Been through the Total Perspective Vortex have you?

On this thread, the messiah, has shown him/her self in post #31.

Ah, well. I’m sure you’ll start up some other thread.

Misanthrop, my suggestion regarding using chimp embryos and stem cells was aimed at finding a way around the religious objections. I was not suggesting full term chimps.

61 – Lauren, the CSICOP group (ghost and psychic debunkers) found long ago that “documentaries” did not need to tell the truth. They were not considered “news”, but “entertainment”. Yup. Legally, they are fantasy.

When the messiah comes there will be peace. I’m scared to death of the messiah. Want to see a peaceful world? Look up on most clear nights. Want this planet to look like our beautiful moon? If not, then hope like hell or prey on your favorite deity that the messiah never comes. (Was that supposed to be pray to your favorite deity? I always get those mixed up.)

I wonder if Mr. Condell is troubled that many people are treating him like the Messiah of the 21st century.

Uh-oh. You’re on a slippery slope with the “majority rule” approach to ethics, Boboli.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes was NOT a documentary??!!? Dang!! All those years of assuming it was …

#62 – bobbo,

Sentient is the word. It unfortunately doesn’t conjure the emotional impact that I’m looking for though. Perhaps that’s because so few people are sentient.

In 50 years, it will be an interesting question whether we are among the species that can “love off our garbage.” We don’t really know the extent to which the biosphere can be disturbed before resulting in a habitat in which we cannot survive either. I fail to be as optimistic about “the near infinite malleability of the human species.”

Thus far, we have not proven to be even malleable enough to limit our own numbers. I’ve got 30 years of life expectancy left. I’m hoping we can make it at least that long before the start of The Great Human Die-Off ™. If we don’t make it that long, I know I’ll be in the first wave. I’ll make sure of it. I’m way too dependent on modern medical technology and channels of distribution to live long past the first wave anyway. And, eating long pig isn’t for me.

As for whether some small number of humans will go on to allow the species to survive, albeit in much smaller numbers, who knows? I just hope when The Great Human Die-Off starts, we can take ourselves or most of ourselves off the planet with minimal destruction to other species.

Close enough for me.

Re gorillas==good point, but same for most of the biosphere. It will be all gone in 50 years except for those that can live off our garbage. As a sentient being myself (unstructured consciousness and all) I find that sad, but I take hope in the near infinite maleability of the human speicies. I’m sure my grandkiddies will think “Who wants other animals around?–uycck!”

Gonna happens regardless of what we think==look at the trends and forces at play. Gee, we almost saved all the wild creatures, and then the ocean came up 80 feet. Who’d a thunk it?

Well yeah, o’ cawse – I just get worried when people mistake ‘em for documentaries…

OK, perhaps human is the wrong term. However, since humans are human-centric, we have failed to come up with a correct term. I think the three of us are mostly in agreement. I just don’t feel a hard or definitive line between humans and other sentiences on the planet.

I think in some cases, the rights of other sentiences should exceed our own. For example, where do you place the rights of mountain gorillas? There are fewer than 700 in the world. They are sentient. They are far less violent and annoying than humans. And, their small numbers make them far more precious than humans, which are about 10 million times more numerous.

As for us being demonstrably superior, at what? If you define superior as the ability to use radio, true. Sonar, false. Language, indeterminate. Dolphins understand us. They understand when we speak. They understand when we gesture. They understand when they view our gestures on a television screen (pretty damn impressive, IMHO). They understand when we request difficult concepts like “be creative.” As an aside, they also pass the mirror test.

On the other side, they obviously communicate. They have a wide range of vocalizations and are highly social. They form relationships with their trainers in captivity. They rescue divers from sharks in the wild. And, when they communicate to us, we understand precisely zero. Which of us is smarter at language? The jury is still out until we can understand what they are saying.

So, maybe human enough was a poor choice of wording. Perhaps I should have said sentient enough, or some such. I would like a term that would convey the intelligence and also conjure the emotional affinity suggested by the term “human.” Any suggestions?

Oh, crikey. You need to quit watching those goddamn ‘B’ sci-fi movies.

Aahh, c’mon. Some of those “B” movies are classics.

“What you say is, you give equal weight to the statements of both the people who know the most about it – and the people who know the least.

Don’t you think there’s something fundamentally wrong about that??”

Well, it appears you’ve got me there.

Unfortunately, due to a couple of my former professions, it’s true I don’t believe anything said by anyone until I’ve verified it personally. I do NOT give more weight to the statements of say, a good citizen as compared to the statements of a pure and simple asshole. That’s mostly because both categories of people lied to me every time they opened their damned mouths.

That could be considered a lack of judgment or it could be considered scientific skepticism, neh?

As for the following:

“… the judgements of experts, the very people who possess the greatest knowledge on a given subject, who have brought civilization to humanity…”

Obviously, your doctor hasn’t tried to kill you yet.

55–Common Scott!!!! Not everything “worthwhile” needs to be called human. That itself is speciest. Dogs should not be fought to death for fun and profit, (save that for bull rings?) one can argue. THAT argument is based on OUR humanity NOT the dog’s percentage of humanity.

But that is an interesting question, why we “feel” so close to chimpanzees or even other actual humans? What is this thing called empathy?

Any creature that possesses a distinct personality, for me, is a de facto person. And that means I accord them rights and respect I do not grant to nonsentient lifeforms. That said, there a fuzzy, but still extremely bright line, on one side of which is humanity (and possibly cetacea, with dolphins and porpoises having a similar relation to whales as we do to apes and monkeys), on the other, all other sentient life.

We do need formal, legal recognition of primates’ rights, but I don’t agree that those rights should ever equal those of homo sap.

As they say in country music, ‘It ain’t braggin’ if it’s true.’ Likewise, it’s not species-centric to say that humans are superior – because we are. Demonstrably so.