Giles

There's a link in the original post ffs. takes about two minutes to do everything.

That raelian idea of copying the brain across is (a) nonsensical and (b) would be murder anyway. I wouldn't mind being cloned; it'd be quite interesting to get some idea of what was genetic and what wasn't (although it would hardly count as a controlled experiment).

Your brain?

It'd do dubya some good to listen to us*. Some of us would be arrested or monitored *some of us, a bit, when the wind is in the right direction.

The opening post of a thread is meant to basically be an open question, whereas an article is usually the oppposite (altho obviously it will point up areas of ignorance). Articles also cover a lot more ground, enough to have many threads. This is why they should be seperate.

I wouldn't be surprised if you failed to realise how little that helps your case.

We only seem to have one article :/ this surprised me actually. I could quite easily fiddle with some old essays and upload them, surely others could do the same. And some posts are nearly articles. maybe we should solicit them?

Even if i accept this it doesn't actually have any relevance in the context of my post.

I think this was directed at me... I will respond as a scientist should - with lots of 'postdictions' masquerading as predictions You are proposing this idea on a public discussion forum. I therefore propse two hypotheses, on the assumption you are rational - that you wish to either (i) convince us, or (ii) discuss the idea and receive criticism. If (i) then it is your business to convince me. This does not fit with your post. Hypothesis rejected. If (ii) then my post is irrelevant, unless interpreted to imply that there is no such evidence. In which case your reply does not constitute a relevant response to the criticism. Hypothesis rejected. Can anyone suggest a new hypothesis, or must I abandon my assumption?

Then how do you know?

textual analysis please, inclusing the techniques used by the authors of such documents to distinguish it from, say, Mars.

That's neat, because then it'll (the case) be matter of public record. Details of the case please.

Adam, Please make single statement derived from this theory of yours which would be demonstrably false if the theory were false, OR provide a link to a reliable source. Please bear in mind that statements not supported by logical, scientific or historical methodology are not grounded in an epistemology that sceptics (you seem to be confusing scepticism with dogmatic denial by the way) are likely to accept as reliable. I cannot find such a statement within what you have posted. The papers referenced appear to concern either standard freudian theory, or standard sensory/neural mapping theory, and these are not relevant to the bone of contention.

Why would time be dilated infinitely at an event horizon? The point of the horizon is defined by the escape velocity exceeding light speed (or the schwarzchild radius iirc). It's not like you're experiencing infinite acceleration/force.

It's a sensation, and we can't actually describe it except by mutual experience, as with colour. In physical terms, i assume that as usual there are certain parts of the brain which are involved as part of their general function (both high-level parts and parts dealing with senses directly). Reductionism isn't going to answer the 'where is pain?' question simply. To go any further - well, I can't be expected to solve the mind-body problem here and now, can I?

XP sped up my laptop's performance (admittedly over ME, but still) by a large amount, and it's got just 56Mb of RAM - 200 less than the 'minimum'. When you turn everything off (there's a button which does) then it's a highly efficient OS. Add an XP tweaking tool and you're laughing.

Both of the theories Glider suggests, in their behavioural ecology incarnations, appear to be correct for some behaviours. However while the relatedness hypothesis yields quantitative hypotheses which have been tested, the social contract idea is harder to validate (refute for the Popperians). It is incorrect however to view the advantage as being at the level of the gene pool or population; it is in fact at the level of the gene. Group selection may or may not exist but it does not account for this phenomenon properly (i.e. does not predict Hamilton's rule). in humans this subject is skating perilously close to questions of free will.

In Radical Edward's case it depends who you ask. Since my girlfriend is just behind me i could get her to post if you like.

Um, I could be very badly wrong, but i think the fact that time slows down for the particle as it drops towards the event horizon doesn't actually make a difference to its speed of motion as observed by someone else.

Species vary, as novel adaptations take time to spread, and often don't come to characterise the population. There are two obvious reasons for this, and the third less obvious reason that an unvarying population is not always stable (i.e. the more frequent a strategy is, the less advantage it occurs.) It is redundant. It only couldn't have been fewer if we were stuck with 4 bases in two pairings, and between 17 and 64 amino acids. That isn't neccesarily something that had to happen. In fact the whole genetic system might have been wildly different. Anthropic principle.

If things are tight, waiting for a little while will cause the price of high-end athlons and associated bits an pieces to drop when the clawhammer appears (which is what i was planning to do). Having a motherboard thats supports PC2700 DDR-RAM, ATA-133/150, a 200Mhz FSB and AGP 8x is the main thing atm.

The Athlon, especially if your motherboard supports the absurdly high bus speed. Such motherboards are more future-proof anyway. No game needs such hardware anyway, the limiting factor is usually graphics card/bus speed/hard disc speed, depending on what you are doing. If you're doing lots of rendering and/or mathematics stuff you could get a dual athlon system. If you're doing such things and you have the money then you should wait for the 64-bit clawhammer/ opteron, as such things will support it eventually.

Wait a bit. Buy an AMD clawhammer (on an nForce chipset motherboard), or take advantage of the price drop in other processors when the hammer chips finally appear. Or buy the 64-bit chip that Intel "don't have" *cough cough*. Anyway, what on earth do you need a 3Ghz P4 for at the moment?

It's not a matter of creating divisions - you can't make everybody identical - but perpetuating a division for 'unfair' reasons. Sci-fi tends to forsee speciation (The Time Machine), or something like the X-men with obvious persecution. If you look at class divisions in the western world now, it's evidently much subtler than that. We don't yet know with the damage to clones is due to an imperfect technique or the nature of the technique itself. This full understanding may be decades away (if only because we may want to watch cloned primates grow up), rather than years or even here, now. That said, when people are going ahead and doing it anyway, it makes more sense to licence and regulate it than drive it underground. (PS. Arch(?)angel for me) The poll should make it clear whether it means now or ever, can that be changed? I assumed ever.