One of the nice things is that nobody gets paid to do Wikipedia, no matter how highly respected they are, or how much work they've put in. How does someone who has the official imprimatur of the Foundation compare with them in terms of prestige or authority? With a retired person who spends eight hours a day fixing typos and essentially being one of the little gnomes that makes everything run smoothly?
The Essjay incident should have put the kibosh on credentialism; users should be evaluated by the work that they put in and nothing else. I fear that this sort of sponsored participation will lead the paid contributors to think that they're more authoritative than the folks who just do it for the love of the project.
It would, but Larry Sanger is kind of a joke, and nobody cares about his sour grapes over leaving Wikipedia with a "you'll be sorry!" and seeing it flourish without him.
You chastised that other guy for making a comparison between two things that are dissimilar. YOU DID EXACTLY THE SAME THING. Save the ridiculous attempt at justifying why your two different things are valid to compare while his aren't.
I did not do "EXACTLY THE SAME THING". The original poster made a comparison which was, as I pointed out, dependent on them being similar in a way in which they're not. My comparison was only dependent on both actions being frowned upon in modern society. I could have as easily mentioned any other obsolete cultural tradition--another poster mentioned the eating of bushmeat--but the point, that "it's our culture" isn't an excuse, stands.
I've explained my point--the difference between what I chastised the original poster for and what I did--three times now. If there's something about it you don't understand, please specifically state what it is, rather than declaring it invalid because you're enjoying your self-righteousness too much to actually read.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying plants have feelings. I'm saying you have no definitive proof that they don't.
But you're asking a question which can't be answered; you're asking for a standard of proof which can't be met.
Personally, I'd be inclined to take the perspective that if it can bleed, it can suffer. Besides, what's the harm in that?
The harm is in the loss of use of various plant products, building materials and derived compounds which improve and save lives, as well as arguably in the lowered bar for what constitutes a suffering organism--you run the risk of not raising respect for trees to the level of respect for cattle, but rather lowering the level of respect for cattle to that of the level of respect for trees.
The first argument--whaling is okay because it's part of their indigenous culture--was dealt with by pointing out that "it's part of their indigenous culture" is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. The second argument--if you care so much about whales, why don't you cry about the trees--is dealt with by pointing out that whales are not the same as trees, a point which shouldn't need to be laid out in full to be understood, because it's rather intuitive.
However, the fact that whales are different from people--which, as you point out, any idiot knows--has no bearing on the strength of the first argument as made; the point of the first argument is that, again, "it's part of their indigenous culture" isn't an excuse. If you're stuck on the point that the comparison happened to use people, it's entirely possible to replace the argument with one not involving humans; for instance, it was traditional to control the animal population by putting extra puppies and kittens in sacks weighted with rocks, and throw them in the river. We frown on that today.
Now, note that the strength of the rebuttal of the "but it's their indigenous culture" argument is the same, demonstrating that while humans and whales are different, this doesn't affect the point I was making. In contrast, the point that whales and lumber are not the same is central to the point that I was rebutting.
The comparison isn't dependent on a whale being equivalent to a person. Read again. Here, I'll repeat myself.
We frown on burning people alive today. We frown on killing whales today. We may not do so for the same reasons, but "it's my culture!" isn't a defense in the first case, and you've failed to explain why it's a defense in the second. I don't have to prove that they're "the same", whatever that means by your lights; I'm merely showing that the situations are analogous in that we don't accept "it's my culture!" as a defense for prohibited behavior.
Not entirely disagreeing, but how sure are you that plants are not capable of suffering?
So far as is known, suffering requires some form of nervous system; apart from the emotional aspect (which has a more restrictive basis than the physical), the physical aspect requires nociception, which requires a nervous system. According to this list, it's most invertebrates, no; cephalopods, maybe; fish, maybe; mammals, birds and reptiles, likely. The concept is pretty meaningless when applies to fungi, to unicellular organisms, or to plants.
In the latter case, Europeans were very culturally attached to a practice that we, in modern times, abhor. In the former, the group of Alaskans in question are very culturally attached to a practice that we, in modern times, abhor. In both cases, "but it's our culture!" isn't a valid excuse. I've explained why these things are like each other; if you disagree, it's up to you to explain why they're different in a way that affects the conclusion I've drawn.
Are you the same plunge who spent an astonishing amount of time patiently refuting a creationist? I was always impressed by that, and have tried to live up to the standard of reasonably debating unreasonable people that was set there. (On creationist blogs, that is; I clearly don't follow those rules of decorum over here.)
This whale was harvested by a group of people that are monitored by the IWC and practice whaling as part of their indigenous culture.
Europeans used to set people with warts on fire as part of their indigenous culture. And yet we frown on that today.
This is a major source of food for these people. [...] They can't eat because of your values? How nice of you.
Because the people who care so much about the whales couldn't send them a few tons of chicken every season for some reason? It's not like they're starving without the whales, and it's not like they'd starve if the IWC started shipping them food to replace the food lost from whaling.
Oh, because it's a 100 year old animal you have feelings for it? Don't bother to think of all the wood and lumber products in your life that are from trees that were FAR older than 100 years old when harvested.
Please return to kindergarten. There, I suggest that you engage in repeated games of "one of these things is not like the other" until the fact that whales are capable of suffering (and, depending who you ask, have a modicum of intelligence) while plants are not sinks in.
I would say that there is a lot more to the desire to rule out abortion in the case of rape than simply punishing the woman.
Well, there's also the rapist's fear that even after a guy has gone to the trouble of raping a woman, she might go and undo all his hard work.
Yeah, because we all know that the pro-life people are supportive of rape, I mean, it's not like they consider it a mortal sin or anything, right?
I was being flip. Let me clarify. "Pro-life" people tend to support exceptions in the case of rape, because opposition to abortion tends to center around punishing women for being "irresponsible", or, without euphemism, "sluts". Clearly the disappointed-rapist component of the pro-life coalition isn't nearly as powerful as the slut-shaming component.
Here's a chart; please note the part about rape and incest exceptions.
I've had good experiences with the homeopathic approach (hot water on a burned finger -> no blister, and have had positive responses to homeopathic remedies).
Putting hot or warm water on a burn to prevent blister formation isn't what I had in mind (though I have no idea if that works or not). By homeopathy, I meant the sale of neutral ingredients that were once near some sort of active ingredient, the idea that water "remembers" being in contact with chemicals which have been diluted out of it, and so forth. I'm comfortable saying that those things are placebos.
We don't count?. I vote for pro-life candidates quite a bit. I have actively campaigned for some of them sometimes and even suggested directions for policy. They don't listen most of the time but I do it. I would say that I am more politically active then most religious pro-lifers. I do this is for more reasons then just being pro-life but that has a minuscule amount to do with the reasoning.
I'm sure that you do. My point was--and I'll repeat it here--that even if you have nice, non-misogynist reasons for your views, the people you're supporting with your activism demonstrable don't. Your nuances count for sweet fuck-all to the people you're working for. Furthermore, as I'll repeat below, you don't have nice, non-misogynist reasons for your views.
I think your support for abortion has more to do with your animosity for religion then anything.
Who are you arguing against here? Did I say something about having animosity for religion? If the fundies were agitating to feed the poor, I wouldn't care that they were fundies. As they're agitating for misogyny, I don't really care what religion they use to justify it; I care more about their actions.
But being a slut is only a definition and a matter of perception. Who cares what another person calls you? They don't hold any more power over your life then the power you let them have. And your seem to be letting them have quite a bit of power and then resenting it.
Are you saying that arguing against public policy which seeks to punish women it labels as sluts is, in fact, giving those policies power? Do you think that these policies don't exist unless someone points them out? Is it freebie day in Backwards Land?
I also never understood why pro-abortion calls itself pro-choice. Pro choice would indicate that there is a choice but when people choose life they seem to be kicked out of the group.
I'll try to use small words here; feel free to ask me if you still don't understand.
The "pro-choice" movement doesn't kick people out for "choos[ing] life". The "pro-choice" movement kicks people out for telling women that they cannot choose, that they will be forced to give birth whether they wish to or not. The "pro-choice" movement does not lobby for mandatory abortion; it lobbies for women to have the choice (there's that word) of whether or not to have an abortion. They are neutral on the issue of whether one should or should not get an abortion, taking the position that that's the business of the person lugging around the fetus.
Nice, though, how you think "choose life" means "exert control over others' bodies".
Skipping the bit where you complain about the school's sex-ed not properly discouraging people from having sex, as it doesn't relate to anything I said...
I do however have a problem with killing unborn children as a form of birth control and encouraging sex in children not capable of making an informed adult decisions. Neither should be happening. It does nothing to further the womans development and does nothing but make abortions happen or kids ruin their futures.
See, this nonsense about using abortion as birth control is more of that "women don't get abortions for the right reasons, so we need to step in and stop them, so that stupid sluts learn their lesson" bullshit I mentioned before; you want to punish women for what you see as their irresponsibility in having too much sex. I reckon that should a condom break or somesuch, you and your ladyfriend would be getting an abortion, assuring yourselves that it was a good one, that you weren't like those other people.
Here, I have a fat stack of anecdotes from people who sound very much like you. Please read them and see if you notice anything familiar.
If the source cells are just skin cells, why can't they simply be taken from the patient? Why is rejection considered as a problem, when patients could receive transplants of their own stem cells?
That's a link to an Amazon page. I don't think anyone's going to go buy his book just to see what you're talking about. Usually claims of a Vast Pharmaceutical Conspiracy to Suppress Magical Cures lead to offers to Purchase Magical Mystery Magnets, and aren't worth taking seriously. Given that the reviews on the Amazon page say that Becker purports to provide a scientific basis for homeopathy, faith healing and qigong, I'm unimpressed--since these things, you know, don't work.
As an individual who is the product of an unwanted pregnancy after a sexual assault, I would say that there is a lot more to the desire to rule out abortion in the case of rape than simply punishing the woman.
Well, there's also the rapist's fear that even after a guy has gone to the trouble of raping a woman, she might go and undo all his hard work.
I have a PhD, meaningful (as in to everyone, at least I hope) work, a lovely spouse, two college-age kids, and am caring for my terminally-ill mother who lives with us. Yep, I'm sure she wishes she'd had my brains sucked right out. Would have been so much better.
Let's take this a little further. You're happy you weren't aborted. Are you happy that your mother was raped? If your mother could have gotten an abortion and didn't, then she chose to have you, and I don't know what you're whining about. If your mother wanted to get an abortion and wasn't allowed to, are you happy that she was forced to bear the rapist's child?
Get this through your head: crying about the possibility that you might have been aborted as a blastocyst is like crying that the rapist might never have attacked your mother. No one is denying that you're a person, or that you're capable of doing good, or any of that.
Nothing more or less than punishing the woman for having sex? Intentional denial of the fact of my humanity makes your argument foolish at best.
Because pro-choice advocates say that grown human beings aren't people because of the circumstances of their conception? Where the hell are you getting this from?
You seem proud to not be religious but in the same post use imaginary beings to make your point. Brilliant example of your genius.
I think that the grandparent poster is aware that "Star Trek" characters are fictional, which puts him way past religious folks who've historically taken their fandom so seriously that they've set people on fire because of it.
Also, "a unique set of DNA" is an incredibly stupid definition of human. From that point of view, a chimera is two people; a set of identical twins is one person. These are not in fact hypothetical situations; in them, we consider a chimera to be one person, and identical twins to be two. Conjoined twins are two people if they have two separate brains, implying that what we think of as human is a mind, not a set of DNA.
You make good points, but waving your unverifiable qualifications around (after all, this is the internet; no one knows you're a Nobel Prize winner) doesn't help you. If you're a genius, show us with your blazingly incisive rhetoric. Any idiot can claim to have a Ph.D.; not everyone can put together a coherent argument to support their point. Doing the latter is worth far more than doing the former.
(If you're going to ask how you should have responded to the assertion that you're an incompetent human being, if not by claiming credentials for yourself, the answer is that it's not worth responding to. It's just an ad hominem; it doesn't contain anything of worth.)
Don't make the mistake of grouping all pro lifers all into the same group. This is probably the biggest reason your confused about who would support something or why they are supporting it.
Yeah, but pro-lifers not in the religious group don't really count in a political sense, which means that whatever your nuanced policy measures are which aren't predicated on punishing women for being dirty sluts, nobody's going to bother responding to them.
Then again, your wailing about "encourag[ing] promiscuity" and how those damned sluts deserve to be punished with unwanted pregnancies because, well, they were asking for it, what with the having sex and all, leads me to believe that your motives may not be that different.
While religiosity is a good predictor of how patriarchal someone's views are, it's not the only predictor. The real drive is the belief that women who have sex deserve to be punished for it, and you don't have to be religious to think that--though it helps. I'd be interested in knowing what portion of people who oppose abortion hold misogynistic views as well.
So, you went from the actually-advanced argument, "fetuses frequently miscarry naturally, so inducing a miscarriage isn't particularly unnatural", to pretending that the original poster said, "people die, so killing them in ways that have little or nothing to do with natural causes of death is morally right"?
It sure is easier to attack positions that your opponent doesn't actually hold, isn't it?
Don't assume hidden intentions behind a logical argument. It's either valid or invalid, and if valid, false or true. Psychological reasoning is most of the time subject to error, as unreliable as it can get. For instance, I study Christianity and, as a Philosophy student, have much interest in the Middle Age, but I'm not Christian, and as such, the Jesus-bashing doesn't ring a bell.
I suppose you have a better explanation for why your analysis of the issues pretends that women are at best inanimate objects? Given that the pro-life movement in the United States is inextricably tied to the right-wing religious revival that got going in the early 1980s, it's understandable why I would assume that someone arguing for the former is part of the latter. However, I didn't make it the crux of my argument, and by wailing on about how mean I am, you conveniently neglected to answer my original question: Why do you pretend that women are inanimate or nonexistent?
If you wish you can take my previous argument and, if you conclude it's valid, take its conclusion as the main premise, the reality of the mother as the secondary premise, and start analyzing from there. Both approaches aren't opposed, they're complementary. And whatever the dialectical synthesis coming from there is, it's bound to the same prerequisites of logical consistency and rigor. Anything else can be taken as mere rhetorics.
It's good to see that your education is coming in handy, in that you can wave your hands with a bit of extra glamour. Given that you think "I don't know" means the same thing as "50% chance", I don't think you've got anything else there. I can't even tell what you think it would mean to take the conclusion of your argument and work backwards from there.
And anyway, you can't just take the conclusion as read; that's begging the question. Don't you know this stuff?
Lol. And what your reply says about your opinion of all the (possible) women that are killed just because they're embryos and fetuses?;)
See why this kind of "non-reasoning" doesn't work?
Given that I'm advocating a pro-choice point of view, did it take your entire philosophy education to whip that one out? Seriously, what is "but some fetuses are female!" supposed to accomplish? Do you think that I hold an opinion that women have a greater right to their lives than men do? That I want men to die, die, die? What are you getting at?
No, because there's no certainty whatsoever on when an embryo/fetus becomes a human being with human rights, only arbitrarily chosen points. For any given point in time, there are two possibilities: it's either the correct point, and the thing before that instant isn't a human being, thus having no human rights, thus his demise not being an assassination; or it's the wrong point, and you're indeed assassinating an human being. Since we don't know what's in any point we choose (3 months, 10 days, whatever, it doesn't matter), aborting is an act that always has 50% chance, minimum, of being an assassination. It's simply illogical to freely allow for something with such a high level of uncertainty. Mere common sense, devoid of any religious implication, dictates that in such a case the safe option be chosen, and the only available other option is not killing the embryo/fetus, because only by following it you're 100% sure you didn't commit an assassination.
If you disagree, then you should also follow the logical consequences of your disagreement and, for example, say that a 50% chance of one being guilty of having committed a crime given the collected evidence must be enough for him to be convicted, even when the conviction is the death penalty. If you think the correct in this case is, let's say, at least 99% certainty, the same must apply to abortion. Any divergence in approaches here would be, necessarily, a case of cognitive dissonance.
Yes, that all hangs together quite well. Of course, you have to assume that the fetus sort of hangs suspended in space until the mean ol' abortionist reaches in there with a claw hammer and pulls its little Jesus-lovin' soul out. It's not like someone has to actually carry the thing around, or undergo significant risk in carrying it to term, or like forced birth ever led to parents resenting their children, sometimes to the point of abusing them.
No, in your world it's a simply choice between a live fetus and a dead fetus, and the inconvenient meatsack that hauls it around for months on end just vanishes from your analysis. I suppose that's rather telling as to your opinion of women.
Livejournal didn't take issue with incest; Livejournal took issue with people who put incest in their interest lists, whether or not they had any real-life interest in it. While this catches pedophiles, it also catches survivors and support groups, as well as fanfiction writers who think that Fred and George Weasley go really well together. The responses which you're complaining about make a distinction between the first group and the last; you're complaining about this distinction.
I assume this horror movie you've been in the process of making for the last few years will contain violence. Nonconsensual violence, even. Gruesome, nonconsensual violence. I take it you need someone to explain to you that violence is wrong folks. for biological, developmental, psychological, moral, social... a whole range of reasons.
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One of the nice things is that nobody gets paid to do Wikipedia, no matter how highly respected they are, or how much work they've put in. How does someone who has the official imprimatur of the Foundation compare with them in terms of prestige or authority? With a retired person who spends eight hours a day fixing typos and essentially being one of the little gnomes that makes everything run smoothly?
The Essjay incident should have put the kibosh on credentialism; users should be evaluated by the work that they put in and nothing else. I fear that this sort of sponsored participation will lead the paid contributors to think that they're more authoritative than the folks who just do it for the love of the project.
They're German. They're going to be editing the German Wikipedia, which is, unless you speak German, not the one you've been editing.
It would, but Larry Sanger is kind of a joke, and nobody cares about his sour grapes over leaving Wikipedia with a "you'll be sorry!" and seeing it flourish without him.
I've explained my point--the difference between what I chastised the original poster for and what I did--three times now. If there's something about it you don't understand, please specifically state what it is, rather than declaring it invalid because you're enjoying your self-righteousness too much to actually read.
The first argument--whaling is okay because it's part of their indigenous culture--was dealt with by pointing out that "it's part of their indigenous culture" is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. The second argument--if you care so much about whales, why don't you cry about the trees--is dealt with by pointing out that whales are not the same as trees, a point which shouldn't need to be laid out in full to be understood, because it's rather intuitive.
However, the fact that whales are different from people--which, as you point out, any idiot knows--has no bearing on the strength of the first argument as made; the point of the first argument is that, again, "it's part of their indigenous culture" isn't an excuse. If you're stuck on the point that the comparison happened to use people, it's entirely possible to replace the argument with one not involving humans; for instance, it was traditional to control the animal population by putting extra puppies and kittens in sacks weighted with rocks, and throw them in the river. We frown on that today.
Now, note that the strength of the rebuttal of the "but it's their indigenous culture" argument is the same, demonstrating that while humans and whales are different, this doesn't affect the point I was making. In contrast, the point that whales and lumber are not the same is central to the point that I was rebutting.
The comparison isn't dependent on a whale being equivalent to a person. Read again. Here, I'll repeat myself.
We frown on burning people alive today. We frown on killing whales today. We may not do so for the same reasons, but "it's my culture!" isn't a defense in the first case, and you've failed to explain why it's a defense in the second. I don't have to prove that they're "the same", whatever that means by your lights; I'm merely showing that the situations are analogous in that we don't accept "it's my culture!" as a defense for prohibited behavior.
In the latter case, Europeans were very culturally attached to a practice that we, in modern times, abhor. In the former, the group of Alaskans in question are very culturally attached to a practice that we, in modern times, abhor. In both cases, "but it's our culture!" isn't a valid excuse. I've explained why these things are like each other; if you disagree, it's up to you to explain why they're different in a way that affects the conclusion I've drawn.
Are you the same plunge who spent an astonishing amount of time patiently refuting a creationist? I was always impressed by that, and have tried to live up to the standard of reasonably debating unreasonable people that was set there. (On creationist blogs, that is; I clearly don't follow those rules of decorum over here.)
Here's a chart; please note the part about rape and incest exceptions.
The "pro-choice" movement doesn't kick people out for "choos[ing] life". The "pro-choice" movement kicks people out for telling women that they cannot choose, that they will be forced to give birth whether they wish to or not. The "pro-choice" movement does not lobby for mandatory abortion; it lobbies for women to have the choice (there's that word) of whether or not to have an abortion. They are neutral on the issue of whether one should or should not get an abortion, taking the position that that's the business of the person lugging around the fetus.
Nice, though, how you think "choose life" means "exert control over others' bodies".
Skipping the bit where you complain about the school's sex-ed not properly discouraging people from having sex, as it doesn't relate to anything I said... See, this nonsense about using abortion as birth control is more of that "women don't get abortions for the right reasons, so we need to step in and stop them, so that stupid sluts learn their lesson" bullshit I mentioned before; you want to punish women for what you see as their irresponsibility in having too much sex. I reckon that should a condom break or somesuch, you and your ladyfriend would be getting an abortion, assuring yourselves that it was a good one, that you weren't like those other people.
Here, I have a fat stack of anecdotes from people who sound very much like you. Please read them and see if you notice anything familiar.
If the source cells are just skin cells, why can't they simply be taken from the patient? Why is rejection considered as a problem, when patients could receive transplants of their own stem cells?
Get this through your head: crying about the possibility that you might have been aborted as a blastocyst is like crying that the rapist might never have attacked your mother. No one is denying that you're a person, or that you're capable of doing good, or any of that. Because pro-choice advocates say that grown human beings aren't people because of the circumstances of their conception? Where the hell are you getting this from?
I think that the grandparent poster is aware that "Star Trek" characters are fictional, which puts him way past religious folks who've historically taken their fandom so seriously that they've set people on fire because of it.
Also, "a unique set of DNA" is an incredibly stupid definition of human. From that point of view, a chimera is two people; a set of identical twins is one person. These are not in fact hypothetical situations; in them, we consider a chimera to be one person, and identical twins to be two. Conjoined twins are two people if they have two separate brains, implying that what we think of as human is a mind, not a set of DNA.
You make good points, but waving your unverifiable qualifications around (after all, this is the internet; no one knows you're a Nobel Prize winner) doesn't help you. If you're a genius, show us with your blazingly incisive rhetoric. Any idiot can claim to have a Ph.D.; not everyone can put together a coherent argument to support their point. Doing the latter is worth far more than doing the former.
(If you're going to ask how you should have responded to the assertion that you're an incompetent human being, if not by claiming credentials for yourself, the answer is that it's not worth responding to. It's just an ad hominem; it doesn't contain anything of worth.)
Then again, your wailing about "encourag[ing] promiscuity" and how those damned sluts deserve to be punished with unwanted pregnancies because, well, they were asking for it, what with the having sex and all, leads me to believe that your motives may not be that different.
While religiosity is a good predictor of how patriarchal someone's views are, it's not the only predictor. The real drive is the belief that women who have sex deserve to be punished for it, and you don't have to be religious to think that--though it helps. I'd be interested in knowing what portion of people who oppose abortion hold misogynistic views as well.
For evidence of how bad-faith the anti-abortion movement is, there's always this handy-dandy chart.
So, you went from the actually-advanced argument, "fetuses frequently miscarry naturally, so inducing a miscarriage isn't particularly unnatural", to pretending that the original poster said, "people die, so killing them in ways that have little or nothing to do with natural causes of death is morally right"?
It sure is easier to attack positions that your opponent doesn't actually hold, isn't it?
And anyway, you can't just take the conclusion as read; that's begging the question. Don't you know this stuff? Given that I'm advocating a pro-choice point of view, did it take your entire philosophy education to whip that one out? Seriously, what is "but some fetuses are female!" supposed to accomplish? Do you think that I hold an opinion that women have a greater right to their lives than men do? That I want men to die, die, die? What are you getting at?
No, in your world it's a simply choice between a live fetus and a dead fetus, and the inconvenient meatsack that hauls it around for months on end just vanishes from your analysis. I suppose that's rather telling as to your opinion of women.
Livejournal didn't take issue with incest; Livejournal took issue with people who put incest in their interest lists, whether or not they had any real-life interest in it. While this catches pedophiles, it also catches survivors and support groups, as well as fanfiction writers who think that Fred and George Weasley go really well together. The responses which you're complaining about make a distinction between the first group and the last; you're complaining about this distinction.
I assume this horror movie you've been in the process of making for the last few years will contain violence. Nonconsensual violence, even. Gruesome, nonconsensual violence. I take it you need someone to explain to you that violence is wrong folks. for biological, developmental, psychological, moral, social... a whole range of reasons.