Originally Posted by The Rani

It might end up being Planet of the Jellyfish.
Humanoid-centric thinking is hardly "observation."

Too true. Good thing I've been absolutely, and in no way humanoid-centric. In fact, it's been generally summer that has been scoffing at my contention that homo sap is not the be-all and end-all of adaptable forms.

I really think your biggest problem in understanding what is being expressed seems to be your conflation of the terms 'person' and 'human'. They're not the same thing, though they do have some overlap. I absolutely do not mean this to be rude in the slightest (and am only asking it because I think I recall you saying something about having family over in Asia) -- is English your first language? Maybe I just haven't made the human/person distinction sufficiently clear?

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Originally Posted by The Rani

It might end up being Planet of the Jellyfish.
Humanoid-centric thinking is hardly "observation."

Too true. Good thing I've been absolutely, and in no way humanoid-centric. In fact, it's been generally summer that has been scoffing at my contention that homo sap is not the be-all and end-all of adaptable forms.

I really think your biggest problem in understanding what is being expressed seems to be your conflation of the terms 'person' and 'human'. They're not the same thing, though they do have some overlap. I absolutely do not mean this to be rude in the slightest (and am only asking it because I think I recall you saying something about having family over in Asia) -- is English your first language? Maybe I just haven't made the human/person distinction sufficiently clear?

Now you're gonna blame her English. Give it a rest. You clearly stated from the beginning that...

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Our hope is that the people who result in part from what we are and what we do are sufficiently more long-term viable than we humans are at the moment. What I believe Copperhead recognizes (and what I like to think that I recognize) is that in questions of long-term viability of localized-entropy-reducers like people, flexibility and adaptability are ultimately the key, and ossification the enemy. Hence the distaste for identifying Superior Systems and the preference for allowing a multitude of systems to develop, grow, and thrive or not as time continue to pass.

...which was the point of the analogy. Trying to morph this into a general discussion of evolution is transparent deflation. If you had only been talking about projected dominant species outside of what we commonly view as "people", the analogy never would have come up.

Originally Posted by Ted '79

I just had a thought about the origin of this: If GIs were like Millies are...well, one of the things I've noticed about Millies is, they're pretty easy to offend. And *that* just reminded me of that pair of articles from the late '40s/early '50s someone linked a while back, about the "new young adults" -- the Silents -- and how they differed from the GIs: One of them IIRC had a quote from a college professor who said that it had always been easy to get the GIs riled up (which the professor liked to do, in order to "make them think")...but not the Silents. The Silents, he complained, "just sit there and take notes."

Hate to say it but I'm getting tired of Millie students' easy outrage...give me some New Artists who might actually let me complete a thought before launching into their "I'm offended" speech!

That GI-Millie similarity is really interesting, thanks!

It's clear you don't understand what you quoted, troll. But did you even try to understand it? The discussion was never about evolution in the way you keep trying to make it.

Allow me to simplify it without materially changing it:

The pov being expressed contains the hope that people end up being better-able to last forever than they currently are. Ecological systems show us that the condition of 'better-able to last forever' is more readily achieved by a diversity than by its absence. Thus an apparently-good way to achieve what is hoped for (see sentence 1) is to allow for or even encourage diversity, rather than restricting it.

-----
-edit-
I'm not blaming Rani's English. I just have come to think of her as a person capable of, and wanting to (with me, at least; there are others here with whom she shows less interest) engage in communication. Since we're hitting a pretty clear failure to communicate, I'm attempting to locate the source of our difficulty with an eye to correcting it. Rani's mind is what I value engaging.

Originally Posted by Alioth68

How about his "interpretation" of what he was trying to say?

There is more than one way (or in this case your interpretation of Justin's way) to interpret the world. Expressing displeasure with the existence of alternative views makes it no less true that they exist. It only makes the other party look silly that they are so easily threatened by the existence of views other than their own.

That's inherently frustrating.

It is not the responsibility of the other person to prevent someone from getting frustrated.

If a person says they meant a certain thing when they said something, you should accept that that's what they were meaning to say.

That would necessarily mean the end of critical thinking as we know it and the death of human intelligence. If you are seeking an echo chamber, I recommend talking to yourself in the bathroom. The internet is necessarily the forum for the coming together of a multitude of ideas. And there is no guarantee that those ideas will never be disagreeable to you. The attempt to achieve otherwise leads to censorship -- something your bullying tactics appear intended to do -- and censorship leads to an unchanging of thought (which ironically is what Justin claims to be against).

I mean what are they all otherwise, liars?

Whether or not they are liars is irrelevant. The important thing is that their need to appear "right" does not hamper others' ability to think. We can all rush to kill the impetuous kid who proclaims "the emperor has no clothes." But it will make people no the wiser in the long run. Cheers.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

The discussion was never about evolution in the way you keep trying to make it.

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

Originally Posted by summer in the fall

What the hell is an "evolution guy"?

Copperfield believes that humans are headed for extinction.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

...Our hope is that the people who result in part from what we are and what we do are sufficiently more long-term viable than we humans are at the moment...*I'm an 'evolution guy', too

Hmmm...

Originally Posted by Justin '77

I'm not blaming Rani's English.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

is English your first language?

Originally Posted by The Rani

That's just it, though. What you'd like or wouldn't like is irrelevant in the course of natural history.
To pretend otherwise is ... well ... as nutty as hoping that God will save us.

English looks fine to me...

Cheers.

Exactly, troll. We're not talking about 'evolution' in the sense you keep trying to make it. That's why a clarification of the term 'evolution guy' was originally asked, and why it was worth giving it (Jenny's answer wasn't factually incorrect, but it had nothing to do with explaining what was meant by the term that copperhead used). It's not biological evolution -- or at least not only or even primarily -- that any of us (except apparently you, over and over and over) are looking at. It is the evolution of systems in general.

As for the other, perhaps one day you'll get good at speaking a foreign tongue. Once you are, perhaps you will realize that fluent usage and full comprehension of nuance are two quite very different things. Or maybe not -- you might be just as special and unique as all your teachers always said you were.

----
-edit-
Again, please Rani don't take that as a criticism of any sort. I just want to figure out why we're talking past each other and fix it, and I always prefer to eliminate the easy problems first.

Originally Posted by Alioth68

@Galen: let me chew on what you said some more. I'm leaving from work (I work nights) and I may not be online for a couple days.

But let's just say for now, that my interests aren't just in optimizing wealth, but also in ensuring that even the least among us can't be manipulated by the circumstances of their poverty by people who hold "all the cards" so to speak (even if it costs some of that overall wealth). And I don't think that just letting every market player do what they will is going to ensure that--especially those players who have no compassion, or who hunger for power. The "free market" allows for compassion, sure. But the question is, do enough people (players) actually have it? Or do some have ends quite the opposite, and the means to realize them (even without government help)? How are such individuals stopped? The government has allowed itself to be used by them. But if government wasn't there, what would keep them in check? The question I guess is, since government might be the only thing strong enough to keep effective check on them, if it was so inclined to: how to repurpose the government to that end, and keep it from being bought and captured again?

The question is what could they use if the government wasn't there? The answer is the one United States started with, and that was limited government and competing jurisdictions.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Again, the sun dying (IIRC, it's not explosion we have to worry about.. our type of star goes red-giant and 'merely' expands its size to something like the orbit of Mars. Also not good for Earth and the things on it.) isn't the way homo sap ends. It's merely a reasonably conclusive proof that homo sap will necessarily end. There are plenty of other circumstances which could reasonably occur far, far prior to our sun's death which would do the trick just as well. But for those, we're talking probabilities, whereas the sun-death has the virtue of being certain.

Humanity will surely be intelligent enough and command enough resources that it will be able to move the orbit of the Earth until it is in a congenial zone in the solar system as that happens if the species is around long enough. But even that delays the end by a couple billion years. But should humanity dither long enough, the end of humanity on Earth ends as the Earth's atmosphere gets too hot to support human life or the plant-based fuel on which it depends. That is still far closer than the Sun leaving the Main Sequence. There are other ways to go -- war that annihilates humanity altogether, a nearby supernova explosion, collision of a star-like object into the Sun, collision of a huge object into the Earth, and of course a supervolcano eruption.

In any case, diversity NOW may or may not be sufficient to make the set of 'persons' adaptable enough to persist whatever-the-hell. But it's a damn sure thing that a lack of diversity at any point in time -- and that includes necessarily selection and exceptionalism as particularly egregiously bad values -- not only means less adaptability to survive whatever-the-hell when and if it comes around, but even increases the number of conditions which could prove fatal to persons as a set. It's about recognizing and playing the odds -- which is a pretty damn far cry from what you're claiming as analogous.

It's a bad idea for humanity to use up its fossil fuels before it has inexpensive alternatives. We may so consume fossil fuels that we destroy the raw materials for solar devices or suitable media for transporting the thermal energy. Then there is always the danger of a Hitler-like leader with nukes... if there are any shaky democracies out there whose people have lots of hurt feelings and whose economies are one financial panic away from a Depression, then beware.

There's all sorts of nutty ideas that would fall under 'diversity'. And at least a small number of not-so-nutty ones. It's not nuttiness that matters, though, so much as just plain getting at least some of our eggs out of that one damn basket. Evolution gets into shitloads of dead-ends. But sometimes not. And we're here at all thanks to a long, long chain of those 'sometimes nots'. At least, it seems that way so far. Maybe we just haven't gotten to our dead end yet. We won't know until it happens, and I'd like for us to have more to say at that time than simply, "oh crap, it's too late for us". That's a piss-poor ending for a story that's been pretty cool from time to time.

Our species looks like an evolutionary dead end. A larger head on an infant precludes childbirth. Maybe the common pig has a better future than we have. George Orwell picked the right animal to lord it over the others in Animal Farm.

Unless the fungus was people (which I don't see as one of the even slightly-plausible paths), it certainly wouldn't be. Although... IF we on earth genuinely are the only people, AND that fungus on whatever other planet were the genesis of an ecosystem which had a chance of, over however many millions of years, giving rise to people... That would be, in my admittedly biased opinion, better than nothing. Better than the end of human beings being the end of people for all time in all places.
So it's not my first choice, but... why the hell not? Diversify far and wide, in all possible manners.

Maybe I ought to start the SF novel about a world in which wolves rule because an otherwise-earthlike world has a 45-degree tilt that favors wolves over apes, big cats, hyenas, crocodilians, and giant snakes due to the sharper extremes of climate. They have pet monkeys and get their introduction to our world by seeing reruns of Lassie broadcast from a wayward satellite and can't figure how the 'inevitable norms of nature' can be so inverted.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Government is good at best at meeting very basic needs when those needs are easy to stereotype. Social Security works because it is simple even if it is large. Likewise Medicare. Much of business activity depends not on simple calculations but instead upon hunches and feedback in the form of sales figures or media ratings that become a surrogate for prices. It may be the fads and crazes that make life interesting; "How to Increase Your Potato Production", however practical, might have at most a limited use. If you are an orange grower, you aren't interested.

You might be right if Congress hadn't spent all of the money already and all there is left is one big IOU.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Mathematics are easy to reduce. Mathematics through at the least differentiation is easy. The trick is in forcing natural and human phenomena to fit mathematical calculations. The mathematics used in business (as in accounting) are at best post hoc, good largely for describing what happened in the past. When the news goes through the accounting department, then the good -- or damage -- is already done. The mathematics used in engineering get tricky enough to require specialists... well, engineers aren't cheap labor.

I am one of those guys. It is how I make my humble living.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Doing the math is one thing. Knowing which math to use is the tricky thing.

I know this but once you start using the wrong one the contradictions start building up pretty fast. In computer science the other way you know you are going down the wrong path is when the space or time complexity of the problem become unmanageable and impossible to implement.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Hunches don't fit mathematical models. Some few people are capable of turning a hunch into a successful business proposition. Is there a mathematical algorithm that would have shown that Barbra Streisand or Elvis Presley would be wildly popular? Not in the least. Or that Star Wars, which resurrected themes recalling heroic warfare preserving a nation (allusions to World War II with the "rebels" resembling Great Britain and the Evil Empire resembling Nazi Germany) would be extremely successful in America after the debacle of the war in Vietnam? One would have to be crazy! Or that kids worldwide would love stories of sorcery set in an elite British "public school"? Not in the least! That is in culture alone. Oil wildcatters guess where underground petroleum might be and then sell out to Big Oil because the successful wildcatters (the unsuccessful wildcatters simply go broke or find another way in which to make money) don't have the expertise at engineering that Big Oil has.

Implementations of evolution often have the parameters of the mutation and crossover operators be random values. What isn't random is that bad decisions are weeded out and only a certain number of the best solutions are kept. It is profit and loss and the willingness of customers to pay for a good or service that determines if an enterprise continues and is the fitness test in a market economy. When government provides guarantees it alters this test of fitness so that it fails to signal when bad decisions are being made. When this happens organizations and individuals start behaving in a dysfunctional manner and we see this happen all of the time in real life. It doesn't matter which political party is doing it since we are running into fundamental law governing computation.

In short government can not prevent bad things from happening and attempts to do so will make things worse. It make take time for the dis-coordination to show up but it always does. The longer the correction is delayed the bigger the malinvestment and the more painful it is to correct.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

But the cash cows can be reduced to mathematical realities. That's how insurance works. That's how banking works (so long as one can judge the character of the debtor). That's how the marketing of simple antibiotics and painkillers operates. That's how 'old industry' like steel, concrete, and glass businesses work -- "Give us the orders and we will fill them", says the supplier of the government contractor.

Even old industries were still subject to the test of the market when government wasn't supporting them. If a business becomes large enough it loses the ability to control its costs and will lose out to more efficient and profitable firms.

What you are talking about here is the models that each individual firm use to make decisions. Now how the economy as a whole tests the validity of those decisions.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

I repeat -- knowing which mathematical model to use is as essential as is mastery of the math.

Like I said before, this is how I make my living.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Exactly, troll. We're not talking about 'evolution' in the sense you keep trying to make it. That's why a clarification of the term 'evolution guy' was originally asked, and why it was worth giving it (Jenny's answer wasn't factually incorrect, but it had nothing to do with explaining what was meant by the term that copperhead used). It's not biological evolution -- or at least not only or even primarily -- that any of us (except apparently you, over and over and over) are looking at...

See this is where you screwed up.

It doesn't matter what part of "evolution" you want to divert the attention to. The fact that "evolution" of people is being used at all makes it apply. It doesn't matter how many names you call me, how many thugs you enlist from your posse of followers, or how creative you get with blaming Rani's intelligence. The fact remains I'm RIGHT. Get over it! Best...

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Humanity will surely be intelligent enough and command enough resources that it will be able to move the orbit of the Earth until it is in a congenial zone in the solar system as that happens if the species is around long enough. But even that delays the end by a couple billion years. But should humanity dither long enough, the end of humanity on Earth ends as the Earth's atmosphere gets too hot to support human life or the plant-based fuel on which it depends. That is still far closer than the Sun leaving the Main Sequence. There are other ways to go -- war that annihilates humanity altogether, a nearby supernova explosion, collision of a star-like object into the Sun, collision of a huge object into the Earth, and of course a supervolcano eruption.



It's a bad idea for humanity to use up its fossil fuels before it has inexpensive alternatives. We may so consume fossil fuels that we destroy the raw materials for solar devices or suitable media for transporting the thermal energy. Then there is always the danger of a Hitler-like leader with nukes... if there are any shaky democracies out there whose people have lots of hurt feelings and whose economies are one financial panic away from a Depression, then beware.



Our species looks like an evolutionary dead end. A larger head on an infant precludes childbirth. Maybe the common pig has a better future than we have. George Orwell picked the right animal to lord it over the others in Animal Farm.



Maybe I ought to start the SF novel about a world in which wolves rule because an otherwise-earthlike world has a 45-degree tilt that favors wolves over apes, big cats, hyenas, crocodilians, and giant snakes due to the sharper extremes of climate. They have pet monkeys and get their introduction to our world by seeing reruns of Lassie broadcast from a wayward satellite and can't figure how the 'inevitable norms of nature' can be so inverted.

It's on the market now.

Clan of the Claw

Exiled: Clan of the Claw - published August 2011 [ publisher's sample]

First entry in a new series, published by Baen. Contains four linked novellas from Harry Turtledove, S.M. Stirling, John Ringo & Jody Lynn Nye, and Michael Z. Williamson.

The extinction asteroid didn't strike Earth, and the dinosaurs kept evolving—but so did the mammals, and now it’s cold-blooded, magic-using reptiles against the hot-blooded, hot-tempered descendants of cats.

Originally Posted by The Rani

I don't consider "people" worthy of any special treatment to which "non-people" aren't entitled, so for me the distinction is irrelevant.

I have no idea what this has to do with the 2012 elections, but will say that if all living things are equally valuable, then no living things are valuable. I am a "who" and not a "what". These are belief statements from Rani and from me, so no proof is necessary.

However, whenever the worth and dignity of the individual person, the human person, is devalued, history shows bad things happen. So you may believe in a philosophical sense that people are any different from non-people, but as a practical matter, for the good our our species, we cannot go down this path. Perhaps to some the dignity of the individual human being is simply a fiction. Its not to me, but I know it is to others. But even if it is a fiction, we must maintain this fiction for our own sake.

James50

Originally Posted by Alioth68

Postmodernism seems to be the intellectual equivalent of "everyone gets a gold star or trophy for showing up", no matter what they actually do or achieve (or don't).

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Possibly. If so, you and Ted may have pointed a finger at what is to blame for summer's intellectual incompetence -- if that is indeed what is going on.

To continue Alioth's analogy -- I'm not saying that summer grew up "getting gold stars just for showing up" and so didn't develop intellectual competence. I'm saying that she believes in giving everyone a gold star just for showing up, and is offended because you won't do it.

And here's a caveat. Continuing the analogy but switching to a class discussion rather than a team:

When postmodernism first came on the scene, there were kids in the class who used sign language, and everyone just ignored their "weird gestures." And there were kids in the class with cerebral palsy, and everyone just ignored their "lazy" slurred speech. And there were kids in the class who used wheelchairs, and everyone just assumed they must have nothing to say. And then postmodernism came along and said, "Hey, we should listen to everyone. That kid with the gestures, that's sign language, he's talking. That kid with the slurred speech, listen to what she says, not how she says it. That kid in the wheelchair, don't write him off without even giving him a chance to talk!" And at the time, that's just what we needed.

Even today, it's sometimes hard to tell the difference between writing someone off unfairly because of invalid, socially-constructed assumptions...and simply having standards and refusing to give them a gold star just for showing up. So if someone gets all postmodern on you, do consider if you might be doing the former without meaning to. Don't automatically assume you are, but don't assume you aren't either.

But when postmodernism goes so far as to say that reality itself is nothing but a social construct, or even that (to quote Sokal's summary) "there exists an external world but science obtains no knowledge of it"...baby, bathwater. And I have to agree with Sokal:

Originally Posted by Alan Sokal

Fair enough: anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the windows of my [21st-floor] apartment.

Is summer a troll? Maybe she's affecting extreme postmodernism simply to get a reaction. OTOH, I have known people who say the same things in all seriousness. Unfortunately. And given what David Kaiser has said about the Boomer left's destruction of history studies, I suspect he has too.

Originally Posted by Ted '79

Sorry, Odin, I didn't mean to put words in your mouth!

What you said really did creep me out, though, and I was trying to explain why. I think there really is a difference between um...the Boomer-Millie mentor-protege group on the one hand and the Silent-Xer group on the other, when it comes to accepting "I was offended" as a valid reason for launching a content-free personal attack. The Boomers seem to accept it from their proteges, and so the Millies seem to do it a lot, and I think that's harmful.

Agreed.

I just had a thought about the origin of this: If GIs were like Millies are...well, one of the things I've noticed about Millies is, they're pretty easy to offend. And *that* just reminded me of that pair of articles from the late '40s/early '50s someone linked a while back, about the "new young adults" -- the Silents -- and how they differed from the GIs: One of them IIRC had a quote from a college professor who said that it had always been easy to get the GIs riled up (which the professor liked to do, in order to "make them think")...but not the Silents. The Silents, he complained, "just sit there and take notes."

Hate to say it but I'm getting tired of Millie students' easy outrage...give me some New Artists who might actually let me complete a thought before launching into their "I'm offended" speech!

I linked the article, people were surprised to find that the way they talked about the Lost Generation (that was in power) was the way they we talked about the Boom Generation today--everything was being compared to them.

And don't you worry, another 12 - 15 years and you'll see them in your college classes. Welcome to the Half-way point for Millies. Homies promise to be an interesting meld of the two from what I can tell from my younger first cousins once removed--you'll see them in 8 - 10 years.

Oh and do compare Millies in college to the college scenes of GIs in college from the movie: The Way We Were. I'd like to hear your thoughts. I watched that movie & the college scenes seemed exactly like what college was like for me.

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by Odin

That GI-Millie similarity is really interesting, thanks!

The GIs were the Boomers of their day: headstrong, opinionated, confident to a fault, "I'm right, you're wrong!" Before Richard Nixon (1913) was a ruined politician, he was Eisenhower's attack dog vice president, the most anti-communist of the anti-communists. Another one of the gang was Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908). Don't forget Barry Goldwater (1909) and Ronald Reagan (1911), even Jimmy Stewart (1908).

The off-topic devolution of this thread should be enshrined as exemplary reference counter to any criticism of Boomers by generational prejudiced and hypocritical Xers. Not just the inane intellectual circle jerk of exploding suns and sophomoric Rousseau-Hume rematches but also the naval gazing from which it was derived of worshipping mathematics as savior without providing a single constant, variable or equation to actually describe or explain anything.

William James turns in his grave and previous Nomads must be laughing their asses off.

Now, with a common enemy, perhaps they can unite in their denial of lack of self-awareness.

Exploding suns indeed!

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/20...ir.php?ref=fpa

Tim Pawlenty Endorses Mitt Romney, Joins Campaign As Co-Chair

No more Obamneycare.

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who left the race for the Republican presidential nomination last month, has endorsed Mitt Romney and joined his campaign as a national co-chair.

On Fox and Friends this morning, where Pawlenty made the announcement, he defended Romney’s record on health care reform (which he had unsuccessfully attacked on the campaign trail) and joined in the dogpile on Rick Perry over his rhetoric about Social Security.

A key quote, gathered this morning by Politico:

“Gov. Romney wants to fix Social Security. He doesn’t want to abolish it or end it,” Pawlenty said. “Gov. Perry has said in the past that he thought it was ‘failed.’”In a letter sent to Romney supporters Monday morning, Pawlenty praised Romney’s economic plan.

“By pressing for fundamental change in the way that Washington taxes and spends, issues regulations, uses energy, interacts with our major trading partners, and deals with our labor force, he fully envisions a way to place America back on the path toward rapid economic growth and full employment,” Pawlenty wrote.

The letter doesn’t mention the phrase “health care,” though Pawlenty told Fox that he had discussed the issue with Romney and determined Romney is “100% dedicated and committed to repealing Obamacare.”

Pawlenty told the Fox team that he’s not angling for a VP slot on the Romney ticket. “That won’t be part of the path for me,” he said.

Big surprise, hey?

At least it keeps the great SS divide front-and-center.

Originally Posted by Uzi

The GIs were the Boomers of their day: headstrong, opinionated, confident to a fault, "I'm right, you're wrong!" Before Richard Nixon (1913) was a ruined politician, he was Eisenhower's attack dog vice president, the most anti-communist of the anti-communists. Another one of the gang was Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908). Don't forget Barry Goldwater (1909) and Ronald Reagan (1911), even Jimmy Stewart (1908).

And I admit, went talking to some Millies...I instantly feel like an Xer who is arguing with Archie Bunker (so sure of their logic and rational).

I disagree with the title.My, my, tsk-tsk, so Boomerish? should be My, my, tsk-tsk, so, so Boomerish? Has a certain symmetric rhyme to it. Yes, I know it's more tangentials. But you are a playwrite, are you not? Cheers.

Originally Posted by playwrite

The off-topic devolution of this thread should be enshrined as exemplary reference counter to any criticism of Boomers by generational prejudiced and hypocritical Xers. Not just the inane intellectual circle jerk of exploding suns and sophomoric Rousseau-Hume rematches but also the naval gazing from which it was derived of worshipping mathematics as savior without providing a single constant, variable or equation to actually describe or explain anything.

William James turns in his grave and previous Nomads must be laughing their asses off.

Now, with a common enemy, perhaps they can unite in their denial of lack of self-awareness.

Exploding suns indeed!

Originally Posted by The Rani

I thought this was very humanoid-centric:

Call it "people-centric," if that makes more sense in your vocabulary.

Indeed, that is the correct term for it, if you want to name it. And since, as I've clearly stated before and before, 'human' and 'person' are not interchangeable words, I would hope that you understand the difference as being one of meaning, rather than just taste.

Do you understand the distinction between 'person' and 'human'? A lot hinges on that...

Originally Posted by The Rani

So far, your definition of "people" is based on qualities which (supposedly) distinguish humans from other living beings, such as self-awareness, intellectual attributes, the ability to tell stories. You even admit your own personal biases.
If you have a different definition of "people," which is less human-centric, feel free to offer it. Or quote it again, if I missed it.

That definition isn't human-centric at all. Those differences are some of the ways that some human beings distinguish themselves from some other living beings. However, it is (in my opinion) eminently unreasonable to presume that those qualities are and can only be exclusively possessed by human beings. There are other qualities relatively unique to human beings which have no bearing whatsoever on a thing's being a person or not.

You quoted Badger coming right out with examples, even. A hypothetical 'self-aware AI' (to use the first of her listed examples) would most definitely not be a human being -- indeed would share almost nothing at all in common with the human organism. But would definitely be a member of 'people', and therefore on the side of my abovestated bias.

..........
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I don't see this thread as being anything but appropriate to it's Title, and our current "Real World" Environment. If there appears to be Entropy,(or if there actually is Entropy), it is only a natural part of the Process.

Prince

This Thread is about self-organization over Time within a System, correct?

Originally Posted by The Rani

In your opinion/definition, it would be a person because it has the HUMAN characteristic of self-awareness.

You're using the word "human" to mean something other than "homo sapiens" (which would be pretty nonstandard -- human and homo sap [u]are[/i] mutually interchangeable terms). And then you insist that self-awareness is a characteristic that ONLY our species is capable of. Which is surprising, given what you've said about other species.
Again, and to make it clear, the characteristic of self-awareness is not exclusively human. That is, it is a quality that humans have (although that some lack who are nevertheless human --- the persistent-vegetative come immediately to mind), but which is not unique to them. So it's not a HUMAN trait, any more than is bilateral symmetry or hemoglobin-based blood. Self-awareness is a PERSON trait, of which group humans are (largely) a part. That is, a human could be a person because it possesses the PERSON trait of self-awareness, just like a not-human could be a person if it possessed the PERSON trait of self-awareness.
So a sentient machine isn't a person because it has human traits. Rather both a sentient machine and a human are people because they each possess PEOPLE traits.

It amazes me that your blindness to your own biases this is so severe that you've actually questioned my familiarity with the English language!

I've questioned your familiarity only because you persist in failing to understand the clear difference between 'human' and 'person'. Those are distinctly different words in the English language, and not interchangeable. But you freely swap them back and forth as if they were. That strongly hints a lack of comprehension-of-nuance on your part. The alternative is that I just really, really, really suck at explaining myself. But if that were the case, I would think your reaction would be more along the lines of "huhwut?" instead of "you think that xxx" (where xxx is not what I said).