flink@umcp-cs.UUCP (Paul Torek) (08/24/84)
Indented material is from Brian Peterson. Why is it bad to do unconstitutional things? Because ... It isn't, necessarily. If you expect me to not do something just because it's unconstitutional, think again. (Private citizens can't violate the constitution, of course, but that's beside my point.) I can think of four ways to say what a "person" is. [...] There is the intellectual/philosophical way of defining people (though it may be a fuzzy concept not discussed much on the net). A "person" is an intelligent being. THE philosophical way? I can think of plenty of others. Better ways, too. I seem to recall that myself and others had plenty of criticism of your way. Assuming that there is a finite amount of resources available, Let's not. It's not a very meaningful assumption. Under any plausible assumption about the development of the world in the future, we will not run up against any absolute physical-resource limits for a long, long time. People *create* resources (i.e., economic value; also, people create social resources) through their labor and, importantly, innovation. We must now decide how much we value quantity of human life (an enlarged gene pool, greater chance for nature to take part), and how much we value the quality of human life ... Here's a simple answer for you, baldly and boldly stated: the total value is the quantity times the average quality. "I love it when a plan comes together!" --The aspiring iconoclast, Paul Torek, umcp-cs!flink