What did Grace do?
Structured the cat's responses.
In response to what?
In response to Grace's effort to conjure behavior that was preferred.
There is a transaction.
Pavlov's dog food.
I didn't say they understood each other.
But that was what you were implying. The context was intelligence, was it not?
So does intelligence move a creature beyond the power of evolution once it's developed a theory of evolution?
It moves it beyond arbitrary control by external stimuli and relegates it to control by evolution from internal conditions.
Operational definitions are arbitrary.
Science proceeds by operational definitions because they're the only ones which can get a group of individuals on the same page.
Cats are alien
Nope. Cats and humans have common ancestors.
and figure out what they mean for cats.
This is a mistake. We can only figure out what we've done to the cat that gives back what we put into it.
What's the logical difficulty?
They don't explain to us what they mean in our written language so we can hold them to it.
But if we've got their "writing" and no Centaurians and no equivalent to a Rosetta stone, then we can't necessarily be sure it's even writing.
True.
So a procedure would be to analyze the aliens signs and signals and corresponding activities to see if we get evidence of language activity, or something like it.
What corresponds to what?
But, quite honestly, I think I'm being led astray I don't think aliens are quite apposite to what I was saying.
You were saying that cats are intelligent. The analogy is cats : humans :: humans : aliens.
I think we add to natural selection with activity additive and analogous to it. And I don't think it's "totally random."
It's random up to the constraints of the physical universe, not the mathematical universe from which comes the definition of "random".
Because it's not a contemporary perspective. Education became a public good in England and throughout Europe as it was during the Roman period.
Dickens didn't believe that. Under tyranny education is limited to a few.
(There's a new book by Nicholas Orme coming out this Spring which should fill in a lot of lacunae in our knowledge of medieval education).
I'm willing to bet that Orme will be putting out a whole new set of myths and inventions stretching the truth in order to sell the book. What else can one do to market a beat dead story?
The US applied its limited democracy because it had to replace the ruler and control his succesor's excesses. Just like the Athenians, they needed good government.
The US is modelled after Spartan democracy. Athens never got good government from democracy. Athenian democracy failed because it was pure democracy: rule by a rowdy mob.
It's not just a matter of getting along. These were very difficult problems for the folk who had to solve them.
That's what "getting along" symbolizes.
Your statement and mine are both true.
How much toleration do you find on chat boards?
yes, I'll suppress you.
QED. You have limited toleration. Therefore, toleration can't be a start point for problem resolution.
I've been down on PCism since before it was called PCism. And I'm really intolerant of Islamists and other fascists.
QED.
I'm intolerant of culture of entitlement - what I call democratized kleptocracy - which is institutionalized stealing by everybody from everybody, and particularly the "rich" because they've got the most.
Uh oh, the Marxist dictum of class warfare. Why do you think that being rich is desirable? Any extreme of possession is bad. Stay indifferent to what comes to you naturally. Otherwise, you'll never be happy.
(I'm not rich. I'm in the position of the butcher who deals with the rich folk on the hill - he wants them to do really well).
The 'crat political philosophy. Grace had that affliction until I gradually made her realize that it's totally mistaken. Totally.
I vote against, speak against, and contribute money against, and act against these things.
And that reinforces their persistence. For every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. Newton's 3rd and the Law of Karma.
For sure, I'm intolerant of lowlifes and psychopathy.
That's why I have to ban people from this thread. I don't mind being intolerant and this thread isn't a democracy. No democracy can survive. That which survives must have a ruler.
Toleration,... We can change our personal collection of tolerances and intolerances as we can change from a baseball cap to a fedora, change the wardrobe from Dior to Punk, or change the paint, decorations, windows in our homes, or change the flower beds, trees, and vistas in our gardens and parks.
This is known as "ethical relativism" and it's the root cause of societal decay. Liberalism in the contemporary sense embraces this view and doing so accelerates the demise of toleration, ethical relativism, and liberalism.
Intelligence is not a style. It's an absolute. Only humans on this planet have it.
This is an extremely old fashioned approach but I don't think I've abused it and given it more weight than it can bear.
You've given "it" a patina of liberal dogma. There is no principle in liberalism. It's low keyed chaos.
This is an evolutionary process analogous to and additive to natural selection.
No. You have used "evolutionary" in two distinctly different ways here. Human society does not change according to the laws of natural selection, but by those of human selection.
The accelerating spread of democracy seems analogous to the expansion of a successful new species.
As successful as Islamists?
I thought at first maybe the PCers who demonstrate for the interests of intolerant islamists and against those of their own tolerant society would be a fatal counter example, but this phenomenon is more likely due to a distortion caused by higher education which has been temporarily captured by a narrowly defined ideological group.
Undisciplined liberal thinking always leads to these ambiguities and this plagues society to no end.
Proof:
The Joe and Joan Lunchbucket crowd, a much larger population not exposed to higher education, show much less confusion.
Given that we do apply technology to ourselves for all sorts of reasons that dystopian future is a possibility but not the only possibilty. Projecting present into the future....
The experience of galactic civilizations show utopia is unavoidable and totally destructive since it brings about its own demise. There is no solution since death is critical to civilizations just as it is to individuals. |
