The Gaming Den

wotmaniac wrote:and could you possibly explain the whole religious bigotry part? as it stands, I'm seeing a bit of a non sequitur there.

Because if you reject neuroscience's definition of personhood (and fetuses clearly do not fit that definition until well into pregnancy), it probably means that you follow that of a religion. You know, the organization that invents things like the Catholic Church's laughably misogynist and womb envy view of concept and complete total bullshit like souls.

Also, I'm never going to get a straight answer to my original question, am I?

Psychic Robot wrote: it's not my problem that tyrone decided to boost cars instead of going to college and jose never learned to speak english. people are responsible for their own decisions, sorry that you think the poor are helpless, weak, and stupid

Wow. Racist much?

Remember, there is no award for Worse Person In The World, so stop trying so hard. Act like you've been in the end zone before.

Psychic Robot wrote:

He's the toughest guy I've ever met. He's certainly the only guy I've ever encountered who has gotten shot and made the other guy run away.

this never happened but it's not really pertinent

I'd show you my bullet scar, but it's not impressive at all.

That being said, I am just in love with the fact that you can't accept it as truth. I think it says more about you that everything you've ever posted.

Thanks man. You just made my day!

tzor wrote:A wibble wibble wibble nininini yip yip...

...Actually those "ignorant" 16-year-olds have probably been coddled, coached and brain washed by Planned Parenthood agents who convince school districts to host special mandatory extra curicular events outside the school where they generally coach them on how wonderful they are and how evil their parents are...

..ggggnnngggh gurgle burble brrbrrbrbrbrrb drooooooool...

Oh yeah you aren't fucking stupid and insane are you.

Sure.

Planned parenthood. Out there using their jedi mind powas to hypnotize school districts for no conceivable reason and then indoctrinate children into their cult which doesn't actually in any way behave like a cult or have any reasonable cult like contact with them ever again.

Just because YOUR religious crazy nut jobs run around trying to indoctrinate children in that age group with extra curricular events doesn't mean all extra curricular events are rival religious crazy indoctrinations. Planned parenthood does not operate like a church, for a start it does not demand the loyalty and time and change in life styles that the religious indoctrination groups demand. You do not attend Planned Parenthood Church every Sunday for the holy sacrament of free abortions for everyone.

But to put in words you might understand... "A burbble burble goochi goo! Fiddle Dee Dee Potatoes"

Wow. Racist much?

terms such as "racist" and "bigot" hold no sway over me. they are used by petty anti-intellectuals who think that they can win an argument by name-calling

That being said, I am just in love with the fact that you can't accept it as truth. I think it says more about you that everything you've ever posted.

shrug I'm familiar with nerds trying to talk up their accomplishments online, so going on about YEAH I TOOK A BULLET AND I STARED DOWN THE SHOOTER AND TIME SLOWED DOWN AND THEN I KICKED HIS ASS WITH MY AUTHENTIC REPLICA WAKIZASHI is nothing. of course you didn't bring it up in the first place so whatever

Unless, of course, it is based on the rationale that contraception is abundant and pregnancy from sex in which it cannot be employed is a special case in which responsibility for getting pregnant was outside the realm of the mother.

No. Either fetuses are people, and you are making exceptions for killing people to ease the physical and mental anguish of another, for which the fetus is not at fault (the rape exception), or fetuses are not people, and I see absolutely no reason to give a shit about abortion, at all, in anyway.

The second you start drawing up that exception clause, you're just admitting, "well, fetuses aren't really people, which is why it's okay to kill them sometimes to help the people-people." Being a person is a boolean state. Either you are or you aren't. If you are, you have rights. If you aren't, you don't and I don't care. You're trying to make them half-people, so they only have the rights that don't lead to morally repugnant situations like being forced to carry the child of a rapist or die from childbirth.

Also, you should probably realize everything you said is exactly what I said; punishment for sex. "You chose to have sex. It had a negative consequence. It is completely possible to medically alleviate this negative consequence. But we aren't going to, because you chose to have sex and as someone choosing to do something you deserve to fully enjoy the negative consequences of it." You may as well apply a similarly stupid rational to getting in a car. "You chose to get in the car and it crashed, so you have to deal with the perfectly medically relievable negative consequences of crashing." (And yes, this is an applicable analogue, because we've established that fetuses are not-people, because if they were people it would in fact be horrible to abort them in the rape case, but it isn't.)

And this doesn't even touch on the idea of 'imperfect contraception,' since you talk as though contraception never, ever, ever failed. If contraception were ever perfect and 100% available, then maybe what you were saying would have some weight. Unfortunately, contraception is flawed. And your response in the cases where ordinary people take every precaution and they fail? "You knew the risks when you had sex, so now you have to deal with the consequences." I.e., you are punishing people for sex.

Psychic_Robot wrote:it's not my problem that tyrone decided to boost cars instead of going to college and jose never learned to speak english. people are responsible for their own decisions, sorry that you think the poor are helpless, weak, and stupid

You are retarded and monstrous. Do you not understand what those numbers were implying? The proportion of minority doctors is less than the proportion of minorities in the country. That is not a personal quality; that is a social circumstance. If this were a matter of self-determination and hard work, then you'd see equal percentages, OR it would lead to the conclusion that minorities are inherently inferior beings.

Which are the two routes you have here:
1) Social circumstances are making it such that these people are less likely to succeed at life.
2) Minorities are genuinely 'inferior beings' and are less likely to succeed at life (i.e., you calling minorities lazy criminals).

You went with the second explanation. You are being racist, and that's really all there is to it. There's no petty anti-intellectualism trying to paint your position up with a negative word here. The only way you can reconcile the difference in those numbers with the world is to say, "social circumstances cause it," or "minorities are subhumans." You're going with #2, and that by definition makes you a racist.

DSMatticus wrote:

Psychic_Robot wrote:it's not my problem that tyrone decided to boost cars instead of going to college and jose never learned to speak english. people are responsible for their own decisions, sorry that you think the poor are helpless, weak, and stupid

You are retarded and monstrous.

Is this a surprise to you? Haven't you read just about anything else he's posted?

Frank can be abrasive, Kaelik is an asshole, PL is often filled with misplaced rage, Tzor is annoyingly obtuse, and I'm sure many people have bad things to say about me. But PR is pretty much defined by the fact that he regularly says monstrous, retarded crap. I can't speak to whether it necessarily makes him a monster, because no one has any way of knowing if he really means any of the shit he says.

Shadzar is the Ur-Grognard. PR is the Ur-Troll.

You are retarded and monstrous. Do you not understand what those numbers were implying? The proportion of minority doctors is less than the proportion of minorities in the country.

see I know exactly what those numbers are implying: on the whole, minorities are less qualified to be doctors than non-minorities.

That is not a personal quality; that is a social circumstance. If this were a matter of self-determination and hard work, then you'd see equal percentages,

not necessarily

OR it would lead to the conclusion that minorities are inherently inferior beings.

not necessarily

Which are the two routes you have here:
1) Social circumstances are making it such that these people are less likely to succeed at life.
2) Minorities are genuinely 'inferior beings' and are less likely to succeed at life (i.e., you calling minorities lazy criminals).

You went with the second explanation. You are being racist, and that's really all there is to it. There's no petty anti-intellectualism trying to paint your position up with a negative word here. The only way you can reconcile the difference in those numbers with the world is to say, "social circumstances cause it," or "minorities are subhumans." You're going with #2, and that by definition makes you a racist.

first of all, calling me racist has no effect on me because I'm not a politically-correct asslicker. it also does nothing to discredit anything I say. it is the height of intellectual laziness to dismiss something outright because the speaker is "racist" or "sexist" or "homophobic" (you want some sexism? women don't take construction jobs because they're weaker than men and they want to work in cushy office jobs. facts and reality are bigoted)

second of all, please prove that social circumstances are the cause of minorities being underrepresented as doctors (actually don't try because I don't care). obviously you don't want to draw the "racist" conclusion because that would shatter your worldview, but I have seen enough evidence in my lifetime to say that yes, minorities pollute the area that they inhabit. (please don't start hollering just yet, I don't think it's because blacks are lower on the evolutionary scale than whites) it's not politically correct to say so, but it would be intellectually dishonest to deny what my eyes and ears have witnessed. pick any city in america with a large minority population and you'll find a festering shithole of crime and corruption. look what happened to detroit

I realize you're going to scream bloody murder but that's okay, I'm sure that living in your middle class gated suburb has given you a lot of life experience with minorities

third of all, you are a [EDITED] (that's a mean word btw). your two conclusions are characteristic of the extremist mindset, the us vs. them dynamic. there is in fact a third, and that is that minorities are underrepresented as doctors because they have been made dependent on the government. they are not genetically inferior or "subhumans" (sorry I'm not a nazi or white supremacist) but they have crippled by the very policies set out to protect them. in becoming dependent on the government, their family structure has disintegrated and they now demand more and more from the government rather than striving and pressing upward to better themselves. they have thus become entrenched in their lower class mode of life of consumption and instant gratification, instead relying on THATS RACIST lawsuits to get their way in society

now obviously this realtalk is going to cause a major limpout but please contain yourself for a moment further while I ask you this question:

indian reservations are third-world cesspools in america despite the people getting government aid. now are they shitty places to live because the government isn't giving them enough cash, or are they shitty places to live because the people are stagnating, living off of someone else's money and spending it on booze?

tl;dr: maybe I'm a racist but I expect people to take responsibility for their actions

PR... why are derailing your own thread you established explicitly to prevent derailments of other threads?

I mean OK, I know that in truth you only established this thread for trolling and the "derail" is some totally awesome opportunities for you to lie about yourself and your opinions for further trolling opportunities and as such isn't REALLY off topic from your... world view.

But really. Maybe you should read your own signature.

Well, PhoneLobster, he didn't start the derail, conversation sort of just naturally went this way. If this subconversation were to reach a conclusion, points from it could be carried back into the actual conversation to further it, but this subconversation will never conclude, so that's moot.

Psychic_Robot wrote:not necessarily

Necessarily. Either social circumstances explain why there aren't as many minority doctors, or minorities are less suited to become doctors. Those are currently the only two explanations. If you have an explanation that I missed, throw it out there and we can see it where it stands. Otherwise, you are forced to hold to one of those positions and you are currently choosing the latter. Your arguments are literally implying minorities are subhuman.

You're disguising it with the ideas of 'choice' and 'self-determination,' but if that was the ONLY issue it would only explain why not all people are doctors; it does not explain the difference occurring along ethnic lines. You have to invoke something else, and the only options are, "social circumstances," or "minorities suck." You're currently going with "minorities suck." You don't realize it, but that's what you're doing.

PR, people aren't calling you a racist to hurt your feelings or change your behavior. They honestly don't care about you.

They are pointing out the flawed and anti-intellectual parts of what you are saying by noting the racism. You see, that's was prejudice is.... the unwillingness or inability to objectively view facts because of existing opinions.

I mean, you think minorities create shitholes despite the fact that whites actually create more shitholes by volume (see Appalachia, for example). Looking at the data shows conclusively that poverty creates crime regardless of race.

You are not an intellectual or some misunderstood genius, but a common racist and tool for a run-of-the-mill fascist movement. We actually understand you perfectly and have judged you fairly because we looked at the facts.

"Social circumstances" can also be constructed by the culture that continues to propagate them.

http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/by ... C&ind=4837

If 80% of black births in DC are to single mothers but only 6% of white births, then something has gone all kinds of shitty, and at those magnitudes I feel it's safe to say that the source of those troubles extend past external influence. Resolving that problem is crazily-difficult: for example, the Canadian government has spent the last few decades attempting to atone for their past racism and ethically and morally repulsive treatment of their native populations, but at this point the culture-at-large is basically beyond the ability of outsiders to help. Meaningful change is going to have to come from within, somehow, but by this point the damage is done and is viciously self-propagating. External aid can mitigate but I doubt they will ever be able to solve the pre-existing, externally-created problem.

mean_liar wrote:If 80% of black births in DC are to single mothers but only 6% of white births, then something has gone all kinds of shitty, and at those magnitudes I feel it's safe to say that the source of those troubles extend past external influence.

Now that's completely true. A lot of the problems are cultural, and there is a lot of cultural inertia that makes it incredibly hard to fix, and that's a tragedy. It means you have to do a serious cost-benefit analysis. What can we fix, to what extent can we fix it, what is working and isn't, and how much is it costing society at large?

But that doesn't make it anymore just; a culture 'can't bring its problems on itself.' Cultures are largely inherited. You're born into a culture, and emulate that culture, and then you have the problems of that culture. The only thing you did wrong was being born to a group that's disadvantaged (even if that group is perpetuating its own disadvantage). And of course, as you point out, the seed of the problems is often times external (and a few hundred years old).

And now this is waaaay off topic. We are derailing from a derail about social circumstances from abortion into where social circumstances come from and why they are hard to change.

mean_liar wrote:Unless, of course, it is based on the rationale that contraception is abundant and pregnancy from sex in which it cannot be employed is a special case in which responsibility for getting pregnant was outside the realm of the mother.

thank you, good sir.

RobbyPants wrote: Well, maybe that's not what you meant, but it's what you said. A better response would have been to clarify your stance on what equals a "living human being". Per your definition, the guy with a heart attack stops being a living human, so your quip about saving the life is a non-sequitur.

I didn't think I needed to go back and cover the legal and ethical standards involving adults. (I realize that I tend to post walls-o'-text, so I try to be brief whenever possible)
hint: if your contrariness has to go to these lengths of asininity, then you're probably missing something very fundamental.
so, are we clear on what I meant, or do I still need to articulate it in more detail?

I don't see anyone here touting the virtues of irresponsibility.

no, they're just apologizing for it.
people don't like to be held responsible for themselves; and since nobody likes hypocrites and "judgement" seems to be a bad word (regardless of context), we've become too pussified to actually expect others to maintain any sort of standards.

I personally don't want to see people punished for long periods of time due to decisions they couldn't make (rape) or ones they didn't fully understand. And if you make abortion legal for rape victims and not others, people will just lie to get abortions (and possibly accuse innocent people of rape to get one). I don't like the thought of a woman using abortion as a contraceptive, but there's no way to enforce that without punishing rape victims and/or guys in consensual relationships.

as I have defined things (or as I'm willing to have them defined), there is a window of opportunity.
personal anecdote time:
I have personally know 2 women who have aborted their rape-babies. in both cases, the decision was made immediately. others can do the same.
part of the responsibility that I'm talking about is simply making a decision.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:

wotmaniac wrote:and could you possibly explain the whole religious bigotry part? as it stands, I'm seeing a bit of a non sequitur there.

Because if you reject neuroscience's definition of personhood (and fetuses clearly do not fit that definition until well into pregnancy), it probably means that you follow that of a religion.

autonomous heartbeat would seem to indicate something. I'm also okay with delaying that legal definition up to quickening.
besides, as a science, neuroscience is still fairly young and underdeveloped (relatively speaking, that is).
oh, wait a minute -- did I just do that? oops.
goddammit, I just did it again.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Also, I'm never going to get a straight answer to my original question, am I?

actually, I covered this in my first post.

DSMatticus wrote: The only actual, valid justification for a stance of "rape-abortion okay, not-rape-abortion bad," is to say, "carrying the fetus is punishment for your choice." That choosing to have sex is somehow inherently bad, and the consequences of having sex should be allowed to negatively impact your life and you should have no recourse to 'improve your life' because you chose to have sex and that's bad. And you can hold that position, but it hinges on the presupposition that sex is bad, and that's a moral judgment I find laughable and certainly don't share with you; stop trying to legislate it.

you seem to have missed a couple of things. but I do realize that maybe I've not articulated myself well; so let me give it another shot:
there needs to be clear point at which we legally define "living human being"; furthermore, that point needs to be an empirically-determinable milestone (not some moving arbitrary timeline; nor just a complete free-for-all). I have proposed the 2 possible milestones that make the most sense to me. And yes, AFAIC, anything before that milestone is just a lump of tissue.
I'm okay with removing a lump of tissue. I'm not okay with killing a human being that has not done anything wrong.
And as to the "life of the mother" issue, post-milestone, .... well, that's what's known as a "complex moral dilemma". Here's the deal on that one -- one of them is going to die no matter what. That being the case, it's probably "better" to save the life of the one that is already a functioning member of society. Sure, mommy is free to choose the other option, but I would recommend against it (though, still free to choose so, nonetheless).I see another fallacious rabbit hole coming; but I'll deal with it when it comes.
Oh, and as to your "sex bad" assertion ..... more strawman.
being irresponsible is bad (not just in this case; but in life in general)
casual sex with random strangers is irresponsible. to take it a step further, casual sex without forethought or proper consideration of the consequences is irresponsible. you can have sex for other-than-procreative purposes and it not be bad/irresponsible. responsible in this case is taking all reasonable precautions, and having a decisive game plan in the event of contraceptive failure.

K wrote:

Psychic Robot wrote: it's not my problem that tyrone decided to boost cars instead of going to college and jose never learned to speak english. people are responsible for their own decisions, sorry that you think the poor are helpless, weak, and stupid

Wow. Racist much?

well, statistically speaking .......
but seriously, I don't think he was intending to be racist. it's just that it is minorities for which gov't/society keeps selling this victimhood coddling bullshit.
it's called nuance. (well, at least, that's the connotation that I took away from it)

DSMatticus wrote: Which are the two routes you have here:
1) Social circumstances are making it such that these people are less likely to succeed at life.
2) Minorities are genuinely 'inferior beings' and are less likely to succeed at life (i.e., you calling minorities lazy criminals).

how about both.
i.e., the social circumstance is the fact that the gov't, et. al., keeps treating them like they're inferior.
if you tell somebody enough times that the system is rigged and they can't get ahead, then they will eventually believe it, and, thus, act like it.
and PR covered the rest.

If you're not using a religious definition of personhood then you're going to have to use either a(nother) totally arbitrary standard (like philosophy or randomness or tea leaves or whatever) or something scientific like... neuroscience. Of course neuroscience only tells us when sapience happens or has nearly happened, but since sapience is the crown jewel of personhood anyway it just as well does.

That said, what the fuck does a heartbeat or quickening or whatever have to do with anything? Your heart is a pump. Your leg is a lever. A hateful cuss would say that it's a weaksauce attempt to push personhood back a few months, but I'll leave a hateful cuss to say that.

If a heart is a pump, and self-determination probably a post-hoc rationalization trick that your brain does, no one is sapient. I mean, that's my rather limited understanding of neuroscience. People think they're sapient and making decisions based on consideration when it's more likely that they're advanced machines responding to complicated stimuli.

Under that rubric, murder isn't really much of a thing, is it? I think neuroscience might be a bad metric.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:If you're not using a religious definition of personhood then you're going to have to use either a(nother) totally arbitrary standard (like philosophy or randomness or tea leaves or whatever) or something scientific like... neuroscience. Of course neuroscience only tells us when sapience happens or has nearly happened, but since sapience is the crown jewel of personhood anyway it just as well does.

That said, what the fuck does a heartbeat or quickening or whatever have to do with anything? Your heart is a pump. Your leg is a lever. A hateful cuss would say that it's a weaksauce attempt to push personhood back a few months, but I'll leave a hateful cuss to say that.

... and the brain is just an ECU. nice job on the over-reductionism.

okay, good sir, could you be so kind as to illuminate my ignorant little brain as your proper neuroscience definition?


---------------------------

okay, time to move this a little bit:

the very same arguments that are made to support abortion (especially late-term) are also the very same arguments used to support "postnatal abortion" -- a concept that is slowly emerging to the point of being more than just a fringe idea.
discuss.

mean_liar wrote:If a heart is a pump, and self-determination probably a post-hoc rationalization trick that your brain does, no one is sapient. I mean, that's my rather limited understanding of neuroscience. People think they're sapient and making decisions based on consideration when it's more likely that they're advanced machines responding to complicated stimuli.

Under that rubric, murder isn't really much of a thing, is it? I think neuroscience might be a bad metric.

Because Personhood is an arbitrary made up category designed to tell us who does and doesn't have rights, and it otherwise completely meaningless, so sapience, which is an actual description of actual brain processes of specific kinds, is still a thing, and if you want to define a person as "having sapience" you totally can. It's a stupid definition, but it's possible.

That self determination is a post hoc rationalization doesn't mean that the post hoc rationalization doesn't occur.

mean_liar wrote:Under that rubric, murder isn't really much of a thing, is it? I think neuroscience might be a bad metric.

That doesn't logically follow. Killing things with sapience (even if sapience is deterministic) is still a different thing than killing things without sapience (if you can even call that killing). Deterministic sapience is still not 'not-sapience.' Deterministic sapience is exactly what you said it is; sapience, and any value judgments based on sapience still apply.

mean_liar wrote:the very same arguments that are made to support abortion (especially late-term) are also the very same arguments used to support "postnatal abortion" -- a concept that is slowly emerging to the point of being more than just a fringe idea.
discuss.

Postnatal abortion presupposes a mother's legal ownership of her child, which is unclear. Prenatal abortion simply presupposes a mother's legal ownership of her own body, and her right to remove things from it, which is immediately obvious. They're distinguishable legally and to a lesser extent morally, even if newly born infants aren't 'people' either. You can't kill your neighbor's dog because you feel like it, and it's certainly not a person. But you could if it had crawled into your womb and that was the only way to remove it (lol what?).

Necessarily. Either social circumstances explain why there aren't as many minority doctors, or minorities are less suited to become doctors. Those are currently the only two explanations. If you have an explanation that I missed, throw it out there and we can see it where it stands. Otherwise, you are forced to hold to one of those positions and you are currently choosing the latter. Your arguments are literally implying minorities are subhuman.

I'm not suggesting that minorities are intrinsically less capable of being doctors. what I am suggesting is that government programs intended to help minorities have created a culture in which they are less capable of being doctors. given the broad definition of "social circumstances" I suppose that culture could be defined as such.

at this point, I'm not sure what we're arguing

p.s. I'm fine with this derail, it's not like this conversation could go much better in any other thread. maybe we should start a circumcision debate next

Psychic_Robot wrote:I'm not suggesting that minorities are intrinsically less capable of being doctors. what I am suggesting is that government programs intended to help minorities have created a culture in which they are less capable of being doctors.

Emphasis mine. Now this is a social circumstance. The exact definition of. By saying this, your position is now a lot less racist, but also a lot less consistent, because you are admitting that people are being born into a situation that predestines them for a higher statistical likelihood of failure (i.e. they are being born into a culture, and therefore learning that culture, and that culture makes them less likely to succeed), and at the same time claiming people are the ones who determine their own fate. You're contradicting yourself, because they certainly didn't decide what culture they were born into, and the culture is affecting their ability to succeed.

So obviously, the solution is to correct that culture (a social circumstance) such that it no longer has that effect. You believe we can correct that culture by reducing access to government assistance programs. I.e., if we 'take away the crutches', they'll learn to stand on their own. This is something we can empirically measure and study.

Your hypothesis is: Higher access to government assistance leads to less successful minorities. We can get data for this hypothesis, and see if you are factually right or wrong. I'll see what I can google in the near future, but I've got nothing right now, though I'm fairly confident that this should be easy to prove wrong.

I can't change the fact that they have shitty parents and I'm not enacting a bunch of policies where someone is favored based on skin color. whites are born into similar shitty circumstances and I don't expect them to have a bunch of government programs to help them, either

Psychic_Robot wrote:I can't change the fact that they have shitty parents and I'm not enacting a bunch of policies where someone is favored based on skin color. whites are born into similar shitty circumstances and I don't expect them to have a bunch of government programs to help them, either

And that's not racist, but it's, "fuck you, you weren't born lucky and I don't care. Life is what it is, and if you aren't lucky you just have to live with it."

P.S., nearly 50% of welfare recipients are white. They are by and large the majority. Now, a higher percentage of minorities are on welfare, but a higher percentage of the people receiving welfare are white (for any given minority). I.e., welfare actually helps more white people than anyone else, so if welfare is favoritism based on race it already favors white people. It's just the actual number of white people in the country is much, much larger, but that's irrelevant to what you actually said.

Your philosophy in this case is still monstrous, because you're basically saying "being born armless and legless is just something that happens; there's no reason to try and prevent it or fix it. Especially not if it would cost everyone a little bit of extra money in taxes." It is the epitome of selfishness. You think people should suffer based on circumstances completely outside their control, and that society has no role alleviating that.

what right do you have to my money? what right do I have to yours?

I don't think "majority" means what DSMatticus thinks it means...