ObserveandReport

I have little to no input on how natural selection and IQ interplay, but wouldn't the survival of a minority whose thriving is based on advances in maths, sciences, and finance necessarily increase the focus on educational development? Is that what you mean by the "history account'? How heavily do genetics influence IQ(I've seen estimates from 40% to 80%)? Most importantly, to what extent is this field of science in its infancy? I am not asking rhetorically.

Update: I was wrong. I emailed the PhD. back about race on race variable statistics, and she confirmed that before 2012 the only questions asked were "white" "black" or "other" when it came to the race of the offender. I was wrong in my assessment of your conjecture. I'm going to try and get the post 2012 offender stats. That being said, I take it the vast majority of people who comment on race, which includes many racists of various backgrounds, haven't done a modicum of research into the matter. That was my point with the joke. It is nearly inconsequential to the conclusions made in the OP. So there you go. My conclusion was that some people were racist, not all. If your assessment of a race is not based on facts, but rather the preconceived notions you have of that race, you're by definition a racist. I have no opinion as to whether or not you are a racist, other than most white people are not racists and you are most likely to be in that majority. How you gathered otherwise is a mystery, but thank you for harping on my statistical error. I will rectify it at the earliest possible time. I actually owe you a bit more than that because you forced me to do the research I was too lazy to do. Thanks. Oh, and I still won't apologize about your uncle because that was a joke.

Update: The response email was this "The NCVS has been collecting data on both race and ethnicity since its inception in the 1970s. You can use our online data analysis tool to examine crime rates for non-Hispanic whites and Hispanics going back to 1993 (http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=nvat). Best, Lynn Langton, Ph.D. Chief, Victimization Statistics So you were wrong in your conjecture. Update: before 2012 there was no specificity to the offender race data. You were right. Thanks for motivating me to do the work. That may be inflating the black data as well...so it's not as though either conclusions are accurate. I am searching for the post 2012 data. The other thing was a joke.

My longer response will post soon...but note that I asked for "definitive" evidence. Either you deliberately ignored that, or don't understand the word. In response, I have taken it upon myself to actually e-mail the BJS.

Well, if there hasn't been many minds changed, at least we may have more definitive arguments for our positions. Cheers.

Thank you for restating the same thing I said except without adding evidence and drawing an inference whose likelihood is unknown. Cantelope and honeydew have a high degree of correspondence, but they taste quite different. I can see why one might draw that inference, but it isn't certain, nor is the likelihood quantifiable. Thus, I left it out of the equation. You are humorless. There are plenty of racist people of all colors. White racism against blacks was the specific target of the article which you so astutely grasped. The comment was a self-deprecating nod to the fact that everyone's "got that crazy uncle." It's a common trope especially brought up by comedians involving the topic of Thanksgiving. Thank you for applying rigor to sufficiently stifle all humor and induce this long explanation. If what you grasped was "all white people are racist" you are as sensitive and loose with logical inferences (and quite frankly dishonest) as any social justice warrior. I genuinely dislike your style of argument. If you want to have the fight "ALL whites are racist" "NO not ALL whites are racist!" please go elsewhere. What I presented was a well sourced argument with some conversational tones at times.I think you are either arguing in bad faith or simply trying to white knight for whites (white-white knighting?). You have the right to be offended and I have the right to give offense. Grow thicker skin or make me believe what I said would be hurtful to a reasonable person. You have clearly done neither.

I know it's going back some, but an "ought" with an "is" and an "if" doesn't resemble a moral statement(to me), but one of pragmatism. While these perhaps aren't mutually exclusive, I don't think it gets you any closer to a moral framework.

I actually laughed aloud. It was like I saw a physical manifestation of self righteousness cut at the knees. Not to poke at the bear, but is he "self-made" when he inherited millions? I'm not saying his accomplishments aren't his own or that he didn't earn much of the money he has, but surely he shouldn't be singing "started from the bottom, now we here." As far as IQ, I literally have no idea the ratio of billionaires to IQs. I will say, he's a rather unimaginative speaker, but that may be a brilliant bit of strategy to appeal to a wider audience, so again inconclusive. It's hard to get a bead on him , because I cant tell what is a part of the show, a necessity of politics, or genuinely him. Maybe that's cynical but there you go.

I love that Arthur C. Clarke quote. Definitely the latter. But if you are working with a credulous audience, ending up with aliens is a hilarious absurdity.

You would not deny that values exist, I think? Consciousness is subjective, but objective in that it exists (I feel like I'm missing an important distinction here). Other than that I agree with your take on this. Otherwise, the argument presented in the OP is a bit distorted from the original. Hume points out that in laying the groundwork for a moral schema, people often list a number of facts ("is" statements) but will then begin speaking about how things should be ("ought" statements) and he sees no reason why they can do this without explanation. Hume may have though that this means there are no principles which bridge this gap. I did my senior thesis on this exact subject. One philosopher, (I forget his name) suggests that most modern theories themselves contain either explicit or implicit bridge principles. These theories include Utilitarianism, Deontolgy, and strong Pareto principles (think Stefan's two guys in a room). Others (Charles Pidgen) suggest that such principles are either nonexistent or trivial. If I am recalling correctly he asserts that deonotological requirements (universality) are not what bridge "is" and "ought" but are necessary conditions of morality if it is coherent.

Thought this was funny. 1. Miracles are extraordinarily uncommon phenomena. 2. Mistakes of humans interpreting their experiences are very common. 3. Humans lying about their experiences are very common. 4. If something is more common, it is more likely to occur. 5. Mistake and lying are far more likely to occur than miracles (by 1-4). 6. Sentient beings using technology to create aberrations in the laws of nature is far more common than natural laws spontaneously breaking down. (CERN vs. telekinesis ) 7. If a human is not mistaken or lying about a miracle’s occurrence, it is more likely than not that a sentient being using advanced technology is responsible (by 5 and 6). 8. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. 9. Magic is indistinguishable from the laws of nature spontaneously breaking down. 10.If a human is not mistaken or lying about a miracle’s occurrence, it is more likely than not that a sentient being with advanced technology is responsible and that it is indistinguishable from magic (by 7-9). 11.There were no sentient beings from Earth, leading up to the miracles of the Bible, with sufficiently advanced technology to produce an aberration in the laws of nature. 12.The cause of the miracles in the Bible was most likely sentient beings not from Earth, if they happened at all (by 10 and 11). 13.A sentient being not from Earth is an alien. 14.If Jesus was responsible for miracles of the bible, he was most likely an Alien and not using magic (by 10 - 13). Give a if you liked it/thought it was funny. Cheers!

Quickly, "the executive control system of the mind" is sufficient. A 12 week old fetus does not have that. A min d can survive the death of the body and in that instance, the person survives. Therefore what we are is our minds. I hate to be repetitive, but you have yet to strike down this argument. There are three main views: animalism, which says that we are human beings (Snowdon 1990, Olson 1997, 2007); personism, which says that we are creatures with the capacity for self-awareness; and mindism, which says that we are minds (which may or may not have the capacity for self-awareness) We are veering off into tangent land. I fall in the third camp. We already know you fall in the first camp. My arguments defends the third thesis and directly attack the first. Defeat my initial arguments, describe why, even if successful, the arguments don't imply acceptance of mindism, or accept the thesis.

​Contracts are interesting because they are the taking on of duties, not necessarily connected to the person who made the deal. For example, third party beneficiaries receive rights or goods as the result of contracts frequently in insurance policies and things of the like. Not a good abortion argument. We are not talking about the consenting exchange of duties when it comes to the fetuses or the dead. We are talking about harm. That's why I cited: An event can affect us only by causally affecting us (the causal impact thesis). We cannot be causally affected by an event while we are nonexistent. We do not exist while dead (the termination thesis). So neither being dead, nor any posthumous event, can affect us while we are dead (by 1–3). Hope this helps. If you could say that we somehow exist, before our brains do, you would be able to distinguish the death argument from the fetus argument. Your're welcome. I certainly came into the debate with my own opinion and had one prior to my exposure to the arguments I put forward. But, I'd be happy to give up my current beliefs if they are in error. I don't have a personal connection to this one, it's more about knowing the truth. I know that people give significance to DNA, but I think it's a cop out. You could slowly and continuously alter my DNA via the CRISPR method until I was genetically far away enough to call me someone else, and I would simply state that I underwent a genetic change, not that I ceased to exist. In the same way, you can look at the egg as having undergone a genetic change. Please see the above argument about posthumous harm. "capacity" can be widely or narrowly interpreted. Every skin cell that gets scratched off our body has a complete copy of our genetic blueprints. Given the right laboratory conditions, that cell could be cultured, reverted into stem cells, and grown until sentience. Is that "capacity?" I'm not saying having agreed upon definitions doesn't help, but perhaps their will always be staggering ambiguity that threatens arguments. It is quite literally the reasons lawyers exist.

Also, if they believe my arguments are irrelevant, they should easily be able to point out the premises or conclusions that are erroneous and provide some rigorous arguments of their own. Instead I see beliefs and platitudes.

There are two ways to distinguish between the coma patient and the fetus. We treat interrupted consciousness as different than ended consciousness, because paused or interrupted consciousness has already existed and garnered rights. Anytime someone got knocked out or lost consciousness temporarily, it would be ok to kill them if current consciousness or regaining consciousness were the standard because the fact of the matter is that when you get knocked out, you may never wake up. Moreover, if consciousness is perception and thought, then time between sensations and thoughts, where neither is occurring...even if it's a nanosecond, would be an opportunity for morally killing a person. This is absurd and not because that person will have another thought/sensation in a mere nanosecond's time. Rights accrue to people and it takes drastic changes to dislodge those rights (brain death or actual death). Once we know what death is, we know intuitively that one can be harmed after death: An event can affect us only by causally affecting us (the causal impact thesis). We cannot be causally affected by an event while we are nonexistent. We do not exist while dead (the termination thesis). So neither being dead, nor any posthumous event, can affect us while we are dead (by 1–3). We cannot be causally affected by an event before the event occurs (the ban on backwards causation). So neither being dead, nor any posthumous event, can affect us while we are alive (by 1 and 5). So neither being dead, nor any posthumous event, can ever affect us (by 4 and 6). Death cannot affect us after it occurs (by 1–3). Death cannot affect us before it occurs (by 1 and 5). So death can affect us, if at all, only when it occurs (by 8 and 9). http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/death/#EpiChaDeaCanAffUs The same is true in reverse. A dead body is not structurally very different from a living one, but we are certain that it is incapable of consciousness so that even if we could frakenstein the body, there would be no moral reasons to do so. On an admittedly weaker note, since the coma patient does have the requisite materials, they may simply be dreaming, or they may even be aware of what's going on. Since we know these things happen, http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/man-trapped-coma-awake-12-4976769and https://www.vice.com/read/being-in-a-coma-is-like-one-long-lucid-dream-511, there is good reason to er on the side of caution and assume they are happening. With the fetus, they simply can't be happening. Especially up until 12 weeks, the point before which 90% of abortions occur. .

Without a doubt the best comment yet. We can only empathize with the conscious and with that comes the ability to possess, harm, or interact. Specifically, you can't deprive a rock of anything. You cant "harm" a rock. You can't do a rock evil. Even organic versus inorganic is not enough. You can genocide amoebas and there is nothing moral or immoral about it. On the continuum fallacy you presented first... its not a matter of neurons specifically (the quick answer is killing a zygote is morally neutral and killing a healthy non-agressing 20 year old is not). Consciousness is quite difficult to define because it is literally as subjective as you can get. That being said, we know that whatever consciousness is, it either exists at the level of the brain or supervenes on the brain (imagine a radio tuning into the right station). Brain injuries and in vitro testing have told us that consciousness involves many areas of the brain working in tandem. Specifically I recommend http://thebrainbank.scienceblog.com/2012/12/04/what-can-science-add-to-the-abortion-debate/for the neural correlates of consciousness. As to what it is.... that answer is both obvious and ineffable. Unless you are a computer program, you know what it's like to be you. What it's like to sleep, run, smell, verbs, ect. You don't need to solve the "hard problem of consciousness" to know it has to do with brains. So, as the article listed above states, there is simply no way the brains of 12 week old babies are advanced enough to have thought, pain, experience, reflection, dreaming, or any other analogue or permutation of consciousness.

font this size is tiny on my computer. That's why I prefer it in this size. If I were shouting it would be in all caps. You still havn't responded to any of my arguments. I would love to have an actual discussion about the points I've raised. Right. I'm not sure why it matters that the cancer will not eventually be self sustaining. Also, on the dementia point, there is a disanalogy there. Where there is a deterioration of the brain is not equivalent to a brain incapable of conscious perception. If you have someone who's brain is destroyed to the point that they can never be conscious or even dream...they are brain dead ... They are dead to the world already. That doesn't mean someone in a coma, it means someone whose thalumus and amygdala have been destroyed. At that point what you have is a sack of organs. It's unfortunate, but true.

No, it's not about survival. It's about personal identity. You can't harm a person before they exist, the same way you can't be hurt after death. None of my arguments have to do with the ability to sustain one's own life. "Meant" is not an argument. If you mean typical behavior of organic cells, then cancer is "meant" to grow....should we let it? Why does it matter that fetuses will eventually grow into a baby? Most pregnancies end in miscarriages... are they meant to do so? Why? If you would be so kind as to address the arguments I put forward in the OP perhaps we could hash out some real points.

No reflexes are not a part of who you are. A body that is brain dead may exhibit reflexes. A fetus pre-brain development of any kind may exhibit reflexes. They are by definition a part of the body. If it can happen without a brain, it's not what make you, you. It can be replaced. If I give you another body with the same reflexes (all else being equal) you are the same. Regardless of the biological functions that proceed, there is no significantly higher probability or potential the nanosecond the implantation occurs versus the nanosecond prior. Whatever potential exists at the moment of conception exists almost to the exact same extent, immediately before. Again, I'm not arguing there isn't more "potential," I'm arguing the difference is arbitrary. If the difference is arbitrary, then we should say it is moral to let the conception happen n+1...then your reducto 'Cancer cells are human. Make an argument, don't just state random facts.

I would ask them why there is relevantly more potential at the exact instant the egg and the sperm meet as opposed to a nanosecond prior? Further, could the reason be that it is a convenient and definitive line? Further, the sperm and the egg existed prior to conception... was it obligatory to have sex so they might meet?

Do you find these "tactics" better at communicating than regular discussion?

I'm not speaking for him/her, but saying that some arguments are merely subjective doesn't mean they are actually subjective. Certainly there are differing opinions, but that's not what's going on here. I have levied three arguments to elucidate a definition of person-hood or identity. You can reject the conclusions by attacking the premises or the logical connection of the premises to the conclusion. Subjectivity plays no role here. I think being reactive to painful stimuli is not necessarily a sign of consciousness. As you suggested there could be other things at play. I'd be very interested to see what we know of the neural structures needed, as determined by those who have suffered traumatic brain injuries. Here's some brain stuff: https://teddybrain.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/a-brief-review-on-consciousness-from-medical-interest/ And: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-does-consciousness-arise/ I'd be interested to see if there is research that is contrary to this. It looks like 24-26 weeks. I always er on the low side, so let's say 24 or even 22 if you want to be a stickler.

I don't think you have read carefully. "Only up until then do I believe it neutral to abort; until we know more about the mind and consciousness I think we should er on the side of caution." That point where the bare minimum for consciousness exists, not where it is confirmed to be occurring, is at 22 weeks (the earliest point at which the amygdala could be formed) Yes, precisely. And I believe that answer to be "no" because you cannot aggress against someone who does not (and most importantly could not )currently exist. This is a reasonable objection. Again the main difference between a coma patient or someone with Alzheimers and a 2 week old fetus is that the fetus lacks the bare minimum neural architecture necessary for consciousness and there is simply no way it's a person. You can empathize with "someone" who experiences like we do, you can agress someone who has existed and and still exists though weakened (we all are likely weakened somehow). Conversely it makes little sense to talk about hurting/agressing against someone who does not yet exist. Would you say that you can wrong someone who doesn't exist entirely, after having existed? That's the brain fungus example. Look to "Bonus Argument" above. My answer is "No" What's yours, and why? Do you not think this more analogous to a fetus because both are outside the bounds of when a person could possibly exist? Follow UP: So that I don't talk in circles here, let me lay out the "valuable future like ours" argument that I mentioned in my original post because it seems a few of you are raising that very argument. If you let a fetus grow, uninterrupted, it will mature into a functioning human being with all the experiences and eccentricities of being a person.Therefore it is wrong to deprive that fetus a future existence like ours. Response: Since we are our minds/brains, it's not the body of a fetus that has a valuable future like ours, nor is it the fertilized egg which has such a future. Since only the mind/brain can experience or possess things or have things, at some point the developing brain has a future like ours. Up until that point, you cannot deprive anything any more than you are depriving a future person by wearing a condom or using spermicidal lube, or preventing implantation on the uteran wall. In other words, its not our genetics that make the person, or even the environment. It is that they are conscious beings, or beings with the current capacity for consciousness. At an instant, coma patients could wake up and Alzheimers patients could flush the neural plaques from their brains. They were people all the way up until those points, because they possessed the stuff of consciousness, (brains with amygdalas and thalamuses ect.) regardless of the diminished state it was in. Someone who has suffered brain death however, simply cannot be harmed further because they don't exist.

I see abortion as problematic after a certain point, but that is jumping way ahead of the argument. Try and parse this in the way I delivered the argument. 1. There is a difference between a fertilized egg and a wiggling baby. The relevant difference is the functioning brain. Before that has developed to some minimal degree, "we" do not exist. 2. Using the term "my" life involves someone to possess the life. That person, what you are, can possess and experience things. Something that doesn't have the neural architecture to do so, cannot be deprived of anything. 3. The method by which the mother becomes pregnant is irrelevant, up until the necessary components for consciousness form (and perhaps later) for reasons cited in 1 and 2. Think about what makes you, YOU. is it your arm? Your leg? What if we make an artificial body for you from scratch. It looks just like yours and will conduct signals to your brain just like your current body does. There is nothing to say this is outside the realm of scientific possibility. Would you still be you if you fell asleep in your original body and woke up in the second? Well I'm sorry to hear you are disinterested in joining the conversation. That being said, people in a coma have the prerequisites for consciousness and experience. A 2 week year old fetus, does not. This is relevant because those prerequisites are the core of what a person IS. Before they exist, no harm can be done just as you cannot harm someone after death. What both of you give are essentially versions of the "future like ours" argument I mentioned in my original post. My answers have been reformulations of my original answer. To say a collection of cells, which lacks the capacity for any semblance of consciousness and has never had such capacity, "has" a future like ours of, is giving an object possession before it has the ability to possess.

Summation of common objection so far: Conjoined twinning is a highly irregular anomaly, therefore making arguments based on what we consider conjoined twins to be is essentially cherry picking examples such that my argument makes sense. Cherry picking and "grey areas" are equally inapplicable here. Cherry picking works by selecting studies or statistics that contradict the vast majority of statistics in order to paint an illusory picture. This is not a statistical analysis or a scientific metaanalysis. My examples are solidly within the definition of "person," minus the brainless fungus body. Furthermore, they don't contradict any other evidence. If anything they are a fuller and more inclusive data set.