I don't have children, but they steal money from me to pay for schools.
I don't drive, but they steal from me to build roads.
I don't read, but they steal from me to build libraries.
Taxation is much like theft - the thug, king, or legislature takes what is yours and uses it for their own purposes. The good news is that as we moved up the scale, the thieves get more responsive to your needs. Thugs and pirates will do whatever they feel like because they have no long term interest in you, kings and mafias have an interest in keeping you alive and productive just so they can steal more from you later, and legislators have to spend a lot of time trying to buy voter support. Until we come up with a better system it's best to stick with theft by representative government, but it's still theft.
I DEMAND my share in the ownership of the colour RED!
Nobody is stopping you from using the color red. Knock yourself out.
I have a natural right to apply a blunt force instrument to your skull until you die
That's news to me, and I'm pretty sure that's new to the concept of natural rights.
however most governments have decided to regulate both the RF spectrum and murder as it is a generally held belief it is beneficial to the majority.
My government regulates murder because it violates individual rights, not because it's beneficial to the majority. As for RF spectrum, at least some oversight might make sense, but the usual justifications are based on outdated technology and a desire to maintain the status quo.
This has nothing to do with self-defence vs assault, protecting gun rights, hippie self esteem garbage or any of your other strawmen. When a kid gets beaten up that's assault, and at least part of the solution is to take it seriously as a crime. Doing so for domestic assault and lynching worked quite well, and it's high time we started treating kids as deserving equal protection.
Bullying should be treated in law as what it is - an assault on the person.
You may disdain childhood violence, but children aren't capable of being reasonable, and violence in kind earns respect.
It's nice to know that the pathetic bravado you seem so proud of is something that has to be backed up by kids. It's also amazing that someone hiding among the women and children can still call someone a "pussy" without feeling humiliated.
What about it? Outside of contracts that have already been signed, both can do what they like. If the employee can quit because the new boss is black, the employer should have the same liberty. And I can't imagine you're saying that people should be forced to keep working at their current job if they want to quit, even if their reason is immoral.
not firing anyone based on race, sex, religion and age which are protected by Constitution.
No. The state can't discriminate based on those traits because of the Constitution. Discrimination by individuals or companies is a matter for the legislature, not the Constitution.
Someone puts business in public
Private businesses, even publicly traded ones, are't public, by definition. "Public accomodation" is a legal fiction, like "corporate personhood", that allows the government to do things that it otherwise could not.
I rather have woman date me regardless.
Women only? You intolerant bigot! Big hairy men need lovin', too!
Anyway, my point is, it's your life and your freedom, not other's you are affecting when it comes to your personal relationship.
That's just silly. If I don't date redheads, blacks or men that definitely does affect them.
My real point is that you've drawn an odd line around personal freedom, based on the areas of life that are touched by money. I can avoid being friends with black people, write books about how they were better of under slavery and put up a "Die, Nigger, Die!" poster in my room, all as part of being free, but if I advertise for a white roommate, then I've suddenly done something illegal?
You've taken "The right to swing your arm ends at my nose" and added "unless money changes hands or certain groups are affected". Why?
You can't legislate them into it, not matter how logical that feels to you.
Great, let's legalize assault! Life is so much better when roving bands of bullies/the mob are going around demanding lunch money/protection money.
Oh, right - violence is only good for children.
Your answer is to run away to someone in charge, and that just exacerbates the problem.
Since you won't call the cops, I think that some of my buddies and I should come over to your place and see if you have anything we could use...
Hey, you've inspired me! I'm gonna go home and slap my wife and kids around, and if they complain, I'll tell them to quit being pussies. I mean, I'm bigger than they are, and my friends are higher status than theirs (bankers and local politicians vs housewives and kids), so the situation's almost identical to school bullying.
Your new boss comes over and fire you for not being "his/her" kind. That's a pro-choice, right?
But if they fire you because you remind them of their ex-*friend or their mother inlaw, that's fine?
Your landlord tells you that he/she is not renewing your lease because you are not his/her kind. Pro-choice right?
But if I discover I'm a "cat person", and want a cat, they can kick me out?
Gas attendant doesn't want to serve your kind. Pro-choice? Yup.
So they lose me as a customer, and unbiased people get more business. Jerks losing money is a bad thing?
Your application for a loan is turned down because Bank doesn't want your kind running business in the neighborhood. Pro-choice! yeah~
If they don't want to give you money, why should they be forced to? It belongs to them.
Your kind can't use his/her kind's bathroom because bathroom isn't for your kind. Pro-choice written all over.
"Bathroom is for paying customers only".
Your kind can't shop at his/her kind's store. You have to walk 20 miles down the road to shop at your kind's store. Pro-choice is the brand of that sneaker!
So we outlaw FUBU and women-only gyms?
Get the point?
No. You seem to think that when it comes to friends, family, associates, business partners, lovers, spouses, and people that ask me for dates I can discriminate freely by sex, age, intelligence, politics, race, beauty and kindness, but when it comes to employees and renters, and certain kinds of discrimination, you make a literal federal case out of stopping me. Freedom that stops when money chages hands isn't freedom.
The purpose of a currency is to have a public accounting record.
I have no idea where someone would get that idea. Money is just a standard commodity that's used in exchanges a lot. Gold used to be used all the time because you could carry a small fortune in your pocket, it was easy to test to make sure it was real, and could be split into pieces easily.
While it does have that cost built into it, the gold has *extra* value
I'm sorry, but it doesn't. If I dug up a pound of gold (under a gold standard) it would affect the economy the same way digging up a ton of iron (or whatever the real equivilant would be). The only difference is that you would see prices and wages go up, but only because they're quoted in terms of gold. The number of hours of labor per loaf of bread wouldn't be affected.
The person printing money pays...
That's because we use fiat (artificial) currency. If it cost $X to make a coin/bill worth $X, there'd be no reason to make counterfiting a crime. When gold costs a certain amount, it's because that's what it takes (roughly) to get it out of the ground; when a dollar is worth a certain amount, it's because the government keeps dollars rare.
So basically, if you base currency on anything *other* than symbolic records, you create a legitimate way to upset the functioning of currency.
Only by finding large, new deposits - normal mining only adds small, predictable ammounts to the economy. And adding any large, unpredicted amounts of almost anything will cause some kind of disruption anyway, like the way the tech boom altered our economy. Keep in mind large-scale disruptions still happen now when a government lowers interest rates too much for too long, and inflation means we have to quote old prices in "1980 dollars" anyway.
The only real difference between fiat and commodity money (or private currency) is that it gives the government (the only group legally allowed to print it) more control over the economy. Some people point to Greenspan and Burnake as an example of the good use of that control, others point to the Great Depression and the hyperinflation that's happened in many countries as examples of the bad side of it.
If my wife had taken the cash from the piggy bank and bought bonds with them then I'd be ecstatic!
Holy frig! You can't be serious!
When the US government, Bill Gates or IBM owes you money, that's a good thing for you. When you owe yourself money, that's playing make-believe.
When you, Bill Gates, or IBM owe the government money, that's good for the government's bottom line. When the government owes itself money, it's playing games to make itself look good.
The existance of categories is more an effect of the human mind than "real".
True, but my point was based around "share[d] characteristics, including arbitrary ones". Bats and birds have similar lifestyles, and in many ways have similar physiology. The fact that there aren't any feathered, echolocating, viviparous creatures with beaks, or any other similar "hybrid" is strong evidence of evolution and the pattern of development that lead to the creatures that do exist.
Evolutionists can just say "evolution did it!", come up with a good story, and be done.
Just as astrophysicists involk gravity, chemists assume the existance of chemical bonds and docters assume that your flu is caused by a virus. These theories are so well established, based on rigerous investigation, that there's no reason to doubt that they're true even when we can't (or don't care to) prove it for a particualar case.
In a large enough search space, this simply won't happen.
Talk to anyone who's studied genetic algorithms. Heck, even with simple hill-climbing you don't need to sample that much of the search space, and even the first iteration almost always leads to some improvement.
Behe is simply looking at changes involving a few amino acids.
Behe has perfected a psudo-argument based on a lack of imagination - "I can't imagine how evolution could to this, so it didn't!". Even if he did find something that can't be explained in terms of evolution right now, that doesn't prove that it never can be.
Darwinism has never shown how it can be the origin of complex systems or traits.
Richard Dawkins has a very clearly written bit about the development of the eye in several different books. Also, many of the blueprints that have been developed with genetic algorithms are better than the best human-designed ones, and some are even so unusual that we can't explain how they work. Would Behe suggest that a superior intelligence is responsible for them as well?
Why cannot intelligent causes be considered in the origin of life?
They could be, but as long as non-intelligent reasons are sufficient, and they are in the opinion of most biologists, there's no reason to postulate that. Second, the only evidence for intelligent design is "current theories aren't enough", which would only suggests that we need a new theory, not which one we should go with. On top of that, we have a natural urge to see intelligence in non-intelligent things, the same way we see faces in random designs, so we have to be careful to avoid "thunder is the wrath of god" theories.
The original name for science was "natural philosophy". To say that you are doing one or the other only is essentially making an arbitrary demarcation.
Science may be a branch of philosophy, but it's quite different than any of the other ones. To say otherwise is just silly.
The same way it works in every day life. I create all sorts of things in my job. My creative acts are not predetermined by physics, but arise out of my own intelligent causation. It is _limitted_ by physics, but not determined by it.
First of all, there's no evidence that creativity (or anything else, for that matter) isn't caused by physical events. The idea that the brain gives rise to the mind is pretty well established science, and demonstrated by everthing from injury to direct stimulation of the brain. Second, you haven't answered my question - what non-physical thing generates your "intelligent causation" and how does it do so?
"Evolution and natural selection is the cause of most, if not all, variation in the biological world."
This is simply false. Natural selection has not been able to explain hardly anything. It is simply invoked.
It's "simply involked" because evolution explains so much about the world. There are so many examples that it isn't worth restating the arguments, the same way that we don't rehash theories of gravity every time we build something that takes advantage of it. If paleontologists need a detailed analysis of the evolution of every trait before they can say it evolved, then astronomers need to do equally detailed studies to show that a star really is fusing hydrogen before they say it's heated by fusion.
As for most of your examples, nothing in evolutionary theory states that other processes can't alter genes or that variations have to be completely random.
Natural selection... is a conservative, not a creative process. And random mutation has too big of a search space to do anything productive.
Natural selection can't produce anything new by itself, it needs the variation and replication components as well. As for the search space, noone is suggesting that the search is exhaustive, it just has to occationally find improvements.
Please tell me what the evidence is that (a) everything shares a common ancestor, and that (b) random mutation + natural selection is sufficient for creating the diversity that exists today from that common ancestor. If you want to be really adventurous, you can also show how (c) life could have proceeded from non-life.
A: The fact that living things can be put into categories that share characteristics, including arbitrary ones, is strong evidence that they share some ancestors. Every type of bird, almost without exception, has feathers, hollow bones, beaks and wings, lays eggs, and has a high metabolism along with a host of other characteristics. This is the hallmark of diversification from a commons source, the way language similarities show common cultural background.
B: Evolution is clearly sufficient to explain breeding done by humans and the development of creatures in recorded history. I guess I don't know what you want - when you find a pile of prehistoric ash, what do you need to prove that something burned? What form of an answer would satisfy you?
C: The origin of life is a separate area of biology, and one that is new enough to not have a single core theory the way that inheritable change has evolution. On the other hand, there are plenty of hypotheses giving it a shot. More importantly, there's no scientific explanation out there right now for the origin of life other than ones that include abiogenesis.
Also, while we're at it, you could try showing how choice can arise through material mechanisms. If choice can't arise through material mechanisms, then either (a) choice as a real entity doesn't exist, or (b) a material view of origins is insufficient.
Now you've switched from science to philosophy. If you're talking about free will and conciousness, we don't know enough about them to say what they really are, let alone how they arose. If you don't think a physical mechanism could possibly work, just let me know how a non-physical one would.
Go ahead and assume I'm a "bigot"
Think to yourself for a moment about what you said. That there is a CONSENSUS among researchers on this subject.
I've never called you a bigot, nor have I talked about a consensus. If someone else is being a jerk, please direct your comments toward them. I am trying to correct a factual inaccuracy on your part, just so that others don't start repeating your erroneous statement.
Your facts are incorrect... mounds of contradictory evidence
I'm sorry, but every scientific, large-scale, peer-reviewed study has concluded that the only statistically signifigant difference in the welfare of children raised by heterosexual and homosexual couples is that the latter are more likely to experience harassment. If there are "mounds" of evidence to suggest otherwise, please cite one peer-reviewed study in a major sociology (or other) journal.
It always amazes me when people like you have the nerve to talk down to others because you think your ideology is superior, then resort to lying in order to make your case.
This has nothing to do with ideology, but with lying in order to back up post-hoc reasoning to prop up a moral position. The only reason I have to talk down to you is that you want to prevent someone from doing something based on a "harm" that you can't prove exists, and then you made up a "fact" to show the "harm".
Aren't we allowed to have the opinion that they both suck?
(Futurama psudo-quote)
Yes, but they won't listen. Everybody is always in favor of getting rid of politicians, but start planning assasinations, and "Ooooooh!" suddenly you've gone too far!
The other reply to your post covered most of what I wanted to say, and probably more eloquently than I could have done, so I'll just address these points:
I believe there is another criteria for rights which I have not yet discussed - uniqueness.
If I change the seed of the (non-running) AI's random number generator, it would (probably) be unique, but I don't see how that would suddenly grant the AI rights.
"Potential matters" is the only one that I find consistent - by which I mean it does not lead me to conclusions that I am highly convinced are false.
The problem I have with this is that "potential" is too vague to set the point at which rights are gained. For you, the "sperm and egg" stage is too early, the "brainwaves start" stage is too late, but the "conception" stage is just right. That's fine, but these are all points on a continuum, and without further information, your choice seems arbitrary.
You also seem to have a different point for humans and AIs. The AIs have to wait until they have unique experiences, but humans get theirs well before that. Why?
Even though every significant scientific study on homosexual parents directly contradicts this view.
I will do whatever I can to help ban gay marriage for this reason alone.
It's sad to know that a gut feeling, unsupported by any facts or reasoned arguments, is enough to get someone to dedicate their life to limiting other people's freedom.
The "potential matters" principle is the only one that is consistent across a wide-range of situations.
Couldn't you be overstating you case just a bit? The only one?
What about the "past matters" principle? When you're awake you have rights, including the right to "come back" from sleep or being in a coma. Your AI has rights, including the right to expect to be brought back. As for Terry Shiavo, her past self essentially no longer exists and can't be brought back, so there's noone that has rights in that case. Human beings that aren't old enough to have any past or current experiences don't have rights. As for the AI, before it was turned on, it has no right that would require you do do so.
On the other hand, if we go with "potential matters", we still have to draw a line at some point in time. You seem to feel that conception is the appropriate point, but the idea that masterbation and contraceptives are evil because they block potential human life has a long history, too. As for your AI, does it get rights when it's conceved of, written, compiled or executed? I'm not saying that you're wrong about the point you've chosen, but "potential matters" isn't enough to set that point without adding in some other principle.
So now, you either are stuck with arresting people for manslaughter when they run over a cat and putting Fido on trial for killing a rabbit, or permitting infanticide. Which do you prefer?
Infanticide. It has a long history in most cultures and has only recently been seen as universally bad. Besides, shouting "Infanticide!" is a blatant appeal to emotions, not to principle.
On the other hand, there are ways to avoid your dilemma. We do have animal crulety laws that have a sliding scale based on how close they are to us (maybe not genetically, but by how close we feel). Infant's rights would fit nicely between apes' rights and adult humans' rights - can't be killed, but can't vote, either.
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis argues that individuals experience the world based on the words they possess. Sapir and Whorf asked people to describe how many stripes or bands they saw in a rainbow. Since rainbows are actually a continuum of color, there are no empirical stripes or bands, and yet people saw as many bands as their language possessed primary color words.
A separate angle on linguistic determinism maintains that language is the only thing that is ever known.
Only the strongest types of linguistic determinism state that "language *is* thought", as you put it. Sapir-Whorf is a much looser variety that just suggests that language has a strong influence on how someone thinks. The idea that S&W were trying to say that you don't think in other ways, such as in images or feelings, is just silly.
Yep. The usual argument is that you can choose your behavior, but not your preferences. Meaning, for example, you can choose to eat vanilla ice cream rather than chocolate, but you can't choose to like vanilla better than chocolate. The throw away argument is "Maybe you could choose to be gay, but I couldn't!"
You decide upon your political allegiances.
I don't really think you do. Could you choose to be a neo-nazi? 'Cause I couldn't.
You decide upon your religion beliefs.
Again, I have to disagree. I could see an experience or a new line of thinking changing my beliefs, but I can't imagine just changing my mind for no reason.
Slashdot Mirror
In Stalinist America, people are instituted to ensure the rights of the government!
I don't have children, but they steal money from me to pay for schools.
I don't drive, but they steal from me to build roads.
I don't read, but they steal from me to build libraries.
Taxation is much like theft - the thug, king, or legislature takes what is yours and uses it for their own purposes. The good news is that as we moved up the scale, the thieves get more responsive to your needs. Thugs and pirates will do whatever they feel like because they have no long term interest in you, kings and mafias have an interest in keeping you alive and productive just so they can steal more from you later, and legislators have to spend a lot of time trying to buy voter support. Until we come up with a better system it's best to stick with theft by representative government, but it's still theft.
Nobody is stopping you from using the color red. Knock yourself out.
I have a natural right to apply a blunt force instrument to your skull until you die
That's news to me, and I'm pretty sure that's new to the concept of natural rights.
however most governments have decided to regulate both the RF spectrum and murder as it is a generally held belief it is beneficial to the majority.
My government regulates murder because it violates individual rights, not because it's beneficial to the majority. As for RF spectrum, at least some oversight might make sense, but the usual justifications are based on outdated technology and a desire to maintain the status quo.
Bullying should be treated in law as what it is - an assault on the person.
You may disdain childhood violence, but children aren't capable of being reasonable, and violence in kind earns respect.
It's nice to know that the pathetic bravado you seem so proud of is something that has to be backed up by kids. It's also amazing that someone hiding among the women and children can still call someone a "pussy" without feeling humiliated.
Back under your rock, coward.
What about it? Outside of contracts that have already been signed, both can do what they like. If the employee can quit because the new boss is black, the employer should have the same liberty. And I can't imagine you're saying that people should be forced to keep working at their current job if they want to quit, even if their reason is immoral.
not firing anyone based on race, sex, religion and age which are protected by Constitution.
No. The state can't discriminate based on those traits because of the Constitution. Discrimination by individuals or companies is a matter for the legislature, not the Constitution.
Someone puts business in public
Private businesses, even publicly traded ones, are't public, by definition. "Public accomodation" is a legal fiction, like "corporate personhood", that allows the government to do things that it otherwise could not.
I rather have woman date me regardless.
Women only? You intolerant bigot! Big hairy men need lovin', too!
Anyway, my point is, it's your life and your freedom, not other's you are affecting when it comes to your personal relationship.
That's just silly. If I don't date redheads, blacks or men that definitely does affect them.
My real point is that you've drawn an odd line around personal freedom, based on the areas of life that are touched by money. I can avoid being friends with black people, write books about how they were better of under slavery and put up a "Die, Nigger, Die!" poster in my room, all as part of being free, but if I advertise for a white roommate, then I've suddenly done something illegal?
You've taken "The right to swing your arm ends at my nose" and added "unless money changes hands or certain groups are affected". Why?
Any tips for the not-yet-so-lucky?
Nice, funniest thing I've read today. But what if it's a girl? Would that turn her into Buffy, or she-hulk?
Great, let's legalize assault! Life is so much better when roving bands of bullies/the mob are going around demanding lunch money/protection money.
Oh, right - violence is only good for children.
Your answer is to run away to someone in charge, and that just exacerbates the problem.
Since you won't call the cops, I think that some of my buddies and I should come over to your place and see if you have anything we could use...
Hey, you've inspired me! I'm gonna go home and slap my wife and kids around, and if they complain, I'll tell them to quit being pussies. I mean, I'm bigger than they are, and my friends are higher status than theirs (bankers and local politicians vs housewives and kids), so the situation's almost identical to school bullying.
Thanks for the tip! I'll never be a pussy again!
You'd think an additional 400M would be rather obvious.
Error correction failed - output expected:
Please reboot operator.
Yep!
Your new boss comes over and fire you for not being "his/her" kind. That's a pro-choice, right?
But if they fire you because you remind them of their ex-*friend or their mother inlaw, that's fine?
Your landlord tells you that he/she is not renewing your lease because you are not his/her kind. Pro-choice right?
But if I discover I'm a "cat person", and want a cat, they can kick me out?
Gas attendant doesn't want to serve your kind. Pro-choice? Yup.
So they lose me as a customer, and unbiased people get more business. Jerks losing money is a bad thing?
Your application for a loan is turned down because Bank doesn't want your kind running business in the neighborhood. Pro-choice! yeah~
If they don't want to give you money, why should they be forced to? It belongs to them.
Your kind can't use his/her kind's bathroom because bathroom isn't for your kind. Pro-choice written all over.
"Bathroom is for paying customers only".
Your kind can't shop at his/her kind's store. You have to walk 20 miles down the road to shop at your kind's store. Pro-choice is the brand of that sneaker!
So we outlaw FUBU and women-only gyms?
Get the point?
No. You seem to think that when it comes to friends, family, associates, business partners, lovers, spouses, and people that ask me for dates I can discriminate freely by sex, age, intelligence, politics, race, beauty and kindness, but when it comes to employees and renters, and certain kinds of discrimination, you make a literal federal case out of stopping me. Freedom that stops when money chages hands isn't freedom.
I have no idea where someone would get that idea. Money is just a standard commodity that's used in exchanges a lot. Gold used to be used all the time because you could carry a small fortune in your pocket, it was easy to test to make sure it was real, and could be split into pieces easily.
While it does have that cost built into it, the gold has *extra* value
I'm sorry, but it doesn't. If I dug up a pound of gold (under a gold standard) it would affect the economy the same way digging up a ton of iron (or whatever the real equivilant would be). The only difference is that you would see prices and wages go up, but only because they're quoted in terms of gold. The number of hours of labor per loaf of bread wouldn't be affected.
The person printing money pays...
That's because we use fiat (artificial) currency. If it cost $X to make a coin/bill worth $X, there'd be no reason to make counterfiting a crime. When gold costs a certain amount, it's because that's what it takes (roughly) to get it out of the ground; when a dollar is worth a certain amount, it's because the government keeps dollars rare.
So basically, if you base currency on anything *other* than symbolic records, you create a legitimate way to upset the functioning of currency.
Only by finding large, new deposits - normal mining only adds small, predictable ammounts to the economy. And adding any large, unpredicted amounts of almost anything will cause some kind of disruption anyway, like the way the tech boom altered our economy. Keep in mind large-scale disruptions still happen now when a government lowers interest rates too much for too long, and inflation means we have to quote old prices in "1980 dollars" anyway.
The only real difference between fiat and commodity money (or private currency) is that it gives the government (the only group legally allowed to print it) more control over the economy. Some people point to Greenspan and Burnake as an example of the good use of that control, others point to the Great Depression and the hyperinflation that's happened in many countries as examples of the bad side of it.
Holy frig! You can't be serious!
When the US government, Bill Gates or IBM owes you money, that's a good thing for you. When you owe yourself money, that's playing make-believe.
When you, Bill Gates, or IBM owe the government money, that's good for the government's bottom line. When the government owes itself money, it's playing games to make itself look good.
True, but my point was based around "share[d] characteristics, including arbitrary ones". Bats and birds have similar lifestyles, and in many ways have similar physiology. The fact that there aren't any feathered, echolocating, viviparous creatures with beaks, or any other similar "hybrid" is strong evidence of evolution and the pattern of development that lead to the creatures that do exist.
Evolutionists can just say "evolution did it!", come up with a good story, and be done.
Just as astrophysicists involk gravity, chemists assume the existance of chemical bonds and docters assume that your flu is caused by a virus. These theories are so well established, based on rigerous investigation, that there's no reason to doubt that they're true even when we can't (or don't care to) prove it for a particualar case.
In a large enough search space, this simply won't happen.
Talk to anyone who's studied genetic algorithms. Heck, even with simple hill-climbing you don't need to sample that much of the search space, and even the first iteration almost always leads to some improvement.
Behe is simply looking at changes involving a few amino acids.
Behe has perfected a psudo-argument based on a lack of imagination - "I can't imagine how evolution could to this, so it didn't!". Even if he did find something that can't be explained in terms of evolution right now, that doesn't prove that it never can be.
Darwinism has never shown how it can be the origin of complex systems or traits.
Richard Dawkins has a very clearly written bit about the development of the eye in several different books. Also, many of the blueprints that have been developed with genetic algorithms are better than the best human-designed ones, and some are even so unusual that we can't explain how they work. Would Behe suggest that a superior intelligence is responsible for them as well?
Why cannot intelligent causes be considered in the origin of life?
They could be, but as long as non-intelligent reasons are sufficient, and they are in the opinion of most biologists, there's no reason to postulate that. Second, the only evidence for intelligent design is "current theories aren't enough", which would only suggests that we need a new theory, not which one we should go with. On top of that, we have a natural urge to see intelligence in non-intelligent things, the same way we see faces in random designs, so we have to be careful to avoid "thunder is the wrath of god" theories.
The original name for science was "natural philosophy". To say that you are doing one or the other only is essentially making an arbitrary demarcation.
Science may be a branch of philosophy, but it's quite different than any of the other ones. To say otherwise is just silly.
The same way it works in every day life. I create all sorts of things in my job. My creative acts are not predetermined by physics, but arise out of my own intelligent causation. It is _limitted_ by physics, but not determined by it.
First of all, there's no evidence that creativity (or anything else, for that matter) isn't caused by physical events. The idea that the brain gives rise to the mind is pretty well established science, and demonstrated by everthing from injury to direct stimulation of the brain. Second, you haven't answered my question - what non-physical thing generates your "intelligent causation" and how does it do so?
This is simply false. Natural selection has not been able to explain hardly anything. It is simply invoked.
It's "simply involked" because evolution explains so much about the world. There are so many examples that it isn't worth restating the arguments, the same way that we don't rehash theories of gravity every time we build something that takes advantage of it. If paleontologists need a detailed analysis of the evolution of every trait before they can say it evolved, then astronomers need to do equally detailed studies to show that a star really is fusing hydrogen before they say it's heated by fusion.
As for most of your examples, nothing in evolutionary theory states that other processes can't alter genes or that variations have to be completely random.
Natural selection ... is a conservative, not a creative process. And random mutation has too big of a search space to do anything productive.
Natural selection can't produce anything new by itself, it needs the variation and replication components as well. As for the search space, noone is suggesting that the search is exhaustive, it just has to occationally find improvements.
Please tell me what the evidence is that (a) everything shares a common ancestor, and that (b) random mutation + natural selection is sufficient for creating the diversity that exists today from that common ancestor. If you want to be really adventurous, you can also show how (c) life could have proceeded from non-life.
A: The fact that living things can be put into categories that share characteristics, including arbitrary ones, is strong evidence that they share some ancestors. Every type of bird, almost without exception, has feathers, hollow bones, beaks and wings, lays eggs, and has a high metabolism along with a host of other characteristics. This is the hallmark of diversification from a commons source, the way language similarities show common cultural background.
B: Evolution is clearly sufficient to explain breeding done by humans and the development of creatures in recorded history. I guess I don't know what you want - when you find a pile of prehistoric ash, what do you need to prove that something burned? What form of an answer would satisfy you?
C: The origin of life is a separate area of biology, and one that is new enough to not have a single core theory the way that inheritable change has evolution. On the other hand, there are plenty of hypotheses giving it a shot. More importantly, there's no scientific explanation out there right now for the origin of life other than ones that include abiogenesis.
Also, while we're at it, you could try showing how choice can arise through material mechanisms. If choice can't arise through material mechanisms, then either (a) choice as a real entity doesn't exist, or (b) a material view of origins is insufficient.
Now you've switched from science to philosophy. If you're talking about free will and conciousness, we don't know enough about them to say what they really are, let alone how they arose. If you don't think a physical mechanism could possibly work, just let me know how a non-physical one would.
Think to yourself for a moment about what you said. That there is a CONSENSUS among researchers on this subject.
I've never called you a bigot, nor have I talked about a consensus. If someone else is being a jerk, please direct your comments toward them. I am trying to correct a factual inaccuracy on your part, just so that others don't start repeating your erroneous statement.
Your facts are incorrect ... mounds of contradictory evidence
I'm sorry, but every scientific, large-scale, peer-reviewed study has concluded that the only statistically signifigant difference in the welfare of children raised by heterosexual and homosexual couples is that the latter are more likely to experience harassment. If there are "mounds" of evidence to suggest otherwise, please cite one peer-reviewed study in a major sociology (or other) journal.
It always amazes me when people like you have the nerve to talk down to others because you think your ideology is superior, then resort to lying in order to make your case.
This has nothing to do with ideology, but with lying in order to back up post-hoc reasoning to prop up a moral position. The only reason I have to talk down to you is that you want to prevent someone from doing something based on a "harm" that you can't prove exists, and then you made up a "fact" to show the "harm".
(Futurama psudo-quote)
Yes, but they won't listen. Everybody is always in favor of getting rid of politicians, but start planning assasinations, and "Ooooooh!" suddenly you've gone too far!
(\Futurama psudo-quote)
I believe there is another criteria for rights which I have not yet discussed - uniqueness.
If I change the seed of the (non-running) AI's random number generator, it would (probably) be unique, but I don't see how that would suddenly grant the AI rights.
"Potential matters" is the only one that I find consistent - by which I mean it does not lead me to conclusions that I am highly convinced are false.
The problem I have with this is that "potential" is too vague to set the point at which rights are gained. For you, the "sperm and egg" stage is too early, the "brainwaves start" stage is too late, but the "conception" stage is just right. That's fine, but these are all points on a continuum, and without further information, your choice seems arbitrary.
You also seem to have a different point for humans and AIs. The AIs have to wait until they have unique experiences, but humans get theirs well before that. Why?
Even though every significant scientific study on homosexual parents directly contradicts this view.
I will do whatever I can to help ban gay marriage for this reason alone.
It's sad to know that a gut feeling, unsupported by any facts or reasoned arguments, is enough to get someone to dedicate their life to limiting other people's freedom.
You're right. So when are you getting yourself sterilized?
Couldn't you be overstating you case just a bit? The only one?
What about the "past matters" principle? When you're awake you have rights, including the right to "come back" from sleep or being in a coma. Your AI has rights, including the right to expect to be brought back. As for Terry Shiavo, her past self essentially no longer exists and can't be brought back, so there's noone that has rights in that case. Human beings that aren't old enough to have any past or current experiences don't have rights. As for the AI, before it was turned on, it has no right that would require you do do so.
On the other hand, if we go with "potential matters", we still have to draw a line at some point in time. You seem to feel that conception is the appropriate point, but the idea that masterbation and contraceptives are evil because they block potential human life has a long history, too. As for your AI, does it get rights when it's conceved of, written, compiled or executed? I'm not saying that you're wrong about the point you've chosen, but "potential matters" isn't enough to set that point without adding in some other principle.
So now, you either are stuck with arresting people for manslaughter when they run over a cat and putting Fido on trial for killing a rabbit, or permitting infanticide. Which do you prefer?
Infanticide. It has a long history in most cultures and has only recently been seen as universally bad. Besides, shouting "Infanticide!" is a blatant appeal to emotions, not to principle.
On the other hand, there are ways to avoid your dilemma. We do have animal crulety laws that have a sliding scale based on how close they are to us (maybe not genetically, but by how close we feel). Infant's rights would fit nicely between apes' rights and adult humans' rights - can't be killed, but can't vote, either.
Only the strongest types of linguistic determinism state that "language *is* thought", as you put it. Sapir-Whorf is a much looser variety that just suggests that language has a strong influence on how someone thinks. The idea that S&W were trying to say that you don't think in other ways, such as in images or feelings, is just silly.
Yep. The usual argument is that you can choose your behavior, but not your preferences. Meaning, for example, you can choose to eat vanilla ice cream rather than chocolate, but you can't choose to like vanilla better than chocolate. The throw away argument is "Maybe you could choose to be gay, but I couldn't!"
You decide upon your political allegiances.
I don't really think you do. Could you choose to be a neo-nazi? 'Cause I couldn't.
You decide upon your religion beliefs.
Again, I have to disagree. I could see an experience or a new line of thinking changing my beliefs, but I can't imagine just changing my mind for no reason.
Sure, why not? It's more realistic than the race war they have in there now.
Besides, I would get a good laugh every time I saw a Pro-Lifer hack a bunch of people to death.
Two words: "Urban legend"