Wolfhnd
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Your Brain on Politics: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Liberals and Conservatives "Recent converging studies are showing that liberals tend to have a larger and/or more active anterior cingulate cortex, or ACC—useful in detecting and judging conflict and error—and conservatives are more likely to have an enlarged amygdala, where the development and storage of emotional memories takes place. More than one study has shown these same results, which is why I felt it was worth investigating." http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/09/07/your-brain-on-politics-the-cognitive-neuroscience-of-liberals-and-conservatives/#.VNa4APmjN8E Looks like this guy covers it pretty well.
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The alternative to Government regulations is government by corporations, think East Indies Corporation. Anti monopoly laws are there to prevent corporations that have a head start from monopolizing the entire economy which is paradoxically the logical out come for free trade. Pure capitalism is as absurd as from each according to there ability, to each according to their need. At least communism is a logical possibility if you assume complete altruism. The one dollar one vote idea is wonderful until you realize that your vote isn't worth much if the other guy has a billion votes. Of course all democracies require compromises so the Government is there to shift the balance slightly back in favor of the average citizen. Those citizen still have to vote responsibly with their dollars but at least they have the option to do so if the Government is not controlled by corporations. The limits of government regulations are equally obvious if your realize you need a regulator for ever other person in society. Societies must be based on the majority of the people behaving ethically. There is no parallel in nature that points to social animals being anything but primarily cooperative. The argument that that makes people sheep implies that their must be a wolf hiding out there. The wolf will not live long if he eats all the sheep. It is obviously more practical if there are no wolves and all sheep in any case. The sheep compete amongst themselves but as long as they follow the rules of their society it does no harm. A wolf on the other hand has no other option that to do harm if he is to survive. The wolf in our case is anyone who doesn't earn what they receive in compensation. Which is part of the reason the money lenders were thrown out of the temple. The neocon fascist seem to be incapable of realizing that societies are first based on cooperation and then on ethical competition. The self evidence of these truths make you wonder if they have ever really been part of a society or if they have always been selfish out laws. The suggestion that you need no laws to regulate a part of society to me implies a desire to be outside the law or above it. The thought that they think of themselves as Darwinian makes me shudder. It is obvious they have no skill for science and that leads be to believe they don't have the logic for managing an economy. Ronald Reagan was an idiot but people loved him because he told them what they wanted to hear. The failure of the economy before he was elected had as much to do with irresponsible financial institutions as the Government. When the wolf is not happy he kills indiscriminately until you give him what he wants. It's not good for the sheep but it stops the chaos for a short while until the wolf eats more than he can swallow, think enron. This cycle of greed and collapse happens over and over but no one studies history.
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Here are a couple of ideas I have and I'm sure they have lots of holes but you have to start somewhere. Elimination of monetary speculation. The stock market needs to return to the original intent that industry needs the means to raise capital other than by borrowing from lending institution. I recommend that speculation be removed as much as possible by placing restrictions on how soon after a stock is purchased that it can be sold. I also recommend that money not be treated as a commodity and end all speculation on currency. This obviously will require international cooperation and will have to be negotiated. The creation of derivatives that can be used as currency. I recommend that derivatives must be converted to currency to be exchanged tying them to monetary policy.
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"before government interference it was very difficult to generate cash through destruction of wealth." Can you clarify this statement?
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Intent is an important consideration in law. Do you think that they are aware of any wrong doing they may have committed or is it just so embedded in the culture that they may actually think they are acting ethically?
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Absolutely it is self insulating from regulation because it is the new economy devoid of any connection to reality and can't be fixed without wreaking the real economy it pseudo represents. Small steps?
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Why women are so extremely emotional?
Wolfhnd replied to Linker's topic in Evolution, Morphology and Exobiology
I forgot to add Einstein must have been a silly, emotional, effeminate male. -
cladking your right it can't be undone at once. Small steps are needed as part of the solution to almost every problem we have discussed. We also need to fix the absurdly broken stock market, It is a hang over from the 18th century when only traders traded. You didn't need to worry about insider trading back then because everyone was an insider. Project that into the 21st century and there is virtually no connection between the people trading and the people investing and that leads to moral hazards. Insider trading is only a problem because we have allowed finances to lose their transparency. I understand their is a need to protect some product secrets but surely there are better ways to prevent predatory investor from disrupting industry than hiding everything behind closed doors. Their is also a difference between speculating on the future of a company than speculation on that companies stock value. Once stock no longer represents a long term investment the value of the stock market to society is questionable and it become something like a pyramid scheme or casino.
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The very description of a dysfunctional democracy. I don't let the general population off the hook however because democracy is a painful series of compromises and sacrifices that most people would prefer not to engage in.
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"if you want things to return to some semblance of normality high taxes on the very wealthy (income over 5,000,000 or bonuses over 1,000,000) are necessary because greed runs wild otherwise." The French had a solution it was called the guillotine. A lot of what you say makes sense in so far as democracy is made impossible if the rich are not subject to the will of the majority in some way. As I said the neocons are fascist and what they promote as free trade is actually just making the distinction between corporations and government irrelevant. What once was the privilege by noble birth to be above common law is now the privilege by wealth to ignore traditional ethics. The problem is made worse by the fact that a huge percentage of the worlds "wealth" is no longer controllable by any government because it is represented by private derivatives. The money changers have got to go because the temple is definitely defiled.
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At the risk of a moderator stepping in and censoring me I'm trying to maintain the historical legal position on this subject so we can avoid any inadvertent support for the various ethical positions people may postulate outside the science forum.
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I admit that I have been conducting myself as if this was a casual conversation. The complexity of the issues involved would require that we break each point down into pages of discourse. I have a tendency to ramble anyway so my failed attempt at concisement is pretty standard for me and I apologize for any stupid mistakes I may have made.
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The article you refer to makes my point clearly as there are no innocents in regards to greed. Of course there are concerns that the housing crisis will lead to discrimination against the poor but that is why we elect people to deal with these issues. What is not clear to me is that the immorality of the underclasses especially the middle class do not aid and abet the immorality of the rich. I pointed out that it was the ordinary middle class people that were investing in property for irrational profits with full knowledge is was a pyramid scheme. The poor had no idea what was going on and I would say could have carried less until it effected them. There is a fundamental paradox in so far as the environmental damage to the planet is driven not by the consumption of the rich but by the multitudes of ordinary and poor people. The rich consume comparatively little in proportion to income. Which I think is illustrated by the fact that income is grossly exceeding consumption and can be correlated to income disparity. The point I was trying to make is that contentment is abstract and unlikely to be directly tied to consumption. The need to uncouple consumption from contentment is not abstract and a worthy goal. That said meeting even the basic consumption required for contentment is unlikely with the current population trends. For the vast majority of people on this planet their problem is not contentment. "Who are the people pushing for equal distribution?" My response was in reference to this term "wealth inequality"?
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Reagan was an idiot probably senile during office and the neocons are fascist. The economist that almost destroyed our economy were insane randroids. Nothing you suggested was my position actually reflects it but does reflect a knee jerk liberal bias. There is little evidence that either the conservatives or liberals in this country have any idea what they are talking about. You also missed the point entirely in so far as morality is not a tiered system where those at the top have more obligations than those at the bottom. The influence on ethical behavior works in both directions. Compromising your beliefs is the hallmark of a cooperative, civilized, democratic society not hypocrisy. Thus the reference to the juvenile philosophies of the hippies.
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"Contentment has almost nothing to do with money" Unless you are starving, sick, lonely and bored. "I can't help but feel that this attitude lies at the heart of why people (at least in the US) aren't more cooperative, which I feel increases this wealth inequality." There is nothing cooperative about someone who isn't engaged in the economic welfare of their society. It is pure escapism to believe that goods and services should be distributed equally and it's inherently unfair. Wealth inequality is not equivalent to income disparity, everyone should be rewarded according to their contribution unless there are extenuating circumstances. There is an apparent disconnect with reality in people that fail to recognize that someone has worked hard to provide them with food, shelter, transportation and health care. Many of the people that provide these services are underpaid resulting in income disparity. There is no disparity for people who simply don't work because they don't feel like doing so. It's also delusional to not see the part that ordinary people play in the unethical practice that permeate society. During the housing crisis the market speculators took advantage of the ordinary peoples greed in wanting houses they could not afford and were purchasing as a speculative hedge of their own. Ethical standards have to be universal if cooperation is going to be the hallmark of society.
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"I'm all for following the scientific consensus on definitions otherwise it just leads to misunderstandings. Until otherwise enlightened, or logically refuted, the fact is a human zygote is coded to make a human, so to me it is a human, but the stage it becomes a person is open to question." I think you missed my point in so far as no amount of DNA identity changes the fact that the scientific definition of human requires a specimen that has certain physiological characteristics. You can identify the zygote as the product of human sperm and egg by DNA but that doesn't make it human. A lot of people think the current definition is idiotically archaic and maybe it is because it is derived from archeological not genetic definitions. One thing is certain and that is zygote is not just a zygote it belongs to a species. Logically though your DNA proposition of identity opens up the door to the other suggestion that cognitive function is needed to define what is and isn't human. I think it is best just to leave things as they are and not start redefining things in the current atmosphere. Zygote definition: the cell produced by the union of two gametes, before it undergoes cleavage. Note not a human but a cell. Fetus definition: an unborn or unhatched vertebrate especially after attaining the basic structural plan of its kind; specifically : a developing human from usually two months after conception to birth—compare embryo. Note a fetus not an embryo and an embryo not a human. You can make up your own definitions if you like but I don't see any reference to DNA and no reason to change the definitions.
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The only thing I would add is that fair competition is rewarding and has social benefits. A hippy may be happy but a hippy could be defined as someone in need of a bar of soap and a job application. The lazy irresponsible self indulged individual is as unethical as the inside trader. Values and contentment do not make us moral.
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The practitioners of what is called science recognized early on that they needed their own language to avoid the confusion we see here. There are accepted if vague scientific definitions for the terms human and life but since science is a probabilistic business there is a cline in each term from non human to human and from non life to life. Science in general does not deal with absolutes like exactly when something began. Some estimations are very exact and some less so. We have enough information to be fairly exact about when a fetus begins and to predict when that fetus is "viable". That in no way helps us to define when a fetus becomes human because the definition of species is not nearly as exact as the definitions related to other biological processes. The inexact definition of Homo sapiens sapiens traditionally relied on physical characteristic but even with the advent of DNA testing what separates the various species of Homo is seriously debated. What is clear is that it the size of the human brain not it's function that defines the species. This may be only a historical artifact of the way species are defined or the inaccessibility of behavior in the fossil record. Either way it doesn't matter because one of the characteristic of science is that to some degree it relies on peer review and accepted definitions. The OP suggest that the species Homo sapiens sapiens be redefined using cognitive function as part of the definition but since doing so would have virtual no scientific utility it is unlikely to happen.
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Correlative data suggest that income disparity is associated with increased dysfunctionality of the markets. You don't have to be against capitalism to be concerned about income disparity, or the lack of regulation. To exist capitalism has to be protected from monopolies, unfair trade practices, unfair labor disputes, etc.. The other failing of capitalism is that it has proven that the mystical "invisible hand" does not provide sufficient foresight for necessary infrastructure to be established. History has shown for example that left to it's own devises capitalism will fail at establishing what could be thought of as the life blood of free trade transportation. Transportation networks have repeated needed to be provided by government entities for capitalism to survive. Capitalism also must be protect by a military and police force and when protection services have been the providence of industry they have proven to be hostile to democracy. The most tragic misunderstanding amongst the proponents of capitalism is a failure to understand what could be called the darwinian perspective. This is most evident in a failure to understand that because the "natural" system is characterized by a lack of foresight competition always leads to extinction. They also fail to understand that intraspecies interaction is characterized by cooperation not competition in "nature". It is this fundamental misunderstanding that society is dependent on virtue far more than greed to motivate it's workers that makes modern economic theories so idiotically out of touch with reality. At the same time that proponents of capitalism insist that markets be deregulated for efficiency greed invariably leads to the system near demise when they are deregulated. What a society needs to function above anything else is ethics. The current manifestation of capitalism is devoid of ethics and where ethics are lacking an authoritarian government will step in to provide order. Fair trade, open markets, fair competitions, and the other things we value about capitalism are all characterized by one thing a sense of fair play regulated by the ethical cooperation of a moral population. Once you take the position that people are naturally greedy and insufficiently ethical to regulate there activities by anything other than the competition of the market place you have doomed capitalism. It is no more ethical to draw a paycheck while doing as little work as possible than it is for traders to engage with insider knowledge. The enterprise of creating a functional capitalist society requires the cooperation of all members of society. It will only work if the participants see it as a fair game and the cheaters are removed to the sidelines. We do this primarily by peer pressure not by authoritarian government intervention but the criminal element both amongst the mighty and the small will always be with us. Criminal traders should be fired as well as lazy workers and these things require that their peers demand them. The government must remain the umpire ever vigilant to point out the cheaters to the other players. Enforcement should be except in extreme cases the prerogative of the peers. Government support unfortunately will always be needed because the game is played in the moment and lacks foresight. The purpose of regulation should be to not only referee the game but to help the game evolve toward something other than extinction. Service that are not profitable in the moment should be carefully selected and provided by the Government with a mind toward some ultimate goal which while never reachable should reflect the democratic consensus.
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I would have another option in the poll that states> Science cannot define when human life begins.
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Not exactly, culture and genes are coevolving but the influence of culture on genetics is very minimal at present in regards to ethnicity and life style. The complexities involved and the limits of history make it impossible to determine what influence culture may have had let alone what impact it will have on the future evolution of the human species. The knowledge that the two are inseparable places responsibilities on us that we have not sorted out.
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I thought this was so well known that it did not need supporting evidence. I apologize and realize that was not a polite assumption. "People today look remarkably diverse on the outside. But how much of this diversity is genetically encoded? How deep are these differences between human groups? First, compared with many other mammalian species, humans are genetically far less diverse – a counterintuitive finding, given our large population and worldwide distribution. For example, the subspecies of the chimpanzee that lives just in central Africa, Pan troglodytes troglodytes, has higher levels of diversity than do humans globally, and the genetic differentiation between the western (P. t. verus) and central (P. t. troglodytes) subspecies of chimpanzees is much greater than that between human populations." http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/skin-color/modern-human-diversity-genetics
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Some of the confusing over this topic may be a result of failing to understanding how little out breeding is required for a trait to diffuse through a population. Cultural barriers are of course relevant to mate selection as well as geological isolation. There are distinct physical characteristic for many ethnic groups even if they live in close proximity to each other. The inverse that cultural isolation is promoted by genetic diversity is perhaps relevant as well. Physical attraction may be higher for people who share physical characteristic which contributes to isolation. All of the above may sound like something straight out of a Nazi hand book and is perhaps considered taboo. The Nazi's however were pretty poor population geneticist. The genetic differences in humans is small enough to rule out much influence on cultural evolution or moral traits as I think the OP was suggesting. Geographical isolation as well as cultural isolation are decreasing rapidly which on the evolutionary time scale would suggest than ethnic diversity as a physical phenomenon should be decreasing at an accelerating rate and likely to disappear in the future. The original post indirectly raises some interesting points.
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I deduced from the other comments that the original topic heading was meant to say when does a human life begin which could be confused with personhood. In any case it is pretty difficult to figure out what the question was exactly. Perhaps the title could have been Should a severely retarded individual be considered human?