flip

And who do you think is hurt by that and helped by that?

@1999: and successful appeals of the judge's support award are routinely sent back to that judge's for his/her "reconsideration". Think about that for a second. The judge issuing an award is encouraged by a higher judge within that court (it's not a distinct appellate court) to rethink the award. Amazing.

Why is that amazing?

Why can she? We're back to property analogues? I own my house. Can I sell it for any cause, to be put to just any use, to anyone?

Imagine if you couldn't sell it. Imagine if you could only put it up for the taking, with the real estate agent gobbling up the fees and leaving you only with the peace of mind that comes from knowing you don't have to mow your lawn anymore. Would you feel unfairly denied the value of your possession?

The problem with the attempts at humor and satire, ala Swift, is that the situation as to the man is at present Swiftian.

There's your problem. You think this is satire, which shows how painfully insulated you are from market reality.

To understand your logic. Your claim is that it is obviously unfair that a woman can have an abortion and end a pregnancy, but a man cannot opt out of supporting his child in any analogous way. Now, obviously, a woman can have an abortion and end a pregnancy regardless of the relationship status of the couple and regardless of whether the child was planned. So to be consistent in your invocation of fairness, you would need to say that the man can walk away at any time.

Not the OP, but the obvious difference is that the man's original agreement to want and support a child induced the woman to conceive a child,*** thereby creating an obligation to that child (even in utero--his responsibilities extend to expenses incurred during the pregnancy). When a woman agrees to conceive, but then aborts, there's no child, therefore a different set of rights are invoked, and what follows is only--no matter how painful--a breach of promise case.



***This is also a case where the woman's religious beliefs can be presumed to be known to the man. He may know that her beliefs commit her to bringing any conception to term, therefore his agreement to want and support a child in advance of conception means that once she conceives he's all the way in. By knowing her beliefs (or having the means and obligation to know) preclude abortion he forfeits claim to any scenario where her rights include the ability to abort; his rights commensurate with that ability are likewise forfeit.

@2003: I can get you started by distinguishing between appeals from the record, and appeals de novo. A de novo appeal makes abundant sense here since once it is decided that the appellant father had good cause to appeal and the appeal is granted, asking the original trier to 'get it right this time' seems silly on the face. The original trier or judge has already erred, in the opinion of the appellant judge, on matters of fact and law, namely, the simple application of a formula with clear exceptions.

An appeal on the record asserts the original judge misapplied the law. This is no time to send the original judge back to their books in the hope they'll get it right this time.

The amount of work is not increased by having a new judge (they're often not judges, but 'support magistrate' [title inflation from the original 'hearing examiner'] confuses people) correctly decide a mistaken support award. Nothing is gained, except fuel for a new Kafka short, by having the judge who erred now be responsible for figuring out and correcting his mistake. The fact that he made a mistake strongly suggests he's insufficiently familiar with the law.

To put it colloquially, if you were a father who appealed what you felt was an absurd award, and the appeals judge agreed with you, whom would you rather have rehear the case: the original judge whose award you successfully appealed, or a new judge guided by the appeals judge's decision?

Nothing is gained, except fuel for a new Kafka short

I hate to break it to you, but Kafka has been dead for about 90 years now.

Well, Jack Carter already suggested a "Not Interested" public registry, which, as Carter said, would "immunize" a man from responsibility ahead of time.

Whatever its impracticalites it's a breeze compared to the idea of contracting prior to every act of intercourse.

I still haven't figured out where I stand wrt whether a man using conception alters his rights and responsibilities. In theory they shouldn't change

We consider there to be some kind of obligation of care in order to protect the common pot. Seat belt laws are one example of that obligation/duty. Perhaps condom use is another. Perhaps by having sex, when sex can lead to a significant obligation of care on the part of society, the man (and woman) is obliged to use contraception. Granted, this last is unlikely to be meaningful in any practical sense, though I suppose we could hold that one opt-out is all a man gets. That has staggering implications for rights.

Is it possible we've gotten this far without any reference to sex 'helmet laws'?

@2007: as a Kafka scholar, I tend to agree with you. It's all part of the pun. When I read your post I had this vivid recollection from The Trial when K. is in the painter's rooms, and the giggling girls outside are poking straw through cracks in the door.

My strongest recollection from reading The Trial the first time was wondering how anyone could call it absurdist literature. It's the stuff of daily bread.

Well, Jack Carter already suggested a "Not Interested" public registry, which, as Carter said, would "immunize" a man from responsibility ahead of time.

If only there was some kind of pill one could take to halt a pregnancy. Darnit. Maybe one of these days they'll get around to inventing it.

There is that, isn't there? That's one reason why I posted the extrapolation, that good condom and pill use would result in very few pregnancies. The problem is all but non-existent, but for carelessness, and given the transparency of good condom use compared to good pill use (let alone the question of whether she's taking the pill at all), the greater burden properly falls on the woman.

It's interesting, too, that verifiable contraceptive use with the woman dictating use by both parties, reduces pregnancy by 99% compared with what a man is able to insist upon and verify. Instead of 10,000 unwanted pregnancies, you have 100.

Given that, we err badly in not aiming our encouragement to use contraception largely at women.

Abortion isn't killing, not precisely.

No, that's precisely what it is. It's not a homicide because the fetus is arbitrarily in law defined as not being a person, but it's a killing of whatever it is. And it's done by more than a passive "withholding support."

I admit to being astonished--and nauseated--when abortion at four and a half months is treated as no different than abortion at two weeks. That has nothing to do with the overall argument of the thread. I knew a woman who at five months attempted to barter an abortion for marriage to her boyfriend. She would if he would. He declined to be a party to this and she asked me to go with her to the clinic. I made it as far as the discussion where some sort of seaweed was going to be inserted in order to dilate her cervix, the better to get the pliers through and crush the fetus's skull on the way to removing it. She did not go through with the abortion.

@2003: I can get you started by distinguishing between appeals from the record, and appeals de novo. A de novo appeal makes abundant sense here since once it is decided that the appellant father had good cause to appeal and the appeal is granted, asking the original trier to 'get it right this time' seems silly on the face. The original trier or judge has already erred, in the opinion of the appellant judge, on matters of fact and law, namely, the simple application of a formula with clear exceptions.

Ok, but this is more a complaint about our legal system than it it is about the injustice of child support awards. Remanding a case for the original trier to reconsider in light of the appellate court's decision is an incredibly common practice in every court system I'm familiar with.

I also think it's coming, and I hope to see it (although if I'm alive I'll probably be too old to personally take advantage).

Morty, you're a well-read guy. Are you at all familiar with The Singularity, and the efforts of people like Ray Kurzweil to stay alive long enough to see it/participate in it? I wouldn't mind living long enough to see what the practical immortality of being downloaded is like.

Hmm--just as we might want a woman to be aware of a man's distinterest in having a chld with the woman in question, and the way that affects her responsibilities, do we want a man to be aware when the woman is against abortion? I don't think it's relevant because a woman who doesn't believe abortion is not a victim of those views, she's holding those views; choosing to hold those views.

The primary driving force behind disparate pay/promotions between men and women is that women generally are forced, by dint of their baby-incubating role, to take time out of the workforce in their 20's and 30's. Most learned discussion I've seen on this topic notes this as something that we should create systems to rectify; that an accident of nature (that only women can be pregnant) shouldn't be allowed to dictate an unfair result (that women don't have as much professional success, on average, as men).

Jesus. This reminds me that in return for being the only sex to be able to get pregnant, the woman gets to get and be pregnant. She gets to have that wonderful experience. She gets to have that bond with her child. The reason I bring it up is how silly (not you) the arguments can get, as though pregnancy and childbearing is this awful endurance contest, with no redeeming virtues at all.

I just wanted to say that the fact that abortion can be discussed, with different opinions, and people considering each others comments, without devloving into a war of insults,...

You really only have skimmed the thread, haven't you? :)

Speaking of which, kudos to all who, for the most part since post 1900, which is where I picked up the thread again, have kept things reasonably civil. The conversation has been much more interesting, as a result.

@2011: sure, and it's a fair point you make. My beef here is that someone who gets something as simple and clear as a support award wrong shouldn't be taking another shot at it. I'd say the same thing about any other kind of case. There's a reason these guys aren't really judges.

Complete aside, and I don't pay much attention to Bill Maher as he's too repetitive and his insistence on having a wingnut chair gets the conversation too often bogged down in trivia and misdirection in the phony name of bipartisanship, but he has George Zimmerman's brother on, and the guy is remarkably well-spoken and even handed. He seems like he's been doing this all his life.

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Coming Out Alert: a soccer player has come out and will step away from the sport, Vague News claims. Robbie Rogers, at http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/02/15/robbie_rogers_ex_u_s_men_s
_national_soccer_team_player_announces_he_s_gay.html

Robbie Rogers' blog (sorry, I can't get a link)

Things are never what they seem… My whole life I have felt different, different from my peers, even different from my family. In today’s society being different makes you brave. To overcome your fears you must be strong and have faith in your purpose.

For the past 25 year I have been afraid, afraid to show whom I really was because of fear. Fear that judgment and rejection would hold me back from my dreams and aspirations. Fear that my loved ones would be farthest from me if they knew my secret. Fear that my secret would get in the way of my dreams. Dreams of going to a World Cup, dreams of The Olympics, dreams of making my family proud. What would life be without these dreams? Could I live a life without them?

Life is only complete when your loved ones know you. When they know your true feelings, when they know who and how you love. Life is simple when your secret is gone. Gone is the pain that lurks in the stomach at work, the pain from avoiding questions, and at last the pain from hiding such a deep secret.

Secrets can cause so much internal damage. People love to preach about honesty, how honesty is so plain and simple. Try explaining to your loved ones after 25 years you are gay. Try convincing yourself that your creator has the most wonderful purpose for you even though you were taught differently.

I always thought I could hide this secret. Football was my escape, my purpose, my identity. Football hid my secret, gave me more joy than I could have ever imagined… I will always be thankful for my career. I will remember Beijing, The MLS Cup, and most of all my teammates. I will never forget the friends I have made a long the way and the friends that supported me once they knew my secret.

Now is my time to step away. It’s time to discover myself away from football. It’s 1 A.M. in London as I write this and I could not be happier with my decision. Life is so full of amazing things. I realized I could only truly enjoy my life once I was honest. Honesty is a ##### but makes life so simple and clear. My secret is gone, I am a free man, I can move on and live my life as my creator intended.

Bravo.

Bravo.

Indeed. And (stolen from MCOA in the soccer thread) the reaction of his (former?) teammates from the men's national team has been pretty fantastic.

@2014, sadly, IE not only won't take me there, but it destroys my ability to simply return to this page by using the Back button, instead leaving a complicated reframing address like a useless turd in my browser's address bar. Right clicking properties only gives me an incredibly long, uncopyable link. Okay, several arcane steps get me the address at the nyt, but the page won't open. Ah, progress.

@2014, sadly, IE not only won't take me there, but it destroys my ability to simply return to this page by using the Back button, instead leaving a complicated reframing address like a useless turd in my browser's address bar. Right clicking properties only gives me an incredibly long, uncopyable link. Okay, several arcane steps get me the address at the nyt, but the page won't open. Ah, progress.

Hmmm. You should find it if you go to http://goal.blogs.nytimes.com/ If that doesn't work, all I can do is suggest trying Chrome instead.

2012:

I've heard of it and of Kurzweil, but no more than that. I do remember reading an interview with him on Edge some years ago. It is interesting food for thought, at the least.

Complaining about IE is like complaining that you knocked up your one night stand and now have to pay child support.

Biggity bam!

It's not our fault. We were trapped by our instincts. At the time only IE was going down for the likes of us.

Jack, even Time Magazine is onto this

The year man will become immortal

Just as I believe the relational fulcrum between males and females will radically change if a relatively foolproof male contraceptive panacea is found and marketed, something like temporal immortality would possibly have an even more far-reaching effect. What would happened if we became immortal--would the idea of an afterlife survive that?

Thanks for the links, Morty. The part I find the most interesting is Kurzweil's emphasis on how we can take advantage of developments especially in computer science in order to merge the tools and techniques of artificial intelligence with the brain, rather than just developing ever smarter versions of HAL 9000 with no integration to speak of with the human mind.

Unfortunately the Time video veers off into the least interesting branch of Singularity scenarios (such as Baron von Frankenstein's "It's Alive!!"), away from that part of tech development that includes biochemistry, brainmapping, and so on, such that along with computers that design computers and speed up the development of intelligence logarhithmically, comes the ability to download our consciousnesses into machines. Iirc in The Singularity is Near Kurzweil devotes several sections to predicting what we'll need in the various sciences to map every molecule in the brain at any given moment, then build that map as hardware (or download it into hardware).

I brought it up by way of reply to your mention of age, since anyone over 40 is going to have to stay in fairly good shape if they want to be alive and downloadable as of 2045. I imagine that once the science is clearly getting close, the amount of money that's going to be poured into development will be little short of astronomical as the wealthy try desperately to foster the first means of attaining practical immortality.

Ours may be the last generation to die involuntarily.

The path is likely to be creating consciousness-receptacles first, and only then body-receptacles of a biological nature into which consciousness can be re-transferred. I imagine there's been some good science fiction written on how fragile a body you might be willing to have your consciousness placed into, risking actual death in order to optimize sensation. Though, why not have a backup consciousness kept in safe storage, that backup allowing you to take all the chances you want?

What would happened if we became immortal--would the idea of an afterlife survive that?

There would probably be the question of whether there's a life after the plug is pulled on human-machine integration. I suppose it would also depend on what human-machine integration is like--if the experience of being merely human turns out to be only a tiny fraction of what it's possible to see, think, and experience after integration, no one is going to take being merely, unadulteratedly human as the departure point, any more than people take illiteracy and a complete lack of medical care as the 'natural' state of being where reading and doctors are some kind of perversion of what it really means to be human.

That means that pulling the plug on the state of being that is the human-machine integration would be looked at in 2100 the same way suicide is looked at today, namely as an aberration, a misapprehension (short of extreme and ongoing physical pain) of what it means to be alive; an inability to recognize what it means to be fully, happily, healthily human.

The Singularity the way Kurzweil describes it also makes me wonder if it's the explanation for Fermi's Paradox. If Kurzweil's right, it puts the time between generating radio waves, and the integration of biologically based consciousness and machines evolving at a logarithmic rate, at something like two centuries. That's two centuries out of four billion years, where our interest in extraterrestrial life and communication would be both possible, and the motive recognizable to us. The nature of consciousness after The Singularity, though? All bets are off.

How many things would you do differently if mortality wasn't an issue? Would you do anything the same?

Complaining about IE is like complaining that you knocked up your one night stand and now have to pay child support.

Or... whining that they won't have sex with you, then giving her everything she wants wrt support in the desperate hope she'll repeat the bout of suicidally drunken behavior that was the only reason you got laid in the first place? Good luck with that.

But, your carrying on aside, I only tried IE again after dumping it years ago because my other browsers are having trouble with flash videos, and IE is ungodly bad. It's the kind of profoundly stupid bad you associate with someone setting up a gigantic stock dump, illegal short selling, and the like. How is it possible it eats as much memory as it does? It has a noticeable lag. It can run 15 tabs before hiccuping, while Chrome can run 50 tabs along with 25 Word documents, a movie in a distinct player, a chess app, a bridge app...

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Or... whining that they won't have sex with you, then giving her everything she wants wrt support in the desperate hope she'll repeat the bout of suicidally drunken behavior that was the only reason you got laid in the first place? Good luck with that.

OOT but I was at a Jquery conference last year... sponsored in part by Microsoft. At least every 3rd talk bagged on IE and how it was horribly broken. Even the MS marketingdrones that were there admitted that not auto-updating their browser was a horrible mistake and "IE 10 is much better".

In fairness, IE10 probably does work.

#2023 Dunno whether IE10 works properly, but I'm considering giving it a shot. I'm not happy with the direction Firefox has gone in recently. Still sticking with it because of noscript, but it's become pretty unstable recently.

I'll probably give Opera another try before going to IE though.

Ours may be the last generation to die involuntarily.

Unless you are much younger than I, I suspect that it's more likely our grandchildren. In 2045 I'll be 75.
Possibly young children if they don't mind being 60 forever in a world of permanent 30 y.o.s

But I also assume biological immortality (I say 30ish years) is likely to be possible prior to a machine storing your consciousness (more like 100). The former only requires some perfection of stem cell rejuvenation in a living organism (can already be done in a dish, and probably will soon be done at birth - in animals obviously).

The latter is more a theoretical exercise. There are 10^13 neurons and 10^16 synapses in a human brain. However neurons are not digital, they are analog so each neuron and possibly each synapse probably requires at least 1Kb to define it's behavior.

So you are talking 10^19 bytes or 10^10 GB of RAM. That's a lot of switches, even if they are small molecules, and even given Moore's law for storage.

And that's the easy part - the hard part is actually READING a living brain and dumping it into your virtual model. I mean, with a breakthrough in MRI resolution you can probably MAP a brain's synapses... but they are analog chemical transistors. You would need good models of every single type of neuron and synapse and it's responses to inputs.

Now I am thinking more like 200 years. But breakthroughs cannot be predicted, so... Essentially - before one COPIES a living brain, first one must construct true artificial human intelligences... and hope they let us continue our "meat" research.

Mississippi officially ratifies 13th amendment

File this under better late than never.

Unless you are much younger than I, I suspect that it's more likely our grandchildren. In 2045 I'll be 75.

Remain in the condition you want to survive downloading in, then. Any reason for what I'd call your pessimism (though, yeah, you're on the cusp, and one issue is going to be affordability)? We're on schedule for completing the construction of a rat's brain before the end of the decade.

Possibly young children if they don't mind being 60 forever in a world of permanent 30 y.o.s

Ah, then you'll be delighted to know that Harvard researchers, after repairing telomeric DNA, made their experimental mice younger. It won't be a case of arresting development. The biochemistry of halting the aging process is intimately linked to reversing it.

There are also going to be some bizarre issues, like, can you permanently download when you have outstanding debt? You know the man isn't going to let you out without getting his cut.

I don't know how clear people in general are that there are several tracks here. One is biological immortality, involving reprogramming cells to repair damage. That's the model that treats aging as a disease, rather than something inevitable. That's the cellular model that makes the most sense to me.

Another track is creating the machine equivalent of the human brain, such that it serves as a receptacle for consciousness by having a) the means to re-create every single physical attribute of consciousness down to subatomic/quantum levels, and b) the ability to allow every physical process of the brain to continue.

This model imagines that if every process can be discerned, and every part of those processes can be be given their equivalent in 0's and 1's, then we will have a functioning brain. There will be processes common to all, which make us human, and processes specific to each, which makes one of us "zenbitz", as opposed to "Morty". The kinks in those first models are going to be fascinating, and probably a little bizarre. And you know the second thing that's going to happen is that researchers are going to start tweaking the models. Or maybe that's the third thing, the second being creating a model to have sex with.

A third is Strong AI, where machines think, and which can contribute to completing the first two processes, but is a track for the time being somewhat independent of the first two. It's likely that weak AI will readily supplement our downloaded consciousness, while the merging of the downloaded brain and strong AI is less clear. After all, having a chess playing program you can overrule wouldn't be difficult to integrate if you're already a set of 0's and 1's. I suppose a lot of it comes down to, what is it that you'd overrule if your consciousness merged with Strong AI? It might be similar to the merging of two personalities. If one doesn't have the ability to remain distinct from the second, and if one doesn't have the absolute right to overrule the second, huge problems ensue.

So you are talking 10^19 bytes or 10^10 GB of RAM. That's a lot of switches, even if they are small molecules, and even given Moore's law for storage.

i agree there are extraordinary hardware problems to sort out, but then I also remember that we work, compared to computer hardware, incredibly, incredibly slowly; our computers can then be extremely inefficient by the standards we typically require of our computers to still work fine as brain simulators, or as brains.

...but they are analog chemical transistors.

Fascinating, isn't it? Absolutely effing fascinating. I've just started catching up on the research. 15 years ago it seems much further away. I still haven't found, though, the 'close to complete as we can get for the moment' 0 and 1 model of a single cell. I won't pretend to be a biologist, organic chemist, or physicist, or even try to play one on the internet, but I have enough of a background to keep up. You sound well-versed. Do you have any sites you like for this kind of thing, and for recent developments? Nature is fine things like Harvard's research on reversing aging in mice, but doesn't treat this as anything like a main topic

Essentially - before one COPIES a living brain, first one must construct true artificial human intelligences

I'm not quite seeing the rationale for this. I can copy a masterpiece, say a painting, without truly understanding that painting. I can build a copier that will copy that painting, and all I need to have a perfect understanding of is how to replicate the thing; I don't need to know the mind that painted it, or why the brushstroke is heavy rather than light, or why the artist used yellow there rather than ochre.

Similarly I think I can copy a brain, both the location of every single particle at every single instant, and the properties and possible behavior of every one one of those particles. without having developed a Strong AI. But, like I said, I'm no biologist. What am I missing>

#2023 Dunno whether IE10 works properly, but I'm considering giving it a shot. I'm not happy with the direction Firefox has gone in recently. Still sticking with it because of noscript, but it's become pretty unstable recently.

I'll probably give Opera another try before going to IE though.

What don't you like about where Firefox has gone? I haven't updated mine in a couple of years.

I'd be happy to try IE10 if microsoft let me run it in paralell to other versions of IE. Last time I let a browser update, though, without the inability to test it independently of the earlier version, it turned into a nightmare.

Five years ago Opera was incredible compared to other browsers. I'd be interested in the latest version. Chrome has its limitations. It also seems to fight with ixquick, when I want search engine privacy.

Unless you are much younger than I, I suspect that it's more likely our grandchildren. In 2045 I'll be 75.
Possibly young children if they don't mind being 60 forever in a world of permanent 30 y.o.s

I will be 60 (turning 61) in 2045, and I'm trying to figure out if you just called me a young child.

I think he's saying that those who are currently young children (say, born in 2005) will be able to arrest their age starting around the year 2065 or so.

Is the 30 the optimal time to 'stop' being only human?

#2028 Firefox is "thinking" for me and guessing wrong. Often enough to be irritating.

And as I said, it's crashing, hanging and simply using more memory than it used to -- even comparatively recently.

There are also work apps (and web sites) that simply don't work for me with Firefox. No idea why, and no reason to care since they do work with exploder. (It does seem to be Java related, but that's all I can see)

You know a lot more about this than I do, Jack, but if anyone else here is also a novice, but interested, here's what seems like a positive article on Kurzweil and his new book that just came out

At 65, alas, I've once again missed the boat.

Any reason for what I'd call your pessimism (though, yeah, you're on the cusp, and one issue is going to be affordability)? We're on schedule for completing the construction of a rat's brain before the end of the decade

.

Source? Also, I totally neglected to mention that brain (synapses) are actually plastic. Meaning it's not just one state of 10^16 connections it's an ever changing set of them.

Possibly young children if they don't mind being 60 forever in a world of permanent 30 y.o.s

Ah, then you'll be delighted to know that Harvard researchers, after repairing telomeric DNA, made their experimental mice younger. It won't be a case of arresting development. The biochemistry of halting the aging process is intimately linked to reversing it.

This is not strictly true. In general, cellular age is not _controlled_ by telomere length, although they are correlated.

I still haven't found, though, the 'close to complete as we can get for the moment' 0 and 1 model of a single cell.

No one has modeled (completely) even a single bacterial cell. There are various models (and various types of models) of certain sub components (basic metabolism, for instance) of cells. If I ever get out of the middle management wheel and back into research I would seriously consider trying to build a virtual yeast cell (I work for, in part, the Yeast Genome Database). But we are 10-20 years away from full understanding of the transcriptional circuitry / differentiation in animal cells.

I was presuming that to have a virtual brain you would abstract most of the cellular biology of the neuron away -- into some generic responses. Although the full enumeration of those is yet to be elaborated.

Consider: Our mental state is influenced by our senses. For example, a scent will trigger a memory. So, let's say I want to add this feature to VirtualMe.
What would I have to know to do this? Well, it's actually two problems

Let's say I have a "beta" virtual human brain. I can probably code it to respond to chemicals in a way similar to the human (really mamallian) brain.
"All" I would need is a complete mapping of olfactory receptors by chemical compound and which neuron fires at what rate and amplitude.
Presumably "memorizing" sensory input (in the organic, not silicone) sense is already solved or you wouldn't have even a "beta" virtual human brain.

But that's the easy part. How would you design such a system such that it triggers memories that ALREADY PRE-EXISTED BEFORE YOU DOWNLOADED THE BRAIN into the VB?
You actually couldn't. You would have to just imitate a human brain structure and chemistry, and hope that the same inputs gave the same responses.

That's what I mean about "copying"

Similarly I think I can copy a brain, both the location of every single particle at every single instant, and the properties and possible behavior of every one one of those particles. without having developed a Strong AI.

This is true. However, I believe the latter is actually an easier engineering feat. If you can do the former, you have Star Trek technology (transporters, replicators)

Unless you are much younger than I, I suspect that it's more likely our grandchildren. In 2045 I'll be 75.
Possibly young children if they don't mind being 60 forever in a world of permanent 30 y.o.s

I could be 87 and shitting my pants regularly but given the chance, I'm going to lock into immortality regardless. Because, you know, the option is THE ####### EXISTENTIAL VOID people.

Since this has turned into the OTP thread ...

A top tea party group is taking its clash with Karl Rove to a new level, sending out a fundraising email Tuesday featuring a photoshopped image of the GOP operative in an SS uniform.
“Wipe the Smirk Off Karl Rove’s Face,” reads the subject line of the email, from Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder and national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots.
The email features a photo illustration in which Rove’s face is grafted onto a photo of a uniformed officer in the Reichsführer-SS, an elite class of soldier in the German Schutzstaffel during Adolph Hitler’s Third Reich. The lower left-hand corner of the photo features the inscriptions “Reichsführer-SS” and “K. Rove,” and appears to match a photo of SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler.

Link with photo of photoshop

Are you at all familiar with The Singularity, and the efforts of people like Ray Kurzweil to stay alive long enough to see it/participate in it? I wouldn't mind living long enough to see what the practical immortality of being downloaded is like.

Not surprising this discussion eventually veered in this direction -- the thread could be entitled Biologic Mortality and its Discontents. Sex and death go hand in hand, just like lovers are supposed to.

Pretty sure this is the thread that the Pistorius story was mentioned.

It's taken an interesting turn. First of all, there has been a fair amount of "roid rage" speculation. Under cross examination, the lead detective said "steroids" were found under Pistorius' bed. Then (without prompting) immediately changed it to, "two boxes of testosterone, needles and injections" and then later admitted that he was not certain of the contents. The defense is arguing that it's a "herbal remedy" called testo-compositum co-enzyme used by many athletes, insisting: "It is not a steroid and it is not a banned substance." (obviously this part is just straight nabbed from a story on the hearing. From the Guardian's account). No idea if it will turn out to be true (awfully risky I'd think to offer up a lie on what's already in evidence) but it can't help the prosecution's case if the defense is right here. (According to the prosecutor's office, the contents are still being tested)

The evidence of a loud argument also seems pretty shaky. It comes from somebody who lives in a gated community some 600 meters away (estimate change to 300 meters under questioning from the prosecution) and the witness didn't identify either Pistorius or his girlfriend's voice.

They also managed to miss a spent shell casing, missed one of Pistorius' cell phones (the prosecution has claimed Pistorius didn't call for help after the shooting. This is potentially important) didn't wear proper footwear when going through the scene.

And awfully important, the detective conceded they have found nothing at the scene that's inconsisttent with Pistorius' version of events.

Early days, but Pistorius is being represented by a guy with a formidable rep and so far he's living up to it.

What is Pistorius's version? That he went to bed with his girlfriend, woke up at 3am to some noise, and without bothering to even check whether it was his girlfriend either (a) making the noise or (b) in the bathroom, just began opening fire through the door without even seeing an intruder?

He's going with that?

EDIT: Apparently this is his story, so it's not that he was awaken. Doesn't change my assessment: "He said he was on a balcony retrieving a fan when he heard a noise and believed a robber was hiding in the toilet. He said he thought Steenkamp was in bed when he fired."

Even if true (and I'd sooner believe that OJ was innocent) it was utterly reckless and (depending on the laws there) probably murder. Even if it's an intruder -- an intruder he didn't actually see because he couldn't have seen any intruder because the person in the bathroom was his girlfriend and not an intruder -- it seems from the local laws that he can't just fire away at an intruder even if he's in his own home.

Then we have the apparent facts that:

a) The police were called to his home two hours earlier for a domestic dispute.

b) A witness says he heard them arguing (sure, a problematic witness based on what you say above; still doesn't help Pistorius).

c) He has earlier domestic incidents.

I'd need to see a lot of reasonable doubt before I were to be pried away from thinking he murdered his girlfriend in cold blood.

Because, you know, the option is THE ####### EXISTENTIAL VOID people.

No, we don't know that. But your type better hope it is, I suppose, though I shouldn't. Suppose , that is.

I bought some black market indulgences, I'm cool.

No, we don't know that. But your type better hope it is, I suppose, though I shouldn't. Suppose , that is.

Oh sure. You could be right. I mean, why not take the hand me down word of Bronze Age goatherds on the matter?

If this is the new OTP thread, everyone should go read this.

He's going with that?

Well, they found a bloody cricket bat too. So I suppose he had his eyes closed the whole time as well.

What is Pistorius's version? That he went to bed with his girlfriend, woke up at 3am to some noise, and without bothering to even check whether it was his girlfriend either (a) making the noise or (b) in the bathroom, just began opening fire through the door without even seeing an intruder?

I heard about the murder for the first time this evening, along with a short news story on his version of events and a model of the residence. My friend and I looked at each other at the same moment with the same complete disbelief.

The story sounds ridiculous. First, he has to cross the bedroom to go into the bathroom, so it was on his way to verify his girlfriend's whereabouts or at least notice she was no longer in bed (or in the smallish bedroom). Second, the bathroom is isolated from the rest of the apartment, so it's not like either he or his girlfriend were trapped. Third, and not that one is likely to think clearly or is obliged to think first about the welfare of a robber, but just for my own safety, and screw the B&E guy, I doubt I'd go adventuring INTO a bathroom and AROUND around a blind corner, in order to accost a robber. I'd be a hell of a lot safer crouching behind the bed with it between me and the bathroom door while taking aim at the bathroom door, and blasting whatever came through it. Or, better yet, taking an extra second to find and grab my girlfriend and send her out behind me while I covered the door into the bathroom. I can even see firing through the wall separating the bedroom and bathroom before I'd choose to voluntarily walk into a small room containing a stranger who might be armed.

There are some people who take any trespass badly, and extremely personally, and react violently, and Pistorius may be that kind of guy, but even if he was he'd have to be strangely indifferent to his girlfriend in order to risk a two way gunfight with her a few feet away.

He'd be better off arguing that he was sure she'd gone into the kitchen, or something. The way it's being reported it really doesn't sound right.

Re:#2042. Interesting article. I always thought it peculiar how hostile they are to unions in the south, even by persons who would benefit from them. Southerners are a strange lot, especially white southerners.

There are also work apps (and web sites) that simply don't work for me with Firefox. No idea why, and no reason to care since they do work with exploder. (It does seem to be Java related, but that's all I can see)

That's an issue with JavaScript not Java and it's because the developers who wrote those apps had no clue what they were doing or were just lazy. Basically, MS included a bunch of non-standard JavaScript functions and properties in IE. Good JavaScript developers know this and can check which browser is being used so that their code will function in all browsers. Bad or lazy devs don't do this.

#2046 Makes sense, but as I said, I have no real reason to care why the app doesn't work as long as I have an easy work-around.

Part of the problem is the app programmers, and part of it is the browser programmers who refuse to use published standards, thereby making the life of a web app programmer hard. They best part was when IE9 implemented something in a "3rd way" such that app code that worked on both IE8 AND FF/Chrome didn't work (in either mode) on IE9. Ironically, I think IE9 actually FOLLOWED the standard (that FF didn't).

or something. It's much better now than it used to be... since we no longer test browsers id (which are trivially spoofable) but rather the ability to do something. Still the biggest open source JS library, JQuery officially no longer supports IE7. IE8 is barely supportable as is.

I was presuming that to have a virtual brain you would abstract most of the cellular biology of the neuron away -- into some generic responses. Although the full enumeration of those is yet to be elaborated.

Abstraction will be necessary, at least in the fairly early going, and I think we're going to see some very odd output as the early models become workable.*** Something's also 'up' with consciousness. Back around 1965 nearly every computer scientist and physicist would have given you a time frame of 10 to 15 years before strong AI started producing results. It would have been disappointing to everyone but a theologian to learn that it wouldn't be another 40 years before a chess playing program could reliably beat the human world champion, and would only be able to do so as a collection of if-then statements, not through the use of, say, neural nets.

Similarly I think I can copy a brain, both the location of every single particle at every single instant, and the properties and possible behavior of every one one of those particles. without having developed a Strong AI.

This is true. However, I believe the latter is actually an easier engineering feat. If you can do the former, you have Star Trek technology (transporters, replicators)

I could have been clearer. I didn't mean copy as in replicated exactly, in form, function, and material, but rather copied as "simulated, analogously, in every part".

***I assume that along with brain building and along with the building of consciousness repositores there will be attempts to seed those brains with consciousnesses of various kinds (or any kind at all, really, at first).

edit: The rat brain construction is called the Blue Brain project. There's a decent write up at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Brain_Project

The Blue Brain Project is an attempt to create a synthetic brain by reverse-engineering the mammalian brain down to the molecular level.

The aim of the project, founded in May 2005 by the Brain and Mind Institute of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland) is to study the brain's architectural and functional principles. The project is headed by the Institute's director, Henry Markram. Using a Blue Gene supercomputer running Michael Hines's NEURON software, the simulation does not consist simply of an artificial neural network, but involves a biologically realistic model of neurons.[1][2][not in citation given] It is hoped that it will eventually shed light on the nature of consciousness.[citation needed]

There are a number of sub-projects, including the Cajal Blue Brain, coordinated by the Supercomputing and Visualization Center of Madrid (CeSViMa), and others run by universities and independent laboratories.

Re:#2042. Interesting article. I always thought it peculiar how hostile they are to unions in the south, even by persons who would benefit from them. Southerners are a strange lot, especially white southerners.

Yes they are. It's one thing to vote against ones economic interests when myriad social issues are part of the package, but that's not the case with unions in the South. I haven't studied the issue enough to know but I'd be interested in what a labor organizer has to say about the problems of establishing unions in southern states. The few guys I know from the south and whom I've talked about this with have some vague reasons on the order of it's commie stuff, you pay dues and don't get anything, they're all corrupt... Nothing meaningful, in short.

Also from the linked article. The claim had me doing a double take.

Whole brain simulation

Main article: Whole brain emulation

A longer term goal is to build a detailed, functional simulation of the physiological processes in the human brain: "It is not impossible to build a human brain and we can do it in 10 years," Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project said in 2009 at the TED conference in Oxford.[4] In a BBC World Service interview he said: "If we build it correctly it should speak and have an intelligence and behave very much as a human does."[4]

"If" is lifting the weight of the world in that last sentence, but it's a remarkable thing for a serious scientist to say.