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Tolerance Test
If Person A claims something MUST be tolerated, then let's see what Person A can tolerate. | |
The proposed invention could be called a "Chinese Water Torture
Hat". It is a hat containing a reservoir of water, and a little
spout
that drips water onto the forehead of the wearer, once every
few
seconds. It is known that when a person is immobilized, the
experiencing of Chinese Water
Torture can, within hours, be
extremely
stressful
and intolerable (see link). The reservoir in this hat will, of
course, need to be refilled at regular intervals, for the duration
of any Tolerance Test.
Well, most people are not normally immobilized, while still
being
required to tolerate various things. Consider super-loud music
in
a bar, that can cause hearing loss, but the workers must stay
there and attempt to understand customer orders. This why we
need an invention like a Chinese Water Torture Hat, so that
tolerance can be tested while a person is not immobilized.
Anyway, there are also situations in which Person A insists
that Person B tolerate something, which Person B might not
want
to tolerate --and which Person A will never experience. A
prime
example of this comes to us from the Overall Abortion Debate,
in
which a male opponent of abortion insists that a woman must
tolerate her pregnancy, regardless of what the woman wants.
So, let's see what Person A can tolerate, shall we? Like 9
months
of physically harmless water-drippings, onto the forehead, no
matter what else Person A happens to be doing. Any male
abortion opponent who can handle that MIGHT be in a position
to
do the insisting mentioned in the previous paragraph. But if he
can't handle it, then he certainly has NO business opposing
abortion!
Chinese Water Torture
https://www.youtube...watch?v=5vESKdr8uqE
As mentioned in the main text. [Vernon, Jul 01 2015]
Biofeedback
Biofeedback_20ContraPregnancy_20Training
As mentioned in an annotation. [Vernon, Jul 01 2015]
Story of Chantek
http://video.pbs.org/video/2365286726/
As mentioned in an annotation. [Vernon, Jul 05 2015]
How clever animals became people
On_20the_20Origin_2...odern_20Mentalities
Something I posted a few years ago [Vernon, Jul 05 2015]
You are not-perfectly human...
http://www.scientif...ia-protects-health/
As mentioned in an annotation. [Vernon, Jul 07 2015]
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Annotation:
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This took a turn I wasn't expecting. |
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bad logic [-] Let me count the ways.
Hasty
generalization 1: Those who oppose abortion rights don't
necessarily do so because of beliefs about what can or
should be tolerated.
Hasty generalization 2:
Those who oppose abortion rights don't necessarily even
care about how pregnant women feel about it.
Hasty generalization 3: All people do not experience
pregnancy -- or torture -- the same way.
Non-sequitur: Torture is not comparable to
pregnancy.
Unwarranted assumption 1: Most pro-
lifers may not mind wearing such a hat to save what they
see as a life.
Unwarranted assumption 2: Such a
hat would not be equally intolerable without restraint.
Appeal to ignorance: Someone who has not been
pregnant doesn't have less of a right to speak about it.
Affirmation of the consequent: The idea that
pregnancy must not be required does not follow from the
idea, even if true, that it's unpleasant to a certain
degree. |
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Apparently, some folks can have trouble recognizing
that an invention, and how it might get used (or mis-
used), are two different things. THIS invention, for
example, could be used simultaneously by many people
at a party, to see who is the last person (the winner and
most tolerant) to rip the hat off his or her head. |
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Also, some folks don't realize that something called
"torture" in some circumstances is not necessarily
torture in other circumstances. The link, for example,
shows that someone not tied down can mentally fare
better than one who is tied down. That's an important
point. So, at what point does REQUIRING that
something uncomfortable be tolerated, become
torture? This invention could let us find that out! |
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As a side-effect of such parties, consider bosses who are
hypocrites. thinking their workers should be subjected
to working conditions that the bosses can avoid.
Exactly why should workers regularly experience more
discomfort than what bosses can tolerate? How much
might working conditions improve, say in a coal mine, if
big stockholders in coal companies had to take shifts
breathing coal dust, like the workers? This is a much
safer way to find out such things! |
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[Voice] Your HG#1 and #2 are both irrelevant, because
no matter what abortion opponents believe or CLAIM
they believe, forcing women who don't want to be
pregnant, to tolerate pregnancies, is what abortion
opponents want to happen --and every woman will talk
about how uncomfortable pregnancy can be, and be,
and be and be.... If nothing else, this invention can
give men a better appreciation for women when they
do choose to carry pregnancies to term. |
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Your HG#3 ignores the fact that most pregnancies have
very-common and well-known discomforts, usually
starting with "morning sickness". So, if some women are
less susceptible than others, to discomforts of
pregnancy, then, logically, not all men should be
required to experience long-term discomfort. Note that
the main text of this Idea does not insist that all men be
required to suffer...only some of them. |
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Your non-sequitur was addressed in another
annotation. Not to mention that some pregnancies are
far more torturous than unavoidable water-drips.
Ectopic pregnancies can lead to extremely painful
deaths, for example. |
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Your UW#1 fails to recognize the main point.
Willingness to wear an uncomfortable hat is one thing;
having the toughness to wear it for 9 months is another
thing altogether. The linked video only covers part of 1
day! So, on what objectively valid basis can a man
insist a woman be uncomfortable, long-term, if the
man can't handle long-term discomfort himself? (The "a
life" thing you mentioned deserves a separate
discussion, because factors such as ignorance and
prejudice are involved.) |
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Your UW#2 appears to be more of "missing the point".
If a man can't voluntarily/continuously wear the hat for
months, on what basis can he insist a woman must be
involuntarily/continuously uncomfortable for months? |
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Your A/I statement fails to recognize that speaking from
ignorance is less worthy of attention, than speaking
from knowledge. We all have Free Speech in the USA
(and some other places). But if speakers don't know
what they are talking about, nobody needs to pay them
any attention whatsoever. |
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Your A/C statement appears to be saying that personal
opinions about pregnancy are irrelevant. Logically, that
applies to abortion opponents as much as it applies to
women who don't want to be pregnant...and perfectly-
natural miscarriages tend to happen, regardless of
anyone's opinion. Which reminds me (see
"biofeedback" link). |
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This is the "separate discussion" mentioned above,
about "a life". |
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If the life was that of a parasite, there would be no
objection whatsoever, regarding terminating it. So,
because human life is involved, prejudice is also
involved. So, go to a beauty salon, and observe all the
manicures and pedicures, routinely killing human life
(living cuticle cells). |
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According to what we know from cloning and stem-cell
research, every one of those living human cuticle cells,
because it has the full set of human DNA, also has the
potential, just like a zygote, to divide many times and
produce a whole human body. |
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The main difference is that the zygote is actually
processing the DNA code for accomplishing that, while
the cuticle cell is processing the DNA code that tells it
how to act like a cuticle cell. But we know cells can be
reprogrammed to process other blocks of DNA code (any
virus can do that!). Therefore, due to ignorance about
"human life", either zygotes are over-rated, or cuticle
cells are under-rated. |
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Confirmed pregnancies involve a much greater
magnitude of "human life" than single cells. The
concept of "person" is now relevant. Thanks to religion
and mythology and fiction, the word "person" refers to
a different concept than the word "human". Anyone
who liked "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" and "Short Circuit"
and "Avatar" and lots of others is fully aware that the
English language accommodates non-humans as
persons. |
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Some people, however, still appear to be ignorant of
that fact. But because "human" and "person" are
indeed two different things, we can deduce that life-
forms in general can be categorized as "persons" and
"non-persons", such as ordinary plants and animals. |
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Next, since cuticle cells are human and killable, since
hydatidiform moles are human and killable, and since
brain-dead adults on full life-support are human and
killable, we also know that "human" is NOT
automatically equal to "person". It is very possible for
something that is human to also be nothing more than
entirely equivalent to an ordinary animal life-form. |
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Some people, however, still appear to be ignorant of
that fact. |
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There is far more scientific evidence that adult dolphins
qualify as persons, than do human life-forms inside
wombs. Therefore, to force a woman to stay pregnant
against her will is to subjugate her, in terms of
"involuntary servitude" (forbidden by the 13th
Amendment of the US Constitution), to an **animal**,
WORSE than slavery to a person! |
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So again I say that men who want to force women to be
pregnant deserve to experience 9 months of discomfort.
Maybe some of those men will change their minds. |
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[LimpNotes], you may be misinterpreting something. I
say that only those who insist others must tolerate
something, DESERVE themselves to tolerate something.
In
a way, my statement is a variation of the Golden Rule
(you should be willing to receive that which you dish out
unto others). "Members of the Ku Klux Klan, who have
participated in anonymous assaults, deserve to be
anonymously assaulted." Saying someone deserves
something is not the same thing as saying they must
experience the "something", regardless. |
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I'm not making the sort of "you must" statement that
certain others make, because I allow for choice, and
they don't. If they did allow choice, then I wouldn't
have an objection. --and I wouldn't be describing things
they deserve! |
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Didn't Red Dwarf do a pair of karma hats? |
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[LimpNotes], I'm saying they don't have any right to insist
others do something they themselves aren't willing to do
(tolerate discomfort for months, in this case). But if they
actually did themselves tolerate discomfort for months,
then I would not object to THAT single aspect of their
stance against abortion. (There are plenty other ways to
object, heh :) |
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So the whole point of this palaver is to gain temporary respite from [Vernon]'s disapproval? |
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Wait. Surely a position on either side of virtually any argument can be re-stated in the form "X must be tolerated", for some value of X. |
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It's true that the use of this invention is not limited to torturing people who disagreed with you on one particular question; it could, with equal logical force, be used for torturing people who disagreed with you on *any* question. Furthermore it could be used, again with equal logical force, for torturing people who *agreed* with you on any question. |
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They had this as a means of resolving disputes in the Middle Ages; it was called "trial by ordeal". I'm not a fan of it. |
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//"Star Trek" and "Star Wars" and "Short Circuit" and
"Avatar" // One of these is not like the others. |
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[pocmloc], please remember that this Idea was created
as a way to test anyone's ability to tolerate discomfort.
Like any other tool, it can be used and it can be
abused; it is itself a neutral thing. |
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It is widely accepted that tolerance is a generally better
thing than intolerance. Some things are not supposed
to be tolerated (like murders) because society as a
whole suffers otherwise. Other things are sometimes
not tolerated even though it doesn't matter to society
(homosexuality doesn't matter because it has always
been associated with only a smallish percentage of the
total population). |
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Since intolerance has consequences, unnecessary
intolerance should be opposed. For one particular type
of unnecessary intolerance by one particular group of
people, I suggested something that has the net effect of
asking, "Which thing is MORE intolerable to those
people?" (abortion* or months of discomfort) If I could
think of an invention suitable for countering
unnecessary intolerance of homosexuality, I would post
that Idea, too. |
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*Opposing abortion is unnecessary partly because only
pure-animal life-forms are deliberately killed by it, and
partly because the world is overpopulated, resulting in
things like deforestation, overfishing, aquifer drainage,
farmland shrinkage by growing cities, mass extinctions
of other species, and more. |
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[Voice], are you unaware that molecular biology has
been
discovered to basically be "natural nanotechnology"?
We
have NO reason to think that intelligent entities,
persons,
must all be organic in their physical existence. And
"Short
Circuit" isn't the only movie featuring a machine being.
There are the Terminator movies (even if we consider
the
main machine being in them --SkyNet-- to be evil), for
example, and the "Matrix" movies, and "The
Bicentennial
Man". |
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In the Star Wars movies, R2D2 appears to exhibit more
in the way of "free will" than C3PO --it is never made
clear whether or not they qualify as true self-willed
machine beings, persons. Also, there is the movie "I,
Robot" where quite a few machines might deserve to be
recognized as persons. In the Star Trek (TNG) shows,
for
Commander Data there was an episode specifically
about his status as a person ("The Measure of a Man").
So, [Voice], if your focus regarding "not like the others"
has been misinterpreted, please explain in a bit more
detail. |
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Avatar convinced me that James Cameron may be
a person but is certainly not human. |
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If you can make a judgment about the future, without experience of those coming facts, then you should be able to judge others, right or wrong. My qualifier being that it must be on a case by case basis rather than a blanket blindness. |
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Oh, and be willing to say sorry. |
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//unnecessary intolerance should be opposed.// |
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Unnecessary intolerance will not be tolerated! |
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Doesn't this already exist at Guantanamo Bay? |
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Unnecessary intolerance in a one off case maybe beneficial for all concerned. Life little quirks of domino effects is strange that way. |
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[pocmloc], if you take something out of context, you
can end up with all sorts of nonsense. I quote a larger
statement than you quoted: "Since intolerance has
consequences, unnecessary intolerance should be
opposed." Your question of "why" is explained in the
whole quote! --although I admit that the consequences
mentioned are assumed to be more negative than
positive. |
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I probably should have been more specific, such as,
"Since intolerance often has negative consequences,
unnecessary intolerance should be opposed." --
hopefully making it clear that by opposing unnecessary
intolerance, associated negative consequences can be
avoided/prevented. |
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[LimpNotes], CALLING the animal occupying a womb a
"child" doesn't make it one. A child exists just fine
without an attached placenta; inside the womb, a
placenta is a vital organ, as important as the heart. |
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Sure, the dictionary lets you call a womb-occupant a
"child", but that is simply because dictionary definitions
come from "common usage", and not necessarily from
actual fact. It wasn't known until modern DNA tests
that much of the placenta is actually part of the overall
womb-occupant. We are not responsible for dictionary
definitions that were created without all the facts
available; we ARE responsible for how we use words
when we do have a very complete set of facts
available. So, because of the placenta, the occupant
of a womb is quite different from a child, and should
not be called a child (or a "baby", either). |
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I've seen some other arguments about why the words
"baby" and "child" should not be used to reference
womb-occupants. One was about the natural
miscarriage rate, and how if you call it a "baby" instead
of a "baby under construction, with Murphy's Law a
significant factor", you raise false hopes, like a con-
artist claiming that a normal birth is 100% certain, and
make the emotional suffering WORSE when a
miscarriage happens instead. Another argument was
about how
we have lots of different words to accurately describe
physically different humans (like "tall", "short",
"chubby", "skinny", ...) and it would be hypocrisy to
freely use those words in ordinary circumstances, but
refuse to use an existing word like "fetus" to accurately
describe one part of a life-form developing toward a
goal of surviving outside a special environment (and is
generic across many different species; look up "turtle
fetus" or "kangaroo fetus" or "bird fetus" ...). |
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Moving on ... there is "murder", which applies to killing
a person, not an animal. There is no scientific data of
any sort that indicates that a womb-occupant, no
matter how close it is to getting born, is more of a
person than, say, an adult pig (which we routinely kill
for food, even though pigs are smarter than dogs). Any
"Man B" who claims something like what you wrote
should PROVE the accuracy of the statement if Man B
wants the statement to be believed by others; mere
opinions are nothing more than worthless propaganda
when they go up against solid
facts. |
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[bigsleep], people do volunteer for the most bizarre
things, sometimes.... |
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I disagree. I don't like this line of reasoning but I don't also
find it "mad". Personally I prefer the notion that the
individual owns their body and that that ownership extends
to using lethal force, murder, within that sphere, if the
person so chooses. The fetus has no native rights so long as
they come at the cost of the rights of the body containing
them. |
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[lurch], I don't see you offering any data that what I
wrote is only "rationalizing", and not valid logic based
on valid data. SImple claims are worthless without
evidence. |
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[WcW], the placenta is constructed by both the woman
and the womb-occupant. Part of it only has the
woman's DNA. Since for her it is not a vital organ, no
more important than her appendix, she could insist that
her part of the placenta be removed from her womb.
(In the early part of a pregnancy, the drug known as
"RU486" can do exactly that.) The womb-occupant
would then die as a side-effect, not as a direct killing
act. |
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It's silly to argue semantics about this. If someone is inside
your body and taking their sustenance from your blood you
have the right to kill them. You don't have to make a
special provision for this other party or be forced to allow
them to have a survivable birth. This attitude of women as
the vessels rather than the elective and powerful arbiters
of reproduction is based in the objectification of the
female body and the repression of female election. The
power of reproductive choice ends at the point of
ejaculation for the male and is entirely the absolute
domain of the female from that point forward. This is
power, and it deserves respect rather than subjugation. |
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Just to throw in a curve-ball, what if the group needed numbers?. High loss habitation conditions such as a space colony or disease ravaged area. Would the moral obligation of the survival of the group outweigh an individuals rights? |
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Nope. That's what it means to have power. |
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So... under this system, the more I can tolerate, the more I get to judge others? |
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Sounds like one hell of a good way to hand the whole shebang over to the psycho/ sociopaths...
...waitasecond |
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I'm pretty sure it's easier to get people to reproduce when
you want them to by making it wonderful and treating
them like they are doing a community service. Our current
policy of shaming sex, shaming poverty, shaming young
mothers and providing a pathetic social safety net AND
forcing reproduction on women is backwards nonsense.
Until society finds the common will to care for every child
that is born and every pregnant mother the shame is on us
for our squandered wealth and not on the women who
determine that they will not suffer to bring another child
into that condition in that society. |
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[lurch], there are denials, and then there are denials
supported by evidence. Of course, if you think you can
make statements unsupported by data, then you
shouldn't mind denials unsupported by data, right? |
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Still, you did say something about "redefining" a word.
Let's examine that concept in terms of an analogy
involving the word "arsenic", a famous poison. It turns
out that the famous poison is actually a chemical
compound, "arsenic trioxide". The name "arsenic" is
now assigned to a particular chemical element (#33). If
you look at a good dictionary, you will find both
definitions for "arsenic", the element and the
compound --but nobody really uses that OLD definition
any more. We could probably assume that if modern
chemistry had been known way-back-when, the word
"arsenic" would *never* have been applied to the
chemical compound. |
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So, with respect to "child" and the modern facts --if all
those facts had been known way-back-when, on what
basis would you claim that the word would have been
used, back then, to describe a human womb-occupant? |
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When the Supreme Court overturns a Law, the *correct*
interpretation of that action is to say, "That Law should
be treated as if it had never existed in the first place." |
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So, logically, the question to ask is, "On what basis
should a moral obligation *ever* have been associated
with a womb-occupant, when it is provably so different
from a 'child', and if those differences had been known
way-back-then?" |
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I can now present some relevant data. In the Bible,
Exodus 21:22, a miscarriage that is caused to happen
can be associated with an *arbitrary* penalty, including
ZERO. |
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The most well-known hunter-gatherers were the Native
Americans of several centuries ago. It is known that
most tribes almost routinely warred against their
neighbors. We may reasonably extrapolate that back in
time, before the invention of agriculture, when the
whole world was populated only by hunter-gatherers. |
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We KNOW that the total global human population was
relatively constant for tens of thousands of years (not
counting the expansion into the Americas),
before agriculture was invented. If all those tribes
were routinely warring with their neighbors, that
indicates the normal birth rate for humans sufficed to
routinely replace the combat losses. |
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WHY was all that fighting happening? The answer
should be obvious: hunting/gathering can only acquire
so much from a specific territory; if you want to gather
more, you have to take it from someone else's territory.
But why would you want to gather more? Because the
population of your tribe was growing! (And for tens of
thousands of years, combat eliminated the excess and
kept the total population
stable.) |
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I once read that maybe we should thank Adolf Hitler for
showing the world *just*how*morally*wrong*it*is* to do
*blatant* exhortations to increase population, followed
by using population growth as an excuse to steal the
neighbors' territories for "lebensraum"/living-space.
The POINT is, has it *ever* been morally valid, to push
*unnecessary* population growth? |
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[wjt], you appear to be making the unsupported
assumption that the reduced population does not want
to all die. But they might be willing to do that, if they
knew the species would continue to survive elsewhere.
Now if the survival of the *species* was at stake, not
just the survival of a group, and the survivors knew it,
then...there could still be issues. I've read that one
reason the Soviet Union collapsed in bankruptcy was,
the political structure and overall culture was so horrid
that large numbers of women chose not to raise
offspring in that culture, and finally there weren't
enough taxpayers to keep the system going. Most end-
of-the-world scenarios don't include the survivors having
political structures that are *that* awful, but we should
keep in mind that it *might* happen; the species could
become extinct if women are not respected enough
(see a National Geographic article about how "Brazil's
Girl Power" is defeating macho-ism). |
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[2 fries], not quite. The more you actually tolerate,
the more you have a right to think others should
tolerate something roughly equivalent. Even so, there
are limits --no marathon runner expects a quadriplegic
to run a marathon. |
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[WcW], semantics are important. Many problems can have
their origins traced to inaccurate communications. A
Debate in which people use the same words to mean
different things is a Debate that just-about-never will be
resolved. So, it is logically essential that we all be on the
same definitions-page --and know exactly why we should
be on that particular page, instead of some other
definitions-page. |
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// I've read that one reason the Soviet Union collapsed in bankruptcy was, the political structure and overall culture was so horrid that large numbers of women chose not to raise offspring in that culture// |
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Just out of interest, [Vernon], was that in Martin Amis' novel "House of Meetings"? For the purpose of the current argument it doesn't matter one way or the other, but I was tracking the propagation of that idea for reasons of my own. |
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[WcW], I was just doing a quick catch-up on this thread, when these two passages from your annotations jumped out at me: |
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1. // If someone is inside your body and taking their sustenance from your blood you have the right to kill them. // |
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2. // Until society finds the common will to care for every child that is born and every pregnant mother the shame is on us for our squandered wealth // |
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The reason they jumped out at me was this: they both seem to start from the same observation - of a dependency relationship - but they draw the most extremely opposite conclusions imaginable from that dependency relationship. |
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On the one hand, according to #2, because an under-resourced mother is dependent on society and draws resources from society, it is unacceptable for society even to make disapproving remarks about her. On the other hand, according to #1, because a fetus is dependent on its mother, and draws resources from her, it is entirely acceptable for her to kill it. |
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I realise no-one ever wins this kind of internet argument. I just thought the mirror-image symmetry was striking. Are we being the love-child of Nietzsche and Ayn Rand - "Blood-suck on me, and I'll kill you!", or are we singing kumbaya - "There, there, of course I'll help; what do you need?" Whichever one it is, why aren't we doing it consistently? |
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Surely the basic points are: |
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(1) An individual has the right to do as they please, as long as
it does not harm another individual |
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(2) Subject to proviso (1), society should work for the
greatest net good. |
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(3) An early-stage foetus is not considered an individual in
this context; a born baby is; the transition point from non-
individual to individual is open to argument. |
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//The more you actually tolerate, the more you have a right to think others should tolerate something roughly equivalent. Even so, there are limits --no marathon runner expects a quadriplegic to run a marathon.// |
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I would think that someone who is quadriplegic tolerates far more than the marathon runner.
I'm just not sure that tolerance is a good criteria for judging. Most of the people I've met who could tolerate extremes of pain or deprivation or what-have-you are pretty much assholes.
I knew a guy one time with burn scars up his forearms from burning holes through dollar bills with cigarettes as a prison betting game to see which man could withstand it the longest.
It was like his 'thing'. |
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Now there's a man who would be more than happy to subject himself to all sorts of tolerance tests if it meant he got the right to judge others.
Very strong in will but almost nonexistent empathy. |
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Now that there is a good criteria for judging. Empathy. It's really hard to judge someone when you can't help but imagine walking in their shoes. |
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...although I suppose that is also a form of tolerance.
hmmm |
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I don't actually see any conflict there. Individual freedom
and collective action are not the same thing. I can
simultaneously want for a society that is nurturing for all
individuals while accepting that we do not have one; I can
imagine a society where abortions would be less frequent
while accepting that criminalizing them does nothing to
address the underlying factors. |
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[pertinax], no, I'm sure I read that thing about the USSR
somewhere else. I wouldn't bet on this next thing, but
it is possible I read parts of the data and then deduced
the connection between the parts, myself. It was years
ago.... |
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The bodily-autonomy argument has the primary flaw of
assuming that two persons are involved. While the
original formulation of that argument (by Judith Jarvis
Thomson) did involve two persons, applying it to
pregnancy is a mistake because it default-accepts a
primary premise of those who oppose abortion. As long
as it is possible to show that that premise is flawed, it
should *never* be accepted by anyone on the pro-
choice side of the Debate. |
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[MaxwellBuchanan], there is significant additional data,
of which a great many people are unaware. There is a
*major* claim that human DNA alone defines us as
persons, but that claim has been *proved*false* by the
data about "feral children". Without significant
Nurture, all any human ever becomes is just a clever
animal, incapable of creatively manipulating
abstractions, or doing other things that distinguish
persons from animals. |
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Almost as interesting is the apparent fact that humans
have exhibited person-type behaviors for roughly
60,000 years, while anatomically modern humans have
existed for about 200,000 years. ALL humans were
"feral", non-person animals, back then! Meanwhile, it
appears that the potential to act at least somewhat like
persons has existed for FAR longer than it has been
actualized. When Washoe the Chimpanzee, Koko the
Gorilla and Chantek the Orangutan (see link!) were
raised like human infants, receiving human-style
Nurturing (with sign-language lessons), they became as
competent as average 3-year-old humans, in terms of
person-abilities. Human ancestors have had about that
much person-potential-brainpower since the days of
australopithecus! |
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Or, rather than making sophistic arguments we
could just accept that the whole female thing is an
awesome reponsibility with life/death implications
and dictating what other people do with their bodies
is a special form of repression. If you feel a moral
compunction to make more humans then get about
it, similarly I'm not going to try to stop you from
using the most modern technology to help make
more humans. You could devote your life to this
calling if you chose and produce many offspring
which, if there is a moral good in it, you would be
obliged to carry it out. |
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//the potential to act at least somewhat like
persons has existed for FAR
longer than it has been actualized.// |
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Actually we have no idea whether that is true or
not. |
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Even if we had the fresh corpses of a normal
human, and a human with very
severe mental retardation, we generally wouldn't
be able to tell which was
which from any anatomical clues. |
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To say that the earliest anatomical humans had the
same physical brains
that we have, is a bit like finding the rusted
remains of an engineless car
body and inferring that it had the same
horsepower as a current model. |
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Given that more genes are involved in brain
development than in any other structure, it's
highly likely that significant evolutionary changes
in the brain continued long after the skeletal
anatomy became recognisably human. |
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[MaxwellBuchanan], one of the things we do KNOW is
that brains don't have to be as
sophisticated as primate
brains to be able to learn a great deal. See the "Alex
the Parrot" link I attached to the page that I linked here
("How clever animals became people"). Do remember
that birds have (mostly) the basic reptilian brain, that
dogs have the mammalian brain piled on top of that,
and that primates have another type of brain-structure
piled on top of the mammalian brain. Then note that
australopithecus
was a primate with about the same size of brain as a
modern chimpanzee, maybe even a bit bigger. |
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In the past society has a leaning that more individuals is a net good. As a collective, the anti abortion sentiment whether ignorant, knowledgeable or legal, acts as an activation energy barrier on an individual for society. |
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The individual always is free to act, but is faced with increasing decision/consequence pressure by society. |
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[wjt], one of the things that has been learned, but
hasn't been applied everywhere it needs to be applied,
is the fact that too much of ANY good thing is always,
always, a bad thing. |
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[LimpNotes], the simplest arguments are the best. In
this case, it could be stated that abortion should be
legal because there is no valid argument for making it
illegal in today's world. If there was such a valid
argument, it would be impossible to poke holes into
that argument. |
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The closest thing I've ever seen to a valid argument for
illegalizing abortion involves the possibility of the
human species becoming extinct from too-small a gene
pool --but that does not apply to today's world. All the
other arguments I've encountered are based on
incomplete information, or actually-wrong information,
or prejudice, or hypocrisy, or some other fatal flaw. |
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In another message I invited [lurch] to basically explain
why it was ever a valid moral thing to oppose abortion,
without actually denying the claim. The point is, if no
valid explanation can be offered, then it would be
perfectly sensible to deny the claim! |
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If I don't want to tolerate this idea, and intend to
[marked-for-deletion] on grounds that it's little more
than thinly veiled advocacy, what kind of hat should I
wear? |
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To support my argument, I can state that I've read and
fully experienced the entire thing, and while it's clear
that there are two diametrically opposing views, I've not
heard anything particularly new on the matter - which
seems to be more about the example used to illustrate
the idea, than the idea itself - which appears to be an
uncomfortable hat. |
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If the idea did work, and removed from the argument
pool those gentlemen who failed the ordeal, what then?
Would the remaining people all be able to reach a
consensus? Or would this issue remain a thorny one? I
suspect we'd be very much in a similar situation,
resolution-wise, only with a rather glumly resigned
population of people no longer participating in the
argument, on account of their proven aversion to wet-
hats. |
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[zen tom], a lot of annotations could be deleted from this
Idea, without actually deleting the idea. Did you not read
my very first annotation here? There IS an actual
invention. How it gets used, though, can certainly be
debated. |
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[lurch], various things can be interpreted different
ways. When someone wants an abortion, that someone
(and possibly anyone who thinks abortion should be
allowed) is saying that that unborn representative of
population growth is unnecessary. To oppose abortion
is thus the same thing as promoting unnecessary
population growth. Not to mention that it might be
interesting to think about whether or not ANY amount
of population growth, beyond the point where the gene
pool is diverse enough for long-term survival, is TRULY
necessary, in the strictest sense of the word. |
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As for the data you previously presented regarding
rationalizing, you MIGHT notice that I didn't outright-
deny that data; instead I asked about why it might be
valid. That is, to change an existing "moral obligation"
by redefining a word is one thing, but to ask why the
moral obligation was created in the first place (and
whether or not creating it back-then was a valid thing
to do) is another thing altogether. |
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There is *nothing* of lunacy in asking core questions!
Most people know a little about the legend of Isaac
Newton and the apple, except they mostly don't seem
to know that there was a core question involved. "Why
does the apple fall toward the Earth, and not the Earth
fall toward the apple?" Newton formalized the concept
of "mass" in natural philosophy (the original name for
what we now call "physics"), to answer that question. |
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Next, Hitler is often introduced *inappropriately* in
various arguments, but I most certainly had an
argument in which it *was* appropriate to mention
Hitler. It is well-documented how he wanted German
women to have lots and lots of babies, and his speech
about "lebensraum" is quite formally Historical, what
with Neville Chamberlain's failure to oppose the land-
grab that followed (and prevent war in the long term),
by signing the Munich Pact. Even if Hitler had not been
a megalomaniac, simply by continuing to encourage
population growth, *additional* lebensraum would have
eventually been sought, until other nations decided to
put a stop to having their territories get given away.
THEY needed lebensraum too!, see? |
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Next, why should the concept of "pushing" population
growth be needed with respect to any woman who
*wants* to have a baby? Are you somehow assuming
that women want babies *only* because of a social
"push" for it? Think again!!! The phrase "nest-building
instinct" would never be applied to human females if
there was no truth to it. |
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Thus my question had no need to differentiate in the
manner you described. But just to be clear, I will
define my usage of the phrase "push population growth"
as encouraging (even insisting) women have MORE
offspring than they might normally choose, without
pressure. Will the human species survive if there was
no pressure? In terms of a stable gene pool, any
geneticist would probably agree that 10 thousand births
a year would be sufficient. There are currently roughly
130 million births a year, worldwide. You would have
extreme difficulty showing that of those 130 million,
less than 10 thousand are *wanted* (and thereby be
able to claim the survival of the species is at risk, if
population growth wasn't pushed). |
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Next, DON'T put your words into my mouth. A human
womb-occupant is 100% human; it is impossible for it to
be "sub human". In fact, it is MORE human than YOU!
(Of all the cells in your body, about 90% are bacterial,
non-human --see the link!-- while the amniotic sac in
the womb is a fairly sterile bacteria-free environment.) |
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I made an effort to show that "human" and "person" are
two different concepts, and you offered NO information
to the contrary. A womb-occupant is, *measurably*,
ZERO% person, especially when compared to adult
dolphins. |
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Next, DON'T put your words into my mouth! I said
nothing about "should be killed". I have only indicated
that if killing a womb-occupant is desired by the owner
of that womb, there is no reason to forbid it in today's
world. Plus I'm not seeing anything in what you wrote
that qualifies as a rationale, or even a rationalization,
for forbidding it. Indeed, that last thing you wrote,
about "supporting the person", could be stretched so far
as to include publicly paid-for abortions. |
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Humans are a plague on the universe and should be eradicated. That goes for all life-forms actually. And while we're at it, stars are pretty messy, get rid of them, and all the rest of matter. Too untidy. |
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[lurch], it was great that you were able have both your boys and keep your wife alive. |
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Most people aren't presented with that potential outcome. |
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Agree with your general principle that the hard and fast rules here are frankly useless. |
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My wife had an ectopic and would have died without an immediate d&c, which unfortunately meant disturbing the twin growing inside as well as the ectopic. |
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The halfbakery is not the place for an abortion debate. Both of you know this. |
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[MaxwellBuchanan], your post should have been made in
the other Idea space ("On the Origin of Modern
Mentalities"). I'm going to copy it to there and delete it
from here, and I will reply to it there. |
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