Because psychologically torturing someone for the rest of their life, on the off chance that new evidence eventually proves them innocent is so much better?

And if we let them out again, then we can pat ourselves on the back because they're not dead, and totally ignore the fact that we ruined their life, and ignore the probability that they would have been found innocent if we had applied the higher standards and automatic appeal they would have gotten had the death sentence been on the table. My opinion? Life in prison should be treated as a death sentence from the legal perspective, invoking all the usual legal protections granted to those facing the death sentence.

Well, if you had to choose on moral grounds (as opposed to just siding with the most powerful), which would you rather worship:
1) A beautiful angel of light, reputed to have been instrumental in mankind acquiring morality. However, this entity is less powerful than his rival YAHWEH.
2) A powerful entity self-describing as being vengeful and jealous, reputed to have forbidden mankind from acquiring morality, then cursing them, their descendants, and the entire planet when they did anyways. Also reputed to eternally torture people, and to require a blood sacrifice to forgive even the smallest offense against him. Also reputed to have such a holier-than-thou attitude that he will kill any who look at him. Also reputed to violate people's free will by hardening their hearts, so that he can show off his might.

What you're saying is that God is able to eliminate evil, and he's willing to eliminate evil, he just wants to allow evil to continue for a few thousand years first?

I'd like to be able to search for regular expressions, or at least boolean. I'd like to be able to specify the context of a word, eg Java (geography), Java (coffee), Java (programming), or similarly the context for the search.

Clearly an upside of ubiquitous surveillance is that now towing companies can provide you with both loss of transportation *and* loss of employment. Be sure to call Advanced Towing for their excellent customer service!

OK then, quick free will/morality test:
1) You see a criminal beating an innocent child to death. You have with you a cell phone, a tazer, and a handgun. Do you intervene? Does your intervention mean the criminal doesn't have free will?

2) You see a criminal beating an innocent child to death. You're omniscient and omnipotent. In particular, you have the ability to teleport to a nearby location in the form of a human owning a cell phone, a tazer, and a handgun. Do you intervene? Does your intervention mean the criminal doesn't have free will?

Bonus question: If someone tries to flap their arms and fly, does their inability to do so impinge on their free will? Conversely, if there were a law of physics that prevented murder, would such a law of physics impinge on a person's free will? If your answers don't match, how do you tell the difference between a law of physics that impinges on free will and a law of physics that doesn't?

Trouble is, the US Constitution is more like a guideline than a law, since there is no punishment for violating it. On the other hand, in non-US countries it would be possible to arrest the NSA agents for espionage, at least in theory, or at least publicly humiliate their agency by holding their agent until they say "pretty please".

No, because there is all kinds of intelligence that is not measurable by IQ tests. For example, a huge chunk of our brains is the visual cortex, but for some reason people don't consider it a sign of intelligence to be able to be able to distinguish basic objects like apples or elephants, or to recognize spoken words (especially with background chatter), or to hold a meaningful conversation. Yet anyone who's tried to have a computer do it knows what a PITA it is. Speaking of computers, just about every math skill is done better by computers, but almost no one considers a computer intelligent.

So at the very least you have 1) raw brain/computing power 2) specialized skills 3) knowledge/data/programming which is rather like precalculated solutions.

Even worse, intelligent people may be more easily bored, and there is a whole boatload of boring things that are necessary for success.

Maybe the researchers (or journalists reporting on the article) aren't intelligent enough to realize that correlation does not equal causation. Maybe people who aren't wasting all their time enjoying themselves are both less happy and more intelligent.

Looks like you're too lazy to look it up too. We don't know, and can't agree upon, a proper definition of intelligence. And it makes a difference what exact definition is used in a study. The definition of "intelligence" used in this study is IQ, so your link is to the wrong article.

I suspect we won't be able to clearly define intelligence until we create a general AI...

It's almost as if the microbes we get antibiotics from have been around for millions of years...

What, just because we have super advanced bio-nanotechnological self-reproducing solar powered aeromining technology to retrieve carbon from the atmosphere, you think it is easy?

Seems like a whole bunch of hand-waving to me.

Carbon atoms are no more nor less renewable than metal atoms.