Exactly. I see a phrase all the time:

'If there are aliens in our galaxy, why haven't we detected evidence of them?'

Perhaps because they are so different from what we even recognize as life that we don't even know what we are looking for. Perhaps the use of radio waves to communicate is something they haven't done in so long, that using it to send a message in space is unfathomable. Or perhaps they never even used that technology in the first place. It's possible that their own physiology would make such technology pointless.

The point is, we're looking for them in very human ways and expecting something very human to come back. Perhaps a civilization at a stage similar to ours out there is asking the same question and using a technology to search that we ourselves have no understanding of. They could be our galactic neighbors and our differing biologies and technology could be so different, that wouldn't even recognize each other as life.

On the flip side of that coin, I once had a UFO experience that was anything but 'lights in the night sky' and the object did things our planes couldn't hope to do. So who knows, maybe they are already here.

Dogs = good
Trying to make me eat hummus instead of butter? = bad?

Idk, I don't think the two are as related as you imply. Either way, animals kill each other in nature all the time. You think if I didn't throw a lobster into a pot of water it'd die of old age? He'd probably get ripped apart slowly by a sea turtle.

^see how that doesn't sound like a conversation about abusing dogs anymore?

Post script: for the record, I believe the most humane way to kill a lobster is by driving a knife through the head quickly, NOT throwing it into the pot of water alive. I'm not for animals suffering, but I like eating meat and butter. The artery clogging is the animals paying me back. So it's all even.

There was a programme about the death penalty hosted by Michael Portillo a few years back which pondered weather hypoxia was the more humane way of executing prisoners - it's weird that your brain can be in such a state of euphoria and intoxication when your survival depends on something as basic as correcting o2 levels.

No. There are MANY ways to stop it. Eating only non-factory farmed, humanely euthanized meats, for instance, makes one non-complicit in the (admittedly terrible) factory farming techniques.
Not all farms are factory farms, and not all use those techniques.
Wrong. Those things you list are valuable things. Slaves, valuable. Food, valuable.
There are humane ways to treat animals. Animals don't all have the need for 'freedom' that human beings do....some do, but those animals were not domesticated.
nutritionfacts.org is a propaganda site created by a vocal vegan who's been ostracized from the scientific community for massive exaggeration and cherry picking data to make his claims. It's not scientific, it has no affiliations with other science organizations, it misuses scientific data to make a pre-conceived point.
Nice, so at least you admit that humans are more healthy (full-body strong) if they eat meat. Thanks 300lbvegan!

EDIT: The best way to get fewer people to eat meat...STOP MAKING SO MANY MORE DAMN PEOPLE! If there was a reasonable population of humans, there would have never have been the 'need' for factory farms or other animal/ecology abuse. My progeny will NEVER eat a smidgen of meat, 100% certain, can you say the same?
Do you realize that, in order to farm enough food for all humans to be vegetarian, you have to create far more farmable land, which in turn removes habitat and kills millions of native animals in ways more painful than execution, right? yes, meat production does too, but the point is that you also kill animals to get your vegis, but you just let those dead animals go to waste.

“It is a healthy, natural reaction for someone who witnesses the brutalities inflicted upon nonhuman animals in the agriculture industry for the first time, to ask, "how can we stop this from happening?”. The simple truth is that there remains only one answer, only one way to stop it from happening. We must end the consumption of animal-based products. Until then, nonhuman animals will always be placed in "livestock" conditions, they will always be exploited, they will always be abused and they will always be slaughtered. You cannot teach someone that a life-form has any real value when it is considered acceptable to enslave, kill and eat said being. Whilst humanity views nonhuman animals as resources, mere commodities, they will always be victims of our barbarity. There is no "humane" way to treat a slave and there certainly is no "humane" procedure to take a life.”

nutrtionfacts.org references only peer reviewed research. it is a not-for profit which gives away everything for free and has no goal other that providing accurate information. if anything, the one's who are distorting thetruth and studies are the one's who profit greatly off the suffering and death of non-human animals.

from a 6'5" 300lb pro football player:

“I can honestly say that being vegan is not only the most efficient way to be full-body strong, it’s also the most humane; everyone wins.”

the300poundvegan.com

Uh... WTF? Have you seriously never heard of the Dresden and Hamburg firebombings? In the Hamburg case the U.S. actually set up a fake German village as a test run just to see how many houses they could burn down. The fact that entire mock village was destroyed was seen as a massive success, not a reason to go back and figure out a more humane way to do it.

As far as Japan goes, even today a large part of Japan's economy depends upon small to mid-sized businesses that often double as people's homes. The government didn't "place" them there, these were people's day-jobs. Just like in the U.S., factories that once produced consumer goods were forced to make military materials to support the war effort.

The U.S. used firebombs for two reasons: first, firebombing meant precision bombing wasn't needed so the planes could fly at a high altitude out of shot of anti-aircraft fire and second, they knew damn well they'd be roasting Japanese people alive. Nobody cared. The war had gone on for so long that the U.S. was willing to do anything to end it quickly, particularly when they saw Russian swooping in to consolidate Eastern Europe. After Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, the bitter island fighting in the Pacific, the kamikaze attacks, and the stories of escaped or freed POWs, it's pretty safe to say the American military wasn't looking at the Japanese people as humans anymore, just enemies to be defeated by any means necessary--including nuclear weapons.

A much more humane way of stealing honey from bee slaves. Colony collapse = Revolts against human overlords.

Besides, I like the wax.

Seconding Artician. The brain evolved by natural selection, just like the rest of the body. It has built in biases and modules that vary genetically. Look at the wide variety of personalities in dog breeds, for example. In humans, the big five personality traits are estimated to be about 50% heritable based on twin studies.

Gattaca is a good movie and Brave New World is a good book, but they should not be taken as the ends of some slippery slope that any eugenic policy inevitably leads to. I think it's unfortunate that so much fear of eugenics is propagated by dystopian fictions like those. Eugenics can be done in a humane way that respects all individual rights. For instance:

1. a system of incentives for highly successful people to have more children or donate to sperm banks.

2. Universal single-payer healthcare, providing among other things free condoms and birth control pills to all, so that the use of contraception will not be so much inversely correlated with income as it has been from 1850 to the present when the poor often couldn't afford it (and it's a demonstrable fact that on average the poor tend to have lower intelligence partly due to genetics)

Even such modest, individual rights respecting policies, if phrased in terms of benefiting the gene pool, are political suicide because people are still afraid of imaginary slippery slopes leading to Hitler. Most of the US is still in denial of the implications of biological science, for reasons that speak well of them, but it's time to grow up and get over that habit of Godwinizing any attempt to improve the gene pool regardless of whether it infringes individual rights.

Or maybe lots of people people don't actually believe that, but are reluctant to say otherwise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0W9sSqeJnA

Neuroscience research has shown that similar brain regions are involved when we think about the behavior of both humans and of nonhuman entities, suggesting that anthropomorphism may be using similar processes as those used for thinking about other people.

Anthropomorphism carries many important implications. For example, thinking of a nonhuman entity in human ways renders it worthy of moral care and consideration. In addition, anthropomorphized entities become responsible for their own actions — that is, they become deserving of punishment and reward.

@bcglorf
1.can you provide evidence that bin laden was responsible for 9/11?

and is it your contention that if the taliban had found bin laden guilty in the 90's 9/11 would have never happened?

im not being confrontational.i am trying to follow your logic.
maybe i am missing something.

2.is it your position that the causation of the current situation cannot be rectified?so therefore we must deal with it.

i have offered no course of action.
so whatever you have taken from my commentary is assumed on your part.

i do not understand your logic.
and i mean that in the most sincerest and human way.

so our country imposes sanctions that starve millions.
lets ignore that.
our country deposes and sometimes assasinates democratically elected leaders to impose depsots and tyrants who kill,maim and murder tens of thousands.
but thats not up for discussion.
our country fabricates evidence to go to war.
millions are the death toll.
but lets not examine that.

lets examine the thousands that are killed in a country that is a fight within their own borders.

and even those borders were an arbitrary drawing by the west (england in this case),which only serves to destabilize a region that was rich in culture and a far more moderate religious state than you find it today.

it is WE who radicalized THEM.
and we did it for our corporations.for profit.
to exploit regions illfit to defend themselves.
WE are the bully.
WE are the empire in star wars.

WE have lost the right to say anything in a moral argument in regards to a countries right to self determine.
because WE have shown ourselves to be,by far,the worst perpetrator of violence,murder,covert assasinations,political manipulation and brought untold suffering to countries across the globe.

WE are the greater of those two evils.
and it is about time WE shut the fuck up and leave other sovereign countries alone.
that is a course of action.
because to do otherwise the bile of hypocrisy would drown out any sense of true morality.

Naturally, I don't believe in capital punishment, but it seems to me their lethal injection procedure is too complicated for its own good. A massive opiate overdose (which could be delivered subQ or IM) would initially be euphoric, the person would fall asleep, stop breathing and then die of asphyxiation. There are caveats, of course (like they might not actually die and just end up severely brain-damaged from lack of oxygen), but these could be sorted with an additional injection of something more directly lethal once they were unconscious.

When it comes down to it, though, there really isn't a "humane" way to kill someone. Perhaps more or less "humane" ways, but it's still well down the "humane" spectrum.

Anyways, capital punishment seems to be more about vengeance than justice or problem solving. Also, given that it's not possible to undo, and the embarrassingly large number of cases overturned by DNA evidence as of late, it's just not worth it. People that truly are irredeemable psychopaths should just be given a lifetime sentence with no chance of parole. This wouldn't be a problem if they would stop incarcerating drug users for stupid-long periods of time. Prison should be for people incapable of living in society without causing harm to others. That's a case of mental illness, and should be treated as such.

Privatized prisons wouldn't like that, but if you eliminated all the incarcerated people who could be redeemable with the right treatment, we could direct our resources to maintaining and attempting to treat the truly criminally insane.

Bit of a rant, but the system seems to be broken and getting more broken all the time.

@hpqp
I am not at all ashamed of my verbose, self-indulgent dross, so here we go!

Something has to be extra-physical, as least based on our current model. I can fully accept that a brain by itself can receive sensory input, process it against memory, and thus act in a completely human way indistinguishable from a conscious human, but on its own can literally be no more "conscious" than a river flowing down a mountain. Our current view of the physical universe does not tolerate any rational physical explanation of consciousness. Any given moment of human experience - the unified sensory experience and stream of consciousness - does not exist in a single place at a single instant. To suggest that the atoms\molecules\proteins\cells of the brain experience themselves in a unified manner based on their proximity to or electrochemical interaction with each other is magical thinking. Atoms don't do that, and that's all that's there, physically.
I disagree that consciousness is subordinate to cognition in terms of value. Cognition is what makes us who we are and behave as we do, but consciousness is what makes us different from the rest of the jiggling matter in the universe.

A couple of posts back, you challenged my statement about abstinence education as demonstrating a lack of pragmatism. I didn't really address it in my reply, but I'd prefaced it with the understanding that it's not a magical incantation. I know people are still going to have sex, but I suggested that has to be a part of education. People have to know that you can still get pregnant even if you're using the contraceptives that are available. They have to at least know the possibility exists. It's one more thing for them to consider. People are still going to drive recklessly even if you tell them they can crash and kill themselves despite their airbags, seatbelts, and crumple zones, but that doesn't mean it's not worth it to educate them about the possibility. I fail to see how that's not pragmatic.

I didn't reply to your comment about adoption vs abortion because I'm not sure there's anything else to add on either side. As I've said, my beliefs on this are such that even a grossly flawed adoption\orphan care system is preferable to the alternative, even if it means that approximately 10 times the number of children would enter the system than have traditionally been adopted each year. (1.4M abortions annually in the US, ~140K adoptions, but there are several assumptions in that math that wouldn't hold up to scrutiny.) Many right and just things have unpleasant consequences that must be managed. (The typical counter here is that Pro-Lifers tend to also be fiscal\social conservatives and won't fund social services to care for these new individuals they've "protected" into existence. That's just another issue of taking responsibility for the consequences of choices. If they get what they want, they need to be held to account, but it's a separate issue. A related issue, but a separate issue.)

Criminalizing\prohibiting almost any activity results in some degree of risky\dangerous\destructive behavior. Acts must be criminalized because there are individuals who would desire to perform those acts which have been determined to be an unnecessary imposition on the rights of another. Criminalization does not eliminate the desire, but it adds a new factor to consideration. Some will decide the criminalization\prohibition of the act is not sufficient deterrent, but in proceeding, are likely to do so in a different manner than otherwise. The broad consideration is whether the benefits of criminalization\prohibition outweigh the risks posed to\by the percentage who will proceed anyway. Prohibition of alcohol failed the test, I expect the prohibition of certain drugs will be shown to have failed the test..eventually. Incest is illegal, and the "unintended" consequence is freaks locking their families in sheds and basements in horrific conditions, but I think most of us would agree the benefits outweigh the detriment there.

Is putting all would-have-been-aborteds up for adoption abhorrent or absurd? The hump we'll never get over is asking "is it more abhorrent than aborting all of them", because we have different viewpoints on the relative values in play. But is it even a valid question? They won't all be put up for adoption. Some percentage (possibly 5-10 percent) will spontaneously miscarry\abort anyway and some percentage would be raised by a birth parent or by the extended family after all. An initially unwanted pregnancy does not necessarily equate to an unwanted child, for a number of reasons. I do not have statistics on what proportion could be expected to be put up for adoption. Would you happen to? It seems like that would be difficult to extrapolate.

The "'potential' shtick" carries weight in my view because of the uniqueness of the situation. There is no consensus on the "best" way to define when elective abortion is "acceptable". Sagan puts weight on cognition as indicative of personhood. As he states, the Supreme Court set its date based on independent "viability". (More specifically, I feel it should be noted, "potential" viability.) These milestones coincide only by coincidence.
Why is it so easy for us, as you say, to retroproject? And why is this any different from assigning personhood to each of a million individual sperm? For me, it's because of those statistics on miscarriage linked above. The retroprojected "potential" is represented by "percentages". At 3-6 weeks, without deliberate intervention 90% of those masses of cells will go on to become a human being. At 6-12 it's 95%. This is more than strictly "potential", it's nearly guaranteed.

I expect your response will be uncomfortable for both of us, but I wish you would expound on why my "It Gets Better" comparison struck you as inappropriate. Crude, certainly - I'll admit to phrasing it indelicately, even insensitively. I do not think it poorly considered, however. The point of "It Gets Better" is to let LGBT youth know that life does not remain oppressive, negative, and confusing, and that happiness and fulfillment lie ahead if they will only persevere.
It's necessary because as humans, we aren't very good at imagining we'll ever be happy again when surrounded by uncertainty and despair, or especially recognizing the good already around us. We can only see torment, and may not see the point in perpetuating a seemingly-unending chain of suffering when release is so close at hand, though violence against self (or others).
This directly parallels the "quality of life" arguments posed from the pro-choice perspective. They take an isolated slice of life from a theoretical unplanned child and their mother and suggest that this is their lot and that we've increased suffering in the universe, as if no abused child will ever know a greater love, or no poor child will ever laugh and play, and that no mother of an unwanted pregnancy will ever enjoy life again, burdened and poverty-stricken as she is.
As you said, we're expecting a woman to reflect "on what would her and the eventual child’s quality of life be like", but we're so bad at that.
And all that quality-of-life discussion is assuming we've even nailed the demographic on who is seeking abortions in the U.S.
Getting statistics from the Guttmacher Institute, we find that 77% were at or above the federal poverty level and 60% already had at least one child.

On a moral level, absolutely, eugenics is very different debate.
On a practical level, the eugenics angle is relevant because it's indistinguishable from any other elective abortion. Someone who is terminating a pregnancy because their child would be a girl, or gay, or developmentally disabled can very easily say "I'm just not ready for motherhood." And who's to say that's not the mother's prerogative as much as any other elective abortion, if she's considering the future quality of life for herself and the child? "It sucks for girls\gays\downs in today's society and I don't think I can personally handle putting them through that," or more likely "My family and I could never love a child like that, so they would be unloved and I would be miserable for it. This is better for both of us."
Can we write that off as hopefully being yet another edge case? (Keep in mind possibly 65% of individuals seeking abortion declare as Protestant or Catholic, though other statistics show how unreliable "reported religious affiliation" is with regard to actual belief and practice.)

_{"Argumentation"? I have learned a new word today, thanks to hpqp. High five!}

>> ^gorillaman:

@Unaccommodated
Modern marriage has nothing whatsoever to do with the production of children.
Marriage can only be worthwhile as a private contract contrived to serve the happiness of its participants. Its legitimacy should not be determined by the number of similar arrangements or the prevalence of comparable relationships in nature.
The biological source of our sociosexual proclivities is only a starting point, the raw material to be combined with our culture and worked by our intellect to produce something of greater value. Humanity has the power to surpass nature.
Homosexuality crossing a threshold of acceptability now that it's practiced by a significant enough percentage of the population is an idea that ought to be offensive to pretty much everybody.


Marriage is FAR, FAR from simply a private contract, it is a public occasion. While the participants in the marriage may make promises to each other, its always done with public input. When people get eloped it often hurts other people in the family for not being able to give their input. Marriage and its public nature, is a human universal. In western Christianity it comes with the portion of 'speak now or forever hold your peace'. In other situations it can be as simple as leaving your belongings in front of someone else's dwelling for a day in the public eye.

Its very clear you think humans are removed from 'nature'. We are not. We do not transcend or surpass our nature, we are who we are. The nature that created your body is the same nature that created your brain and the way you think. Of course other things affect the way you think, but you can't get passed your human way of understanding things. Our Biology affects are behavior and culture, until the point where our culture influences our biology. That is why only some cultures, with a practice of raising cows, people can drink milk as adults. We will never become removed from this cycle.

Homosexuality has had varying amounts of acceptance at different places and different times. Its not only a modern development. I am saying that homosexuality makes up a significant amount of the human population, and probably always has far into our past. I am not saying 'Oh, I guess now it should be accepted', I am saying 'Why should it be anything other than accepted?'

This is more humane way to do it, no guns, no overuse of authority: link

The guy got 10 months on probation and the police with broken lip got 1400€. Again, no over-sentencing but fair.. It's good to live in this kind of society.

I think every one in here should take a moment to understand how things die. It is highly debated, but is that fish dead? Maybe, maybe not. What is dead? Dead when the person observing the former cannot sense signs of life (pulse, eye dilation)? Or is death when a brain no longer carries electrical signals; moreover is death when the cerebral cortex no longer functions.

How long is a severed head still alive?

Below is some debate about the severed head issue. While I found the first link interesting, I was not satisfied. The Wiki Answers link seems to be more to the point. How long does a severed head retain life, perhaps a few fleeting moments. To an observer maybe seconds, or minutes. To the victim, no one can know; given the effects of time dilation.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1172/does-the-head-remain-briefly-conscious-after-decapitation

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_long_does_one%27s_awareness_continue_after_the_human_head_is_severed_from_the_body

In short there is no humane way to die. Death is a dirty business. Some see this video and say it's not humane, some see the video and all but condone it. I see this video as an observation of the interaction between the macabre and desirous. Business as usual.