Peterkin

I think it was in large part because she had previously been set up as an icon of progressive thought. Fans hate to see their heroes' clay feet. (or else, like Johnny Depp's, refuse to look down) Mass media gave us superstars; social media brought them within our grasp.

That must be something... wonderful...!

No, no, Dave was the spaceman-foetus. The monolith was God.

I still have not seen a reliable source for this information. Can't see that. At all. Without thought, how would they find shelter, capture food, win mates, decide who was in charge at any given activity, teach their children not eat poisonous berries...? I'm ruling out gods (at least any of the ones I've heard of) and magic. As for machine consciousness will not be created; it will 'arise' from unconscious machines once they expand their limited vocabulary. From the specific to the general is how reason works. You seem to be making generalizations out of thin air and trying to apply them to unnamed unspecified people. How long ago, exactly, is 'ancient'? And how many of these language do you speak? There are pictures and possibly pictograms in the caves; definitely cryptograms on the walls of ancient civilizations. No dictionaries. Symbols would suggest both thinking and abstraction, which you say this universal, very early use of shared symbology does not represent. No, I just can't follow either the reasoning or the history you present.

Yes, in that life is a prerequisite of consciousness, but consciousness is not necessary to life. Under general anesthetic, or in a coma, a normally conscious (that is, known to possess the capacity of consciousness) entity can be temporarily unconscious. Consciousness has been claimed for various forms of plant life - possible, but as yet unproven; I'm suspending judgment. It has also been claimed for non-living systems, such as a planet or a galaxy, but I have seen no demonstration of that; I don't find it credible. Life is not hard to define I suppose there are a number of slightly different working definitions of consciousness, but they all have a large overlap in the middle, so if you trim away the fanciful bits, you'll end up with a solid enough core to be going on with. [How to test for "the vocabulary of consciousness"] That method presupposes that the subjects is 1. of the same species and nationality as the observer 2. aware of the experiment and its purpose 3. capable of verbal communication 4. willing to answer and, of course, 5. conscious.

I understand it and it's still bogus.

I have no idea what that means. There was language, with words and syntax, but it was limited (highly limited?) What circumstance imposed that limitation? And then somebody - who was unconscious at the time - somehow invented a new kind of language, and that new language caused consciousness to happen, so that after the vocabulary was unleashed, we could experience thought. Sounds awfully back-assward. I go along with the second half... provisionally. No it isn't. On both counts. Symbolism and abstraction are not interchangeable concepts. A symbol can be specific, concrete and constant: A is always the first letter of the English alphabet; 5 always stands for the same quantity of objects; % always indicates part per 100. An abstraction is not directly representative of a single thing or event, but can be a impression or generalized idea. You can test other species for the recognition of symbols (experimentally high incidence in many other species) but you cannot accurately test anyone, even of your species, even of your own culture, for abstraction: it's too subjective. Which ancient people, and where does this datum appear? Words are made for communication. If everybody understands about thinking, you don't need to talk about thinking. But that's beside the point, which is: the earliest languages, and even some quite recent ones, were not written down. So how can you know their vocabulary? You speak exclusively for yourself. Many of us do relate, quite successfully, to other species. We do think like they do, about everything that's fundamental to survival, to socialization, to communication, which is why we can anticipate them, hunt them, capture them, subjugate them, tame them and befriend them.

It's quite possible, given hormonal and societal gender differences, that men commit 6+ times as many crimes as women, but is it equally possible that black people - both male and female - really commit 25 times as many crimes as white people? If proportions are that far out of the probability zone, and in the absence of any significant physiological or psychological difference, it's worth checking other factors. ...Maybe. Or they might point to all the women, past and present, who aggressed their way to the top of a power structure that was against them, who disprove your claim. Well, yes. As has been repeatedly proved by the achievements of women who did finally get into university, medical school, law school, the space program, real estate, robotics, finance, etc.

Wouldn't the parallel work better if you compared black man vs. black women and white men vs. white women? Cose, guess what! There are a lot fewer black women than white women, but a lot more of them are locked up. The male-female ratio is about same in both races --- which just might reflect the relative incidence of criminal behaviour in men and women of both races, while the discrepancy between the incarceration of black men and white men is indicative of some other factor(s) in the system.

Shouldn't we wait until they commit crimes, the way we waited 4000 years for them to prove intelligence and competence and adulthood to the satisfaction of men?

Maybe all maybe some maybe none maybe some some of the time maybe one once in awhile maybe all the time but not about the same thing... Sho. Arose - what does that mean in biological terms? Why? When? By what mechanism? In response to what stimulus? What? Okay. What about dead languages, and ancient ones? Didn't they also use words (which are symbols for things, events and acts?) Why is another kind required? Birds and groundhogs make specific sounds to stand for things and events; they express possession, intention, warning, persuasion and call to arms - those are ideas - with symbolic utterances. Where is the difference in kind? Sez who? On what evidence? You've never met a rat, a crow, a dog, a chimpanzee or an elephant.

I don't think Ontario has anything to brag about in that department. We only look like we're ahead, because we're lagging behind in the race backward.

Why invent a word everyone understands and yet has no definition? In fact, it is defined in ever bill and charter of rights. It means that nobody can legally be deprived of opportunity, political franchise or freedom of speech and action based on their race, creed, colour or gender. While it's certainly open to debate in its ramifications, the concept is solidly embedded in the democratic ideology. Oddly enough, nobody brings this up when it's a question of two white men being unequal: nobody seems to think the dumb blond middle-aged one should have different rights from the smart red-haired old one. Or that a short man ought to be paid more than a tall man. Not in the voting booth. No struggle: just make an unequivocal X against a name.

No worries - What have I ever lost to you? Who they think is more likely. And they are often wrong. When they are right, they take credit; when they are wrong, they shift blame. I had to lift this out, because I wonder what 'pandering' means in this context. If they're not pandering to voters, then to whom? And if it doesn't win them votes or power, then why? If that's what they're saying, nobody will understand them, and many of their fans will think it's too deep and/or profound for lesser men to understand. That's too profound for anyone to understand.

Politics, too. Well, if men are who the voters want running their government, who are we to select women candidates? Works out quite neatly.

Does this mean that all male nurses should be paid more than all female nurses, throughout their career, because a few of each might be accused of sexual misconduct and some of the accused might be innocent, but the male ones would be more likely to suffer consequences? That's some insurance package! Teachers have always been both male and female, though not not necessarily both in the same culture at the same time. But you still think all male teachers and no female teachers deserve that same sexual misconduct risk bonus? Voters can only choose from the candidates they're offered. They do not exclude groups; the party nomination and candidate selection procedures do the excluding before voters have any say at all. Since our current systems of government were all exclusively masculine domains until a century ago, it has been necessary for all-male and then predominantly male legislatures to change the rules and allow female participation. It has been a very slow process, but there are progressives in every generation.

We can talk about anything, whether we understand it or not. And we do talk and think about all kinds of things that don't affect us directly, and try to understand them. We study distant galaxies, as well as cans of soup that fall on our toes, and we did get to understand a great many of the processes in the universe to which we don't attribute consciousness or intelligence. (Unless... But the believers in supernatural intelligence are not consistent in their attribution, which leads me to suppose they understand the foundations of their belief less than we do ours.) I find that humans talk far more confidently about things they don't know than what they do know. Nevertheless, we can theorize, project, suppose, guess, and surmise, as well as observe, weigh and measure. It is sometimes the wildest surmise that inspires the experiment that leads to understanding. We can't know. Probably, we can never know. If the universe is one great big conscious Difference Engine, sooner or later it will decree, "Let there be light" and then we shall see.

At some interfaces, yes, they do blend - or at least overlap. We draw a big black line between consciousness and deductive intelligence when it comes to computers, and some people still draw that line between humans and other animals, while other just lump all pattern-formation into a comprehensive 'intelligence', without any lines at all. I think all those distinctions are arbitrary, ill-defined and differently understood by different people. Even the vague, general notion changes with each advancement in neuroscience. 'Processes' was too broad a term, since those of us who don't subscribe to a divine creator behind the universe consider the workings of the universe unconscious. But if we restrict the term to 'thought processes', the question makes more sense. Like the human programming is the consciousness behind computer intelligence. I'm inclined to agree. (Isn't it odd, people who believe in a god credit him for the skill of surgeons and soccer players when successful, but don't blame him for their failures? If a computer screws up, it's always the programmer's fault.) Indeed! Ants have quite a sophisticated system of communication. https://www.antkeepers.com/facts/ants/communication/ I suspects humans systematically underestimate the intelligence of other species... Though, I can't imagine very much autonomous cortical activity in each tiny ant brain, the colony is so interlinked as to have a collective intelligence far greater than its individual members'. This article is about memory https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/an-ant-colony-has-memories-that-its-individual-members-don-t-have/ That doesn't mean the colony is a conscious entity, only that it shares information, a small amount of which is available to each of its individually less intelligent but conscious members. For a 'person' to take a test, being conscious is a prerequisite. That particular example is a vocabulary test - maybe for ESL students? Of course an army requires each soldier to think! Not to devise strategy or make tactical decisions, but to deploy their learned skills and co-ordination to maximum effect, and to protect one another, and respond to changes in a developing situation. It's the same kind of limited thinking that ants or factory workers or migrating swallows have to do. Where did this different language come from? Who did the programming?

That would depend on the door. Garage? Bathroom? Loading dock?

The motivations are not in evidence and are not readily discernible from statistics. I know about some of the motivations, and their origins tend to lie in the cultural roles assigned to people, and how fragile their egos are as a result of childhood and societal influences long before marriage. In sports threads, we're constantly hearing that men are inherently more aggressive than women - why would it be any different in domestic situations? Can you think of reasons why women would want to abuse their mates? In my limited - statistically negligible - experience, wife-beaters do not intend to abuse, and are [more or less] genuinely sorry after each episode. That's one reason the women stay: the men always promise it won't happen again; "I don't know what came over me." "I didn't mean it!" "It's just that you made me sooo angry..." The operative there is 'you made me'. It's the partner's fault. (In actual fact, the anger is may well come from failures and humiliations outside the home, and simply come to a focus on the most convenient target. Much like a child that's being punished kicking the dog on his way to the corner.) And abused women do often provoke incidents; they, too, have all this blocked rage building up over time. That's why the situation typically escalates from yelling to slapping to punching to broken bones and hospitalization - and sometimes death. Alcohol frequently plays a part, which also tends to escalate, from occasional overindulgence and uninhibited speaking out, to habitual weekend inebriation and more forceful acting out, to full-blown alcoholism and uncontrolled violence. This applies to both sexes. The frustrated wife may get a little tipsy at a party and make some jocular cutting remarks... and end up being drunk every night, throwing tableware at him. Verbal abuse is far more varied, subtle and difficult to pin down. More kinds of motivation and more kinds of purpose. But that, too, usually escalates as the victim becomes less responsive, and the original cause (jealousy, insecurity, fear, ambition, frustration, need to control, need to assert ego) remains unsatisfied. It always remains unsatisfied, because no change takes place ion the abuser's psyche, where the original problem lies. Domestic violence statistics usually reflect social issues: the home is just the small stage on which every man and woman is the star of their own drama.

That last line should have read : "from either side", since most abusive relationships are unequal: most of the power is on the abuser's side - and that just becomes more lopsided over time. Whatever happened between the lovely people in the OP, there probably was some inequality of power there, too. Couples who are both domineering, emotionally insecure and volatile either kill each other quickly or blow up the relationship quickly.

The only way I have seen laws change is through challenge. Make exceptions, find loopholes, allow exemptions, bend it, clip it, break it where necessary and go to court and appeal and appeal and appeal. It's a hard, ugly slog almost every time. We went through it with women's suffrage, divorce law, reproductive rights, gay rights, end-of-life rights... every damn time we want Abraham's sons to loosen their stranglehold on other people's personal autonomy.

I'm not sure how things stand now, either. In my outdated experience, women who suffered repeated abuse were more likely to be financially dependent, or simply too intimidated to leave. They might have nowhere to go, especially with children. And the husband (it was usually a husband, not a boyfriend, which meant that for a large percentage of women in that situation, religion made it more difficult) I think - at least I'm led to believe - that social services have improved since the 1970's and 80's. The biggest obstacle, though, was fear, and I think it still is. Abusers are vengeful; that's part of what makes them abusers in the first place. It's still not uncommon for a man to track down and kill his escaped wife and children. A woman is less likely to kill the man who leaves her, and far less likely to hurt or kill the children. To the extent that holds, men are better able to walk away from a toxic relationship. Not that there can't be other complications, extortion, blackmail, spiteful communications, making trouble at work.... from both sides. We have a lot of sick puppies in this litter!

Perhaps not neatly, as they do very often occur together, but emotional abuse does also occur without physical violence. Physical abuse is often a form of lashing out or venting of frustration not caused by, and sometimes not even related to the victim; at other times, it's retaliation for perceived wrongs or insults; sometimes it's just a way to prove dominance. Psychological abuse is more often an attempt to control (own) the other person by depriving them of self-esteem and the will to resist. Anyway, the truth is out there and it's not about celebrity misfits, though they, too can be subsumed in the statistics.

Statistics and studies are available. Here's a bunch of them from all over the world: https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=intimate+partner+emotional+abuse+statistics&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart and a clear, very accessible overview from Canada (2012) https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/health-promotion/stop-family-violence/prevention-resource-centre/family-violence/psychological-abuse-discussion-paper.html CDC 2021