1. Biologist Teaches the Nation's Judges About Genetics

Comment #202868 by hogi on July 2, 2008 at 5:03 am

even if free will is just an illusion and did not really exist (which is the notion that convinces me most at the moment, it's all just genes and experiences) we would not have to discard our legal systems.

1) deterrence: if we assumed that potential perpetrators of crimes just did their genes bidding, then the simple threat of punishment would still prevent many of them from commiting these crimes, since the avoidance of said punishment is part of their genetic programs.

2) protection: if we had a perpetrator of a crime who was genetically unable to be deterred by punishment, we could still justify locking that person away, because the protection of the other members of society is more important than the freedom of an individual who is unable not to commit crimes. this is for the same reason, why we can justify putting people with highly infectious illnesses in quarantine, even against their will.

3) compensation: the punishment of a crime serves as a compensation for it. in order to accept that, one doesn't have to resort to some form of "higher justice". it's simply the fact that a certain sense of fairness is hard-wired in the genes of the majority of the population. we have to satisfy this rather common sense of fairness (at least to some extent) in order to prevent unrest and lynch law.

4) rehabilitation: when a perpetrator of a crime displays a genetical disposition to commit crimes, that doesn't mean we can't do anything about it. a punishment can contain a therapy which may decrease the risk of said perpetrator to commit a crime in the future. this will get more important as our understanding of psychology and biology advances. in berlin, for instance, the charite (a huge university hospital) has recently started a programme where paedophiles, who have (not yet) commited a crime but fear they might do in the future, get the chance to talk to psychologists and to make a therapy. this is just one example of a genetical predisposition for crimes that used to be seen as incurable but on closer investigation may turn out to be curable instead.

as you can see, we have plenty of reasons to maintain our legal systems that do not rely on the existence of free will. i find the notion that our legal systems rely on free will rather disturbing, since the only reasons that would be based on free will that come to my mind involve sky fairies or supernatural conceptions of justice. thus i appreciate teaching judges basic genetics and getting them to see more and more crimes as expressions of genetical predispositions (and of course traumatic experiences in the past), because this might lead to more rational punishments and as a consequence to a more effective legal system.

i think many judges need to be taught basic informatics, too, because many recent judgements regarding copyright law and e-commerce demonstrate an utter lack of understanding of what the internet is, let alone how it works and how it is not radio- or tv-broadcast. some judges even give the impression, that they don't use computers at all and regard it as adequate to judge as if the internet was the ancient roman marketplace where western law has originated.

2. Vatican bans Dan Brown film Angels & Demons from Rome churches

Comment #194583 by hogi on June 17, 2008 at 2:13 am

well.. so movies that were allowed to be filmed on the grounds of the vatican can be considered approved by the pope? good to know that as i can now avoid wasting my time on these... :)

3. Dinesh D'Souza says I don't exist: an atheist at Virginia Tech

Comment #33411 by hogi on April 20, 2007 at 3:38 am

23. Comment #33344 by Satanburiedfossils on April 19, 2007 at 11:10 pm

[...] the praise-absorbing sponge of the Old and New Testaments [...]

4. Medical 'Miracles' Not Supported by Evidence

Comment #31724 by hogi on April 14, 2007 at 2:32 am

hello there..

i think most uf us would intuitively call the development of humankind over the millenia 'improvement' (as opposed to those who descibe it as 'decline' in order to justify weird political measures). since our brains haven't changed significantly in a biological sense since the romans or even the hunter-gatherers of the neolithic, this 'improvement' can only be measured by the degree of our understanding of the universe.

there has been a fair amount of different ways to understanding of the universe throughout history: trial & error, meditation, logical conclusion and even religion itself were once dominant strategies. today the dominant (and most successful) strategy is the scientific method. every time the dominant way is being replaced by a new one, it is a huge paradigm shift, which is often being referred to as transcendence.

as we have seen in history, we should avoid the concept of regarding ourselves as special in some way, and as naturally as we reject geocentrism and heliocentrism, we should reject the idea, that our time is and will be forever the most enlightened time of all. so we should expect the scientific method to be transcended in the future.

however, such a trancendence can only be reached by gradual improvement, and the best way to improve known to us is, in fact, the scientific method. this means humankind will some day transcend the scientific method, but this is going to happen through the scientific method itself!

all those faith-healers, bogus-doctors and religious authorities claim, that they have transcended the scientific method in some way, however not one of them is an expert on anything involving the scientific method. to me it seems that they and their believers are desperately looking for shortcuts to transcendence, actually to avoid the hard work of using the scientific method.

unfortunately most uneducated or lazy people fail to recognize, that the scientific method is our best bet to transcend the scientific method in the future.

5. Creationism debate continues to evolve

Comment #29832 by hogi on April 5, 2007 at 4:34 am

mikado,

according to a majority of economists (watch the film 'we feed the world') free market and mad dictators are a minor problem compared to european food supplies for africa. the argument goes something like this:

1) europe produces a ridiculously high surplus of food, while keeping the price extremely low (with billions of subsidies, of course)
2) africa experiences a major famine
3) europe is eager to help plus it want's to sell the huge surplus
4) european food, both sold on the market and sent as free help, dominates african markets
5) the famine is stopped
6) african farmers can't make their living because of the low food prices (as europe continues to sell its cheap surplus)
7) the agricultural sector in africa is weakened
8) the next famine is about to come soon...