Remiel

The first thing you should understand is that the distinction between artificial and natural is one of the forement examples of the former.

No, I do not, actually. I think eating, killing, and using animals is permissible because I do not put humans so far above animals that what is appropriate behaviour for animals cannot be translated to humans. Other animals freely do as they wish to their fellow creature, killing them, torturing them in some cases. I think the difference that should concern us can loosely be translated to how we do things, not what we do. Animals eat animals, people are animals, and thus people may eat animals. Some may find this objectionable, but in its own way it is a rejection of some of our supposed inherent moral superiority. Nature does not give one good God damn about how young and fragile a creature is. We do, to some extent, but if we should find ourselves killing young animals, in the grand scheme of things what matters more is how we do it, not how old they are. If the people in the business of conservation and preservation of animals say that the seal hunt is not some kind of torture, then that is good enough, given the other considerations. This is not a case of getting the right, best answer, all that is required is a not wrong answer. And compared to many other practices which most people seem to be fine with, the seal hunt cannot reasonably be judged exceptionally wrong. What we do not need is your trying to rationalize why your okay with other sorts of more everyday cruelty. I do not particularly care what your motive is; the important thing is that when you are saying, " Well, intelligence this, nervous system that, " you are just rationalizing behaviour that you have tacitly condoned your whole life. Seals are merely a source of something we want and perhaps need, same as every other time we play around with or pollute the ecosystem. And if a seal manages to kill a hunter, or a child, that is tragic. But I am not going to blame the seal for protecting its interests. Neither am I going to blame the hunter as long as he remembers what he is there for: to do a kill seals, not to hurt them more than is necessary for that.

Perhaps. I think we are perhaps disagreeing on what things count as part of your identity. To me, it would be a fundamental flaw to suggest that the avatar in a game, or even if it were a physical body, is part of you. It is merely your tool. So, when you suggest that a person, an identity, could be on a computer controlling multiple bodies out in the real world, well, that could happen. But, if those " avatars " could continue to operate as persons if the central processor ceased to exist and the connection were severed, then I say that they are in fact distinct agents merely enslaved to the will of the central controlling identity, and that to consider them as part of the identity of the computer mind would be in error. This is not the case with an avatar in a game. It is merely a thing that I can control and a representation the computer projects, but it does not have its own identity and is not capable of being an agent. See, you cannot precisely migrate your thoughts to a seperate medium because your thoughts and the medium are a unified whole. The thoughts are part of the medium. To replicate the thoughts in another medium (which is what transferring is; there is only duplication and erasure) is to create a distinct thought/medium whole. I think most of your questions are completely irrelevant to the subject at hand. The cybernetic implant might be interesting, but ultimately I do not think anyone would ever confuse the implant as truly being part of themselves. With the memory back up... you have fundamentally the wrong question. The question is not, " Are you less you because there is a copy of your mind on a computer? " the question is " Is the copy part of you? " Anyway, I know I there there a couple times in this discussion where I use words that often have a demeaning connotation to them, like, " irrelevant " , " mistaken " , " fundamentally wrong " and such, but I merely mean them descriptively. I am quite pleased with our debate.

Your analogy fails. What you are suggesting is that You is originally just a Hand, and somehow transcends to become a whole person with many different parts besides a single Hand, and retains the identity of the Hand. However, this cannot be the case. You is in the beginning a whole You, not part of a You. If You were to somehow become part of a whole MechaYou later on, MechaYou still cannot be the same thing as You. If you start with just a hand... Well, you have a dead hand, and that is it. Okay, I may have erred slightly on this one. Either You is part of MechaYou, and could be seperated from the whole later on to continue on independantly as You, assuming You never ceased functioning during its time as a part of a composite entity. Or, You must have died during the process, Yous body having been disconnected from MechaYou and thus the location all the mental processes that characterized You now taking place in a location that is definitely not where You was. I will admit that the issue is tricky enough that I would like to confer at some point with some of my friends whos realm this is, but I am fairly certain that identity is not as fluid as you make it out to be.

All of our laws regarding the killing of fawns have to do with making sure there are just as many full grown deer to kill next year. It has nothing to do with being, " nice " . You need to stop romanticizing how most " hunts " really work. It is not one guy tracking an animal by the trail it leaves, cornering it by use of stealth and guile. It is a bunch of guys going into the bush to scare any animals to run in the direction of a bunch more guys just waiting for them to come out so they can shoot them. Or sitting around in a lookout all day hoping something comes by. " Searching " and " pursuing " do not play nearly as big a part as you think.

What is your point? If the relevant comparisons are, " Is it a fruit? " , " What kind of seeds does it have? " , and , " Is it good to eat? " , then why is the comparison invalid? Jeremy Bentham famously said that we should ask not whether a creature thinks, but whether it suffers. That does not arbitrarily stop at the difference between mammals and fish any more than it stops at the difference between humans and anything else. Besides, where does that leave reptiles and amphibians? Or do you think it perfectly okay to pull off a turtles shell?

I think you are far too focused on the semantics of the word " hunt " here. If we were to just call it the seal " slaughter ", half of what you have been arguing would be shown to be pointless, because " slaughter " is exactly what I would call what happens to ever domesticated animals destined for the abattoir, a.k.a. " slaughterhouse " . No one complains that how " unsporting " fishing nets are.

You know, if you were actually to find a paralyzed deer while hunting, you may be doing it a favour by killing it quickly. Because if you do not kill it, starvation, dehydration, the wolves, the coyotes, or the bears will.

And yet, the seal with swimming issues still has a better chance of escape than any farm animal on the way to the slaughterhouse. And the trip to the slaughterhouse is never pleasant, which wild animals are spared. For wild animals, nature is also a far more brutal killer than we are.

Before answering whether they should have their expenses released, the question to ask I believe would be whether it would be a trade secrets sort of thing: that is, would it just be giving other media outlets a professional upper hand?

I am not sure that that study really reports everything it is important. Why it says, basically, is that the way the network computes results is the same in both the biological and hybrid cases. It did not really say anything about what was computed, at least as I read it. What I want to know is, " What is hyrbid lobster doing? " See, this is the problem as I see it. You have posited that the subject, let's call them, " You, " will be able to simultaneously inhabit multiple bodies connected by a single server. However, what if the connection to the server is lost? Which of the resulting bodies is You? Are none of them You? Is You dead? Was this setup even You to begin with? Did You die/cease to exist during its inception? I am inclined to believe that this last possibility would be the case. If all of this actually comes to happen... it will be both a good and bad time to be a lawyer. Property rights will become a " shit storm, " if I may use the vernacular.

I do not think that rate of killing is really relevant; and if it is, chickens and fish are light years beyond the number of seals killed. There are something like 24 billion chickens in the world. I bet you dollar to a dime at least half of that is probably killed every year for food, and I would not be surprised if it was a much greater proportion. There is no way that intelligence has any bearing on the capacity of an animal to feel physical pain, which is the relevant kind when these sorts of questions are raised. And if anyone were to mention some kind of mental anguish of parent seals, well, they apparently abandon their pups on the ice after about twelve days. No wonder hunting them is so easy.

I am not sure that there are many ways in which you could not maintain the original brain and still have it be philosophically the same person. Perhaps if you found some way in which for the brain to be gradual taken over by artificial neurons mimicking the normal process of replacement (if neurons even replace the way other cells do), but other than that... I think you need some sort of continuity in a cohesive substance for it to count as the same person.

I doubt it. On more levels than just the scientific.

They might do something to you, but it is far too soon to describe it as, "making people more intelligent". Just because we could make artificial neurons that operate faster does not mean that they would operate the same way. There is a lot that we do not know about how the brain processes information that could preclude that sort of augmentation while still keeping the result meaningfully human, or even animal. Tri-Level Hypothesis and all that...

I think he is suggesting that the Senate should actually have representation from all parties. I would agree, except that the NDP themselves disagree. Last time I checked, they were for abolishing the Senate and I think it is forbidden for their members to actual stand for appointment.

Thanks for making it crystal clear that despite the facade of at least intelligent disagreeability, you are underneath still just a bigoted asshole.

I was somewhat confused by what you said here, but I went back and re-read what I had said myself, and I see how that could have come across as " Haredim are worms " , but it is the issues, not the people, that I was referring to with " opening another can of worms " . Just some misspoken common slang. I apologize though for any confusion.

I think I can feel your pain, JB, though the circumstances are vastly different in my own family. The problem is the same though: discussion of Israeli policy has caused rifts to appear where there should be none. Among my Jewish friends (whom are mostly all young), all are open to discussion, though some still take a rather hard line. Others though tend to be critical of divisions within Israeli society, such as the settler movement, while still be supportive of Israel as a whole. I think some of the problem can be attributed to the fact that older generations grew up in qualitatively different circumstances than people in our own generation with regards to post Holocaust anti-Semitism. Despite what some of the ultra-conservative pundits claim, I do not think there are many so-called "self hating Jews," running around out there hoping for the end of Israel. Everyone wants things to work out. Disagreement comes from the question of whether things are going to work out by following the current path. I think you are kind of equivocating with your use of "liberalism" here, Bonam. In any case though, if Israel's neighbours are very unliberal, Israel is still only limitedly liberal, especially in the classic sense of liberal. It is a country whose governments purpose is bound up in that of a collective, not merely a group of individuals. Also, if liberalism must be conflated with Western culture and people, then it is not the case that liberalisms demise will because liberal countries went awry; it it because liberalism was flawed in the first place. A political ideal is at heart a theory about the organization of people. If it cannot be generalized to all peoples, it is in some sense a failure as a theory. I am deeply troubled by such things. No good can come of such things, be it the work of a group, as at York, or an individual, as Western probably was. But if I may say so, I am also curious as to why the media only ever seems to publish the anti-Jewish quotes from such confrontations. They are probably the worst (that is, after all, how the media works), but I have read Ha'aretz enough to see numerous stories of the bald hatred some Israeli Jews have for Palestinians, and I imagine that for any confrontation to count as "heated" there is probably some of the crap from the Middle East channeled by both sides. I mean, Jews are not in a position of weakness anymore, yet the media always portrays them as such when a confrontation is publicized. At least at my university, neither side is afraid of challenging the other. Haredim are a whole can of worms themselves, and would be even if there were no Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A lot of Israelis have an intense dislike for the Haredim and their place is Israeli society. I do not think you will see them wholly switch over though, even if there is some embracing of Zionism. Their stance on Israel is too rooted in religious events that have yet to take place, if they ever will.

Last time I checked there are plenty of young leftists; in fact, they are over-represented in the young among age groups. If a young leftist goes to ask Harper a tough question, that is their right. They are no less citizens of Canada than young rightists, and though they may despise him Harper is the Prime Minister of their country, thus making him as responsible to them as to any other citizen. No planting necessary.

As a long term solution, the only way I think nuclear energy could possibly work is if experimental fusion reactors like the ITER prove to be succesful. A friend of mine who does energy science has tried to tell me it is a waste of time and money, but for the moment I think I will take the fact that the French scientists working on it know more about energy production that someone working on their undergraduate degree as reason to be more optimistic than that. Though it remains for the moment more science fiction than science fact, I am also hopeful that space based energy production will be viable, if the requisiste materials and technology can be developed. But for the meantime, I am all for working on alternative energy sources, other than crop based biofuel, which I think to be a horendous waste.

Not too long ago I did take a look at some of the videos on YouTube of chicken factory farming; broiler chickens, as they are called. The things they do on purpose, like debeaking, are just the beginning. I saw one video where chicks just a day or two old were sealed in plastic bags - alive - to be sent off to the labs. Hakapik, or asphyxiation? I saw chicks that had literally been disembowled by the machines, and were left alive. Hakapik, or bleeding out while your entrails lie on the wrong side of your skin? All those chickens are killed before their 50th day. The ones that don't starve because their legs can't lift the bodies that have been bred too big.

I disagree with the ban for several reasons, most of which have been brought up already to some degree. Argus is insofar as seals are nowhere near endangered, and that as long as humane methods are being used they should not really be any different from any other animal that we kill. He is also correct in pointing out that seals are a very real danger themselves to what our cod fishing industry; one which, by the way, I am not sure Europeans have ever been very considerate of. Sir Bandelot has also pointed out that if one were to go looking for seal products on the shelves, one is probably not very likely to come across seal meat on the store shelves, here or in Europe. So, in that sense, a banning something that most people do not use seems kind of trivial anyway. But, of course meat is not the only thing that comes from them; I think it is still mainly about fur. Fur clothing has long been unpopular in the progressive crowd, and may only be beginning to experience a new mini-renessaince because it may be "green" . Anti-cruelty protests may just be a stand in for good ol' anti-fur. As for legality though... On one hand, yes, the European Union may be morally entitled to ban what they want. That is, after all, part of what it is to be a sovereign entity. But I think that the seal ban at least runs afoul of the principles that are commonly enshrined in free trade agreements, even if it does not contravene any current treaty (though I sort of imagine it may run afoul of the GATT). Surely with the proposed Canada-EU Free Trade Agreement currently under negotiation, I think it would certainly be illegal once THAT comes into effect, at least insofar as it would probably be illegal under NAFTA, and the CEUFTA (or whatever you want to abbreviate it as) is supposed to be, " broader and deeper, " than that. My personal feelings are that we are being done a disservice by the EU, of course. The source of that may be certain Realist tendancies, however. Certainly there are much worse things out there that nothing is done about, and that no one cares about; probably because they are not, " cute and furry. " If individual Europeans feel like they want nothing to do with the seal hunt that is all well and fine, but a government ban is way beyond reasonable. I am not sure what the government should do. Tit for tat trade wars are generally frowned upon, though they might make us feel good about ourselves. Certainly, I think that it would be something that is on the table with the CEUFTA negotiations. For now, that may be the best venue to pursue restitution. If that does not work and we have to go harder, we will at least be able to claim that we did our best to accomodate their unreasonable demands. Of course, this is all my unresearched opinion as well. But I think it should satisfy what you were looking for here.

While I would prefer the status quo, if we were looking to follow the lead of one of those countries, I would choose Sweden. It has no hard, fast end of the line, and because it does not need to make exceptions it does not fall afoul of inconstinency. Most of those laws are like, " We sort of think abortion needs to be limited because babies lives have some sort of consideration, but they are definitely worth less if a, b, or c, " where those tend to be if the child is the product of rape or " malformed " whatever that means. I am firmly pro-choice, but I can say that when I see those sort of distictions made by people who purport to be against abortion, I am repulsed by their hypocrisy.

That was just... bizarre. But, the amount of "evidence" you muster to try and unjustly convict all Muslims of seeking the destruction of the Jews is about equal to the amount and quality of "evidence" used by the classic anti-Semites of yesteryear to persecute the Jews. Bernie Madoff is not the representative of the worlds Jewry, and neither is this girl the representative of its Muslims. ( And by the way, for whoever posted the reference to it above, there is no such thing as a Muslim "ethnicity". )