The polar bears just need to adapt to their changing environment. Instead of roaming around on the ice, looking for people to eat, they should go back to school, and try to find a way to get some of the new jobs with the shipping industry that will presumably be opening up there. We should let the bears know that these guys have been successful, and that the rest of them can be too
To be fair, though, we (meaning the West) have already pumped a lot of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere as part of the industrialization of countries. The idea that we have already gotten to do this, and are now rich enough and have enough infrastructure to be able to start spending some money on being industrial in a cleaner way, while many less developed countries still need to spend invest a lot of money in the initial infrastructure that are needed to be industrial at all, is not outrageous. Of course, the details are always what matter, and I don't know the exact details of the Kyoto treaty, but it is wrong to dismiss it as being clearly unfair (rather than simply not in the US's interests) because China's greenhouse emission is treated differently than the US's is (which, I think, is what you are implying with your post.)
I think a better response may be that while the treatment of an individual patient may have an element that is non-scientific, that treatment is supposed to be motivated by studies on groups of patients that are scientific, and also by deductive reason. I am not an MD, but I would suppose that there will always be an art to treating an individual- after all, science deals with the common behaviors of many people, but an individual can always behave in some strange way that deviates from the norm. But individual Feng Shui treatments are not motivated by a body of knowledge that can in any way be said to be scientific in the modern sense of the word.
Which, of course, is exactly what nintendo wants to- pull a pepsi. Rather than winning in the existing market, they want to expand the market for games, the same way that pepsi expanded the market for processed drinks.
I don't think you are giving classical mechanics enough credit. Sure, it is wrong on several accounts. But it some ways, it seems to have gotten things fundamentally right, in a way that I personally think almost seems to transcend the mathematics. For example, the idea of conservation of energy and momentum seems to be preserved in some form over and over again. And remember that QM is still in the language of classical mechanics. We of course talk about, for example, quantum mechanical Hamiltonians and Lagrangians, which are extremely analogous to their classical counterparts. Sure, we have to through Heisenberg's uncertainty principle into the mix. I'm not trying to marginalize how radically different quantum mechanics is from classical mechanics. But the fact that it is so different, and yet so many of our concepts do carry over, hints to me that some of those concepts are more than ad hoc approximations, and can't be dismissed as simply wrong.
Otherwise, allow me to carry a weapon with me at all times and places so that I can protect myself
Carrying your own weapon to protect yourself against terrorism- I don't know if this is misguided or foolish, but this desire for self reliance is sure inherently American. But remember that it's not you who is going to do these wiretaps- its the government. Giving the government this sort of power is not so in accordance with our best American ideals.
This might as well be an inditement of modern society as a whole. Most of the statement can be just as much about adults as children. And it's true that children and adults probably don't spend enough time outside. But there is a trade off- the computer brings unsocial or antisocial games like grand theft auto which perhaps don't challenge the imagination as much as a good book does, but it also brings todays children a much greater sense of community than anyone has had before which DOES challenge the imagination. Just look at slashdot- teens who read slashdot get the direct opinions of other people from all over the world. For example, maybe if the American people had been allowed to speak with the Iraqi people over the internet, they would have had the imagination to be able to find an alternative to going to war.
You have to be careful. Evolution is of course not going anywhere. But I (a physicist) made a post sort of like this at one point (sorry, I don't have a subscription, and can't go back far enough to find it), and a seemingly biologist-type-person linked me to a number of big questions the biologists have with what I have always heard called the "modern synthesis", the idea that DNA carries the hereditary information that Darwin talked about in his evolution. Evidently, there are a lot of big questions for whether there are other structures beyond DNA that could carry hereditary information. For example, the lack of number of genes in the human genome is one such problem that I remember.
no such thing as a humanity gene
on
Humanity Gene Found?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
There is more to being human than genes and flesh. A baby is raised without human contact may grow up to be a human being, but certainly not a functional human being. And homo sapiens existed for tens, or hundreds, of thousands of years before acquiring religion, language, art, etc., aspects of civilization we consider important parts of our humanity. Isn't the most we could ever find a gene that allows us to be human? To make an analogy, ink allowed the original manuscript of Hamlet to be Hamlet, but it's not a Hamlet material. It doesn't contain the essence of Hamlet-ness in any meaningful sense.
Well, I've read a lot of reviews about the newest MMOs, so I feel like I have some idea of them. And I've played (briefly) a couple text-based MUDs within the last couple of years. The player-vs-player side seems to have advanced a lot, but the player-vs-environment seems practically identical to what it was 15 years ago.
I'll have to check out Mission: Thunderbolt. Looks pretty cool:-)
One last thing: I'm a physicist, and if anytime a physics article comes up a bunch people can post "So I guess/all scientists are wrong then..." - which I don't mind, by the way - then I can post "I love Nethack, don't know about any game other than nethack" when the MMORG article comes up:-P
I don't think skills vs classes matters all that much. Case and point- nethack (sorry, I'm going to whine a little about nethack is better than EVERYTHING;-P). Nethack has classes, but I never feel confined when playing it. Every nethack character has the simple goal of retrieving the amulet of yendor- it is a hack 'n' slash, after all. But somehow there are enough items in the game, and they interact in unique enough ways, that every game plays out differently. In other words, there is strategy. So you play the game for its own sake. I haven't played any of the new, commercial MMORG, but I played different MUDs (text-based MMORGs, for those who are too young to know) back in the day, but skill or class based, I always got bored of them, because there was very little of what I would call "reason-based" strategy. You found a good area, went and typed "kill foo" (now I suppose you click on foo), and you killed it or didn't. Rinse and repeat. Sure, as a player you get better, but this is mostly due to better knowledge, not better reason-based strategy. Then the entire strategy becomes shaping the character, which doesn't matter all that much anyway, since you are just typing "kill foo" or "cast fireball foo" or "alias kill=cast fireball; kill foo" anyway. So we get into having to suspend belief as to the differences in characters. (We also have to suspend belief as to the importance of leveling your character as a goal, since the game play doesn't stand completely on its own.) This is where the skills vs classes comes in. Classes make you choose between a character with a strong close attack, a strong ranged attack, or OK close and ranged attacks. Is this enough to suspend belief that you have a real choice in strategy when you type "kill foo"? Or do you need a skill-based system which allows you to be able to choose a character with a better-than-OK close attack, and a crappy-but-still-sort-of-useful range attack? What we need are MMORG that take real strategy. I don't now, maybe World of Warcraft, for example, has this. I have never played it, as I said but I have read a lot about it. And I would think that if it did, the emphasis wouldn't be on improving gameplay of exisitng levels and classes, not putting more high level content or adding more classes.
On a slightly different topic, I've heard that people really play these games for the social interaction, not the gameplay, which is fine, but I wish that someone would figure out how to implement permadeath in a fun way and effective way. Then we would start seeing real politics in MMORGs (and I might try such a game.)
Human beings and other primates clearly have very important differences. We have art, religion, science, civilization. We also have moral self-awareness. Do these differences give us greater moral worth than other primates? I'm not sure. You certainly haven't proven that we have the same moral worth. Instead, with no justification you have taken this to be the default position, and put the burden of proof on any claim otherwise. Ideally, we would have the luxury to try to advance science without killing animals. But this costs human lives. I would rather bet on the worth of human lives than of primate lives.
Might as well say that Jesus' doctrines lead to the slaughter of Jews and Muslims during the first crusade. Jesus' teachings were used as a power-play by the pope, and ideas put in the language of Darwin were used as part of a power grab by Hitler.
The invading Mongol hordes decimated Islam, just like Russia. And religion cultivated thought in both Christendom, and Islam. The difference is that Islam rejected Greek Reason for orthodoxy, while Christendom embraced the Greeks, and had the enlightenment.
You are comparing the scientific elite with the common worshiper. Take a look at the common scientific beliefs in the USA, say, and you will find can be just as irrational and superstitious as religious beliefs. But of course, my guess is that you would instinctively lump them in with religious beliefs. This is the problem- when we say science, we inevitably mean only the beliefs of the scientific elite. When we say religion, we typically aren't referring to the beliefs of, say, the university theologians, who are the intellectual equivalents of the scientists. Instead, we mean whatever aspects of the belief system of the masses has gained political traction. These are the beliefs of people who often have to worry about getting their kids through college more than logical consistency or the need to always push the limits of imagination. Finally, to say that science is reason, while religion is faith, is a vast oversimplification. True, religion places emphasis, maybe even preeminence, on personal revelation, which science can never accept. But science is not based on pure reason, and does require assumptions, and the christian tradition makes extensive use of reason.
It is a good point that one of the embryos could grow up to cure cancer much earlier than would otherwise be done, say, although my understanding that the chance of one of the IVF embryos becoming a person is more or less zero. But then, one of the saved diseased persons could him/herself cure cancer, or one of his/her children could. Alternatively, one of the fetuses could be the next Hitler, and aid in the deaths of millions. In physics, we would call these sorts of probabilities "second order effects," which simply means that these chances are getting so small that it is too much work to worry about them. No, I think that mainly, when we argue over this issue we are comparing only two different kinds of potential - potentially saving actual lives versus actually saving potential lives. (Although my understanding that the chance that one of the IVF embryos becoming a person is more or less zero.) The conservative argument tends to be that a potential life is the same as an actual life, in fact IS an actual life, so that we should choose actually saving the potential life over potentially saving the actual life. Again, it is the reality of this choice that is given an emotional context in the example. i agree with you though that dismissing someone as a kook or hypocrite is uncalled for, and comes off as a bit childish, so I don't agree with the tone of the original post, so I agree with your original sentiment. Also, I liked your post because it referred to Buridan's Ass, which I hadn't heard of before.
But certainly we can agree that there is a chance that embryonic stem cell research will lead to actual treatments. Maybe that chance is only 1/100. Then if we must destroy 1000 embryos, we must weight 100,000 destroyed embryos versus the number of people who would be saved if the treatment worked. I think the actual number of embryos tends to be considered unimportant to the example, which implies that it is not the chance that a particular cure will be discovered (or rather be discovered faster than through some other avenue of research) is not really why the example is so effective. If that were it, then one could increase the number of embryos- at 1 million say, vs one person, then it would be easy to decide to save the embryos- and resolve the problem. Instead, what is important is that the to-term person (adult or child) is directly weighed against the embryo in a context that is easier to relate to emotionally.
It would seem, though, that this scenario is exactly what we are presented with. The question is whether to do stem cell research, presumably sacrificing embryos to save diseased child and adult lives, or to refuse to do stem cell research, presumably saving some large number of embryos, but condemning some number of diseased children and adults to death. This strikes me as more or less identical to choosing between saving a drowning child, or some large number of embryos. The only difference is the emotional context- when we talk about stem cell research, the embryos seem most real while the diseased seem abstract and hypothetical (even though they are just as real). Examples like the GP post draw attention to the fact that the diseased are real, and to the fact that to decide to save the embryos, whether it is from research or the fire or the river, requires what is essentially a conscious decision to ignore the reality of the dying adult.
That's a good point. Still (and my apologies if you, you know, really know what your talking about, because I don't) the, uh, angle could presumably still be different. Women are born with "backwards" uteruses, for example. So I would think that it wouldn't require a huge change for back-to-front to be easier than front-to-front. which is not the case in my opinion. In any case, I still think biology can easily motivate belief in a God who intends sex to be used to cement human relationships, as well as to reproduce.
A counter-argument I have heard to this - and I am pro-choice and in favor of stem cell research - is that in the event that stem cell research actually leads to treatments, to practically apply those treatments would require many more stem cells than can be supplied by IVF clinics. There was a reference for this that looked reasonable enough, but I don't remember what it was. In any case, the presumption is that these extra stem cells would come from fetuses that might not otherwise be destroyed. Anyway, a person to make this argument would have to favor ending embryonic stem cell research of any kind, I think.
Similarly, the attempt to repeat the pleasure of sex beyond the needs of procreation (birth control, gay lifestyle, etc) has generally bad results - physical, emotional, and spiritual.
I agree with you except that I think you take your examples too far. Human beings seem to have a deep psychological need for sexual intimacy. Unfortunately, they often also have a deep economic need to NOT procreate. Would you have parents that cannot afford more children not have sex anymore? The human vagina (so I've read) is positioned to encourage people to have sexual intercourse facing each other, cementing the pair bond between them. Human love is in some way reified as sex, which is acknowledged by the phrase "making love". In the language of your analogy, sex in the context of love IS nutritious, regardless of whether it leads to procreation.
Forget moralizing the release of the keywords. From a business standpoint, this was terrible for AOL. They are trying to reinvent themselves as an internet service rather than internet access that, among other things, is responsible for your computer security. My memory, at least, is that recent AOL commercials have all stressed in particular that buying AOL helps protect you against "viruses". Then they release these search results, and eviscerate this new image they were building for themselves. Heads had to roll.
I watched this sort of thing recently on the "What the heck were we thinking?" DVD I rented from netflix. Of course, Mary Jane ends up marrying the drug dealer (seriously). The funny thing is that he dresses in a 3 piece suit. The drug dealers of the 50s were evidently better dressed than the CEOs of today!:-p
This is a very scary scenario. And it certainly seem plausible. But does it actually happen? According to this report, only drugs (as in, not drugs AND alcohol) are linked with only 6% of traffic fatalities. Cocaine and/or meth (or amphetamines rather) alone was in in less than or equal to 1.3% of accidents. Now if you are one of those 1.3%, this is significant, but still, this is hardly a leading cause of traffic death.
Slashdot Mirror
The polar bears just need to adapt to their changing environment. Instead of roaming around on the ice, looking for people to eat, they should go back to school, and try to find a way to get some of the new jobs with the shipping industry that will presumably be opening up there. We should let the bears know that these guys have been successful, and that the rest of them can be too
To be fair, though, we (meaning the West) have already pumped a lot of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere as part of the industrialization of countries. The idea that we have already gotten to do this, and are now rich enough and have enough infrastructure to be able to start spending some money on being industrial in a cleaner way, while many less developed countries still need to spend invest a lot of money in the initial infrastructure that are needed to be industrial at all, is not outrageous. Of course, the details are always what matter, and I don't know the exact details of the Kyoto treaty, but it is wrong to dismiss it as being clearly unfair (rather than simply not in the US's interests) because China's greenhouse emission is treated differently than the US's is (which, I think, is what you are implying with your post.)
Hey, I'm a physicist. I recognized that both expanded the market. What more do you want from me :-)
I think a better response may be that while the treatment of an individual patient may have an element that is non-scientific, that treatment is supposed to be motivated by studies on groups of patients that are scientific, and also by deductive reason. I am not an MD, but I would suppose that there will always be an art to treating an individual- after all, science deals with the common behaviors of many people, but an individual can always behave in some strange way that deviates from the norm. But individual Feng Shui treatments are not motivated by a body of knowledge that can in any way be said to be scientific in the modern sense of the word.
Which, of course, is exactly what nintendo wants to- pull a pepsi. Rather than winning in the existing market, they want to expand the market for games, the same way that pepsi expanded the market for processed drinks.
I don't think you are giving classical mechanics enough credit. Sure, it is wrong on several accounts. But it some ways, it seems to have gotten things fundamentally right, in a way that I personally think almost seems to transcend the mathematics. For example, the idea of conservation of energy and momentum seems to be preserved in some form over and over again. And remember that QM is still in the language of classical mechanics. We of course talk about, for example, quantum mechanical Hamiltonians and Lagrangians, which are extremely analogous to their classical counterparts. Sure, we have to through Heisenberg's uncertainty principle into the mix. I'm not trying to marginalize how radically different quantum mechanics is from classical mechanics. But the fact that it is so different, and yet so many of our concepts do carry over, hints to me that some of those concepts are more than ad hoc approximations, and can't be dismissed as simply wrong.
Otherwise, allow me to carry a weapon with me at all times and places so that I can protect myself
Carrying your own weapon to protect yourself against terrorism- I don't know if this is misguided or foolish, but this desire for self reliance is sure inherently American. But remember that it's not you who is going to do these wiretaps- its the government. Giving the government this sort of power is not so in accordance with our best American ideals.
This might as well be an inditement of modern society as a whole. Most of the statement can be just as much about adults as children. And it's true that children and adults probably don't spend enough time outside. But there is a trade off- the computer brings unsocial or antisocial games like grand theft auto which perhaps don't challenge the imagination as much as a good book does, but it also brings todays children a much greater sense of community than anyone has had before which DOES challenge the imagination. Just look at slashdot- teens who read slashdot get the direct opinions of other people from all over the world. For example, maybe if the American people had been allowed to speak with the Iraqi people over the internet, they would have had the imagination to be able to find an alternative to going to war.
You have to be careful. Evolution is of course not going anywhere. But I (a physicist) made a post sort of like this at one point (sorry, I don't have a subscription, and can't go back far enough to find it), and a seemingly biologist-type-person linked me to a number of big questions the biologists have with what I have always heard called the "modern synthesis", the idea that DNA carries the hereditary information that Darwin talked about in his evolution. Evidently, there are a lot of big questions for whether there are other structures beyond DNA that could carry hereditary information. For example, the lack of number of genes in the human genome is one such problem that I remember.
There is more to being human than genes and flesh. A baby is raised without human contact may grow up to be a human being, but certainly not a functional human being. And homo sapiens existed for tens, or hundreds, of thousands of years before acquiring religion, language, art, etc., aspects of civilization we consider important parts of our humanity. Isn't the most we could ever find a gene that allows us to be human? To make an analogy, ink allowed the original manuscript of Hamlet to be Hamlet, but it's not a Hamlet material. It doesn't contain the essence of Hamlet-ness in any meaningful sense.
Well, I've read a lot of reviews about the newest MMOs, so I feel like I have some idea of them. And I've played (briefly) a couple text-based MUDs within the last couple of years. The player-vs-player side seems to have advanced a lot, but the player-vs-environment seems practically identical to what it was 15 years ago.
:-)
/all scientists are wrong then..." - which I don't mind, by the way - then I can post "I love Nethack, don't know about any game other than nethack" when the MMORG article comes up :-P
I'll have to check out Mission: Thunderbolt. Looks pretty cool
One last thing: I'm a physicist, and if anytime a physics article comes up a bunch people can post "So I guess
I don't think skills vs classes matters all that much. Case and point- nethack (sorry, I'm going to whine a little about nethack is better than EVERYTHING ;-P). Nethack has classes, but I never feel confined when playing it. Every nethack character has the simple goal of retrieving the amulet of yendor- it is a hack 'n' slash, after all. But somehow there are enough items in the game, and they interact in unique enough ways, that every game plays out differently. In other words, there is strategy. So you play the game for its own sake. I haven't played any of the new, commercial MMORG, but I played different MUDs (text-based MMORGs, for those who are too young to know) back in the day, but skill or class based, I always got bored of them, because there was very little of what I would call "reason-based" strategy. You found a good area, went and typed "kill foo" (now I suppose you click on foo), and you killed it or didn't. Rinse and repeat. Sure, as a player you get better, but this is mostly due to better knowledge, not better reason-based strategy. Then the entire strategy becomes shaping the character, which doesn't matter all that much anyway, since you are just typing "kill foo" or "cast fireball foo" or "alias kill=cast fireball; kill foo" anyway. So we get into having to suspend belief as to the differences in characters. (We also have to suspend belief as to the importance of leveling your character as a goal, since the game play doesn't stand completely on its own.) This is where the skills vs classes comes in. Classes make you choose between a character with a strong close attack, a strong ranged attack, or OK close and ranged attacks. Is this enough to suspend belief that you have a real choice in strategy when you type "kill foo"? Or do you need a skill-based system which allows you to be able to choose a character with a better-than-OK close attack, and a crappy-but-still-sort-of-useful range attack? What we need are MMORG that take real strategy. I don't now, maybe World of Warcraft, for example, has this. I have never played it, as I said but I have read a lot about it. And I would think that if it did, the emphasis wouldn't be on improving gameplay of exisitng levels and classes, not putting more high level content or adding more classes.
On a slightly different topic, I've heard that people really play these games for the social interaction, not the gameplay, which is fine, but I wish that someone would figure out how to implement permadeath in a fun way and effective way. Then we would start seeing real politics in MMORGs (and I might try such a game.)
Human beings and other primates clearly have very important differences. We have art, religion, science, civilization. We also have moral self-awareness. Do these differences give us greater moral worth than other primates? I'm not sure. You certainly haven't proven that we have the same moral worth. Instead, with no justification you have taken this to be the default position, and put the burden of proof on any claim otherwise. Ideally, we would have the luxury to try to advance science without killing animals. But this costs human lives. I would rather bet on the worth of human lives than of primate lives.
Might as well say that Jesus' doctrines lead to the slaughter of Jews and Muslims during the first crusade. Jesus' teachings were used as a power-play by the pope, and ideas put in the language of Darwin were used as part of a power grab by Hitler.
The invading Mongol hordes decimated Islam, just like Russia. And religion cultivated thought in both Christendom, and Islam. The difference is that Islam rejected Greek Reason for orthodoxy, while Christendom embraced the Greeks, and had the enlightenment.
You are comparing the scientific elite with the common worshiper. Take a look at the common scientific beliefs in the USA, say, and you will find can be just as irrational and superstitious as religious beliefs. But of course, my guess is that you would instinctively lump them in with religious beliefs. This is the problem- when we say science, we inevitably mean only the beliefs of the scientific elite. When we say religion, we typically aren't referring to the beliefs of, say, the university theologians, who are the intellectual equivalents of the scientists. Instead, we mean whatever aspects of the belief system of the masses has gained political traction. These are the beliefs of people who often have to worry about getting their kids through college more than logical consistency or the need to always push the limits of imagination. Finally, to say that science is reason, while religion is faith, is a vast oversimplification. True, religion places emphasis, maybe even preeminence, on personal revelation, which science can never accept. But science is not based on pure reason, and does require assumptions, and the christian tradition makes extensive use of reason.
It is a good point that one of the embryos could grow up to cure cancer much earlier than would otherwise be done, say, although my understanding that the chance of one of the IVF embryos becoming a person is more or less zero. But then, one of the saved diseased persons could him/herself cure cancer, or one of his/her children could. Alternatively, one of the fetuses could be the next Hitler, and aid in the deaths of millions. In physics, we would call these sorts of probabilities "second order effects," which simply means that these chances are getting so small that it is too much work to worry about them. No, I think that mainly, when we argue over this issue we are comparing only two different kinds of potential - potentially saving actual lives versus actually saving potential lives. (Although my understanding that the chance that one of the IVF embryos becoming a person is more or less zero.) The conservative argument tends to be that a potential life is the same as an actual life, in fact IS an actual life, so that we should choose actually saving the potential life over potentially saving the actual life. Again, it is the reality of this choice that is given an emotional context in the example. i agree with you though that dismissing someone as a kook or hypocrite is uncalled for, and comes off as a bit childish, so I don't agree with the tone of the original post, so I agree with your original sentiment. Also, I liked your post because it referred to Buridan's Ass, which I hadn't heard of before.
But certainly we can agree that there is a chance that embryonic stem cell research will lead to actual treatments. Maybe that chance is only 1/100. Then if we must destroy 1000 embryos, we must weight 100,000 destroyed embryos versus the number of people who would be saved if the treatment worked. I think the actual number of embryos tends to be considered unimportant to the example, which implies that it is not the chance that a particular cure will be discovered (or rather be discovered faster than through some other avenue of research) is not really why the example is so effective. If that were it, then one could increase the number of embryos- at 1 million say, vs one person, then it would be easy to decide to save the embryos- and resolve the problem. Instead, what is important is that the to-term person (adult or child) is directly weighed against the embryo in a context that is easier to relate to emotionally.
It would seem, though, that this scenario is exactly what we are presented with. The question is whether to do stem cell research, presumably sacrificing embryos to save diseased child and adult lives, or to refuse to do stem cell research, presumably saving some large number of embryos, but condemning some number of diseased children and adults to death. This strikes me as more or less identical to choosing between saving a drowning child, or some large number of embryos. The only difference is the emotional context- when we talk about stem cell research, the embryos seem most real while the diseased seem abstract and hypothetical (even though they are just as real). Examples like the GP post draw attention to the fact that the diseased are real, and to the fact that to decide to save the embryos, whether it is from research or the fire or the river, requires what is essentially a conscious decision to ignore the reality of the dying adult.
That's a good point. Still (and my apologies if you, you know, really know what your talking about, because I don't) the, uh, angle could presumably still be different. Women are born with "backwards" uteruses, for example. So I would think that it wouldn't require a huge change for back-to-front to be easier than front-to-front. which is not the case in my opinion. In any case, I still think biology can easily motivate belief in a God who intends sex to be used to cement human relationships, as well as to reproduce.
A counter-argument I have heard to this - and I am pro-choice and in favor of stem cell research - is that in the event that stem cell research actually leads to treatments, to practically apply those treatments would require many more stem cells than can be supplied by IVF clinics. There was a reference for this that looked reasonable enough, but I don't remember what it was. In any case, the presumption is that these extra stem cells would come from fetuses that might not otherwise be destroyed. Anyway, a person to make this argument would have to favor ending embryonic stem cell research of any kind, I think.
Similarly, the attempt to repeat the pleasure of sex beyond the needs of procreation (birth control, gay lifestyle, etc) has generally bad results - physical, emotional, and spiritual.
I agree with you except that I think you take your examples too far. Human beings seem to have a deep psychological need for sexual intimacy. Unfortunately, they often also have a deep economic need to NOT procreate. Would you have parents that cannot afford more children not have sex anymore? The human vagina (so I've read) is positioned to encourage people to have sexual intercourse facing each other, cementing the pair bond between them. Human love is in some way reified as sex, which is acknowledged by the phrase "making love". In the language of your analogy, sex in the context of love IS nutritious, regardless of whether it leads to procreation.
Forget moralizing the release of the keywords. From a business standpoint, this was terrible for AOL. They are trying to reinvent themselves as an internet service rather than internet access that, among other things, is responsible for your computer security. My memory, at least, is that recent AOL commercials have all stressed in particular that buying AOL helps protect you against "viruses". Then they release these search results, and eviscerate this new image they were building for themselves. Heads had to roll.
I watched this sort of thing recently on the "What the heck were we thinking?" DVD I rented from netflix. Of course, Mary Jane ends up marrying the drug dealer (seriously). The funny thing is that he dresses in a 3 piece suit. The drug dealers of the 50s were evidently better dressed than the CEOs of today! :-p
This is a very scary scenario. And it certainly seem plausible. But does it actually happen? According to this report, only drugs (as in, not drugs AND alcohol) are linked with only 6% of traffic fatalities. Cocaine and/or meth (or amphetamines rather) alone was in in less than or equal to 1.3% of accidents. Now if you are one of those 1.3%, this is significant, but still, this is hardly a leading cause of traffic death.