@blankfist:

I'm impressed with your level of dialogue on this post. You show a better understanding of how markets can behave irrationally when small costs are forcedly imposed on a large number of people by a small number of actors, whether government or not. I sympathize more with your views realizing that your distrust of government stems from a distrust of concentrated capital in general, with government being the most extreme example. Honestly, you sound more like an anarcho-cynic than a libertarian in this conversation. Frankly, I have more respect for that. Where we differ is that I've come to see government instead as my only recourse against all those other forms of concentrated capital. This comes from my belief that democracy is the natural structural conjugate to capitalism. The two balance each other.

@Psychologic

What I really liked about your post is the emphasis on technological context. What struck me about the video is how almost all of the enumerated powers surrounded particular technologies, such as post, naval warfare, etc. Don't you suppose if planes had been invented there would be some mention of an air force? Laws always have to be revised to reflect the current technological context. Innovation confers powers to individuals not previously considered by lawmakers. Since just laws almost always heir on the side of liberty, there will thus be no statute in place to provide the necessary regulations a majority agree on. Thus, we update the law. That's why these constitutionality arguments always fall apart.

Also, I'm a computational neuroscientist, with a strong background in artificial intelligence. So your conversation about robots is rather close to my heart. I do think the ramifications of this technology have not really hit home yet. It's a large part of the reason I keep taking pay cuts to work for the government on issues clinically relevant to human vision, rather than work for the private sector on issues relevant to replacing employees and guiding missiles. Not trying to take a stand on it, just not my thing.

Hey Captain Edit, until your post contains the word externality, and a way in which your free market intends to deal with it, I don't want to talk to you.

p.s. I'm a neuroscientist, not an economist. I just read the behavioral literature.

p.p.s. Cool story bro.

>> ^snoozedoctor:
[...]At some point, it reaches the realm of faith, or simply "I have no idea." Either view is acceptable to me when you reach that far into the unknown.

I wonder, what is going to be left of the religious unknown by 2050? Since the mid-90s, neuroscientists have been concretely picking apart the general ghost in the machine view of the mind (check out "neurotheology"). (When I was spiritual, I was fascinated with the mysteries of our mental experiences; I hope to live to see these mysteries one day revealed.)

@UncleJeet's super-comment;

To argue that the impact of molecular biologists, neuroscientists, particle physicists, or journalists on humanity is the creation of belief, and requires faith in their trustworthiness is a perfectly valid semantic and philosophical point.

But to imply that what these individuals test, create and share requires equivalent faith to believing the scriptures, in the minds of John Q. Public, is silly and borderline offensive.

You argue that if an individual can not personally explain the tests, data and analysis that indicate the relative truth of all discoveries off the top of their head, then their understanding of these discoveries is equivalent to faith in the gospels. Which of these are false: A)George Bush Jr. is 6ft tall, B)two planes crashed into two skyscrapers in New York in 2001, C)the amygdala in the brain plays a large part in fear responses, D)a few amino acids in different sequences, held in place by a sugar backbone, form the basic mechanism for the coding of all life on Earth.

You're one step from arguing that if I've never met George Bush or the people he hangs out with I can't tell you what his height is. If I wasn't staring at the twin towers on Sept.11th, I'm just expressing my faith that TV is showing my the truth. If I don't ablate the amygdala in a subject animal and then try to scare it, I'll never really know if neuroscience is BS'ing me. And if I can't tell you how exactly DNA and RNA code for living organisms, well, obviously its just faith.

I can only assume that no-one called you out on this because your comment was soo long.


On a similar note, many scientists are spiritual and/or classically religious. Things are hardly ever black and white.

stemcellresearch.org is a front for the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity which is a christian bioethics organization. So it must be unbiased right??

That neuroscientist paints Fox as partisan for the Democrats which is just not true.

That's a good link rickegee, I already learned a lot about stem cell research.

its funny that the eye was such an 'irreducibly complex' talking point for anti-evolutionists back in the day.

I'm an aspiring neuroscientist, and if you want to talk about irreducibly complex, take a look at the brain. Its freakin' ridiculous.

In the vid above they just talked about the anatomy of the retina.

... and they kind of get it wrong, specifically because they refer to 'afterimages' when talking about persistence of vision theory, and then act as if the 'reseting period of the eye' is all rod and cone cells firing in unison at a framerate or something, and our brain is filling in the gaps of this constant full retinal reset (nothing like this happens).

'Afterimage' is caused by fatigued cells that have been overstimulated, made to release more neurotransmiter than they can replace. You stare at something red, then look at a white piece of paper (which stimulates all 3 cone cell varieties), and the red object from before appears as a green afterimage on the paper because the cones in the red wavelength are tired. This castle post was an 'afterimage' demo - http://www.videosift.com/story.php?id=3783

Persistence of vision is very complicated; depends on amounts of spatial displacement between frames, amount of time between frames, amount of stuff in the frame,... its weird. The brain sees this and decides whether it sees motion or whether it sees jerkiness. Talking about the brain skipping over black spaces when watching a movie projection is strange; its not like we have photoreceptors for black, so theres just nothing to see...

I'm glad this group employs some talented drumline guys. It sucks they don't employ any neuroscientists, though ; )