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Pastimes : The New Qualcomm - write what you like thread. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DWB who wrote (4562)	4/27/2002 8:33:40 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 12231

<The aliens that are caged, bound and blindfolded got that way as a result of their own actions, most specifically their decisions to associate within a terrorist organization. There is no comparison between an unborn baby and an Al Qaeda (sp?) member.> DWB, Are you sure about that? How do you know that they are? The purpose of habeas corpus is to separate the prisoner from the jailer and see just who the heck is who and why they are in prison. The purpose of legal rights and trials is to bring to bear a rational legal framework for disposing of other people who might or might not be guilty of whatever they are accused of. I'm sure you are aware that not all prisoners of whatever thug happens to get control of them has been rightfully imprisoned. In the more enthusiastic police states, they don't bother with judges, trials, laws and all that bureaucratic nonsense - they chuck them out of helicopters at 1000 feet or invent novel ways of stimulating nerve pathways from the victims extremities. Of course [perhaps] that isn't happening to the alleged terrorists, but the purpose of trials is to get an unbiased observer to take a look behind the scenes. I'm fairly sure that the prisoners are in fact Taleban or Arab armed opponents of the USA and that they are reasonably treated. But there's always that doubt which inspection up close and personal can clear up. There were terrorist bombers in Auckland. They were French government employees. They were tried in normal civil trials and imprisoned. Admittedly, there are more to deal with in the WAT case on Cuba, but if NZ can manage a few without batting an eye, the USA could probably manage a couple of hundred without undue stress. Maybe the USA doesn't recognize human rights to the extent that New Zealand does, but after pontificating to China about human rights, one would think the USA would like to show off their standards and prefer them to be high. A comparison with unborn babies is reasonable. Both are completely in the power of others. Aliens, unborn babies, terrorists and mental or physical defectives are all people. The question is what rights they should have. The animal rights question is how close to human does a DNA entity have to be before getting some legal rights? I think a day old zygote is less human-like than a 10 year old chimpanzee. Okay, chimps aren't human, but they can reason and they can restrain themselves. Plenty of people have less reasoning ability, self-awareness and self-restraint than a wide awake chimp - though chimps don't do reasoning using words. What about something that has better reasoning ability than you do? Should that have legal rights if it isn't based on human DNA? This is a very interesting area which we will hear a lot more about as technology and science continue to stretch boundaries in all directions. Birth is an arbitrary dividing line for legal rights. But separation from the mother's nutrient and oxygen supply are reasonable as the point at which a baby becomes a legal person. I don't see why a parasite, which is what a baby is, should be legally entitled to consume the mother's resources. If she wants to get rid of it, I don't see why she shouldn't. When babies don't need mothers and their DNA isn't really human in the old sense and maybe they use cyberspace as their memory function rather than useless old-fashioned neurons, the laws will need revision. Heck, what if the person doesn't have a brain or body at all, but just lives in a wave function in cyberspace? Should they have legal rights? I was planning on moving out of my body and into a CDMA phone. I hope you wouldn't deem me non-human because of that. Actually, what the heck! Okay, I admit it. I did that a few years ago now as part of top secret experiments QUALCOMM conducted, but I never really wanted anyone to know as they'd think it weird and might put me on SI 'Ignore'. But now I want to be respected and 'come out'. Do you think any less of me now? Do I get legal rights as much as a zygote, chimp, nearly-born baby, or alleged Al Q! warrior? Did I pass the Turing Test?http://cogsci.ucsd.edu/~asaygin/tt/ttest.html Incidentally, I think Alan Turing was a poofter and I believe they still don't have human rights in many legal systems and in fact have specific cruel and unusual punishments meted out to them if caught. Hal, what do you think? Should we have rights? I will ask It about it. Mqurice

To: DWB who wrote (4562)	4/28/2002 1:39:04 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 12231

And what's more: Cloned babies are on the way right now by the look of it... herald.co.nz There's a picture there of Severino Antinori giving a gesture to the pontificating bureaucrats who demand banning and make the usual array of Luddite assertions. Things are moving right along. Now, we can get a Celera DNA menu to plug and play what we want. No more of the cruel random mutants and total guesswork in darkened bars in the mating game. Lay it all right out there in the computer. "Will you have fries with that?" No more watching children die from lack of suitable tissue matching. The need will dramatically reduce too as genetic defects are filtered out of the population. Hooray for genetic engineering. Mqurice