> So far, you have used "alive", "a human life"... interchangeably,
I have not. I specifically stated that "alive" and "a life" are not identical.
Sure. After you conflated them in the first place.
Why do you put quotes on "humanity"?
I put quotes on it because it is the definition of which we are discussing, and therefore has no set definition in the context I was using it in.
What do you even mean by "humanity?"
The property of being human. You claim this property is acquired at conception. I claim it is not acquired until a certain minimum of brain processing is established.
> what is so special about the fertilization event that makes the fertilized egg a "human"
> and the unfertilized egg and sperm milliseconds prior to that not "human"?
It is one of the scientifically definitive points of the coming into existence of a human organism. That should be obvious
This is circular reasoning. You define a human organism as the result of the fertilization of a human egg, because the fertilization of a human egg is a "definitive" point in the coming into existence of a human organism.
Please either define a human organism without relying on the importance of fertilization, or define the importance of fertilization without relying on the definition of human organism.
One can equally claim that sperm and eggs are human organisms, they are alive, and they have human DNA...
I'm not the one who is claiming that the "humanity" of a human organism is due to some extra-physical blessing conferred upon it.
Read carefully, neither am I. There is nothing non-physical about information processing in the human brain, it is entirely physical. Yet, some human organisms are not capable of sophisticated enough processing to be called a person.
Trust me: we are never going to discover this succinct, objective definition of consciousness that you dream of. We will always wonder, to some degree, about human life.
I see no reason to trust you unless you back up that statement with some solid reasoning and evidence. What reason is there to assume that we can never figure out how consciousness arises?
This smacks of dualism and mysticism to me. Ancient humans probably thought that we would never discover a succinct, objective definition of thunder, and that we would always wonder, to some degree, about the booming sky sounds.
There is no reason I see to assume anything mystical or non-physical, therefore the human mind must arise from processes occurring in the human brain. It's just a matter of finding out the structure of the processes that give rise to consciousness. I'm not saying that's an easy task to accomplish, but the brain is a physical thing, so we can figure it out in an objective manner. Maybe not a "succinct" definition, but that all depends on what you mean by "succinct", if you mean simple, I highly doubt the answer will be simple. If you mean clear, I hope that any objective definition would be clear enough to be able to make proper distinctions.
Really, your equivocation knows no bounds. So far, you have used "alive", "a human life" and now "a new human organism" interchangeably, when they represent clearly different things. All this does is muddle things. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this was not your intent. Please be careful about your definitions.
Alive = living in the biological sense
A human life = a human organism possessing a human mind, I would argue this is the definition most people feel comfortable with colloquially
A new human organism = my best guess as to the meaning of your new equivocation is a viable fertilized human egg or zygote, but I don't see the utility of this, what is so special about the fertilization event that makes the fertilized egg a "human" and the unfertilized egg and sperm milliseconds prior to that not "human"? What about monozygotic twins? Are they perpetually sharing a single "human life"?
If you are claiming that "humanity" begins at fertilization, then you are logically committed to saying that monozygotic twins share their "humanity" and each have only some kind of half life.
On the other hand, if you believe that monozygotic twins are each fully human, then you are logically obligated to accept that "humanity" begins at some point after the embryo splits in two, and thus is unrelated to the fertilization event.
If you are saying that being a Human requires more than just being a biological organism of the Human kind and that science doesn't know what that is
then you have a faith-based definition of Human life, not a scientifically based one
Yes and no. You are equivocating again. When human mind begins is an empirical question that can be answered by science. A definition based on an unanswered empirical question is not the same thing as a faith-based definition. Faith-based definitions are scientifically unanswerable.
What I am saying is that being human requires having a human mind, not just being "a human organism". What precisely constitutes a human mind (i.e. at what point in the developmental cycle does consciousness arise) is an empirical question, but has not yet been answered. So at this point, anyone pointing to a specific point in the developmental cycle and saying "human life starts here" is simply giving a subjective opinion. The objective answer will come when cognitive science figures out what type of information processing gives rise to the phenomena we call "consciousness" and thus mind. Then it is simply a matter of finding out when said information process in the human brain "comes online".
Of course life starts at conception. It's the scientifically correct answer to that question Ask a biologist!
So you began by clearly discussing life in terms of being biologically "alive". However, when you got called on this, you tried to then claim you had been talking about a human "life unto itself" (which of course - by invoking biology - you had not):
A sperm or an egg is living. Of course!
But neither is a life unto itself.
That which is "alive" is not identical to that which is "a life."
And yes, I meant that a new human life starts at conception.
The funny thing is you accused the person who pointed this out of playing word games!!!
You cannot claim that "a human life" begins at conception, and use biology to back it up, the only definition of life biology can back up is the "alive" version in which case you are wrong, as both sperm and egg are biologically alive.
When we talk about "a human life", however, we are talking about something else all together, which is much more subjective. Most people define a human life in terms of consciousness and self awareness etc... which modern science has yet to figure out. When "a human life" by this definition begins is unknown at this point, so the definition is entirely subjective. You cannot rely on biology for this, so your argument has no support, it is simply your opinion.
We inherit much of our disease resistance in the form of antibodies prenatally, so the neandertal child would have much of the same immunity as the surrogate mother that volunteers to carry the child to term.
Come on, people, this is the like the pink elephant in the room.
Who would carry the neandertal embryo to term???
We don't have artificial womb technology that's worth a damn yet (and not in the foreseeable future either), so we would need a volunteer. But how would that work? There are all sorts of issues surrounding surrogacy NOW, when it is the same species. Do we pay them? (Is that legal?) Who has more rights to the child, the woman bearing the child or the genetic donors?
With a different species it gets even more complicated. Who are the genetic donors? The scientists? Is it ethical to ask a woman to carry an embryo from a different species? What if the volunteer bearing the neandertal doesn't want to give up the baby to the scientists that cloned it? How the H do you work that out in court?
Wow. Most the replies I have seen so far are from a much too high or abstract level.
Speaking as someone who has taken both computer science at university *and* computer programming at college, I'll comment on what they teach at college for computer programming. In university, computer science classes tend to assume that you have taken computer programming in high school, and therefore already understand the basic concepts. They make no such assumptions in college.
The first step is to simply explain that computer programming is not magic, it is a method of specifying a step by step solution to a problem i.e. laying out a set of steps to solve a given problem. Usually, you can do this by using a recipe analogy to cooking. You have a set of ingredients (variables) and some things (operations) that you do with these ingredients in a set order.
Now that's a really brief description, you would of course also explain briefly what a variable is, what an operation is (in computer terms - usually best equated using a math analogy) etc...
The important thing is to emphasize the relations between computer programming and things they already understand (math, cooking etc...).
What you *don't* need to do is explain anything about:
-algorithm analysis (Big O - that will generate blank looks and dropouts)
-how computers actually work (1s and 0s, switches etc... again, blank looks and dropouts)
-computer hardware (hard drives, CPUs, RAM etc...) this may be acceptable for a intro to computers in general, but is not necessary to learn how to program - too much detail
-advanced math (calculus? see above)
-HTML or the internet (they might find it interesting, but it's not related to programming)
-software engineering, they have to learn how to walk before they can run, they'll have no clue about this until they actually grasp the fundamentals of what a program is and does
-bits, bytes, binary, hex, you don't need to understand representation to grok what programming is, this is WAY too much detail for beginners
-OO, you need to grasp basic structured programming first
All of the above is fine for a basic computer science course, but for a basic computer programming course, you really need to assume that your students are completely computer illiterate.
So, after teaching going through the first basic lessons on what a computer program is (i.e. formal specification of how to solve a problem) and *leaving out* the list of stuff I mentioned that will only confuse them, you move on to explain the 5 basic elements of computer programming in a bit more detail:
1) Assignment - the ability to store and retrieve values. As part of this you will need to explain a bit about what a variable is and some basic data types, integers, floats, characters, booleans and strings. You don't need to go into detail about HOW these things are represented, just that these are some of the basic general types of data used.
2) Operation - functions, what they are, what they do, what inputs are (i.e. to whip butter you need butter (duh), a mixer and a bowl) and what outputs are (the output of whipping butter is (duh) whipped butter)
3) Sequence - sequential execution of a list of instructions (go back to the recipe example if you have to), this is just basically the idea that one step follows the next in order they are listed
4) Conditional Branching - the ability to do one thing or another based on the condition/state of some variable
5) Iteration - repetition of instructions either a conditional or fixed number of times
These are the basic elements used to formalize solutions to a problem. If you can get your students to understand these basic concepts, then they will understand the essence of what computer programming is, and realize that it is not magic.
Once they have grokked this, *then* you can move to actually having them write some basic programs in some language that is suitably simple in
It's a very, very nice AJAX email 'client', and it really does do wonders for (that is, against) spam.
Sure, but you are not required to use their client. As I pointed out, you can use your own client (like Thunderbird).
All you have to put up with is to let a huge and insanely powerful foreign corporation read your email
You see now, that just sounds paranoid to me. I highly doubt that Google has the people power to actually have a human read every piece of mail that comes through their servers. Now having a computer scan my e-mail, and create content hashes etc... for the purposes of providing a better service and blocking 20-30 spam messages a day, I have no problem with, and am perfectly happy to consent to. Who cares if a computer inputs your e-mail content into an algorithm somewhere? It all just gets turned into a series of innocuous numbers, there's no actual person snooping through your mail.
Of course, Google has access to the stored content and could provide said data were they subpoenaed, but this is no different than any other ISP/e-mail provider. If you have e-mail, the people you pay for the service most likely have copies of all your e-mail on disk somewhere. Big deal. Google is no different in this respect than any other e-mail service provider. In this day an age, it is highly unlikely that you will find much effective difference between the terms of service of one e-mail provider to another. They're all pretty much the same (yes I am sure there must be some "high-end" premium services available that cost much more for more user-friendly terms of service - but this is a digression, I'm talking about e-mail service for regular users).
So what? Who cares if Google has access to my e-mail content? E-mail has never been guaranteed to be secure in the first place, and a lot of it is flying around the internet in a perfectly readable form to anyone capable of intercepting the data packets. You have to assume your e-mail is publicly readable by default anyway! If I do have something sensitive to say to someone, that I don't want anyone else to be able to read ever, I will encrypt it. It's hardly the job of my e-mail provider to guarantee my e-mail privacy when messages are being packet-switched across a public network.
I find it hard to believe that people still have serious problems with spam.
There is a perfectly workable spam solution that my grandmother wouldn't have a problem implementing.
I have a GMail account to which all my other e-mail accounts are forwarded. I access this account through IMAP with Thunderbird. I use Thunderbird's built in learning spam filter.
When I first signed up for GMail/started using Tunderbird, I had almost more spam than e-mails and I get at least 20-30 real e-mails a day. So I just flagged all the spam I got as spam in both Thunderbird and GMail.
Now, I get maybe, and I stress *maybe*, a single spam message that shows up in my Thunderbird inbox per week.
I go through my Thunderbird Junk folder and my GMail spam folder about once a month to look for false positives, but they are few and far between, less than one a month.
Seeing as how this solution is simple, automatic, easy and pretty much ubiquitous (who doesn't have access to Thunderbird and GMail?) I don't see why anyone needs to suffer from spam at all anymore. I sure don't.
Other than ideological reasons (i.e. problems with either Google or Mozilla) I see no reason not to use this solution.
Corporations are treated legally as individuals because they must be in order to have liability
Actually, corporations are treated legally as individuals for the purposes of *limited liability*, by making an anonymous piece of paper somewhere legally responsible for the actions of the corporation, it limits the liability of the shareholders and execs, who would otherwise be responsible for their actions.
Ideally, this is supposed to spur innovation by protecting execs from the consequences of accidental bad decisions (thus they are free to take more risks) and encouraging people to invest (without facing jail time if the company does something illegal).
Too often however, it allows shareholders to invest without having to worry or care about the legal or ethical transgressions they are paying for, and it allows execs to *knowingly* make unethical or illegal decisions for the sake of profit.
The fact that they are disagreeing with you doesn't mean they are anti-business, it means they are anti-you.
You misunderstood the original poster. This IS what he meant. It could have more accurately been put "jeans vs suits". It has nothing to do with "business" per se. It's about the antipathy between people in a company who wear suits ("business" types) and those who don't (i.e. the techies wearing jeans and a t-shirt who sit in a basement all day).
"Anti-business" in this context does not refer to being against business as in "conducting business" but rather being against the typical attitudes portrayed by people in suits towards people not in suits.
Re:What do you mean, Anti-business?
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Tech Vs. Business?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Perverse security requirements, upgrades that remove functionality, ridiculous delays to get the simplest things done because users aren't permitted to do anything to their pc...
You've got it wrong. These things are not done by Techies because they choose to, they are done because they are mandated by policy.
More often than not, it is policy mandated by suits who don't understand the ramifications.
I've never worked anywhere where a ridiculous security policy was chosen by the IT guys, it normally comes down from way up top where some director has decided to make it his personal crusade against "hackers" by telling the IT shop that from now on, all computer access will be done by face recognition like he saw in the Hollywood blockbuster he took his kids to see on the weekend. Oh, and laser tripwires would be nice too.
Upgrades that remove functionality? No techie would do that on purpose either, but again, upgrades are usually mandated by policy/business guys who have made some kind of deal with the vendor and thus the upgrades are forced. All the techies do is implement someone else's poorly thought out decision (usually because they don't have the tech skills to make the decision in the first place - but business guys don't like giving such decision making power to "techies").
The problems you have pointed out are not examples of IT folks obstructing business folks, but rather the other way around. They are examples of how suits obstruct IT staff and massively impede everyone's productivity.
If the submitter is really hankering for 'open source' and 'practical' and 'easy to use', then he/she is SOL - there's no good options that satisfy all those requirements.
Yeah, I guess that's sort of like asking for fast, cheap and reliable eh?
And if you have the documentation the site becomes more about the emotional and symbolic attachment than historical value. Which is precisely the point.
Human cognition is modulated by emotional processes, which are highly affected by symbolism. If we want the lessons learned from events like those at Bletchley Park to have societal significance in informing future generations, the emotional impact and symbolism of preserving the physical location is a huge benefit.
Personally, I know that I recall historical lessons learned from actual visits to museums much better and more vividly than any list of dry facts I learned in history class. Psychological principles tell us that this is most likely the case with the majority of other people as well.
The historical value is greatly enhanced by the "emotional and symbolic attachment" that you dismiss.
Doing something great a long time ago shouldn't guarantee you a lifetime of financial benefits. Even if you saved the world. Agreed in principle. It is illogical to base current decisions on events that have occurred in the past, they are fixed.
The only events which it is rational to consider in decision making are those which will occur in the future and can be predicted with a certain degree of probability.
In this light, funding for the the Bletchley Park museum should not be justified based on it's previous accomplishments, but on the future benefit to society of preserving a record of those previous accomplishments. Such important historical events have a great deal to teach us and are of an immense value to future generations.
I would simply add that empirical research in this area has demonstrated that performance differences that have traditionally been attributed to "natural ability" are very much more likely to be due to differences in said practice than in inherent fixed characteristics (except for at the very highest levels of performance where learning asymptotes).
Thanks for such a concise summary, you have a talent;) for cutting to the core of an issue!
I've seen enough people with talent to know that it is more than just learned skill. Hey. Wow. Anecdotal evidence is _really_ good science. Your insight into the _entire_ backgrounds and experiences of _everyone_ you meet is simply astounding! You've convinced me.
I notice you completely ignored my challenge to prove your earlier claims. I'm still waiting for the logical argument demonstrating the equivalence of "anyone can be" and "everyone is". However, I have the impression I will be waiting for quite a while...
I think it's funny that you to claim that the debate over nature vs. nurture has already been decided in your favor, Please, show me where I made this claim. You will find that equally hard as well, because this is just another straw man argument of yours. I never once claimed that. As I said in other posts in this thread, no one seriously considers the "nature vs. nurture" debate an actual debate any more. It has been adequately demonstrated that who we are as a whole is determined by a mixture of the two, and that they are not mutually exclusive. We are not forced to pick one or the other, the answer is both. It's a false dichotomy.
Many reputable studies support the concept of fluid intelligence: "on-the-spot reasoning ability, a skill not basically dependent on our experience." (Belsky, 1990, p. 125) Hey, great, I agree with you completely on this. But there's nothing in the concept of fluid intelligence itself that contradicts anything I have said. I never denied the existence of fluid intelligence or that people have differences in that respect. However, those differences account for very little of the variability on learned task/skill performance (e.g. music, engineering...) - so much so that the colloquial notion of "natural ability" is simply false. The majority of said variability is accounted for by experience/practice. This has been very well documented.
I suppose it won't hurt you to believe this way It's not a matter of belief my friend. I am merely reporting to you the facts that are supported by the weight of evidence and scientific consensus. It is your choice whether or not you wish to remain ignorant of this. I suggest you familiarize yourself with the relevant literature before making such certain proclamations on a subject with which you are so woefully ill-informed. The reference I have already given you should serve as a good starting point. It will most likely address any further questions you may have, I know it addresses the issue of "fluid intelligence" you have already brought up much better than I can here.
There is no such thing as "native ability".
so there's no such thing as IQ? no one is smarter than anyone else?
Not the same thing. First of all IQ is a horrible measure of anything, and so culturally specific as to be almost worthless. But on some level (whether or not we can properly measure it), yes some people are smarter than others, but that difference is a very small factor when it comes to learning things. What matters much more is the amount of effort and practice you put in and how motivated you are. You can be 45 IQ points (just using it for an example, not endorsing the measure) higher than another person, but if they spend 10 years learning to play chess and you don't, they are going to cream you in a game.
No one has better abilities than anyone else?
That's absurd. Of course some people have better abilities than others in different areas. What's important is the source of that difference. The greatest part of that difference comes from practice and experience, not innate ability.
Anyone can be a Mozart, Hawkins, or Einstein?
This is also absurd and does not follow from what I said. To be facetious, I would say "anyone can be a Salieri, Penrose or Oppenheimer" - but that may not be entirely true. It's only at the level of the very very best in a given field where the slight advantage of innate ability comes into play and distinguishes genius from master. So no, not everyone can be Einstein or Kasparov, but anyone who dedicates enough time and practice to it can be a theoretical physicist or chess master.
> "everyone is" and "anyone can be" are quite distinct logical propositions.
No, since you want to claim that anyone can do anything, I figured why not just call anyone who can't expertly play music yet an untrained musician. It's a mere formality for you, right?
No, it's not a "mere formality" for me, there is a clear difference between "everyone is" and "anyone can be". It is your argument, not mine, that they are equivalent. If you want to make that claim, you are going to have to defend it. For starters, let's just change some of the variables in there. I challenge you to logically prove the following:
P1: Anyone can be a burger flipper at McDonalds
(it shouldn't need to be said, but I'm going to go ahead and qualify by barring any external force preventing them from doing so - claiming that people living on the moon or quadriplegics or tribesman from the Gobi desert couldn't do this is not a valid rebuttal)
C1: Therefore, everyone is a burger flipper at McDonalds
I certainly think it's a ridiculous claim, but hey, it's your argument, YOU defend it.
> This is not my conclusion, but the consensus of researchers in the field.
I doubt your references will say that there is no such thing as "native ability".
Well then, you would be wrong. I sincerely hope you are not a gambling man. Here's a reference:
Ericsson, K.A., Krampe, R.Th., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), pgs 363-406.
And here's a quote from that reference (verbatim):
In summary, our review has uncovered essentially no support for fixed innate characteristics that would correspond to general or specific natural ability and, in fact, has uncovered findings inconsistent with such models
Can a dog learn higher mathematics with enough time and effort. I can't prove the negative, because you could always claim they didn't have enough time.
This is such an obvious straw man you are trying to build here, I'm not even going to bother addressing it. Suffice to say we are talking about people, not dogs.
Your standard was also undefined. Could we call anyone banging on a drum a musician? If so, then you are right, but only trivially so.
Standards require specifics, I was speaking in generalities. The same standard obviously cannot apply across disciplines/tasks. Read the above reference. In general it takes roughly 10 years (of deliberate practice) to become truly proficient at something (again that's in general - certain difficult tasks/skills will take longer, easy ones will take less, and children generally learn faster).
Undoubtedly there are some extreme liberals who would call anyone banging on a drum a musician, just like they will call anyone who dumps corn flakes on the ground and calls it "Commentary on global food imbalance" an artist. I am not of that persuasion. My personal standard for calling someone a musician? If you can live off of your music production, then I would call you a musician. Regardless I am digressing here...
Obviously, people have different abilities.
Sure, but that doesn't mean those different abilities are due to innate, inherent differences in capabilities. It was once obvious that the sun revolved around the earth too, but scientific investigation demonstrated this was not the case. While it may seem obvious to you that people have different, innate, inherent abilities, "seeming obvious" doesn't make it so. Science requires a higher standard.
Some cannot do good engineering and music, whether you want to believe it or not. Not enough time? If it takes more than the average lifespan, it shouldn't count. In fact, if it's more time or resources than is practical, then it also doesn't count. At some p
Hey cool, I used to read the encyclopedia too; the World Book; Aardvark to Zymurgy.
That was the same encyclopedia I had! Also, the Encyclopedia Britannica, but it's a little dense when you're 8. lol.
Your premise may have some truth to it, but it seems to say that with enough hard work and practice, anyone can play guitar like Jimi Hendrix, paint like Picasso or hit balls like Babe Ruth.
No, the very best in the world, the cream of the crop, are still distinguished largely on the slight advantage that innate ability can give them. However, anyone can become a professional musician, painter or athlete with enough training and practice.
Back in high school, I handled math and science with condescending ease. By that I mean that I often was able to complete homework in class, did little "studying" before tests and scored in the upper 90s. Other students worked much harder than I did....
...I submit to you that I had "something" they lacked. You can call it "native ability" or smarts or IQ or whatever, but the point is we were differently abled _before_ we started to learn the material.
I'll grant that that was your experience in high school, mine was largely similar. I got the highest mark in the school on my grade 11 computer science final, despite never studying and being horribly drunk the night before.
However, when is _before_? Can you really say you went into high school with _zero_ experiences prior to that? I submit to you, that you probably had a more enriched experience prior to high school (in terms of stimulating visual-spatial and problem solving abilities) than those other students. Possibly you enjoyed math in grade school more than they did, did your homework more often and built a better foundation. Maybe you were encouraged by your parents at an early age to become interested in science, or maybe you just liked it and spent more time reading "sciency" things (I know I spent a lot of time reading the encyclopedia as a kid - sad but true; expressing both my age and nerdliness in one sentence - consequently, I was much better prepared for science class than my peers in high school).
Whatever the cause, what you attribute to some kind of "innate superiority" has been demonstrated to be much more likely explained by prior life experience and practice.
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> So far, you have used "alive", "a human life" ... interchangeably,
I have not. I specifically stated that "alive" and "a life" are not identical.
Sure. After you conflated them in the first place.
Why do you put quotes on "humanity"?
I put quotes on it because it is the definition of which we are discussing, and therefore has no set definition in the context I was using it in.
What do you even mean by "humanity?"
The property of being human. You claim this property is acquired at conception. I claim it is not acquired until a certain minimum of brain processing is established.
> what is so special about the fertilization event that makes the fertilized egg a "human"
> and the unfertilized egg and sperm milliseconds prior to that not "human"?
It is one of the scientifically definitive points of the coming into existence of a human organism. That should be obvious
This is circular reasoning. You define a human organism as the result of the fertilization of a human egg, because the fertilization of a human egg is a "definitive" point in the coming into existence of a human organism.
Please either define a human organism without relying on the importance of fertilization, or define the importance of fertilization without relying on the definition of human organism.
One can equally claim that sperm and eggs are human organisms, they are alive, and they have human DNA...
I'm not the one who is claiming that the "humanity" of a human organism is due to some extra-physical blessing conferred upon it.
Read carefully, neither am I. There is nothing non-physical about information processing in the human brain, it is entirely physical. Yet, some human organisms are not capable of sophisticated enough processing to be called a person.
Trust me: we are never going to discover this succinct, objective definition of consciousness that you dream of. We will always wonder, to some degree, about human life.
I see no reason to trust you unless you back up that statement with some solid reasoning and evidence. What reason is there to assume that we can never figure out how consciousness arises?
This smacks of dualism and mysticism to me. Ancient humans probably thought that we would never discover a succinct, objective definition of thunder, and that we would always wonder, to some degree, about the booming sky sounds.
There is no reason I see to assume anything mystical or non-physical, therefore the human mind must arise from processes occurring in the human brain. It's just a matter of finding out the structure of the processes that give rise to consciousness. I'm not saying that's an easy task to accomplish, but the brain is a physical thing, so we can figure it out in an objective manner. Maybe not a "succinct" definition, but that all depends on what you mean by "succinct", if you mean simple, I highly doubt the answer will be simple. If you mean clear, I hope that any objective definition would be clear enough to be able to make proper distinctions.
Really, your equivocation knows no bounds. So far, you have used "alive", "a human life" and now "a new human organism" interchangeably, when they represent clearly different things. All this does is muddle things. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this was not your intent. Please be careful about your definitions.
Alive = living in the biological sense
A human life = a human organism possessing a human mind, I would argue this is the definition most people feel comfortable with colloquially
A new human organism = my best guess as to the meaning of your new equivocation is a viable fertilized human egg or zygote, but I don't see the utility of this, what is so special about the fertilization event that makes the fertilized egg a "human" and the unfertilized egg and sperm milliseconds prior to that not "human"? What about monozygotic twins? Are they perpetually sharing a single "human life"?
If you are claiming that "humanity" begins at fertilization, then you are logically committed to saying that monozygotic twins share their "humanity" and each have only some kind of half life.
On the other hand, if you believe that monozygotic twins are each fully human, then you are logically obligated to accept that "humanity" begins at some point after the embryo splits in two, and thus is unrelated to the fertilization event.
If you are saying that being a Human requires more than just being a biological organism of the Human kind and that science doesn't know what that is
then you have a faith-based definition of Human life, not a scientifically based one
Yes and no. You are equivocating again. When human mind begins is an empirical question that can be answered by science. A definition based on an unanswered empirical question is not the same thing as a faith-based definition. Faith-based definitions are scientifically unanswerable.
What I am saying is that being human requires having a human mind, not just being "a human organism". What precisely constitutes a human mind (i.e. at what point in the developmental cycle does consciousness arise) is an empirical question, but has not yet been answered. So at this point, anyone pointing to a specific point in the developmental cycle and saying "human life starts here" is simply giving a subjective opinion. The objective answer will come when cognitive science figures out what type of information processing gives rise to the phenomena we call "consciousness" and thus mind. Then it is simply a matter of finding out when said information process in the human brain "comes online".
In your first post you said:
Of course life starts at conception. It's the scientifically correct answer to that question Ask a biologist!
So you began by clearly discussing life in terms of being biologically "alive". However, when you got called on this, you tried to then claim you had been talking about a human "life unto itself" (which of course - by invoking biology - you had not):
A sperm or an egg is living. Of course! But neither is a life unto itself. That which is "alive" is not identical to that which is "a life." And yes, I meant that a new human life starts at conception.
The funny thing is you accused the person who pointed this out of playing word games!!!
You cannot claim that "a human life" begins at conception, and use biology to back it up, the only definition of life biology can back up is the "alive" version in which case you are wrong, as both sperm and egg are biologically alive.
When we talk about "a human life", however, we are talking about something else all together, which is much more subjective. Most people define a human life in terms of consciousness and self awareness etc... which modern science has yet to figure out. When "a human life" by this definition begins is unknown at this point, so the definition is entirely subjective. You cannot rely on biology for this, so your argument has no support, it is simply your opinion.
We inherit much of our disease resistance in the form of antibodies prenatally, so the neandertal child would have much of the same immunity as the surrogate mother that volunteers to carry the child to term.
Come on, people, this is the like the pink elephant in the room.
Who would carry the neandertal embryo to term???
We don't have artificial womb technology that's worth a damn yet (and not in the foreseeable future either), so we would need a volunteer. But how would that work? There are all sorts of issues surrounding surrogacy NOW, when it is the same species. Do we pay them? (Is that legal?) Who has more rights to the child, the woman bearing the child or the genetic donors?
With a different species it gets even more complicated. Who are the genetic donors? The scientists? Is it ethical to ask a woman to carry an embryo from a different species? What if the volunteer bearing the neandertal doesn't want to give up the baby to the scientists that cloned it? How the H do you work that out in court?
Wow. Most the replies I have seen so far are from a much too high or abstract level.
Speaking as someone who has taken both computer science at university *and* computer programming at college, I'll comment on what they teach at college for computer programming. In university, computer science classes tend to assume that you have taken computer programming in high school, and therefore already understand the basic concepts. They make no such assumptions in college.
The first step is to simply explain that computer programming is not magic, it is a method of specifying a step by step solution to a problem i.e. laying out a set of steps to solve a given problem. Usually, you can do this by using a recipe analogy to cooking. You have a set of ingredients (variables) and some things (operations) that you do with these ingredients in a set order.
Now that's a really brief description, you would of course also explain briefly what a variable is, what an operation is (in computer terms - usually best equated using a math analogy) etc... The important thing is to emphasize the relations between computer programming and things they already understand (math, cooking etc...).
What you *don't* need to do is explain anything about:
-algorithm analysis (Big O - that will generate blank looks and dropouts)
-how computers actually work (1s and 0s, switches etc... again, blank looks and dropouts)
-computer hardware (hard drives, CPUs, RAM etc...) this may be acceptable for a intro to computers in general, but is not necessary to learn how to program - too much detail
-advanced math (calculus? see above)
-HTML or the internet (they might find it interesting, but it's not related to programming)
-software engineering, they have to learn how to walk before they can run, they'll have no clue about this until they actually grasp the fundamentals of what a program is and does
-bits, bytes, binary, hex, you don't need to understand representation to grok what programming is, this is WAY too much detail for beginners
-OO, you need to grasp basic structured programming first
All of the above is fine for a basic computer science course, but for a basic computer programming course, you really need to assume that your students are completely computer illiterate.
So, after teaching going through the first basic lessons on what a computer program is (i.e. formal specification of how to solve a problem) and *leaving out* the list of stuff I mentioned that will only confuse them, you move on to explain the 5 basic elements of computer programming in a bit more detail:
1) Assignment - the ability to store and retrieve values. As part of this you will need to explain a bit about what a variable is and some basic data types, integers, floats, characters, booleans and strings. You don't need to go into detail about HOW these things are represented, just that these are some of the basic general types of data used.
2) Operation - functions, what they are, what they do, what inputs are (i.e. to whip butter you need butter (duh), a mixer and a bowl) and what outputs are (the output of whipping butter is (duh) whipped butter)
3) Sequence - sequential execution of a list of instructions (go back to the recipe example if you have to), this is just basically the idea that one step follows the next in order they are listed
4) Conditional Branching - the ability to do one thing or another based on the condition/state of some variable
5) Iteration - repetition of instructions either a conditional or fixed number of times
These are the basic elements used to formalize solutions to a problem. If you can get your students to understand these basic concepts, then they will understand the essence of what computer programming is, and realize that it is not magic.
Once they have grokked this, *then* you can move to actually having them write some basic programs in some language that is suitably simple in
It's a very, very nice AJAX email 'client', and it really does do wonders for (that is, against) spam.
Sure, but you are not required to use their client. As I pointed out, you can use your own client (like Thunderbird).
All you have to put up with is to let a huge and insanely powerful foreign corporation read your email
You see now, that just sounds paranoid to me. I highly doubt that Google has the people power to actually have a human read every piece of mail that comes through their servers. Now having a computer scan my e-mail, and create content hashes etc... for the purposes of providing a better service and blocking 20-30 spam messages a day, I have no problem with, and am perfectly happy to consent to. Who cares if a computer inputs your e-mail content into an algorithm somewhere? It all just gets turned into a series of innocuous numbers, there's no actual person snooping through your mail.
Of course, Google has access to the stored content and could provide said data were they subpoenaed, but this is no different than any other ISP/e-mail provider. If you have e-mail, the people you pay for the service most likely have copies of all your e-mail on disk somewhere. Big deal. Google is no different in this respect than any other e-mail service provider. In this day an age, it is highly unlikely that you will find much effective difference between the terms of service of one e-mail provider to another. They're all pretty much the same (yes I am sure there must be some "high-end" premium services available that cost much more for more user-friendly terms of service - but this is a digression, I'm talking about e-mail service for regular users).
So what? Who cares if Google has access to my e-mail content? E-mail has never been guaranteed to be secure in the first place, and a lot of it is flying around the internet in a perfectly readable form to anyone capable of intercepting the data packets. You have to assume your e-mail is publicly readable by default anyway! If I do have something sensitive to say to someone, that I don't want anyone else to be able to read ever, I will encrypt it. It's hardly the job of my e-mail provider to guarantee my e-mail privacy when messages are being packet-switched across a public network.
Seriously, do they?
I find it hard to believe that people still have serious problems with spam.
There is a perfectly workable spam solution that my grandmother wouldn't have a problem implementing.
I have a GMail account to which all my other e-mail accounts are forwarded. I access this account through IMAP with Thunderbird. I use Thunderbird's built in learning spam filter.
When I first signed up for GMail/started using Tunderbird, I had almost more spam than e-mails and I get at least 20-30 real e-mails a day. So I just flagged all the spam I got as spam in both Thunderbird and GMail.
Now, I get maybe, and I stress *maybe*, a single spam message that shows up in my Thunderbird inbox per week.
I go through my Thunderbird Junk folder and my GMail spam folder about once a month to look for false positives, but they are few and far between, less than one a month.
Seeing as how this solution is simple, automatic, easy and pretty much ubiquitous (who doesn't have access to Thunderbird and GMail?) I don't see why anyone needs to suffer from spam at all anymore. I sure don't.
Other than ideological reasons (i.e. problems with either Google or Mozilla) I see no reason not to use this solution.
Corporations are treated legally as individuals because they must be in order to have liability
Actually, corporations are treated legally as individuals for the purposes of *limited liability*, by making an anonymous piece of paper somewhere legally responsible for the actions of the corporation, it limits the liability of the shareholders and execs, who would otherwise be responsible for their actions.
Ideally, this is supposed to spur innovation by protecting execs from the consequences of accidental bad decisions (thus they are free to take more risks) and encouraging people to invest (without facing jail time if the company does something illegal).
Too often however, it allows shareholders to invest without having to worry or care about the legal or ethical transgressions they are paying for, and it allows execs to *knowingly* make unethical or illegal decisions for the sake of profit.
The fact that they are disagreeing with you doesn't mean they are anti-business, it means they are anti-you.
You misunderstood the original poster. This IS what he meant. It could have more accurately been put "jeans vs suits". It has nothing to do with "business" per se. It's about the antipathy between people in a company who wear suits ("business" types) and those who don't (i.e. the techies wearing jeans and a t-shirt who sit in a basement all day).
"Anti-business" in this context does not refer to being against business as in "conducting business" but rather being against the typical attitudes portrayed by people in suits towards people not in suits.
Perverse security requirements, upgrades that remove functionality, ridiculous delays to get the simplest things done because users aren't permitted to do anything to their pc...
You've got it wrong. These things are not done by Techies because they choose to, they are done because they are mandated by policy.
More often than not, it is policy mandated by suits who don't understand the ramifications. I've never worked anywhere where a ridiculous security policy was chosen by the IT guys, it normally comes down from way up top where some director has decided to make it his personal crusade against "hackers" by telling the IT shop that from now on, all computer access will be done by face recognition like he saw in the Hollywood blockbuster he took his kids to see on the weekend. Oh, and laser tripwires would be nice too.
Upgrades that remove functionality? No techie would do that on purpose either, but again, upgrades are usually mandated by policy/business guys who have made some kind of deal with the vendor and thus the upgrades are forced. All the techies do is implement someone else's poorly thought out decision (usually because they don't have the tech skills to make the decision in the first place - but business guys don't like giving such decision making power to "techies").
The problems you have pointed out are not examples of IT folks obstructing business folks, but rather the other way around. They are examples of how suits obstruct IT staff and massively impede everyone's productivity.
If the tankrush seems impossible to stop to you maybe you're just not playing well enough.
That's not the problem. Tank rushes in Starcraft can be stopped, but only by a better, faster tank rush. All that really matters is speed.
If the submitter is really hankering for 'open source' and 'practical' and 'easy to use', then he/she is SOL - there's no good options that satisfy all those requirements.
Yeah, I guess that's sort of like asking for fast, cheap and reliable eh?
Pick two.
Indiana Jones: A New Treasure? Strikes Back? and the Return of the Archaeologists? and the Revenge of the Nazis?
We don't need your logic here!
Human cognition is modulated by emotional processes, which are highly affected by symbolism. If we want the lessons learned from events like those at Bletchley Park to have societal significance in informing future generations, the emotional impact and symbolism of preserving the physical location is a huge benefit.
Personally, I know that I recall historical lessons learned from actual visits to museums much better and more vividly than any list of dry facts I learned in history class. Psychological principles tell us that this is most likely the case with the majority of other people as well.
The historical value is greatly enhanced by the "emotional and symbolic attachment" that you dismiss.
The only events which it is rational to consider in decision making are those which will occur in the future and can be predicted with a certain degree of probability.
In this light, funding for the the Bletchley Park museum should not be justified based on it's previous accomplishments, but on the future benefit to society of preserving a record of those previous accomplishments. Such important historical events have a great deal to teach us and are of an immense value to future generations.
We can observe the number one the same way we observe an apple or galaxy.
What we observe (our perceptions) is not a direct representation of reality, but rather a reconstruction based on patterns extracted from our inputs.
The number one might be several abstractions removed from an apple, but we perceive it in fundamentally the same way.
Any object we observe (whether an apple or the number one) is essentially just correlation between patterns of input.
Excellent summary. This is spot on.
;) for cutting to the core of an issue!
I would simply add that empirical research in this area has demonstrated that performance differences that have traditionally been attributed to "natural ability" are very much more likely to be due to differences in said practice than in inherent fixed characteristics (except for at the very highest levels of performance where learning asymptotes).
Thanks for such a concise summary, you have a talent
I notice you completely ignored my challenge to prove your earlier claims. I'm still waiting for the logical argument demonstrating the equivalence of "anyone can be" and "everyone is". However, I have the impression I will be waiting for quite a while... I think it's funny that you to claim that the debate over nature vs. nurture has already been decided in your favor, Please, show me where I made this claim. You will find that equally hard as well, because this is just another straw man argument of yours. I never once claimed that. As I said in other posts in this thread, no one seriously considers the "nature vs. nurture" debate an actual debate any more. It has been adequately demonstrated that who we are as a whole is determined by a mixture of the two, and that they are not mutually exclusive. We are not forced to pick one or the other, the answer is both. It's a false dichotomy. Many reputable studies support the concept of fluid intelligence: "on-the-spot reasoning ability, a skill not basically dependent on our experience." (Belsky, 1990, p. 125) Hey, great, I agree with you completely on this. But there's nothing in the concept of fluid intelligence itself that contradicts anything I have said. I never denied the existence of fluid intelligence or that people have differences in that respect. However, those differences account for very little of the variability on learned task/skill performance (e.g. music, engineering...) - so much so that the colloquial notion of "natural ability" is simply false. The majority of said variability is accounted for by experience/practice. This has been very well documented. I suppose it won't hurt you to believe this way It's not a matter of belief my friend. I am merely reporting to you the facts that are supported by the weight of evidence and scientific consensus. It is your choice whether or not you wish to remain ignorant of this. I suggest you familiarize yourself with the relevant literature before making such certain proclamations on a subject with which you are so woefully ill-informed. The reference I have already given you should serve as a good starting point. It will most likely address any further questions you may have, I know it addresses the issue of "fluid intelligence" you have already brought up much better than I can here.
It's been fun! Cheers!
so there's no such thing as IQ? no one is smarter than anyone else?
Not the same thing. First of all IQ is a horrible measure of anything, and so culturally specific as to be almost worthless. But on some level (whether or not we can properly measure it), yes some people are smarter than others, but that difference is a very small factor when it comes to learning things. What matters much more is the amount of effort and practice you put in and how motivated you are. You can be 45 IQ points (just using it for an example, not endorsing the measure) higher than another person, but if they spend 10 years learning to play chess and you don't, they are going to cream you in a game.
No one has better abilities than anyone else?
That's absurd. Of course some people have better abilities than others in different areas. What's important is the source of that difference. The greatest part of that difference comes from practice and experience, not innate ability.
Anyone can be a Mozart, Hawkins, or Einstein?
This is also absurd and does not follow from what I said. To be facetious, I would say "anyone can be a Salieri, Penrose or Oppenheimer" - but that may not be entirely true. It's only at the level of the very very best in a given field where the slight advantage of innate ability comes into play and distinguishes genius from master. So no, not everyone can be Einstein or Kasparov, but anyone who dedicates enough time and practice to it can be a theoretical physicist or chess master.
> "everyone is" and "anyone can be" are quite distinct logical propositions.
No, since you want to claim that anyone can do anything, I figured why not just call anyone who can't expertly play music yet an untrained musician. It's a mere formality for you, right?
No, it's not a "mere formality" for me, there is a clear difference between "everyone is" and "anyone can be". It is your argument, not mine, that they are equivalent. If you want to make that claim, you are going to have to defend it. For starters, let's just change some of the variables in there. I challenge you to logically prove the following:
P1: Anyone can be a burger flipper at McDonalds
(it shouldn't need to be said, but I'm going to go ahead and qualify by barring any external force preventing them from doing so - claiming that people living on the moon or quadriplegics or tribesman from the Gobi desert couldn't do this is not a valid rebuttal)
C1: Therefore, everyone is a burger flipper at McDonalds
I certainly think it's a ridiculous claim, but hey, it's your argument, YOU defend it.
> This is not my conclusion, but the consensus of researchers in the field.
I doubt your references will say that there is no such thing as "native ability".
Well then, you would be wrong. I sincerely hope you are not a gambling man. Here's a reference:
Ericsson, K.A., Krampe, R.Th., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), pgs 363-406.
And here's a quote from that reference (verbatim):
In summary, our review has uncovered essentially no support for fixed innate characteristics that would correspond to general or specific natural ability and, in fact, has uncovered findings inconsistent with such models
Can a dog learn higher mathematics with enough time and effort. I can't prove the negative, because you could always claim they didn't have enough time.
This is such an obvious straw man you are trying to build here, I'm not even going to bother addressing it. Suffice to say we are talking about people, not dogs.
Your standard was also undefined. Could we call anyone banging on a drum a musician? If so, then you are right, but only trivially so.
Standards require specifics, I was speaking in generalities. The same standard obviously cannot apply across disciplines/tasks. Read the above reference. In general it takes roughly 10 years (of deliberate practice) to become truly proficient at something (again that's in general - certain difficult tasks/skills will take longer, easy ones will take less, and children generally learn faster).
Undoubtedly there are some extreme liberals who would call anyone banging on a drum a musician, just like they will call anyone who dumps corn flakes on the ground and calls it "Commentary on global food imbalance" an artist. I am not of that persuasion. My personal standard for calling someone a musician? If you can live off of your music production, then I would call you a musician. Regardless I am digressing here...
Obviously, people have different abilities.
Sure, but that doesn't mean those different abilities are due to innate, inherent differences in capabilities. It was once obvious that the sun revolved around the earth too, but scientific investigation demonstrated this was not the case. While it may seem obvious to you that people have different, innate, inherent abilities, "seeming obvious" doesn't make it so. Science requires a higher standard.
Some cannot do good engineering and music, whether you want to believe it or not. Not enough time? If it takes more than the average lifespan, it shouldn't count. In fact, if it's more time or resources than is practical, then it also doesn't count. At some p
That was the same encyclopedia I had! Also, the Encyclopedia Britannica, but it's a little dense when you're 8. lol. Your premise may have some truth to it, but it seems to say that with enough hard work and practice, anyone can play guitar like Jimi Hendrix, paint like Picasso or hit balls like Babe Ruth.
No, the very best in the world, the cream of the crop, are still distinguished largely on the slight advantage that innate ability can give them. However, anyone can become a professional musician, painter or athlete with enough training and practice.
I'll grant that that was your experience in high school, mine was largely similar. I got the highest mark in the school on my grade 11 computer science final, despite never studying and being horribly drunk the night before.
However, when is _before_? Can you really say you went into high school with _zero_ experiences prior to that? I submit to you, that you probably had a more enriched experience prior to high school (in terms of stimulating visual-spatial and problem solving abilities) than those other students. Possibly you enjoyed math in grade school more than they did, did your homework more often and built a better foundation. Maybe you were encouraged by your parents at an early age to become interested in science, or maybe you just liked it and spent more time reading "sciency" things (I know I spent a lot of time reading the encyclopedia as a kid - sad but true; expressing both my age and nerdliness in one sentence - consequently, I was much better prepared for science class than my peers in high school).
Whatever the cause, what you attribute to some kind of "innate superiority" has been demonstrated to be much more likely explained by prior life experience and practice.