.
And no, your inability to comprehend informal usage of terms will not save you. Lawyer your way out, if you can.
And what can you "prove"?
And do be aware that for anyone but an utter neophyte on the subject, nothing is "provable" outside of mathematics.
As I'm sure you have the typical profound ignorance of science as the one domain you can even poseur having worthwhile understanding of, typical of those with your worldview, understand that a "theory" is indeed just that. A provisional model permanently open to revision based on new evidence.
Show me what you can "prove".