Yet another weird SF fan


I'm a mathematician, a libertarian, and a science-fiction fan. Common sense? What's that?

Go to first entry


 

Archives

<< current
 
E-mail address:
jhertzli AT ix DOT netcom DOT com


My Earthlink/Netcom Site

My Tweets

My other blogs
Small Sample Watch
XBM Graphics


The Former Four Horsemen of the Ablogalypse:
Someone who used to be sane (formerly War)
Someone who used to be serious (formerly Plague)
Rally 'round the President (formerly Famine)
Dr. Yes (formerly Death)

Interesting weblogs:
Back Off Government!
Bad Science
Blogblivion
Boing Boing
Debunkers Discussion Forum
Deep Space Bombardment
Depleted Cranium
Dr. Boli’s Celebrated Magazine.
EconLog
Foreign Dispatches
Good Math, Bad Math
Greenie Watch
The Hand Of Munger
Howard Lovy's NanoBot
Hyscience
Liberty's Torch
The Long View
My sister's blog
Neo Warmonger
Next Big Future
Out of Step Jew
Overcoming Bias
The Passing Parade
Peter Watts Newscrawl
Physics Geek
Pictures of Math
Poor Medical Student
Prolifeguy's take
The Raving Theist
RealityCarnival
Respectful Insolence
Sedenion
Seriously Science
Shtetl-Optimized
Slate Star Codex
The Speculist
The Technoptimist
TJIC
Tools of Renewal
XBM Graphics
Zoe Brain

Other interesting web sites:
Aspies For Freedom
Crank Dot Net
Day By Day
Dihydrogen Monoxide - DHMO Homepage
Fourmilab
Jewish Pro-Life Foundation
Libertarians for Life
The Mad Revisionist
Piled Higher and Deeper
Science, Pseudoscience, and Irrationalism
Sustainability of Human Progress


























Yet another weird SF fan
 

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Would People in Space Colonies Be Really Alive? Part II

My earlier post on the topic is being discussed at Back Off Government! and Stupidus (which sounds like it has to do with Memento Moron). According to Stupidus:

I guess another way to put it would be to ask if those people have any right to life... If the company operating the space colony found it to be too expensive to operate, would they have the right to, say, shut off life support, thereby killing the colonists? Or would they have the right to dismantle the colony, with everyone still inside, thereby killing them?
In order to make the analogy exact, the company in question would have to hire armed guards ready to stop anybody else from rescuing the colonists.

My original point, however, was to point out the inanity of the claims that insisting that a technical fix be used would mysteriously shut down technological development. (A particularly annoying example can be found at Hot Needle of Inquiry.)

By the way, which nation is more likely lead in the Intelligence Amplification sweepstakes? A nation where victims of Down's syndrome “don't get out of the delivery room”? Or a nation where yucky artificial means are routinely used to solve problems?

And now for a remark on the Other Side's trump card: I doubt if the existence of Creationists will have any effect. I haven't heard of many instances of otherwise qualified people being deflected from careers in medical research by a belief in a 6000-year-old Earth. Creationists aren't the red-state version of scientists; they're the red-state version of New Age Loons.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

 
Profiles
My Blogger Profile
eXTReMe Tracker X-treme Tracker


The Atom Feed This page is powered by Blogger.