Much like Three Mile Island (which also didn't release any significant radiation), this will set nuclear energy back years. And with the carbon problem and increasing dependence on fossil fuels, we need it now more than every. Solar and wind aren't ready, and so much progress has been made in nuclear plant safety.
Laugh at the old Ham guys all you want. When a real disaster hits and the infrastructure goes down, I bet you'll be going to them and asking for their help.
That's an interesting point, but it would still be rather disturbingly impersonal. I bet your girlfriend wouldn't like receiving a love letter that you had bought from "Love Letters Unlimited" and just inserted her name into, would she? No matter how well-written, it just wouldn't be the same as a genuine love letter that you had actually written from the bottom of your heart (even if you suck as a writer). There is something about genuine feeling, personalized by one human directly to another, that is special.
Animals are a lot more like us than robots. Animals do have genuine emotions (anyone who thinks they don't can't have been around them very much), so it's a lot easier for us to empathize with them.
As for the distant future--well, anything is possible, of course. Personally I'm very skeptical of predictions of singularity and AI's that are genuinely conscious. Building an AI that is anything more than an imitation of life would take some pretty radical innovations in the way we think about programming (not to mention some pretty powerful/exotic hardware to back that up).
It can be *imitated*. Humans fake it too, but with them there is always at least the possibility that it's genuine. With robots, you always know it's fake. No matter how good the emulation, that's just always going to be in the back of your mind in dealing with a robot (unless you don't actually know it's a robot).
That was actually a surprisingly good movie, especially considering the cast and budget. I watched in on a lark, just to laugh at Melanie Griffin in a low-budget 80's dystopia, and actually ended up watching it all the way through. Better than a lot of her big budget crap.
There is something about a genuine human touch that is seen as empathetic, as an act of kindness. Even if we know it's disingenuous, or that it's part of a person's job, there is still something in the back of our minds that responds to it as a genuine human connection.
Robots, on the other hand, can NEVER be empathetic or kind--and we know this without a doubt. There touch isn't a connection and never can be. That introduces a creep factor that no amount of programming or human emulation can ever fix. Because we know they have no base morality or emotion and are incapable of empathy, robots will always inherently creep people out at best, or scare the shit out of them at worst.
Again, you cite your holy text as evidence for the accuracy of your holy text. I'm giving you today's "No Shit, Sherlock" award for highlighting the obvious fact that a religious text traditionally makes the founder of the religion sound like an awesome guy.
If you think the LDS is just a kind, charitable organization, you've never been around a large number of them for long. Move to Utah sometime and try to run for office without the right LDS credentials and you'll find out about their charity and kindness, alright.
Accounts of Jesus were all written decades after his death. None of them was written by anyone who actually knew him (the fact that they were all written in Greek alone would tell you that--if you knew jack shit, that is). So unless you have some Q document that you're holding back, you're just citing one incestuous, reverent source after another. Citing the Gospel of John to back up the Gospel of Matthew is like citing Brigham Young's writings to back up the Book of Mormon--just using one believer to back up another. It's not like someone has discovered a Gospel in Aramaic written by one of the actual apostles (again, unless you're holding out on us).
Neither of the sources you cited mention Jesus or the primitive Christian movement. Christianity doesn't grow large enough to be mentioned in non-biblical sources until the 2nd century. It wasn't even a blip on the radar before then.
Much as with Josephus "Iosepos", a Hellenization of "Yoseph", yes we give it the modern "J" sound. "Jesus" is actually Isoûs in Greek (/. doesn't recognize Greek letters, unfortunately, but you can go look it up if you like). Not that it would have mattered to him either way. To him his name was always Yoshua Ben Yoseph.
Israel, Judea, Palestine. It's like calling Yoshua Ben Yoseph "Jesus," when he himself would have never heard that name in his life (unless the Romans called him that briefly at his trial, right before nailing him to a cross). Or maybe you bible-thumpers think J.C. spoke Greek and hung out with the Romans too (a notion even more laughable than him being literate).
If you're serious about wanting to read some scholarly research on literacy in first century Palestine (and not just a bible-thumping apologist for your hero J.C., as I suspect), you can go read any number of books and articles by Werner Kelber. He'll fill you in on all you want to know (though I suspect you'll just want to argue with him too).
Incidentally, you know what the generally agreed upon literacy rate estimate was for that region at that time? It was approximately 1.5%-3% (depending on who you ask). But again, maybe you think your peasant hero was in that tiny minority.
I also can't disprove the Book of Mormon's assertion that an angel came to Joseph Smith and told him to fuck a bunch of young girls and assume command of the church. Therefore it MUST be true. The burden of proof falls on me to prove that this WASN'T true, after all, and we do know that many of the events described in the Book of Mormon are historically accurate.
You're confusing modern Judaism with what can be more accurately called "the Hebrew religion" of Jesus's time. He was a country carpenter in the first century, decades before before the Temple was destroyed.
Jews have always had a pretty large emphasis on being able to read.
No, they haven't. That's a relatively modern thing, which evolved long after AD 70 (when modern Talmudic Judiasim was effectively born). Country Jews in Jesus's time were nothing like modern Jews.
Your modern conception of "middle class" is laughably ill-suited for first century Israel (especially Galilee), as are modern Jewish ideas of the importance of literacy and education. But believe what you like.
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Much like Three Mile Island (which also didn't release any significant radiation), this will set nuclear energy back years. And with the carbon problem and increasing dependence on fossil fuels, we need it now more than every. Solar and wind aren't ready, and so much progress has been made in nuclear plant safety.
Laugh at the old Ham guys all you want. When a real disaster hits and the infrastructure goes down, I bet you'll be going to them and asking for their help.
Wow, that's almost a full tank of gas.
That's an interesting point, but it would still be rather disturbingly impersonal. I bet your girlfriend wouldn't like receiving a love letter that you had bought from "Love Letters Unlimited" and just inserted her name into, would she? No matter how well-written, it just wouldn't be the same as a genuine love letter that you had actually written from the bottom of your heart (even if you suck as a writer). There is something about genuine feeling, personalized by one human directly to another, that is special.
Well, I didn't say they don't have their uses of course...
Animals are a lot more like us than robots. Animals do have genuine emotions (anyone who thinks they don't can't have been around them very much), so it's a lot easier for us to empathize with them.
As for the distant future--well, anything is possible, of course. Personally I'm very skeptical of predictions of singularity and AI's that are genuinely conscious. Building an AI that is anything more than an imitation of life would take some pretty radical innovations in the way we think about programming (not to mention some pretty powerful/exotic hardware to back that up).
Empathy and kindness can be programmed
It can be *imitated*. Humans fake it too, but with them there is always at least the possibility that it's genuine. With robots, you always know it's fake. No matter how good the emulation, that's just always going to be in the back of your mind in dealing with a robot (unless you don't actually know it's a robot).
That was actually a surprisingly good movie, especially considering the cast and budget. I watched in on a lark, just to laugh at Melanie Griffin in a low-budget 80's dystopia, and actually ended up watching it all the way through. Better than a lot of her big budget crap.
Obviously you haven't ever seen my priest.
There is something about a genuine human touch that is seen as empathetic, as an act of kindness. Even if we know it's disingenuous, or that it's part of a person's job, there is still something in the back of our minds that responds to it as a genuine human connection.
Robots, on the other hand, can NEVER be empathetic or kind--and we know this without a doubt. There touch isn't a connection and never can be. That introduces a creep factor that no amount of programming or human emulation can ever fix. Because we know they have no base morality or emotion and are incapable of empathy, robots will always inherently creep people out at best, or scare the shit out of them at worst.
The coldest brown dwarf ever was that elf in Bad Santa.
Again, you cite your holy text as evidence for the accuracy of your holy text. I'm giving you today's "No Shit, Sherlock" award for highlighting the obvious fact that a religious text traditionally makes the founder of the religion sound like an awesome guy.
If you think the LDS is just a kind, charitable organization, you've never been around a large number of them for long. Move to Utah sometime and try to run for office without the right LDS credentials and you'll find out about their charity and kindness, alright.
Religion has everything to do with everything in Utah.
Accounts of Jesus were all written decades after his death. None of them was written by anyone who actually knew him (the fact that they were all written in Greek alone would tell you that--if you knew jack shit, that is). So unless you have some Q document that you're holding back, you're just citing one incestuous, reverent source after another. Citing the Gospel of John to back up the Gospel of Matthew is like citing Brigham Young's writings to back up the Book of Mormon--just using one believer to back up another. It's not like someone has discovered a Gospel in Aramaic written by one of the actual apostles (again, unless you're holding out on us).
Neither of the sources you cited mention Jesus or the primitive Christian movement. Christianity doesn't grow large enough to be mentioned in non-biblical sources until the 2nd century. It wasn't even a blip on the radar before then.
Much as with Josephus "Iosepos", a Hellenization of "Yoseph", yes we give it the modern "J" sound. "Jesus" is actually Isoûs in Greek (/. doesn't recognize Greek letters, unfortunately, but you can go look it up if you like). Not that it would have mattered to him either way. To him his name was always Yoshua Ben Yoseph.
Israel, Judea, Palestine. It's like calling Yoshua Ben Yoseph "Jesus," when he himself would have never heard that name in his life (unless the Romans called him that briefly at his trial, right before nailing him to a cross). Or maybe you bible-thumpers think J.C. spoke Greek and hung out with the Romans too (a notion even more laughable than him being literate).
The records of a census that DON'T FUCKING EXIST.
If you're serious about wanting to read some scholarly research on literacy in first century Palestine (and not just a bible-thumping apologist for your hero J.C., as I suspect), you can go read any number of books and articles by Werner Kelber. He'll fill you in on all you want to know (though I suspect you'll just want to argue with him too).
Incidentally, you know what the generally agreed upon literacy rate estimate was for that region at that time? It was approximately 1.5%-3% (depending on who you ask). But again, maybe you think your peasant hero was in that tiny minority.
Are you seriously asking for a citation of the ABSENCE of a citation? That's amazingly fucking stupid even by bible-thumper standards.
I also can't disprove the Book of Mormon's assertion that an angel came to Joseph Smith and told him to fuck a bunch of young girls and assume command of the church. Therefore it MUST be true. The burden of proof falls on me to prove that this WASN'T true, after all, and we do know that many of the events described in the Book of Mormon are historically accurate.
You're confusing modern Judaism with what can be more accurately called "the Hebrew religion" of Jesus's time. He was a country carpenter in the first century, decades before before the Temple was destroyed.
Jews have always had a pretty large emphasis on being able to read.
No, they haven't. That's a relatively modern thing, which evolved long after AD 70 (when modern Talmudic Judiasim was effectively born). Country Jews in Jesus's time were nothing like modern Jews.
Your modern conception of "middle class" is laughably ill-suited for first century Israel (especially Galilee), as are modern Jewish ideas of the importance of literacy and education. But believe what you like.