I would maintain that there is another (albeit rarer) reason to do something not in one's own best interest which has nothing to do with getting a warm fuzzy feeling out of doing the right thing.
Some people choose to act in a particular way as part of an intelectual construction of a particular way of acting. Motivations can be strange things.
No extinction is not a bad thing per se, anymore than turning the earth's atmosphere into a 90% CO2 hyper-greenhoused hellohole like venus is a bad thing in of itself - what we have to ask is: would it be a bad thing for us?
Survival of the fittest is a statement of fact, not morality. It's simply what happens without any outside interference. Morality steps in when we have the capability to change it.
Now certainly mass extinctions on the scale of teh current (human-created) one appear to have happened on earth before - and each has inevitably led to a boom in new species over the couple of million years that follow... which is of no help whatsoever to the short-lived beings like us which have to live out their lives during those couple of million years (and by teh looks of it this mass-extinction won't end and the subsequent repopulation begin until humans stop killing things off or become extinct ourselves).
Unfortunately corporate law doesn't work like that. The company breaking the law doesn't immediately mean that the people in charge can be gaoled.
Pretty much the only punishment that the EC can hand out is more fines.
Now a fine that doubles each day of non-complience would be interesting...
Nor did he say it was. What he said was that a computer with fink installed will likely also have the developer tools installed, since fink requires them in order to work properly.
Yes, and you'll notice how I was pointing out the disadvantages as well as the advantages?
Remember - it isn't so much the idea of Eugenics that is teh problem as what criteria you set for selection. Adolf Hitler killed an awful lot of people based upon a selection criterion which was chosen to coincide with his pre-existing prejudices. The problem with his philosophy was not that he advocated Eugenics, but ratrher that he advocated killing people - and that his criteria for selection were based upon no scientific data whatsoever but rather upon some horrible racist stereotype of the Aryan master-race.
For a more sane less evil view on Eugenics you might want to take a look at some of Nietzsche's work - a lot of the same terms used (Ubermensch etc...) but they mean something quite different in context.
Um... knowing some people who have this problem I'd have to say that you realy don't need to test everyone to find out that it's not present - it's fairly obvious if someone has this the first time theuy try drinking alcohol (as it can easily result in getting a killer hangover before you get drunk).
There probably are a few people in Ireland who have this, and likely all of asiatic descent. Ireland (like England and indeed most of Europe) was traditionaly a brew culture - water was fermented in order to make it safe to drink - as a result a total innability to drink alcohol would have quickly resulted in death. It's unsuprising that the genes for this are simply not present in Irish people (and very rare in all of Europe).
In east asia, on the other hand, the traditional way to make water safe to drink is to boil it - so people with an innability to cope with alcohol have much less selection against them.
You are assuming that Eugenic engineering would lead to a reduced gene-pool. This may be the case (certainly there is a strong human tendency to move that way) - but it would also be possible (through intentional genetic engineering) to increase the genetic diversity of humanity intentionaly, thus giving random evolution a bigger pool to work from.
Um. I think your maths is a little off. a sibling shares on average 50% of your genes, so two will on average between them share 75% (remember, they share on average 50% with each other too), and three will share on average 87.5%. That's for humans - ants and bees (as gould points out) have a different means for passing on their genes, and so an ant's sister shares 100% of her genes (which is why it's more evolutionary beneficial for an indiviual ant to keep the queen around to make more siblings than it would be to have their own offspring who would share only 50% of their genes).
Nah, devolution is the granting of independent law-making powers to local authorities. Evolution, kind of by definition, doesn't have an oposite (unless you count stagnation).
An evolutionary advantage is whatever passes your genes on to the next generation. Hence it is the poor not the rich that have it. Quality of life doesn't make a difference. Evolution is a simple dumb process, it holds no moral judgements whatsoever.
Anywhere outside of the US that's not much of an issue. Heck, in Britain the vast majority of people never have to fill out a tax-return, and those that do don't tend to find it too difficult -- the US just has a ridiculously complicated tax-system.
2. Knowingly allowing, accepting, and encouraging reproduction of individuals, who...shouldn't (No, I don't mean Bush). There's some bad genes out there. Some that shouldn't be passed on. While we're at a point where we can curtail some of this through prescreening parents for likely inherited traits, we continue to become more accepting of people with, well, bad genes. Aren't we effectively letting people piss into the pool?
What's a bad gene? Something that causes multiple scleroses or suchlike might well count, but what about other things. By definition if a person with those genes can survive long enough to mate then the "bad" gene is no longer an evolutionary disadvantage.
Look at me, I'm short-sighted, slightly deaf, and slightly lame. Those would have been serious disadvantages at one time - genetic traits which ensured that I would not reproduce, nowadays they are nothing of the sort (and the only thing stopping me from reproducing is that I have no desire to have children, horrible smelly little things). In the end "good" and "bad" genes are relative to the current enviroment.
Re:DID people actually think evolution had stopped
on
Human Genes Still Evolving
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Geneticly speaking the single mother is "fitter". Evolution is a brainless uncontrolled process - it selects for things that maximise reproduction - so after a certain point it starts to select in favour of stupidity.
If we want to preferentialy breed inteligence into future generations we're going to have to do it intentionaly, either by a direct process of eugenics (possibly by giving financial benefits to inteligent people who have children and heavily taxing less inteligent people who do... which runs into the problem of how you measure inteligence reliably) or by human genettic engineering.
One interesting possibility would be to have everybody sterilised with reproductive material kept on ice, and then when a woman wants to have children give her artificial insemination with an embryo who's biological parents are of "aproved stock". Yeah, somewhat abusable by whomever has control over the system - not to mention the unfortuante problem of monoculture if enough genetic diversity doesn't get into teh next generation as a result.
Seems to me that a lot of the time what you're fighting for is market-capitalism -- freedom and democracy often seem to be regarded as more of a happy bonus.
(Exactly why the market-socialist UK is supporting this I'm not sure).
Yes it's just as corrupt. Political parties shouldn't be allowed to take any campaign donations whatsoever - put the damned thing back on an even footing.
Actualy pretty much no nuclear power-plants can actualy explode (even Chernobyl didn't realy explode, it released a huge cloud of radioactive gas) and no modern designs could even melt-down like Chernobyl did unless the water-supply was physicly cut off (pretty unlikely considering that they're almost universaly located near oceans).
To make a modern nuclear planet melt-down you have to know what you're doing and realy want to - and it still wouldn't be anything like as bad as Chernobyl. Fusion plants are likely to be even less dangerous - a hot fusion plant which loses containment will wreck some very expensive equipment and have to be left to "cool-down" before it can be properly decommisioned (likely for several years) - but it won't explode, and it wouldn't release much radiation externaly either.
Slashdot Mirror
I can think of a few counter-examples - notably strict Therevadan Buddhism, Orthodox Judaism, Annabaptist Christianity, and most forms of Gnosticism.
Some people choose to act in a particular way as part of an intelectual construction of a particular way of acting. Motivations can be strange things.
Survival of the fittest is a statement of fact, not morality. It's simply what happens without any outside interference. Morality steps in when we have the capability to change it.
Now certainly mass extinctions on the scale of teh current (human-created) one appear to have happened on earth before - and each has inevitably led to a boom in new species over the couple of million years that follow ... which is of no help whatsoever to the short-lived beings like us which have to live out their lives during those couple of million years (and by teh looks of it this mass-extinction won't end and the subsequent repopulation begin until humans stop killing things off or become extinct ourselves).
Unfortunately corporate law doesn't work like that. The company breaking the law doesn't immediately mean that the people in charge can be gaoled. Pretty much the only punishment that the EC can hand out is more fines. Now a fine that doubles each day of non-complience would be interesting...
Whereas I think they give every impression of knowing that of which they speak.
Nor did he say it was. What he said was that a computer with fink installed will likely also have the developer tools installed, since fink requires them in order to work properly.
Remember - it isn't so much the idea of Eugenics that is teh problem as what criteria you set for selection. Adolf Hitler killed an awful lot of people based upon a selection criterion which was chosen to coincide with his pre-existing prejudices. The problem with his philosophy was not that he advocated Eugenics, but ratrher that he advocated killing people - and that his criteria for selection were based upon no scientific data whatsoever but rather upon some horrible racist stereotype of the Aryan master-race.
For a more sane less evil view on Eugenics you might want to take a look at some of Nietzsche's work - a lot of the same terms used (Ubermensch etc...) but they mean something quite different in context.
There probably are a few people in Ireland who have this, and likely all of asiatic descent. Ireland (like England and indeed most of Europe) was traditionaly a brew culture - water was fermented in order to make it safe to drink - as a result a total innability to drink alcohol would have quickly resulted in death. It's unsuprising that the genes for this are simply not present in Irish people (and very rare in all of Europe).
In east asia, on the other hand, the traditional way to make water safe to drink is to boil it - so people with an innability to cope with alcohol have much less selection against them.
In reality you'd probably do a bit of both.
Um. I think your maths is a little off. a sibling shares on average 50% of your genes, so two will on average between them share 75% (remember, they share on average 50% with each other too), and three will share on average 87.5%. That's for humans - ants and bees (as gould points out) have a different means for passing on their genes, and so an ant's sister shares 100% of her genes (which is why it's more evolutionary beneficial for an indiviual ant to keep the queen around to make more siblings than it would be to have their own offspring who would share only 50% of their genes).
Nah, devolution is the granting of independent law-making powers to local authorities. Evolution, kind of by definition, doesn't have an oposite (unless you count stagnation).
An evolutionary advantage is whatever passes your genes on to the next generation. Hence it is the poor not the rich that have it. Quality of life doesn't make a difference. Evolution is a simple dumb process, it holds no moral judgements whatsoever.
Anywhere outside of the US that's not much of an issue. Heck, in Britain the vast majority of people never have to fill out a tax-return, and those that do don't tend to find it too difficult -- the US just has a ridiculously complicated tax-system.
What's a bad gene? Something that causes multiple scleroses or suchlike might well count, but what about other things. By definition if a person with those genes can survive long enough to mate then the "bad" gene is no longer an evolutionary disadvantage.
Look at me, I'm short-sighted, slightly deaf, and slightly lame. Those would have been serious disadvantages at one time - genetic traits which ensured that I would not reproduce, nowadays they are nothing of the sort (and the only thing stopping me from reproducing is that I have no desire to have children, horrible smelly little things). In the end "good" and "bad" genes are relative to the current enviroment.
If we want to preferentialy breed inteligence into future generations we're going to have to do it intentionaly, either by a direct process of eugenics (possibly by giving financial benefits to inteligent people who have children and heavily taxing less inteligent people who do ... which runs into the problem of how you measure inteligence reliably) or by human genettic engineering.
One interesting possibility would be to have everybody sterilised with reproductive material kept on ice, and then when a woman wants to have children give her artificial insemination with an embryo who's biological parents are of "aproved stock". Yeah, somewhat abusable by whomever has control over the system - not to mention the unfortuante problem of monoculture if enough genetic diversity doesn't get into teh next generation as a result.
Nah, you can't call him that, Apple have a trademark.
(Exactly why the market-socialist UK is supporting this I'm not sure).
Yes it's just as corrupt. Political parties shouldn't be allowed to take any campaign donations whatsoever - put the damned thing back on an even footing.
Nah, use Qemu, VPC is expensive (and has a tendency not to work with some Linuces).
Interested minds couldn't care less.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/07/04
Essentialy it's to stop them from being tried for non-registration in addition to possession of an illegal firearm.
which is not to say that I don't have Linux on my powermac, but it certainly gets used a lot less than OS X.
And talking to dogs is left-wing how?
To make a modern nuclear planet melt-down you have to know what you're doing and realy want to - and it still wouldn't be anything like as bad as Chernobyl. Fusion plants are likely to be even less dangerous - a hot fusion plant which loses containment will wreck some very expensive equipment and have to be left to "cool-down" before it can be properly decommisioned (likely for several years) - but it won't explode, and it wouldn't release much radiation externaly either.