jeskill

Hmmm. Let me mull that over for a bit.

(The following definitions are from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary.) I think that we do actually have a good idea that a just-formed zygote does not have consciousness, just by logical reasoning. Here me out: If consciousness is defined as "the state of being aware" and "aware" is defined as "having or showing realization, perception, or knowledge", we can argue with a large degree of accuracy that a just-formed zygote is not conscious. Perception requires a somatosensory system and the ability to process the sensory information. Most of the stuff I've read states that a fetus likely cannot perceive until 22 - 24 weeks. Here is an example of one such article. The act of being conscious is more than perceiving, though -- if being aware requires knowledge and realization of what is being perceived in order to connect it to an internal representation and process the information, how can a fetus with no previous experience have such a thing?

Personhood is not a scientific concept -- it's a philosophical one. The concept of personhood will entirely depend on whether or not one believes that the fertilization process automatically creates a "soul" (we know it doesn't create consciousness) or whether or not a soul develops as consciousness develops, or even whether or not one believe a "soul" exists. But I think that a calling a collection of diploid human cells a person is a bad idea, simply because there are so many different philosophies on the concept of "soul" and "personhood". That, and it automatically means a number of contraceptives are no longer morally appropriate, such as the pill.

Some statistics to back this opinion up, from Wikipedia ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childfree#Statistics_and_research (italics and bolded are mine)

Abortion is definitely legal in China.

I think that this over-generalizes the interaction between men and women. IMO, monogamy has less to do with the man supporting the woman, and more to do with the man supporting the children of the woman. This is totally anecdotal, but it seems like both males and females tend to work for a living in childless relationships. Men do not seem to be supporting women when children are not present. This balance shifts when children are involved because child-rearing is so darn economically expensive and time-consuming. In a society that values the proper growth and education of children, yet doesn't have strong community interactions (at a local level), I'm not sure unfettered sexual freedom would make sense, because it might increase the economic and emotional burden of child-rearing on the women. If the man doesn't know for sure that it's his kid, why bother taking care of it?

I agree with pretty much everything you say, but I disagree that life begins at conception. Life, at least, the biological concept of life, continues in a different form at conception. The sperm and the egg are both alive before fertilization, and they are still alive after fertilization. I have a longer rant about this, but I've already posted it here, so I won't waste space in this thread.

I think it makes intuitive sense why you'd use a lognormal prior, but my sleep-deprived brain can't quite figure out why. Why do you use a lognormal prior? A n00b to Bayesian statistics wants to know.

It's only rare if you sample a small sub-set of the entire world population that has access to good health care. Edit to say: I'm not arguing that abortion should be legal because of maternal mortality rates. Certainly, the evidence I've seen does not suggest that the availability of abortions decreases mortality rates in woman who want to carry to full term. I was merely arguing that from an ethical standpoint, since the woman is assuming all the risks, she should have the most to say in the decision.

IMO, the ethics depend on the relationship between the woman and the man. If they are in a committed non-abusive relationship, I think it would be ethical to discuss and weigh the pros and cons together and try to come up with a concensus. Otherwise, I firmly support the concept that it's the woman's choice. My reason is simple: carrying a child to term not only "punishes the body", it can kill the woman. I agree.

I don't think there'd be a need for party affiliations. Representatives that aren't elected, don't need a platform or a condensed set of apriori objectives. If this were to work, I think you'd need to re-vamp the whole education system so that everyone has sufficient knowledge after high school. It could also be a voluntary pool-- for example, those who pass exams X, Y and after high school get into the pool of potential representatives.

I like the idea, but would prefer that there were a baseline amount of knowledge necessary for the job. At least a solid understanding of civics.

Uh, you just quoted "Answers in Genesis". lol.

I know that sometimes it's easy to look at the world and feel useless or hopeless. Certainly, there are a lot of environmental problems that need to be addressed and haven't yet been addressed. But we have also had some key environmental wins, at least in some parts of the world, so we know it can be done. Some examples: Montreal Protocol Air quality standards in the majority of Annex I countries have improved over the past 100 years. Commuting by bike increased by 70% in North America from 2000 - 2009 As stated in multiple previous posts (in the politics forum), sustainable agricultural techniques have improved healthy food availability and environmental sustainability in a few, but growing, regions of the world I will answer your question with a question: Do you want these problems to be fixed? If you do, have you written to your government representative to tell them this? The dead zone in the Gulf is fixable. There are multiple possible techniques available to reduce ag runoff and storm-water runoff. This problem would be helps if the EPA was given the ability to enforce their regulations concerning ag runoff and storm-water run-off. Why do you think it'd be easier to create, pass, and enforce legislation to limit birth rates than it would be to create, pass, and enforce legislation to regulate pollution (and I mean pollution in general right now, not just green house gasses).

As stated before, I accept that humans cause pollution, overuse resources, and have been either directly or indirectly responsible for a significant amount of biodiversity loss in recent times. I just disagree with the notion that the effective solution to these issues is to impose laws to limit birth rates. "it will be to late" ... EXACTLY. That's why I'm arguing it's more effective to focus on reducing our per capita footprint, rather than focusing on reducing our birth rate. Our human footprint is not "a problem we are causing to the environment". It's a metric used to calculate our per capita effect on the environment. With the second sentence, do you mean to say that a much smaller population size reduces the demand of resources? This is actually an interesting idea. One would think that reducing the population size would reduce the demand for resources. This logical line of thinking doesn't actually hold up when you look at the evidence, however. A reduction in population birth rates is usually caused by an increase in women's education, women's empowerment, and an increase in urbanization. These factors also generally lead to an increase in per capita resource use, because families with more education make more money and thus use more resources. What I'm saying is, as birth rates decrease, both per capita emissions and per capita use of resources increase.

I don't know why I keep being reeled in by the same arguments. Nevertheless ... Saying something like "those people produce more children than average" without backing that statement up with evidence makes it sound like you're stereotyping, which runs the potential of offending someone. How exactly are North Americans affected by population growth rates in Africa? Yes, the world is a global economy. But Africa as a region has the lowest CO2 emissions per capita in the world, despite having a high birth rate. (See Figure 10, page 12) That means that on average, an African individual's effect on carbon dioxide emissions is far less than an American individual's effect on carbon dioxide emissions. Hence, an American has a far greater polluting effect on an African. OK, I have some questions before I go on: First: Are you insinuating that the human population growth rate is currently exponential? Because data suggests that we're actually growing logistically right now and should reach a stable population size within the next 50 years. Second: Do you recognize that population birth rates in all parts of the world have been declining for the past 20-30 years? If not, look at the OP graph again. Third: Do you recognize that places with low birth rates (such as China and the US) have a disproportionally large effect on the environment? Yes, China has a large effect because it has a large population size, but please note it has a low birth rate -- they've already introduced a draconian population control policy. Really, the only effective policy to reduce the population size in China right now is to remove the population via emigration or to kill them. Ethical, eh? Fourth: You might consider reading up on "IPAT", which stands for Human Impact = Population Size x Affluence x Technology. Here is a classic overview by Dietz and Rosa.

Mind Control by Parasites ... Toxoplasma gondii is not a fungus, but it is a parasite and it does change rat behaviour.

That truly is an amazing story. I think it suggests that keeping OWS as non-partisan as possible for as long as possible may actually be a better tactic than pushing partisan policy options right now, because it's likely there are people out there who are on the right and actually agreeing with many of the grievances. It also seems like OWS has had a hand in changing the political and economic discourse in the U.S. and globally. For example, This article discusses how the various U.S. media outlets were focused on discussing the deficit in the summer, whereas now they are focusing moreso on unemployment, jobs, and Wall Street. The importance of this is that a fear of the deficit makes it easier to make social service cuts. Discussing unemployment and the causes of unemployment probably make it harder to justify social service cuts.

I feel like to really tackle this, we have to separate the concepts of morals/values from the concept of ideology. In my mind, they are two different things. Everyone has morals and values, which I loosely think of as rules that govern interactions between people. Ideology is a belief that, not only are a certain set of morals and values absolutely correct, but that there is only one system which will allow us to live in a moral and ethical way. For example, I value the concept that every human should have equal opportunity to live a free life. That doesn't mean I believe everyone is 'equal". Moreover, it doesn't mean I ascribe to a particular ideology that tells us how our institutions should be set up so that we have equality. My opinions on the latter are highly influenced by evidence: what works and what doesn't? So, I guess I'm saying that I don't necessarily believe that a secular system is completely ideological. Yes, there are a set of morals and values inherent in a secular system, but it's possible for to change the institutional structure surrounding these morals and values if evidence suggests the institutional structure is inadequate. And indeed, that seems to happen. On a related note, I'm also confused as to how you could have a non-secular system that wasn't ideological. Funny, I see the prevalent ideology in popular culture as, "only pretty and sexy women matter", not as "women should act like men". How sure are you that the act of men protecting women is innate (i.e. coded in the genes), and not a learned response to societal cues? Do you have any evidence to back this statement up?

It might be useful if you described which types of equality you value and which you don't. This website might help.

The problem with "life begins at conception" is that, from a biological perspective, life doesn't begin at conception. Rather, life continues at conception. Think about it: a zygote is not created from non-life. The two components that fuse to make a zygote -- the sperm and the egg -- are biologically alive before fertilization occurs. There is no point in the process at which things aren't alive. I think what "life begins at conception" people are trying to say, is that the special aspect which makes a human a human begins at conception. But different people define that special aspect differently. Some people call it a soul, others call it consciousness, others still may call it something else such as a heartbeat, or the ability to survive outside the womb. This definition can affect a person's belief concerning when a zygote or fetus should have the same rights as a human outside the womb. The other concern I have is thus: if you define that special aspect as "the point at which a new individual has a soul" then how can you define the moment in physical time when the metaphysical concept "soul" begins to exist? How in the world could you provide physical evidence that a soul pops into existence the moment an egg is fertilized? I strongly believe that in a country which professes we all have the right to our own religion (or lack of religion), these things should be based on physical evidence.

No, I do not believe that us humans would survive for very long if we destroy the resources that provide us food, shelter, etc. You're missing the point. The figure linked to in the OP clearly shows that humans, especially North American humans, have already taken responsibility for their reproduction rates and currently have a fecundity level that is below replacement rates. This is also shown in the US population clock, where birth rates clearly are less than death rates. According to this clock, the North American population is growing mostly because of immigration, not new babies. I agree that humans, especially North Americans, are currently using resources unsustainably. I agree that sex education, women's reproductive choice, and availability of contraception should be maintained in North America. But if you want to stop unsustainable resource use in North America, railing on about how North Americans need to have less babies is ineffective. They already ARE having less babies than before. It would be more effective to use your energy to work to improve per capita energy efficiency, reduce consumer waste or even to just eat locally grown, sustainable food.

When an organism has just one set of genes, it's called a haploid organism. If it's unicellular and haploid, it's called a "gamete". If it's multicellular and haploid, it's often called a "gametophyte". Humans do have a gamete life cycle phase -- sperm and eggs are gametes -- but these don't grow into multicellular organisms until they've fused via fertilization to become diploid. We also know that most monosomies (when one chromosome from a pair is not present) are lethal, with the exception of Turner Syndrome. So the answer to your question is no, a multicelllular human could likely not survive as a haploid. That being said, there are lots of other organisms that can grow into multicellular haploid organisms. Male ants are haploid (they have just their mother's genes). There are other organisms that grow into gametophytes, such as algae, fungi and some plants.

Have any of you read this yet? Thoughts or comments? https://sites.google.com/site/the99percentdeclaration/

Land is being taken from the poor at a fairly high rate. Specific examples include Uganda, Latin America, and Indonesia.