Interesting viewpoint. I disagree the Theseus argument requires total replacement, but that’s minutiae not worth getting into at the minute.
I always considered the more complex question of the thought experiment not being if the whole is different when the components are replaced, but when that change would occur if you assume change occurs in the first place.
Difficult to think about. I might need a bigger brain.
I’m aware of Penrose and his position relative to Hawking.
When I wrote psychologists or philosophers, note I didn’t write psychologist or philosopher. It’s great work Penrose did to be sure, but I’d prefer not to rely on a foundation of thought laid by a single mind, no matter their intellect or dedication to science.
With respect to you, I made a quick joke about whether human rights would be applied to cyborgs in the future, I was not questioning the fundamental nature of what it is to be.
Physicists are often pointed to as the ‘smartest’ among us, yet when they turn to other fields, their genius isn’t always transferable. I personally would prefer psychologists or philosophers to determine what is consciousness.
Also, I wasn’t suggesting we replicate consciousness. I was touching on whether a human is still a human if, to put it extremely, neck down is machinery instead of biology. I might be okay with a Wall-e body.
Wouldn’t it be nice to just support human rights? The one thing all of these groups have in common is their humanhood.
Well at least until we reach a ‘body of Theseus’ point in technological augmentation. Then we may need to rebrand ‘human rights’ to ‘consciousness rights’ or something more catchy.
Fortunately, I wasn’t.
I was wondering what you were referring to as ‘they’, so I reread my comment and it occurs to me I should have worded it, ‘a course on governmental collapse, taught in European universities.’
Hopefully that’s clarifying.
It’s quite surreal to live through what will one day be a course on governmental collapse in Europe.
Farmers are also dependant on soil quality, temperature, sunshine, equipment that largely relies on fuel, and distribution for the crops they grow.
Not being an oracle myself, I’ll take an educated guess that when the temperature keeps climbing, the conditions that allow for outdoor food production will also change. Likely, the hardiness zones will shift to places with no farmland, and the current hardiness zones will be subject to flooding or drought or both.
Might be tricky business if the best farmland is suddenly on the side of K2.
Tell that to Captain America.
urban people
Funny how I don’t remember the last hospital I saw in the middle of a corn field.
Sorry, all life? Even the mosquitoes? Damn.
Gail Berman is to blame. She cancelled Firefly and doomed humanity in the process.
If the politicians would have refused bribes,
the standards wouldn’t have come into fruition that allowed the auto industry to decouple vehicle size and weight from energy efficiency;
the trams systems wouldn’t have been bought up, shut down, and rails ripped from the ground to make room for more lanes;
the energy sector wouldn’t have septupled down on an invisible gas that’s 20x worse than burning coal;
the healthcare companies would be run by medical experts finding the best treatment instead of by money men denying care by default;
the technology we developed wouldn’t be tracking every time we blink to create advertising opportunities;
the houses we build wouldn’t sit vacant waiting for a tenant to pay half their income for the privilege of having no equity…
Greed is the problem.
It’s understandable within capitalism why corporations would push boundaries to make money, but our politicians are supposed to be the force of opposition. Instead they look the other way while pocketing another cheque or airline ticket or deed to a brownstone.
I’m as pro active transportation as anyone I have ever met, but it’s delusional to blame people for buying a large, expensive vehicle when the manufacturers keep discontinuing small, cheap cars because the return on investment isn’t as high. The politicians could require them to make two compact cars for every pickup or SUV, but they don’t because they’re greedy just like the corporations.
There are no checks and balances anymore, and the politicians are to blame. Some blame in certain places should also land on the electorate, to be sure. But with every city, neighbourhood, and street gerrymandered to look like a hand drawn map by Michael J. Fox, it’s mostly the politicians on the hook for all this.
If everyone got together and came to the decision to fix the planet, it would probably still be possible, even though it’ll likely get to a point where going outside is a complication. Generations, to be sure.
Though of course, we’re never all going to agree on how to go about it, so you might be right.
China has the highest emissions in the world!
Only right now though. And only in annual volume. And in large part because they make just about everything for just about every other country.
China has four times the population of the United States. Despite this and being the world’s factory, their CO2 emissions per capita are only 10.1 tons. Which sounds like a lot - and it is - but the United States emissions are 17.6 tons per capita.
But who cares about all that mumbo jumbo. Don’t go looking at how America got here, to this pedestal so high above the rest. There’s nothing to see in the past, just some work ethic and a good pair bootstraps. Don’t worry about it.
Good on you for attempting to parse different meanings out of what was said. Too few people attempt to do so and instead jump all over a misinterpretation.
Know what I like about coal? If some falls off the sleigh, it’s just another rock, not an explosion or dish soap advertising campaign.
All those other problems with coal? Still bad, but maybe not as bad as non renewable alternatives. Really annoying we didn’t go full steam ahead on sun and wind the moment they became possible.
If only pragmatism could prevail, perhaps the elected could do the good work they promise the electorate.
The people charged with coming to an agreement should lose their positions when they refuse to do their jobs.
Seems to me the misunderstanding was my joke being interpreted as an opening to a semantics debate when it was merely an offhand remark loosely connected to the subject matter of this post.
However I’ve checked the clock just now and it does appear to be minutiae time.
I don’t consider the literal tale of Theseus to be the only point of valid argument when invoking his name. Had the man returned with 85% of the ship boards replaced, the same philosophical argument about the ship not returning with him could be had.
Mentioning his name in relation to an issue communicates a concept. Similar to a child suddenly spouting a detailed piece of factual information being called Einstein. The concept being communicated is that Einstein was a genius, not that he was a mathematician.
To frame this with an analogy, when I’m at the grocers looking for salted peanuts, I go to the section where I also find almonds, hazelnuts, and pistachios. I wouldn’t berate management if I couldn’t find them around the chickpeas and lentils.
Oh, would you look at the time.