[Treasure Hunt]

Imagine this little concoction to be like a colossal multiplayer mancala game played on a 10-by-10 (or thereabouts) board representing a piratical island upon which treasure has been discovered... little gems, scattered across the sand and palm trees like so many crystal coconuts. In the end you want your treasure chest to have the most gems (gems = good ) and we play until the island is devoid of gems (at which point they all reside in the chests and the winner, well, wins ;D).

So we'll divide up the island into territories of sorts depending on how many people want to play in the first round. If you don't know how mancala works (or this variation for this game, seeing as there are all kinds of evolutions of the ruleset), in this game you pick up a pile of gems from within your territory, except you are not restricted to a single direction of travel like in normal mancala (usually counterclockwise if looking at it from above), you may pick any of the four orthogonal directions (we could even go for the four diagonal directions too, I mean this is pretty flexible, I don't know how it will work out haha) and go in that direction until you run out of gems. If you place the last gem in an empty space, you stop there. But if you place the last gem in a populated space (with more gems), you pick all those up and keep going (in the same direction? or would we allow to fork into a different direction at that point? these details can be ironed down after playtesting I'm sure), and you can just keep going and going as long as you can. Whenever you go past your own chest, you drop a gem in as if it was a space, but you skip over everyone else's chests. If you drop the very last gem of your turn into your chest, you get to go again.

Originally mancala is populated with 3 gems in every spot although that may be too numerous here. It could be a checkerboarded pattern (so split into two mutually separate sets connected only by diagonals), with one diagonal set being empty spots and the other diagonal set having some gems in them.

The other thing still up in the air would be the placement of the chests. I was thinking actually if it was 9-by-9 and we had something like this, where O is a normal space and X is a chest:

OOOOOOOOO

OOOOOOOOO

OOOOOOOOO

OOOXXXOOO

OOOXOXOOO

OOOXXXOOO

OOOOOOOOO

OOOOOOOOO

OOOOOOOOO

And then you wrap around, so when you get to the top, you go back to the same column but at the bottom, etc. Also I'd imagine that gem pile in the middle would start off with a ton of gems or something, but it wouldn't be part of anyone's territory and thus could only be picked up as a result of being dropped onto.

Well whaddyall think? As you can see it's not a set-in-stone plan or something but I think it could be interesting

I don't think I have a youtube account anymore or I would subscribe, but as it is I shall watch them faithfully and perhaps lend suggestions later if desired

Druggggggggsss

haha

that seems to be the conclusion...

The war on drugs, though, is a useful place to take the conversation, though undoubtedly it would involve rehashing how much of a failure it has been, unless we have dissenters to that opinion, which would be a fresh intake onto the topic?

[Rollo]

OKAPI

this is it I'm like 99% sure now! haha beat me to it

[Rollo]

LEAPT!

[Rollo]

snath

(it's the shaft of a scythe )

For anyone who wishes to subscribe, my brand new youtube account is thecommonersview

And my blog on blogspot is thecommonersviewtherealamerica.blogspot.com

Thanks everyone, i can't wait till this gets off the ground =)

I'm looking forward to it eagerly!

I'm sorry, but you seem to be looking at humans as superior.

Objectively I don't view humans as superior. All animals are part of a vast interconnected ecosystem and all have a part to play in nature. Humans have even overstepped their boundaries and become a scourge to the Earth, a major problem to the natural balance. We are a virus on the planet.

But subjectively, yes, the closer something is on the family tree to me, the more "important" it is for me personally. So whereas I don't raise as much of a fuss when we eat chicken eggs (which aren't even fertilized by the way... eggs can't even hatch!), eating baby lambs is a bigger problem I think, etc.

It seems my playing devil's advocate didn't really get us anywhere, but in reality this logic has been in the back of my mind the whole time:

fine. lets say no present. the more and more people that earth takes on, the worse it will be. we're still recovering from an ice age, and global warming isnt that things are rising, its that they're rising at a larger rate. at some point, if we have the technology, well move onto other planets or SOMETHING. but do you wnat to increase the number of people living on the streets/the number of people in general?

In the end, the less humans, probably the better I guess. So fine I concede. I don't like abortions and I still think there's a line to be drawn SOMEWHERE in the process, but I will give a little ground and agree that most women should not be penalized by the state for making this choice...

"The US and Mexican governments have rejected the findings as misguided." gahhhhhhhrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr :mad:

by the way, I have no intentions of coming off as mean or condescending, I'm just really really tired And I think this issue is somewhat important (though actually not really that important, I ultimately don't care all that much what the law(s) on abortion is(area) )

Obviously, I understand this. I don't think i said that I would support it's illegality. Just because i don't like something doesn't mean it should be illegal. The point here is choice: are you for the choice of an already living human or do you support a mass of cells? That's what the fetus is, no matter what it will become eventually. No one seems to care that a chicken egg would turn into a chicken.

Chicken eggs are unfertilized. And it's a non-human animal, which we eat aplenty of (even post-birth animals too, ie, cows etc) but that's not what this debate is about, regardless of whether it is ethically correct to kill other animals. We're talking about killing other humans here.

But it currently is not. The human wins out over the will eventually possibly be human. It is a cell. That's all. And oviously, your skin cells are pretty special, because I believe i read somewhere that they used stem cells from the skin or something like that to grow other stuff. It could be a new human, but it is assigned the job of keeping THIS human alive.

Skin cells can't be made into humans as far as I know. And if they can, it's a procedure that is different from the natural progression of things (whereas the fetus => birth => baby is the natural progression of things and that will indeed happen (with a high success rate) if left alone (i.e. not aborted).

To be clear, in the event where the success rate is predicted to be low and the mother's life at risk, I am in favor of abortions, just like any other triage at a hospital. But most childbirths go 'according to plan' and produce living human beings...

...unless interrupted. Then the human being will not exist.

thats not the point. the point is why should you have anything to say about what another person does to their body, because a fetus is part of her body until it can survive as a separate "being." Its her body, not yours. thats the point.

That's not the point. What if a living adult is dependent on my nutrients for survival. Like somehow, a portion of everything I eat goes to them. Despite this, you would probably call it murder if I killed my "parasite".

I think it's a sad world when we call potential humans "parasites" to justify aborting them for mostly selfish reasons...

hows it an invalid argument? there is a point in time where a fetus is able to function and is able to survive. at that point where it could leave the mother, its a functioning being. im sure, if the mother wanted an abortion, tests could be done to determine the stage the baby was at quite easily.

And a day before it is able to function, it is not alive by your reasoning. Say in 8 hours it will have crossed the grey area and be "alive" by your reckoning and then you support criminilization of aborting it. But now (8 hours before this time), you are somehow pro-abortion??

oh - and look at the quote in my signature. unless you want to become catholic, you must draw some sort of line.

I'm well aware of the sperm-egg analogy. But it's a matter of probability. At one point does it become quite likely that a new human is going to enter this world? At that point, it is too precious to kill. I could never kill it at least, though you seem to be bent by society into thinking it's okay to do this. So yes, a line must be drawn. But for me, that line is fairly early (once we are fairly positive that a new human will come to exist as a result of what's going on). And yes, past that point, I believe it is murder.

thats like saying dont not pick at your skin because then the dust mites wont have any food.

Once again, other animals are not the subject here. Dust mites aren't people and aren't as precious to me as people are. But apparently you see dust mites and people as being on the same (rather low) pedestal...

if the baby's aborted, does it make a difference to now? no.

This obsession with the present!! What about the future??? What about one day before birth?? It still isn't conscious but it seems like murder now doesn't it? As I said above, I draw the line at the point when it becomes very likely a new human will come to exist. And I think that answers UtF's post too

[Are you planning to vote in the 2012 election]

I have been reading this discussion from the sidelines without commenting and it has been very interesting, but I feel it is time to step in.

UtF: I would like to live in a world where everything is by consent and where you choose to join a govt instead of being born into "taxation-based slavery" as you say; however, as others have pointed out, this can never be reality due to human nature.

It simply comes down to this: you are far too optimistic about your fellow human beings. Maybe you have just not seen enough of the world or experienced the cruelty and selfishness of the average person. We'd all like to believe everyone is inherently good but ultimately we are just animals, and our foremost care is ourselves. Sure we may give to charity but usually it's to feel better about ourselves Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of charity, a lot of good people in the world, that sincerely want to help, but it's not enough to overcome the constant tide of self-interest that persists through every animal on the planet including us. It's how we became so prolific in the first place and it's not stopping now.

Your society may work if each member was selected after a careful cross-examination and only "good people" were in it, but corruption happens fast. People WILL take advantage of the freedom and make life hell for everyone else.

So really, it comes down to values. You value freedom/choice/(consent) as the utmost highest pinnacle of morality; others on the board value basic life necessities/conveniences/(ease/quality of life).... that's what it comes down to.

I'm not trying to pick sides, I will let the debate continue as it has, but I just wanted to point out this fundamental difference that's making a large barrier between you all.

And since the fetus is not a human until later on (I'm against late-term abortions except in extreme cases), and is really only a parasite that isn't even fully alive by scientific standards, then I think we should let the mother exercise her right of choice over her body. If she wanted to remove her tonsils, would you care? What if she wished to remove a tumor? Or a parasite? For me the answer is no.

I don't care if she removes her tonsils, because they won't develop into a living human being

Thus, until it becomes human, I have no problem with it.

Aha, the old catch. I'll show you why this is an invalid argument (and by extension the rest of your argument falls into speculation) : say you have a set date (you seem to think it's 6 months but a lot of people have their own little opinions about "when" it's a person, lol), and at that point in the development, you consider the fetus to now be a human. You're no longer okay with aborting it at that point or later.

So what about a day before? What about literally 10 seconds before this "line"? Is that perfectly fine to kill the fetus, despite that if you wait 10 seconds longer it'll now be murder by your standards? It's a paradox of infinitesimals. You cannot draw an absolute line. it's very fuzzy. There is no distinction, being a continual, gradual process, that, if not interrupted, will most likely (in most reasonably healthy countries) be born into a living person if left to develop as it naturally does.

Life does not begin at conception. That zygote is not anything more than a human cell, and if you wish not to kill that, well, I hope you've never rubbed or scratched or touched your skin. I hope you haven't bitten your tongue, or rubbed your eye.

Once again, my skin cells, tongue cells, etc, will not keep multiplying into a new person. A zygote may not seem like a person yet but it will be.

So unless anyone would like to actually counter this point, I return to my original thought line: It's not human until later, it can't suffer until later.

A sleeping person cannot suffer until later, if, say, you fill the room with a poisonous gas that kills them in their sleep peacefully. Would you do that to a sleeping person? I hope not...

and yes octopuppy, a comatose person did have a personality, and will have a personality if they wake up. A fetus did not have a personality but they will develop one if they are born. The future is more important than the past.

my point is that what if it was better that they never had. Im not trying to say that people who are poor dont deserve to live. my point is that there are cases where its better for person X to have not entered a situation. ok. so weve talked about the "what if, by being born, the baby and the mom would (probably) die? what then?" situation. and by "probably" i mean that theres some sort of complication wehre they KNOW. im not talking about the regular dangers of childbirth. but what if 1) that baby was born in a place where there wasn't any medical care so the mom and the baby have a liklyhood of dieing (and, just saying, this is for people who would WANT ABORTIONS. this isnt a "im in this part of society so i have to do ____), and the mom had the option, and she WANTED TO. what if the baby would be unwanted, and would grow up in a home where they had to live a not-so-good quality life in an unwanted home. Its not about the poor. its a "waht if." what would be better? this doesnt mean we need to pass a law saying you HAVE to get an abortion, this is for an OPTION.

Right but who are you (or anyone, or the mother) to judge someone's quality of life? Even if they have a bad childhood in an orphanage, they might go out and conquer the world one day. I don't think it's morally permissible to say someone should not be born if they'll be unwanted.

this is why controversial topics are controversial. many people who are in a coma, and its known that they wont wake up will go off life support.

ever read My Sister's Keeper?

and remember - its not a WILL, its a LIKELY. theres never a 100% change that the baby will survive. things happen. they do. if they're likely to wake up, most people will keep them on life support. but someone has to pay. if you nor your family can pay for you to be on life support, then who pays? the government? do you think that THEY'LL keep you on life support for as long as necessary? I dont know.

Agreed, though my point is, let's say someone is knocked unconscious or deep asleep or something and they'll wake up in 8 hours. They're not conscious, they're not "thinking", but they WILL, in another 8 hours. Sure you could kill them right now, but you agree that would be murder yes? Because they'll wake up in 8 hours and be fine. Likewise, the fetus may not be thinking yet but it'll wake up in 8 hours, 9 months, whatever, and be fine. It's "sleeping" and it will indeed most likely wake up (normal dangers of childbirth aside as it's been said) and then be alive

I agree...somewhat. i (mostly) agree about how you look at a fetus, but think about this: what would be better - for this fetus to have never been born, or for it to grow up in poverty as an unwanted and unloved, (and possibly burdensome) child to the parents. now im not syaing this is always the case, but there will be people with this situation.

That's pretty cruel and closeminded. I'm not trying to be rude here but just because someone has less money than you doesn't mean they're unhappy or deserve to never have been born...

the reason why i say i mostly agree with your view of the unborn kid is that, under a certain "age," it cant feel, cant understand. theres a point where it can feel or react, but until then, it is as unconscious of it's being as anything. "I think, therefore I am." If something can't think, is it then not considered murder? and even then, other animals are killed, and they can think.

What about someone who's asleep? in a coma? unconscious? they're not thinking. But they WILL when they wake up (or get born, in the fetus's case).

Also: In terms of "kid potential," a point that many people have brought up, theres many MANY possibilities of "unreached potential." another point about "unborn potential" is that, at least for girls, it starts being "wasted" around the age of 13. you cant argue that every bit of dna should be used.

agreed. That's why it's a sticky situation.... one view is that when the sperm and egg come together, then it's life. But even that presumption stands on thin ice...

Before i decide whether or not i should kill something, it's best to find out what that thing is. I think i'll add a bit more support to my view that the fetus is human, just so you know that it isn't a Christian bias.

I only see a few differences between a fetus and a born child:

Size - The fetus is smaller than a born child, just as Hilary Clinton is a smaller person than Shaq O'Neal.

Level of Development - The fetus is less developed than a born child. But a 4 year old girl is still developing a reproductive system, which means she's less developed than a fourteen year old.

Environment - Being in the womb or out of the womb doesn't make much more of a difference than whether your in a box or out. Though as a fetus you're more dependent on that "box"

Dependency - The fetus is dependent on the mother for life just as a kidney patient is just as dependent on their dialysis machine for life.

I'm not saying in no circumstances should you get an abortion. If both lives are threatened by the pregnancy, then do all you can to save at least one of their lives, be it killing the child to save the mother.

The fetus is a stage in every human's life, and that being so, they should have a right to live through it. It's not a parasite, but a natural part of the woman's life as child-bearer and a human's development.

I agree with you LJ, your logic is pretty sound. If not aborted, the fetus will most likely become a human. The issue however is where you draw the line. Is every non-pregnating sperm, every egg passed unfertilized, a waste of potential human life? It's hard to say...

And they never really will. With a 19x19, there will always be counterplay. Any game with reasonable counterplay cannot be so strictly predicted.

I wouldn't be so pessimistic if I were you. There's nothing magical in a human's ability to play a board game. Any strategy we can do, whether conscious or subconscious, a computer can [in theory!] imitate (and probably do better) either by learning or its own devise. There may be no written-in-stone ideal strategy as related to the OP, but there's definitely the potential for a computer to become extremely good (better than you or i) at the game with the right kind of adaptive, flexible programming. It just hasn't happened yet as far as I know (but I haven't followed up on that for a while)

I think AI researchers have been cracking at Go for a while now, still to no avail

Have you stopped to think that you're just scapegoating the grades on drug use when (a) the classes are getting harder as you get older, and (b) typical end-of-the-year apathy?

But as I recommended weeks ago, you should've staved off the hedonism until the summer :excl: But don't give up so easily. You have more time to reclaim your academic record

oh yeah! ever noticed...

that OK is a sideways person?

that lol is a drowning person?

bed looks like a bed!

also,

This world is "ideal" how, exactly? Unreality, this is directed at you as well.

Don't get me wrong, cannabis is a great plant. We use hemp for everything (and used to use much more before prohibition) and THC is a pretty rad chemical. But if everyone was high all the time I doubt the world would function very well We'd probably eat up all the food supplies within the first week

@Peace: I'm going to echo what a few other people have said, but don't take amphetamines on a regular basis. Eventually, you won't be able to function as well as you were accustomed to off of them, and you risk giving yourself amphetamine induced psychosis, which is essentially schizophrenia. Parents have a tendency to over medicate their children, and a lot of doctors go with it. If you find your ADHD is a serious problem (you were diagnosed rather late, so I doubt it was *that* serious), increase your intake of vitamins and omegas especially. Do some yoga or daily concentration exercises. Use the pills only when you really have to, and hell, sell 'em if you want.

Well, don't sell them haha, but otherwise listen to Izzy. Don't take the pills regularly, even if your doctor has convinced your parents it's best for you. Regular amphetamine use can cause you all kinds of problems later.

Lol.. marijuana. It increases the brains ability to put up with meaingless s'hite while on it (homework, laundry, etc.), but there's definitely a agree of functionality that's lacking.

Well, it's possible that it's dependent on the quantity (though I have to admit, I don't have any experience in the matter). Kind of like this.

Yeah a very small dose is generally helpful. But these things are pretty hard to establish and research, especially with the current legal status. As far as I know, knowledge hasn't been outlawed by the government (yet...lol), but whereas ignorance is bliss, knowledge is power, and we should do more and more research so that we're not guessing anymore. That's another reason the legal system is completely f*cked when it comes to this.

edit: another issue being that in a society where alcohol is the drug of choice, all other substances are as assumed to be as intoxicating as alcohol is (far from the truth, alcohol is one of the most severely impairing) which is another reason for the kind of paranoia and religious conservatism over the situation. But I digress... peace*out already won her debate

I agree with all of the above except for "marijuana actually INCREASES the brain’s ability to learn and function"

[Seveny Rollo]

VALIANT

What year is this?

It's 1930, great scott you've overshot! Luckily you're just in time to stop Hitler

Actually, reading the rest of the thread provides the necessary context for this post. He made two typos:

"In an idea[l] world we would make them all [legal]..."

That's what he meant to say. What you have doesn't make sense even in the context of the rest of the post. Unreality is a strong supporter of drug legalization, so I'm pretty sure it was just a typo.

The first was a typo (I meant ideal not idea) but the second wasn't a typo, I did mean to say 'illegal', but it was meant as sort of tongue-in-cheek, i.e., a ludicrous possibility. I didn't mean a government should make them illegal (you know how against governments meddling in personal health I am. Despite my dislike of McDonald's and the health risk it poses I would still elect to keep it legal. The fine line, and only reason, for drug illegalization is not that it hurts you but could have the potential to hurt others.), I just meant in an ideal world nobody would have the curiosity or desire to use drugs but that was what I meant as tongue-in-cheek since such a world is ludicrous. Escapism is built into our nature, whether it be by video games, books, movies, substances, love, virtual reality, or more likely a hodgepodge of all of the above. As UtF said, nobody should be threatened by a vast group of individuals with force or incarceration for that desire, even if it may be psychologically or even physically unhealthy. Moreover, chemicals abound constantly. Our brain is a cocktail of drugs, hormones and self-produced psychoactive substances constantly causing neurotransmitter releases & mood changes. We rotate through a complex series of primal states of varying "sobriety" every single day. Anyone that likes to "stay sober" has never gotten mad, had a dream, drank coffee, fell in love, or smelled a strong smell of chocolate cookies that reminded them of their childhood in a sudden rushing of warm memories. At a certain point you have to stop fighting the unknown and realize that for all of human (and many animal's) history, altering our own minds has been an important catalyst for discoveries, but yes, also tragedies. There is good and bad to everything, some substances more than others. It's all a matter of detail, care, health, and using one's best judgment after thorough research and thought.