When I read the percentage who had cheated on an exam, I started to call BS in my mind, knowing that if I, being among the smartest in my class back in high school, had cheated, surely the rest of the bell curve had too (After all, the only way of getting this data is unreliable self-report surveys.), but then I realized what a perfect example of this fallacy I was making.
TheRev
Karma: 85
Wouldn’t a program (like a computation of the laws of physics) written within the confines of the universe be necessarily less complex than the universe itself, or am I missing the point of your post?
Are we allowing dreams into evidence now? As real as your father’s experience may have been, it is still subjective, and thus really doesn’t have any bearing on the rest of us. For instance, say I had a very exciting dream involving myself, Keira Knightley, and few clothes. A rational response would be to write it off as a very good dream. An irrational response would be to become convinced that Ms. Knightley was infatuated with me and start writing her creepy letters. Likewise, if your father simply wrote this off as a dream, perhaps one whose effects were amplified by his compromised physical state, that would be rational. If that leads him to accept as fact the existence of an afterlife, despite the complete lack of any objective evidence, that would be irrational. The difference here is that your father’s dream deals with death and religion, two subjects which cause most people to throw rationality out the window. Had he had the same dream one random night while lying peacefully asleep at home, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. My dream wouldn’t be any more real if it happened on a hospital bed, why should your father’s be?
I think most people would agree that a dice, regardless it its fair or not, does not have free will simply because its unpredictable.
You’ve obviously never played pen and paper RPGs.
I’m not saying the near-term economic woes won’t hurt China or bust some of their economic bubble. I just think these are less likely to be profoundly crippling. The urban development issues you mention are part of what’s leading to China’s environmental troubles, and will have bigger impacts than just near term economic imbalance.
I didn’t actually realize cryonics was such a hot topic on this site until after I had posted, so I became a little worried that I’d get beaten with the newbie stick for it.
I consider myself a transhumanist (in the sense that I find genetic alteration, computer augmentation, life extension, etc to be desirable goals, not in the sense that I drank the Kurzweil Kool-Aid and think that all this is inevitable or even probable in my lifetime), but I had never really considered cryonics as a major transhumanist approach. I’m certainly not opposed to cryonics on any kind of ethical grounds (my personal pragmatic concerns are a matter for another thread entirely), but since this is a question of the policy rather than the science side of cryonics, I have to go with my general observation that legislatures almost inevitably show up a day late and a dollar short. I think that the first wave of legislation on the topic will come at least one legislative session after the irrational masses start to get worked up into a religious frenzy over cryonics. So this is, to me, an issue better suited for decade rather than year predictions. I am however, compelled to agree with you that the likelihood of pro-cryonics legislation appears to be significantly less than the likelihood of anti-cryonics legislation. Hell, even if I weren’t a transhumanist, the civil libertarian in me would be appalled by Michigan’s facepalmingly bureaucratic handling of the situation. “Cryonics Institute is clearly operating as both a funeral establishment and cemetery without any state oversight.” Do we really need a government permission slip to bury/freeze our dead?
Also, why am I completely unsurprised by the fact that Arizona was the state to try and ban cryonics?
I’m going to have to distinguish here between guilt in the actual sense, and guilt in a legal sense. Do I think Amanda Knox did it? Somewhat likely. Do I think the prosecution proved that beyond a reasonable doubt? No.
I think my estimates of guilt for all three parties will be higher than most commenters, but here they are:
Probability that Knox participated in the murder: 15% Probability that Knox participated in or covered up the murder: 20% Probability that I would find Knox guilty of murder: 5%
Probability that Solecito participated in the murder 10% Probability that Solecito participated in or covered up the murder: 20% Probability that I would find Solecito guilty of murder: 5%
Probability that Rudy Guedo participated in the murder 80% Probability that Rudy Guedo participated in or covered up the murder 95% Probability that I would find Guedo guilty of murder: 85%
The biggest problem to me with the prosecution’s case is the alleged physical abuse of Knox by her interrogators. Her story did change somewhat, but not in a manner consistent with a guilty party. If Knox was guilty and wanted to frame someone else, it is unlikely that she would have fingered Lumumba days later and made vague statements that incorporated some kind of clairvoyant dream about Lumumba raping Kerscher rather than just making immediate and damning accusations. If the police physically harmed her in any way, that alone should have been enough to immediately drop the case. I’d find Charlie Manson innocent if I found that the police had roughed him up in interrogation to elicit a confession; such actions by the police undermine the very fabric of a free legal system and cannot be tolerated in any way whatsoever.
Secondly, the prosecution failed to establish a clear motive. First they claimed that Meredith refused to participate in some unspecified ‘sex games’. They never showed that Knox or Solecito were inclined to that sort of sexual behavior, and even if they were, it is a large leap from sexual frustration to murder. There was the stolen credit cards and missing money, but it was never shown that Knox or Solecito were in possession of the money. It should have been fairly easy to find a record of their withdrawals from Kerscher’s account, but it appears the police never even attempted to find such evidence. So the prosecution claimed that since Knox and Solecito smoked cannabis, they must have been addicts who stole the money (that no one ever proved the couple even had) to fuel their raging drug habits and possibly buy ‘hard drugs’ like cocaine. Que clips from ‘Reefer Madness’ now.
There is DNA evidence against Knox, but being roommates with the victim, it would be a challenge to find something of Kerscher’s that didn’t have some of Knox’s DNA on it. This seems to be a case of the ‘CSI effect’ actually working in favor of the prosecution. All the jury hears is ‘DNA’, but don’t stop to consider any number of explanations as to why Knox’s DNA would be on one of her own kitchen knives and on her roommate’s clothes that don’t involve murder.
There is also some dodgy eyewitness testimony, but even if the witnesses were so-called ‘credible witnesses’ eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable.
Guede, on the other hand, used the classic ‘a large unidentified black man did it’ defense at first but then changed his story when he found out Knox and Solecito were involved. He did flee the country, but so would I if accused of murder in a foreign country. Forensic evidence also confirmed that Guede had sex with Kirscher that night, not rock solid evidence I know, but notable. More evidence against Guede comes from the story he gave of how he was sitting on the toilet listening to his iPod when the attack occurred, which would have meant that he knew about the attack when it happened, failed to call the police, and fled the scene to go dance at a night club. Additionally he originally claimed that he tried to comfort Kerscher, meaning she was still alive, before fleeing and leaving her to die, which is ethically equivalent to murder.
To draw this lengthy post to a conclusion, I’m going to give my first impressions of the site wanting to keep Knox behind bars. As Nietzsche said “Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.” All of these ‘victim rights’ groups who spend their time trying to keep other people in prison are a walking contradiction. A murder victim, by definition, has no rights; they’re dead. It does a victim no good to keep the murderer behind bars; it only serves to satiate the need for vengeance in the bereaved. True, there are people who will likely murder again if released, but often, these groups continue to hound those who have reformed and express remorse (Leslie Van Houten), or those whose guilt was never clearly established in the first place (Leonard Peltier). Knox seems to be just another one of these unfortunate victims getting slandered by those who confuse justice with revenge. Am I out on a limb here, or does someone want to present a rational case for rights post-mortem?
I think even these numbers are a little high, except for the fact that you didn’t limit it by jurisdiction. Cryonics isn’t hot right now, but longevity certainly is. I don’t think there is enough attention on cryonics to justify legislation, but even if there were, the first steps of the legal battle would be court decisions rather than legislation.
The Chinese bubble is certainly going to collapse, but I doubt it will be a sudden enough collapse to happen within the year. People can talk all they want about undervalued currency or export dependency, my money is on demographic echo from the one child policy, and ecological and agricultural collapse from industrial pollution, both of which would be on the scale of a decade or more instead of a year. Though a smaller bursting of the bubble could happen due to general global economic downturn, the real kicker is still down the road a few years.
I guess I should have said 95% confidence on each of them rather than all of them. I would take 10 to one odds on any of them individually, and probably even money on all of them, depending on how the predictions were formalized. (IE instead of “A b-list celebrity will die unexpectedly; CNN will declare this a national tragedy.” “CNN will devote X hours of news time to the death of an actor who has not starred in a movie grossing over Y million in the last Z years, or a musician who has not made it onto the Billboard top 100 in at least Z years.”
Out of curiosity, which ones would you think most likely to turn out wrong and lose the bet for me?
A major church figure will face allegations of child abuse.
Europeans will riot over reductions in social programs.
A vague new terrorist threat will lead to increased security procedures at American airports.
A conservative talk show host in America will openly endorse murder of atheists, homosexuals, or immigrants.
Video of a pop star engaged in sexual acts will be leaked to the public.
A b-list celebrity will die unexpectedly; CNN will declare this a national tragedy.
A natural disaster will strike a third world country, causing everyone to completely forget about Haiti once again.
Literally dozens of Americans, many of whom are on social security or medicare, will protest government social programs in America as socialism.
North Korea will say or do something crazy.
So will Mel Gibson.
Stores will sell out of the newest overpriced shiny Apple gadget on release day.
The sun will rise each day except in areas above 66 degrees latitude.
All of these I think I can safely predict with 95% confidence. They aren’t the most earth shattering, but I’m rational enough to know my predictive limits.
Best of luck to her. Though I am curious, are you hiding the fact of her preservation from the authorities or just from her other friends and family? If the authorities, what would/could they actually do? Would there be a stiff punishment for ‘desecration of a corpse’ or other such nonsense, or are you worried that someone might take her out of cryo? I have heard of a case where a cryo facility here in the US was shut down, but they didn’t actually thaw anyone. Hopefully Russian authorities would be at least that sensible.