damn right it does.

There is a lot of argument here about the technicalities: CAN we do it? There is a lot of argument here about the politics of it: Would we be ALLOWED to do it? There is a lot of argument here about the COST of doing it: Can we AFFORD to do it? But the fact is this country is 3,000 miles wide (maybe 3500-4000 miles diagonally), 1500 to 2000 miles deep, so the question is: WHY do we want to do this? How many people really need to travel from Seattle to Atlanta with a suitcase? Either fly with the same suitcase much faster, or drive so you can take along the kitchen sink. Otherwise, use Zoom.

Serious answer? Because they were in the "Don't ask; don't tell" phase of military policy.

Think of the physical brain as the TV set. "Consciousness" is the program sent to the TV set. Without the TV set you can't see the program, but no one would claim that the TV set IS the program. In essence the program manifests via the TV set. There is nothing particularly special about the brain. It's grey matter is as physical as the TV set. There is no reason why a sufficiently complex and advanced TV set cannot host consciousness. Karel Capek dealt with this very idea in the very first use of the term, "robot" in "RUR Rossum's universal robots" (They were actually androids, not mechanical, but the point remains.) One day this will become a serious issue.

This is like a cop show video that stops in the middle.

Robots.

Okay, I work in the industry.. If solar and windmills worked, we would be putting them up everywhere. They don't work.

I work for an electric utility. The politicians are forcing green energy, which doesn't work. Shutting down coal fired plants eliminates the base load energy production, and wind and solar are unreliable. So as we are forced to get rid of our base-load generation, and if the wind ain't blowing (or its blowing too hard) or the sun goes behind the clouds, we must purchase that electricity somewhere, and that excess capacity is getting scarce. It's a supply & demand issue. That's it.

Roughly 30,000 pounds? Totally worth it to get rid of her permanently.

Which is a felony all by itself. Good luck with that.

on this thread is excessive.

Problem solved.

Robotic Lincoln has been on stage for decades.So I guess it's OK for Lincoln, but not OK for Walt?

That's a really good example about the dogs, and a useful phrase to know, as well. Thanks!

I would expect as much. Can anyone even make a good case for the existence of "Journals" -- as companies that get to sell access to research they didn't fund? I don't believe any scientists are getting rich off royalties from them, right?

They seem to me to be like a worse version of the record label racket. It seems like peer review itself should provide enough signal (drawing on the reputations of who decided to review it) to distinguish a Serious Paper that Really Matters from some slop fabricated by a conspiracy theorist in their basement. And surely the bandwidth costs etc. are so low as to be borne by the universities themselves, either by each of them self-hosting, or by funding a cooperative to host them all in one place. Or whatever Arxive is, of course.