What do you believe that most people of your political creed don't?
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I suppose to me, one's moral weight is in their mind. If someone has no mind -- such as a brain-dead patient -- then they aren't really a person. Seeing as there's no reason to believe there's an immediate jump in neural development in a baby at the moment of birth, I do not believe it's a special moment for the baby in a moral accounting sense. So I don't think the baby becomes more intrinsically worthy of life at the precise moment it draws its first breath.
(For the parent, of course, it is a special moment, and in particular new options are available outside of the keep-or-abort dichotomy.)
As for being an individual, I don't really see how the child's autonomy is relevant. It's still fully dependent on its parents and society and could not function on its own.
I suppose to me, one’s moral weight is in their mind.
The problem that i see with that is the following: Assume a child has little neural activity (which, btw, is not true at all; children and newborns often have higher neural activity than grown-ups), but assume for a moment that a child had little neural activity, and therefore would be less worthy of preservation.
Now, somebody who has migraine, or has repeated electrical shocks in their brain, might be in a lot of pain, but has probably more neural activity than you. Would you now consider that since they have more neural activity, they are more worthy of life than you are? And what if you and that other person would be bound to the tracks of a trolley problem? Wouldn't it then be the ethical thing to kill you because you have less neural activity?
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I agree with my mom. 25 years is good.
For context she said that when I wasn’t 25 yet.
I agree with the following: If your mother tries to kill you, and dies themselves instead as a result of the conflict, they have no right to complain.
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It's less 'too much pc' and more 'purity politics' imo
There's a great post on tumblr that really fuckin' nailed it:
"The trannies should be able to piss in whatever toilet they want and change their bodies however they want. Why is it my business if some chick has a dick or a guy has a pie? I'm not a trannie or a fag so I don't care, just give 'em the medicine they need."
"This is an LGBT safe space. Of COURSE I fully support individuals who identify as transgender and their right to self-determination! I just think that transitioning is a very serious choice and should be heavily regulated. And there could be a lot of harm in exposing cis children to such topics, so we should be really careful about when it is appropriate to mention trans issues or have too much trans visibility."
One of the above statements is Problematic and the other is slightly annoying. If we disagree on which is which then working together for a better future is going to get really fucking difficult.
just a short reminder:
you can post a picture of a gun on facebook, because it is only a harmless picture of a machine that is solely built to kill people. definitely nothing that shouldn't be shown in public
if you do post a picture if an exposed female nipple, banned, because guess what? that's illegal
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I think we need to figure out how to make leftism more appealing to centrists, and particularly to the cis/straight/white/male demographic.
it will become automatically appealing to them the moment that is pays out economically for them. if they could afford more under a leftist politics, than under the current politics, people are gonna be all for it.
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You don't even realize you are further proving my point and you're coming across as even more fake.
I started respectfully, just as at first, you appeared to be "just another leftist with some different opinion".
In reality, you're just another liberal apologists that is fine with genocide... And I am absolutely NOT going to be respectful to Zionists once your true colore are evident.
Your "point" was moot to begin with because you're not leftist. But you are a fake ally ready to backstab minorities
I have no idea what point you're trying to make other than, I dunno, some crazy shit like everyone who disagrees with you is a Zionist or something?
But I stand by that post, if you voted for a third party, you helped trump. If you're trying to wrap your stupidity around the plight of the Palestineans you either aren't following the news or never really cared about them in the first place.
I get that this is probably the first humanitarian crisis you've seen on social media and pretended to care about but as you grow up, hopefully you'll realize there are sometimes unfortunate restrictions around your choices. While I would have loved a better option than the Dems, the choice was them or trump. If you voted third party, you helped put an administration that is absolutely hostile to them and worse than what would've been the case otherwise.
Sorry if reality sucks but whining about it like a petulant child isn't going to change it or rally others to your cause.
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Just wanted to prove that political diversity ain't dead. Remember, don't downvote for disagreements.
I am very very very left wing, BUT I can get really annoyed with a lot of those "on my side" advocating for the most idealist of all idealism, as if it's a contest. Feels like a competition of "who's the bestest and mostest leftist of all". You scare people away and - not justifying it - but I get why some people get upset with "the left" because of this...
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Ahahaha, "As long as you're respectful one can disagree." And a paragraph later "hey, this guy pointed out trump would be worse for Palestineans that means he is down with genoicde!!!!"
Could you prove my point much harder?
this guy pointed out trump would be worse for Palestineans
You realize Trump pushed Israel to accept a ceasefire/prisoner exchange, right? That's an actual, material improvement in the situation in Gaza compared to Biden. Democrats who are still trotting out "Trump will somehow do an even worse genocide" are giving away they game that they don't even care enough to keep up on the news.
I say this as someone who think Trump should be in prison, too.
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I suppose to me, one’s moral weight is in their mind.
The problem that i see with that is the following: Assume a child has little neural activity (which, btw, is not true at all; children and newborns often have higher neural activity than grown-ups), but assume for a moment that a child had little neural activity, and therefore would be less worthy of preservation.
Now, somebody who has migraine, or has repeated electrical shocks in their brain, might be in a lot of pain, but has probably more neural activity than you. Would you now consider that since they have more neural activity, they are more worthy of life than you are? And what if you and that other person would be bound to the tracks of a trolley problem? Wouldn't it then be the ethical thing to kill you because you have less neural activity?
I don't mean to say that neural activity ∝moral weight. I am merely asserting that something without neural activity at all (or similar construct) can't be worth anything. This is why a rock has no moral value, and I don't need to treat a rock nicely.
I am less confident -- but still fairly confident -- that consciousness, pain, and so on require at least a couple neurons -- how many, I'm not sure -- but creatures like tiny snails and worms probably aren't worth consideration, or if they are then only very little. Shrimp are complex enough that I cannot say for sure that they aren't equal in value to a human, but my intuition says they still don't have fully-fledged sentience; I could be wrong though.
The strongest evidence that shrimp don't have sentience is anthropic -- if there are trillions of times more shrimp than humans, why am I a human? Isn't that astoundingly improbable? But anthropic arguments are questionable at best.
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Lessee... I suppose my hottest take is that no lives are sacred. I believe that human expansion into more 'wild' domains is a mistake and that national and state parks' availability should be limited (geographically - you may not venture into the Deep Parks). This probably borders on some vaguely eco-fascy beliefs, and I recognize human's inexorable curiousity and desire to explore, but you will never find me mourning a human victim of a wild animal.
We can disagree a bit about the sacredness of life but I think we agree about oreseving nature. Yet I think national parks are both a good and a practical necessity. If the general public can’t get a taste of wilderness they will not value it, and will not protest its demise. So it’s a balancing act— in a perfect world sure have some very large untouched reserves, but if you care about any wilderness surviving then national parks are a must imho.
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I'm far left, but I believe that any citizen should be allowed to own any gun.
Why any? Why not pistols or rifles with small magazines?
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I've been thinking of starting some sort of group to help with that goal-- would you be interested? I'm not sure what we could do, but I want to do something, you know? I figure the best impact I can have is to convince other people that I mostly agree with to adopt this approach, which is what I envision the group could help with.
DM me too pls
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can you name any example? and also, who's the judge? can somebody else decide you're too rabid for their opinion?
well given that i already did and the whole concept and spirit of this post appears to have flown right over your head you're lookin' a wee bit trollish there bud.
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counterpoint:
the labor market is a market, and as such regulated by the rule of Supply and demand. That implies: if the supply is increased, then the price is decreased. If the supply is decreased, then the price is increased.
In the context of the labor market, that means:
If there's fewer workers in the country (which comes naturally with a smaller population), then the price for labor (a.k.a. wages) goes higher. That increases the Quality Of Life for the people, and is therefore a socially good thing.More people also means more demand for things that require labour to create however. Your position is referred to as the lump of labour fallacy
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I don't mean to say that neural activity ∝moral weight. I am merely asserting that something without neural activity at all (or similar construct) can't be worth anything. This is why a rock has no moral value, and I don't need to treat a rock nicely.
I am less confident -- but still fairly confident -- that consciousness, pain, and so on require at least a couple neurons -- how many, I'm not sure -- but creatures like tiny snails and worms probably aren't worth consideration, or if they are then only very little. Shrimp are complex enough that I cannot say for sure that they aren't equal in value to a human, but my intuition says they still don't have fully-fledged sentience; I could be wrong though.
The strongest evidence that shrimp don't have sentience is anthropic -- if there are trillions of times more shrimp than humans, why am I a human? Isn't that astoundingly improbable? But anthropic arguments are questionable at best.
why am I a human and not a shrimp? Isn’t that astoundingly improbable?
haha yes i agree with that
my personal (kinda spiritual) take on this is that we are conscious because we are "nature's soldiers" and we're fighting the greater cause of life itself. That is what our consciousness is targeted at and what gives it justification in front of the world.
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what does that mean?
language of privilege
i've never heard that phrase
I think he means the mental framework where levels of privilege are assigned to swaths of the population based a facet of their identity: white privilege, female privilege, vegetarian privilege, etc.
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it will become automatically appealing to them the moment that is pays out economically for them. if they could afford more under a leftist politics, than under the current politics, people are gonna be all for it.
In theory it should have a strong monetary incentive for all but the wealthiest of cis/striaght/white/males. They just don't realize that for some reason.
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Humans aren't going to evolve towards intelligence. We're a pretty short-sighted stupid species. We're going to continue to devolve and kill ourselves off, one way or another.
Enter bioengineering: empathy virus
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Just wanted to prove that political diversity ain't dead. Remember, don't downvote for disagreements.
Stop out-woking one another, it's okay to be right silently in order to bring in fence sitters.
If someone says, "my spirit animal told me late-stage capitalism is evil" welcome them to the club with open arms, focus on how you're alike and trust them to work out their faux pas over time spent among like-minded peers.
Also cultural appropriation ≠ exploitation, we can stop clutching our collective pearls over these faux pas.
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Yes? I'm not so optimistic about humans becoming interplanetary, but if it were to happen, I'd make noise to try and limit any human settlement. I'd argue that if humans want so badly to be off this rock, they can make space arcologies designed around themselves rather than inserting themselves where they ought not be and fucking up wherever they land.
do you have plausible arguments for that that could be used to convince somebody of this that isn't already convinced?
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I see how that could feel right. It doesn't make sense to me personally though.
Is consciousness different from the ability to experience? If they are different what separates them, and why is consciousness the one that gets moral weight? If they are the same then how do you count feelings? Is it measured in real time or felt time? Do psychedelics that slow time make a person more morally valuable in that moment? If it is real time, then why can you disregard felt time?
What about single celled organisms like stentor coeruleus that can learn? Why are they below the bar for consciousness?
My intuition for a person's overall moral value is something like the integral of their experiences so far multiplied by their expected future QALYs. This fits my intuition of why it's okay to kill a zygote, and it's also morally abominable to, say, slightly shorten the lifespan of somebody (especially someone already on the brink of death), or to, erm, put someone out of their misery in some cases.
I'm not terribly moved by single-celled organisms that can "learn." It's not hard to find examples of simple things which most people wouldn't consider "alive," but "learn." For instance, a block of metal can "learn" -- it responds differently based on past stresses. Or "memory foam." You could argue that a river "learns," since it can find its way around obstacles and then double down on that path. Obviously, computers "learn." Here, we mean "learn" to refer to responding differently based on what's happened to it over time, rather than the subjective conscious feeling of gaining experience.
