Sayonara

This: Hurrah!

Moderators: feel free to delete any further Iraq soap-boxing posts from this thread, or move them to the thread specified above. Your choice.

Temporary closure while I move all off-topic Iraq posts to here: http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=8685

Which I was happy to do (for the reasons already stated much further up) while the debate remained civil and realistic. I have already said the posts will be moved eventually - it's just a matter of finding a suitable new home for them, and then sifting through this thread to find a sequence that can be removed, maintain sense, and leave sense behind in its absence.

The other two scenarios are (a) one in which a foetus is self-aware for the duration of its existence as a foetus, which I don't need to evidence, or (b) one in which the foetus is not yet self-aware because it's just being lazy, which is just stupid.

After building up a picture - over several years - of the kind of world he might produce in such a scenario, I can assure you that there would never be a dull moment for the prudent citizen.

PM me a non-hotmail email address.

I doubt it. Aardvark doesn't do things by halves.

Pffft. Say hello to British history some time. Stop replying to this thread. You are clearly not going to make any coherent case, and to be quite honest we all have better things to do than respond to snide put-downs from someone who (assuming factual profile information, which I am seriously beginning to doubt) ought to know better.

Is the fact that a foetus has a time-dependent requirement that forces it to be "not self-aware" not a factor in your reasoning? It seems a little like shooting someone at the start of an exam because they haven't had their paper marked yet. Granted that analogy is a touch affective, but it was the best I could come up with for this scenario.

I don't blame you. I can hear the split monster putting on his work boots. A minor alteration I know, but rather it is the fact of "the homogenous property by which things live". This is something that is evident in equal measure in all living things, has no attributes by which arbitrary values can be derived from its study, and is irreplaceable. So do you agree that it is a sorry state of affairs, or are you able to rationalise non-consideration? It's not really critical to the argument, but I feel that this way of viewing the problem is a good way to assess our own standing on the matter of the value of life. I am familiar with the concept of value judgements in this sense. What I am trying to divine is an answer to the earlier issue we had of whether subjectively-alloted inter-relational values are the only means by which we make such judgements. It seems to me that if we are to make the claim, for instance, that a life has no inherent value, and it can only be valued through the judgements (and I use the word in the same loose sense I think you intended) of others, then we have a problem. Consider: If we take any given person, the value of their life will be considerably higher (by orders of magnitude, in fact) in the view of members of their family than it will in the view of any others (with the possible exception of close friends, but they are not so easily quantifiable and possibly also time-dependent.) Does this mean then, that in general the life of someone with a high number of family members is more valuable than, say, an orphan? I don't think we should discount the inherent value of life simply because we have problems quantifying it, or identifying its roots. But we do this anyway, in many ways. Our entire civilisation has been built - and continues to develop - through the supression of biological urges, and the (often self-imposed) enforcement of particular economic* models. Then I have a simple question. Bearing in mind that self-sacrifice is not mythological, under what minimum circumstances would you place someone else's life before your own? * in the financial, energy flow, and genetic fitness senses.

On what grounds do you presume the authority and expertise to speak for the entire United States? No, I am not confused. You have bad information, and have still not shown (and, let's be honest, are not likely to) how a tenuous link between Al Quaeda and Saddam Hussein justifies a special case invasion of a sovereign nation, and continuing occupation ex post facto which involves killing the people who want us to leave. Have you heard of Basra? How about Fallujah? Baghdad maybe? Stating a provision of the question is not the same as answering the question. Personally, no; I have no reason to believe that a person who lives in Iraq is worth less than a person who lives in Britain, and I lack the trumped-up sense of national pride that is required for me to assume it. Unlike you I do not presume to speak for the entire population, but if the 70% "no" peak of the national poll on war in Iraq is anything to go by, then the answer to your question entire is "no". Evidently. Do you not think that's a shame, given the number of deaths involved? And he can say what he likes. It won't change matters. Let's pretend for a moment that the contents of a report based on subjective evidence and flawed intelligence can be submitted as a rebuttal, and you tell me exactly which part of the report provides a response to reply #91, and why. The fact that there are a great many people who are as (or more) intelligent as Mr Blair. The degeneration of your counterpoints into derogatory or off-hand comments is making it difficult to take you seriously as a debate participant. Look up "race". Not in this thread. Because you claim to be able to do that which you told Phi_for_All he (and others) could not. You will notice that I tend to only quote the part I am replying to. I am not implying that you do not do the same; indeed you have done so several times in this thread. What you will not see me doing is quoting a half-million word post and replying with one line. It's just good manners. I see the flippancy is back. If they do not warrant more than a one line response, and you wish to remain a participant in the debate, surely that then triggers a requirement for a reply that explains the problems with the proposition.

Hurrah for technology! http://www.savastore.com/products/components/tv-tuners/ I use a PCTV Rave card. It has sockets for co-axial, composite, and sVHS.

Sorry to be so mainstream, but I have to hand it to that Mozart fellow. Beethoven, Orff and Wagner are favourites. They can really bang out a good tune John Williams is rather ace, as is David Arnold. Nubuo Uematsu is a star.

Curb the off-topic racist jokes. Then either you are a biological anomaly, or your above proposal of intelligence classes is woefully self-contradictory. If you have nothing constructive to post, then don't. Also, if you are just going to post a one-liner in response to a post that's more than about 5 lines, replace the body of the quoted post with "reply #x", where x is the reply number shown at the top-right of the post you are quoting. It means lower bandwidth consumption and less scrolling for all involved - aces.

That doesn't address the issues raised; it only serves to press home the fact that issues exist. You directly inferred it yourself. You even fall back on that inference further down in the very post I'm replying to now. If it was not your intention to infer such a link, what possible relevance does it have? I refer you back to the 'my car being keyed' scenario, and then back to my comment And I'm saying "what has that got to do with anything?". If your premise is that the USA will react to terrorism by killing terrorists, and the mechanism of this involves destroying cities and wiping out thousands of people, regardless of their affiliations or world political views (if they even have any of either), then we have segued somehow back towards the original topic - because this is clearly a statement that you see one USA life as being worth more than one non-USA life. If you care to expand on the reasoning behind that, with particular reference to the treatment of prisoners, then we will be back on topic completely. I was quite clearly saying that they are not in a position to make those judgements. They may be able to plan such contingencies, but they are not able to put them into practice. Therefore any motive for doing or not doing such a thing is a moot point. Because the evidence for those links was provided by the CIA, and they basically made it up (mostly unintentionally, in their defence). The CIA admitted it, and several officers and directors resigned. What? Opposing a baseless view that has been derived from bad information is not "being in denial". I am not qualified to say, however the evidence certainly suggests that it's a big fat "no" to that one. Perhaps you are incapable of recognising cogent analytical processes; which would be your short-coming, and not mine. Regardless, you know perfectly well I was refuting your idiotic claim that I was undermining my credibility.

Which ones are not showing? One thing that throws people is that the happy , tongue , and unhappy smilies have a nose, whereas wink and grin don't. Click 'quote' on any post to see the vb code used.

Ha, very good

Surround anything you want to put in a quote box with (remove space from first quote). One set of tags per quote. If you want to add the byline, stating who made the quoted post (recommended), use

What do you mean by "via the creation process"?

That means nothing in the context of this discussion.

Not to mention muscle boosting effects

That's why I specified bigotted views. I wasn't talking about you, despite my post immediately following yours and commenting on the same matter.

I realise that, and it's exactly my point: calling something a war does not necessarily mean that it is a war. The phrase "war on terrorism" has been designed to ellicit a heightened affective response, and it's up to us to question the acts that are taking place in this conflict's less-than-valid name. I am not questioning the motive (well, apart from pointing out just over half of the 3,000 killed were actually US citizens), I am questioning this link to Iraq that only you seem to know about. No. False dilemma. And therefore there are no such options? The people who have orchestrated this occupation are not in a position to: i) Casually mention that they have tried to whack Saddam and been thwarted, ii) Casually mention that they have planned to whack Saddam, and given up, or iii) Casually mention that they have plans to whack Saddam (assuming a retrospective view, before the invasion). Yes. It was a single throw-away line, replying to a post that deserved better than a suggestion that one look elsewhere for a response. A post that was in direct answer to your argument. Hence, flippant. Yes. The news was, and still is, 'quite a big thing'. I really don't think I am.