US 2024 Presidential Election

Trunkage

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They did in China where they actually happened.
Australia has four times less of a death rate than the US. Because of proper lockdowns. And the economy didn't take a tumble like the US

We even got vaccines well after the US. Lockdowns don't save lives if you don't actually do a lockdown. The US didn't doing anything close to one
 
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Trunkage

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Hey, since we are all talking about Hedonism and pleasure etc. Can anyone tell me what percentage of abortions happen in America with people who are already mums? Like, they already have a kid and then have an abortion to a potential second, third or even eighth child
 

Seanchaidh

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Hey, since we are all talking about Hedonism and pleasure etc. Can anyone tell me what percentage of abortions happen in America with people who are already mums? Like, they already have a kid and then have an abortion to a potential second, third or even eighth child

Six in 10 women who have abortions are already mothers, and half of them have two or more children, according to 2019 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “One of the main reasons people report wanting to have an abortion is so they can be a better parent to the kids they already have,” Professor Upadhyay said.
 

XsjadoBlayde

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Is it time to point out that 2022 was a bit of a mirage. When socially progressive (including some Dems) people came out in 2021 over the last war in Gaza, APAC deliberately targeted them, trying to oust them from any power. It just took them a few years to change the course of the country. The exact same shit has been happening in Australia

The progressive wing in the DNC are on borrowed time
Same in the UK during and after Corbyn, with it specifically being weaponised to remove him as a threat to capital and long-term foreign policy interests focused on full geopolitical takeover of middle-eastern resource/extraction to serve aforementioned capital. Would go into detail but would rather blow my own brains out with all the good it done so far.
 

Trunkage

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We keep talking about abortion being related to young women being sexually active, and they aren't even the major demographic using these services

Worrying about hedonism has got very little to do with abortions. Sure, it's there is some, but it's just conservatives overexaggerating a situation. Again
 

tstorm823

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We keep talking about abortion being related to young women being sexually active, and they aren't even the major demographic using these services

Worrying about hedonism has got very little to do with abortions. Sure, it's there is some, but it's just conservatives overexaggerating a situation. Again
That really isn't the conversation that was happening at all.
 

Agema

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It's not "a hedonistic pursuit", it's not an insult or euphemism, it's actual hedonism that Agema is expressing. Hedonism is the idea that the determinant of moral goodness, the governing principle you might say, is maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain.
No, I'm expressing a concept here that is akin to the idea of non-maleficence in medicine or animal experimentation. So think about why we use anaesthetics, rather than just strap someone down tightly, give them a stick to bite on, and proceed with surgery. Why we give a dog more protections in the way it should be treated than a beetle. "Pleasure" is neither here nor there, it's just minimising suffering. If we're talking about something that cannot think or feel, it does not have to merit any more protection than a vegetable.
 

tstorm823

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No, I'm expressing a concept here that is akin to the idea of non-maleficence in medicine or animal experimentation. So think about why we use anaesthetics, rather than just strap someone down tightly, give them a stick to bite on, and proceed with surgery. Why we give a dog more protections in the way it should be treated than a beetle. "Pleasure" is neither here nor there, it's just minimising suffering. If we're talking about something that cannot think or feel, it does not have to merit any more protection than a vegetable.
That's not at all analogous, as you are talking about minimizing suffering in things you intended to do anyway. You give the person anesthetics so that it doesn't hurt when you perform the surgery that is ultimately to help them. The governing principle is not minimizing pain, and in fact, if that were the principle with surgery, you wouldn't do the surgery, you'd just put people down like animals. There's a bunch of pain in recovering from surgery, but you don't feel a thing if you're dead.

So why do all those surgeries? To keep people alive, because keeping people alive is good. You try to minimize pain in the pursuit of keeping people alive. The idea that anything that's painless is justifiable is nonsense you would not apply to any other situation but abortion.
 

Trunkage

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That's not at all analogous, as you are talking about minimizing suffering in things you intended to do anyway. You give the person anesthetics so that it doesn't hurt when you perform the surgery that is ultimately to help them. The governing principle is not minimizing pain, and in fact, if that were the principle with surgery, you wouldn't do the surgery, you'd just put people down like animals. There's a bunch of pain in recovering from surgery, but you don't feel a thing if you're dead.

So why do all those surgeries? To keep people alive, because keeping people alive is good. You try to minimize pain in the pursuit of keeping people alive. The idea that anything that's painless is justifiable is nonsense you would not apply to any other situation but abortion.
Yeah... I wouldn't go down this track. You have a very different concept of when a fetus is alive to the average US citizen. This will just reinforce what they are saying
 

tstorm823

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Yeah... I wouldn't go down this track. You have a very different concept of when a fetus is alive to the average US citizen. This will just reinforce what they are saying
You have contributed nothing to the conversation but your own confusion. Let the people handle themselves.
 

Seanchaidh

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So why do all those surgeries? To keep people alive, because keeping people alive is good. You try to minimize pain in the pursuit of keeping people alive. The idea that anything that's painless is justifiable is nonsense you would not apply to any other situation but abortion.
The actual reason to perform those surgeries in our societies is to make money-- to satisfy the surgeon's desire for more money. And the reason to pay for the surgeries is to satisfy someone's preference of being alive (or heal a wound or cure a disease or whatever-- oftentimes the objective of a patient is purely to reduce suffering in the long term and has little or nothing to do with being alive). Not many are putting effort into staying alive because it's arbitrarily "a good thing" only. Those that are tend to be people who are indoctrinated against suicide who otherwise would want to die. Most people expend effort or money on staying alive because they want to be alive; they have that preference. By and large they couldn't give less of a shit whether being alive is "a good thing" outside their own point of view except to the extent that they imagine their own point of view is a universal morality.

Fetuses do not have preferences, so there is no preference related to their being alive to satisfy except those of other entities. You might prefer some fetus stays alive, but this is mostly an abstract exercise for you: in the vast majority of cases, your opinion is not very relevant. The one carrying the fetus is the one who is most affected, and that person most likely has preferences assuming they're not brain-dead. Given that the one carrying the fetus has preferences and the fetus does not have preferences, it is pretty clear which preferences should govern: the ones that actually exist. If the one carrying the fetus wishes to regard it as a person, that is their prerogative. If they do not, that is also their prerogative. And so we can have a morally consistent position that abortion (or any other action that results in the termination of the pregnancy) can be murder (or some other criminal homicide) if it is performed against the wishes of the one carrying the fetus but also that it is not if it is performed at the request of the one carrying the fetus.

And to preempt a common objection, I'll note that not only do fetuses not have preferences, they never have had preferences either. There is no particular reason to consider them as part of our moral community unlike e.g. coma patients who have had an opportunity to express their preference about living in the form of having or not having a DNR-- or indeed not having already killed themselves.

Fetuses also have no meaningful relationships with other people apart from the very one-sided expectations of parents and grandparents and so forth. These might be described better as hypotheses than as relationships-- and these hypotheses can exist without any difference regardless of whether yet the fetus actually exists. No one in the world's entire history has "gotten to know" a fetus. No fetus has ever shared its thoughts. So if someone carrying a fetus doesn't want it or doesn't want to be a part of making a new person, it should absolutely be regarded as that person's prerogative to terminate the pregnancy. If you want to make new people, find your own willing breeder and leave the unwilling out of it.
 

tstorm823

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By and large they couldn't give less of a shit whether being alive is "a good thing" outside their own point of view except to the extent that they imagine their own point of view is a universal morality.
You say this flippantly, as though the golden rule isn't a watershed moment in the history of ethics.
 

Seanchaidh

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You say this flippantly, as though the golden rule isn't a watershed moment in the history of ethics.
Imagining your own point of view as a universal morality is not the golden rule. It's solipsistic egoism.

But I thank you for helping to clarify what I'm saying by raising that odd interpretation.
 

tstorm823

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Imagining your own point of view as a universal morality is not the golden rule. It's solipsistic egoism.

But I thank you for helping to clarify what I'm saying by raising that odd interpretation.
That's a rather nonsensical use of "universal" then, as solipsistic egoism supposes that only your personal viewpoint, only your personal morality exists, and there is nothing of any significance outside of it. Solipsistic egoism would suggest there is no universal morality. Basing morality on the idea that others are real, equal agents with largely the same concerns as you is entirely the opposite of both egoism and solipsism.

The phrase "imagines their own point of view is a universal" implies someone is projecting their perception and desires onto others. If you wanted to say people imagine their own point of view as the only measure of morality, don't use the word universal.

This is kind of a shame though, as now your post is pretty much just useless and tautological. "People do things they want to because they want to" is not a compelling moral system, nor does it preclude the inclusion of a fetus, as you don't have a particularly clear conception of what a want actually is. If we can reduce to a purely materialistic cause and effect like "surgeon does surgery for money", how is that meaningfully different than "fetus twists for more comfortable position"?
 

Seanchaidh

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That's a rather nonsensical use of "universal" then, as solipsistic egoism supposes that only your personal viewpoint, only your personal morality exists
And here I thought "except to the extent that they imagine..." marked the idea as something that is not supposed to make very much (if any) sense.

That is the most important part of this post, by the way. What follows is commentary.

Because the idea is nonsense-- or more accurately, it is silly. It is typical for people to want to live. We should not pretend that they do so because it is 'morally good'. If you want something that happens to be morally good and you attempt to satisfy that want, we should assume that the reason you do so is because you want it, not because you're committed to virtuous behavior or whatever. The idea that universal moral good-- what people should do in general without any qualification ('qualification' as in additions like "... if they want more money" or "... if they want to be regarded as serious" or "... if they want to achieve 30 lbs. of weight loss in a month" or "... if they want to get away with tax evasion" that mark the difference between practical advice about satisfying a certain goal and declarations of what is moral or immoral; what ought or ought not be done in any case)-- is identical with one's own preferences is silly. But despite that silliness, some people do seem to believe that what they want is necessarily good by virtue of being what they want.
 

tstorm823

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Because the idea is nonsense-- or more accurately, it is silly. It is typical for people to want to live. We should not pretend that they do so because it is 'morally good'.
But that's effectively your only offering as to why it is immoral to kill a person but acceptable to have an abortion. The only distinction you make is preference. Are you mocking your own perspective, or the idea of morality entirely?
Not confused. I'm just not you. Nor is America

It would be great if you could stop pretending disagreement is from confusion
No really, you don't understand what anyone else is saying. Not me, anyone at all.
 

Mister Mumbler

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I was going to just let this go but I will say that I got more aggressive at you than I probably should have. I'm just sick of people whining at me, especially at this point since what's done is done (hence why now I'm just fucking around and talking about Dear Leader Harris and whatnot; this conversation is pointless now that she has lost and rather than doing the mature thing and bowing out of the argument like you, I'm gonna do the immature thing!).
Oh hell no, do not take my exit as mature here, lol. It's quite immature, as it's basically a loud "screw you guys, I'm going home" back to my usual lurking of these messes that is the Current Events forums, and pulling an Irish Goodbye in the middle of what seemed like active discourse is silly (really thought about it though). It's nice to sit back without worrying about needing to answer things right away (like taking two weeks to respond, lol). Gives me more time to ponder to myself and figure out big and blindingly obvious truths about myself in the mean time (been a wild and frankly goofy week for me personally).

Besides, I was never put off about your aggressiveness or rather, I understood why, as like I said, I'm sorry to have singled you out in particular. It just seemed off all parties involved that you were one I could talk to and maybe get somewhere, but it did come off a bit patronizing so again, sorry about that. Frankly, everyone was throwing around shade and snide jabs all equally annoyed me, even if I could understand everyone's frustration, just a natural, if somewhat bad, mediator I guess.

Anyway, I'll just leave this here as this rather nicely sums up everything I've been feeling and trying to communicate in this thread better than me;
 
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