I have similar tendencies. What changed for me was using journaling to understand and cope with my emotions during a very difficult time in life. By writing out my thoughts they were more complete and I could better asses them so it helped calm racing thoughts and patterns of rumination.
Ive come to enjoy the process materializing my thoughts into something concrete, as a thought isn't really fully formed until you write, speak, or type ot. I continue the practice as part of my morning routine and when I read at night.
I don't review what I've written or share it or have any plans to make a blog or something. I just use journaling to enjoyably process my thoughts.
It's super early, and detection seems at the limits of our technology.
This is just understanding at present. That, in itself is worth it.
As that understanding develops, and our tech advances, engineering may be able to apply it in useful ways, maybe object detection above a specified mass? New ways to visualize things?
One "application" is to serve as a ruler to measure out tech with. The limits are there, putting these observations just within reach.
Now that we have some confirmation, we also have the metrics as well as the compelling new science that may arise from all of this as a strong motivation to advance.
It's like being able to detect color for the first time. At first we understand what color is, then we refine, and after iterations, engineering, experiments, we get to a place where we see it all in color.
Applications will follow.
These waves being confirmed are like a new sense. Crude, but real. We can now follow this new perception to its conclusion, just as we have many other things.
We don't always know what that conclusion will be, or the form an application may take, but we do know we won't actualize any of it if we don't do the basic, hard, expensive work needed first.
A lot of these points sound similar to the famous resolutions of the young Jonathan Edwards. I try to make a habit of reading them at least once a year for many of the points Paul mentions in this article.
a few examples:
"6. Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live."
"9. Resolved, to think much on all occasions of my own dying, and of the common circumstances which attend death."
"52. I frequently hear persons in old age say how they would live, if they were to live their lives over again: resolved, that I will live just so as I can think I shall wish I had done, supposing I live to old age"
I think your basically right, but the paradox actually makes more sense when you understand a few nuances of Protestantism:
0) Reformed (i.e. Calvinist) theologians made significant efforts to argue their understanding of predestination was not deterministic because humans are moral agents and responsible for their actions. They were aware and quite comfortable that God predestining morally responsible people is a paradox (technically referred to as an antinomy).
1) Reformed theologians also taught the predestined are 'born-again', meaning they are given a new spiritual life that changes that person's perspective and attitudes towards everything. The predestined evidence their salvation by good works.
Here's where the growth mindset would apply. Reformed theologians taught predestination as a motivating belief, rather than a fatalistic one. Grace, or salvation, in Reformed theology doesn't comes through religious observance but comes from faith, which demonstrates itself in how a person lives.
> As a result, all language in the accord relating to the reduction of carbon emissions is essentially voluntary. The language assigns no concrete targets to any country for emissions reductions. Instead, each government has crafted a plan detailing how they would lower emissions at home, based on what each head of state believes is feasible given the country’s domestic political and economic situation.
I fail to see how this summit differs from previous summits without anything being legally binding.
Mitch McConnell is from Kentucky. That alone is enough to explain his actions. Because, you know, coal mining, Kentucky... likewise whatsisname...ah, Inhofe ... from Oklahoma.
You know that people from states with strong extractive industries have a conservative tendency because of the really large business cycles, right? Throw in that these climes also sport lots of farmers, and.... Not everybody can move to the large, overpriced urban areas.
Just like international development money in Europe has been moved to pay for handling refugees from war locally and military action in Syria, it is a risk that this pledge just becomes recycled money from this previous pot of money. (International development funds were about $130BN in 2014.) And countries like the Netherlands and Finland have been cutting back their spending recently, quite dramatically, if they just spend what they used to spend they could claim they have done their part already, without actually adding anything.
Older workers with one skill is more related to the drastic change of incrased longevity in only a generation or two. And with the global population aging and a diminishing 18-65 work force, the surplus of workers we've had in th 20th century could easily be reversed.
Trades also are inherently focused on a single area. Plumbers can't just pick up a rig and start pressure welding.
Most of my family and a significant number of my friends are in trades and I've always found their educations models enviable. Here in Canada, hours are accumlated on the job prior to classes and the time spent in a classroom is small (4-6 weeks 2-3 times a year). Unemployment insurance considers trade school a legitimate leave so students receive 55% of their wage for those weeks. Certain high schools even offer accelerated work experience programs where one semester is spent on core classes and the other on a job site. An individual could leave high school with enough work experience to have a ticket within 2 years of graduating. Not to mention making significantly better wages without having to work evenings and weekends.
Compared to arts and science degrees with substantial debt loads, years of no applicable experience, and a high probability of employment outside your field, the economic model of trade schools seems significantly better.
I think the real caution behind giving the status of person to a non-human has nothing to do with animals, but with removing the status of person from certain classes of humans. The atrocities of the last century should probably suffice to establish a measure of caution when redefining personhood.
I'd consider telling an autonomous citizen what they can and cannot do with their bodies in the absence of disparate impact to the rest of the social community at large to be pretty abhorrent, and the definition of "personhood" was used to do exactly that in US abortion debates.
Expanding the definition to include animals necessarily involves redefining personhood, and that's the risk. Expanding personhood doesn't necessitate removing classes of people from personhood, but allowing for its redifitinion makes it possible.
Your argument is similar to the argument of those who opposed gay marriage in that it claims that expanding something to another group will redefine said thing to the other group.
The term person has established precedent, both for humans and non-humans. For humans, the legality of abortion is often thought of in terms of the humanity of the embyro. However, the actual legal issue is whether the law extends to the embyro the right of personhood.
Peter Singer has advocated both for the personhood of certain animals and the non-personhood of certain humans (including live infants below certain cognitive thresholds) for some time.
The abortion debate is largely orthogonal to the personhood of a foetus.
There is no precedent for making it illegal to refuse to risk your health, well-being and bodily integrity to sustain another person with your own body. If the risk is negligible, sure, everything else would be denial of assistance -- but pregnancy (to say nothing of birth) is extremely risky as far as biological processes go.
You could argue about a voluntary pregnancy being some kind of contract that suspends your right to bodily integrity but that still wouldn't apply to unwanted pregnancies, which represent the majority of abortions.
Arguing that a foetus' personal rights are violated by early stage termination of a pregnancy is just special pleading biased by religious ideas about the inherent sanctity of life. Most nefariously, the same people who argue for the rights of a foetus also oppose the welfare that would be necessary to address the social impacts of the unwanted birth. Or to put it more hyperbolically: "A human's life is holy, until they are born".
I'm only arguing that the term personhood has extensive use in definining rights for humans and non-humans, providing a prominent ethicist as an example. I'm not trying to open up an abortion debate in a comment thread, because those simply go no where, influence no one, and fail to advance a meaningful dialogue.
You can certainly disagree with applying personhood to the abortion debate and claim an unlimited number of nefaroious motives behind pro-life advocates, but those would be different discussions. The term personhood is used widely for embyronic and non-human rights, that's the extent of my claim.
The real issue is that just over a century ago we lost a 2nd person plural pronoun and haven't really found a good subsitute since. When "you" took over for "thou" as the 2nd person singular pronoun we never replaced the original use of "you" with anything. So "guys", "y'all", "youse" are all attempts to fill the gap.
Folks kinda works. I usually use "guys" when addressing people, but when being extra sensitive (eg, if I'm addressing a bunch of MTF trans girls), I'll be careful and use "folks".
To make a list, for things that I use in a "Hey ___, ..." context, with varying levels of casual:
- Guys
- Folks
- People
- You lot
- Motherfuckers/jerks (other insulting term that's obviously not meant in earnest)
- Mateys
- Chaps (debatably gender biased)
- Team (or other factual statement e.g. colleagues)
- Everyone
- Dudes (also debatably gender biased, but depends on how well people know you. I call everyone dude, I am probably immature)
- Reprobates/scallywags/some other sort of old world sounding term.
Yep. "Folks". I use it in all of my communications to my group (I am not the manager). I've tried others: "Guys" is clearly gender specific, "Ya'll" is pretty informal (although I use it on occasion), "Team" is barf-o-rama.
"Folks" works well. It's reasonably formal but not gross and, best yet, its inclusive.
Ive come to enjoy the process materializing my thoughts into something concrete, as a thought isn't really fully formed until you write, speak, or type ot. I continue the practice as part of my morning routine and when I read at night.
I don't review what I've written or share it or have any plans to make a blog or something. I just use journaling to enjoyably process my thoughts.