Timewaster's Guide Archive

Don't read your PMs.

I feel like the Lord Ruler, if you think about it hard enough, is a much more human character than he appears to be on the surface.  I think he meant to help, and in order to do so, he ended up doing something that hurt, but stopped whatever the problem was.  So, what ended up happening was a bittersweet solution.

As for the parchment, couldn't it be possible that Keepers have artists, who pass images from person to person, putting them on record as pieces of art and hiding them?  Perhaps she was given it by a keeper who needed to get rid of it.  Also, it could be possible it was taken from the Lord Ruler's palace by a guard who was desperate for a few boxings to try and bribe his family out of a death sentence, or something like that.  There are dozens of theoretical solutions--choose the one you'd like.

 "We leap into vast social experiments with no evidence of their efficacy or necessity"

I thought it was amusing that Card spent the entirety of the article defending the invasion of Iraq, which is perfectly described by his later statement, which I quoted above.

He attacks the intellectual elite with valid statements, and then ruins his validity by pretending the economic elite and/or "conservatives" are any better.  RARELY do people surround themselves with the views of others, and it is distressing that our government doesn't have a way to force opposing views into the white house.  Card accuses the social elite of being discriminatory of opposing views, and neglects the fact that Bush has nobody of an opposing view on his cabinet, and his administration went through that whole, "firing officials because they don't agree with what I think" phase, and they ask for political affiliation before hiring a person for any job under the administration... So essentially Card, who spends the entire article ridiculing the "intellectual elite" for being hypocritical and praising President Bush and his administration is, in fact, doing the exact same thing that he claims to be so disgusted by.  Right down to the name-calling.

As for the "intellectual elite" not being willing to go to war, I believe there are serious issues with all sides of the die there.  On the one side, the Bush Administration went into a war on false information (which was KNOWN to be false), and yet Card ignores this fact and claims the war in Iraq was always based on the concept of spreading freedom and democracy, yet our reasons for being in Iraq, according to the administration in charge, has changed from WMDs all the way down to spreading freedom and democracy over time.  Yet Card has the gull to attack Obama for changing his mind on issues--all politicians change their minds on issues according to what is popular.  Isn't the the nature of a democracy?  In a democracy, don't we want our elected officials to change their minds as we do, so they are actually representing how we feel rather than how they feel?  In an ideal representative democracy, the politician in question would ALWAYS vote with the people he represents, whether they be wrong or right in his/her mind.

However, sometimes force is needed (though usually it is more than adequate to THREATEN force).  The problem isn't that we aren't using force in Darfur, but that we aren't putting any TROOPS in Darfur for peacekeeping reasons.   If my memory serves me, there were only TWO UN peacekeeping troops in Darfur in 2007.  We aren't to send troops and force a solution, but to send non-combative troops to force temporary peace until a resolution can be found, only to assault when one side becomes aggressive, not picking sides in the issue, but only helping he who is being attacked at the time in order to persuade both sides to not attack, for fear of heavy losses.

And politicians, especially those who tend to agree with Card, send in other people's children to war while they rarely have anything invested in the war themselves, other than profit (and perhaps professional dignity, which few of them have, anyway).  We could solve two problems with one stone if we would enact a mandatory service in the military, like Isreal.  Not only would we be less likely to go into unimportant wars because those in charge, both the intellectual and economic elite, would HAVE to consider if the war is worth life because their family and friends' families would be on the line.  In addition, we would have more troops in order to create powerful peace-keeping missions, instead of not having the troops to go around because we are already invested in too many other wars/occupations.  Plus, our entire country would be a backup reserve of military force for emergencies, everybody would know how to defend themselves (and in a non-lethal way, unlike having a firearm), which would lower crime rates.

If we are to believe that we need a leader of strong conviction who will blunderingly charge into battle for causes, and never admit mistake, we might as well just suit ourselves a dictator.  The nature of a democracy is that those in charge represent US, not their own values or convictions.  Our leader should always consider what WE want as a people more heavily than what he or she believes should happen. 

Sometimes democracy must be overlooked in a moment of dictatorial power in extreme situations where action is needed but the people cannot see--this is a rare occasion and, in all honesty, may be a rare occasion which is not missed.

Modification:  Thanks a LOT for posting this article, Jakobus--good catch and good idea to post it.

I think the more important question is: Should we allow a potential life to be forfeited because it is inconvenient?  And if the answer is yes, then why stop in the womb?  Maybe we should give every family 6 months after the birth to decide whether or not they made the right choice.  After all, a baby is completely unable to take care of itself, so is that where we draw the line?  There are certainly situations where abortion is a viable option, but it should definitely be tempered with wisdom and common sense.  I certainly believe that any fetus that makes it to the 2nd trimester should be allowed to go to term unless there is a direct threat to the mother, or the baby is not viable. 

This is a fallacy of argument in logic--you are using a gross exaggeration of a point to make it seem irresponsible by extending its bounds beyond the point where it was meant to be extended to.  I think you know that the line was implied to be drawn at birth (or perhaps at the point when the fetus can feel pain, as it has been in my arguments).  The reason for this is it is simply a "potential life", like you said, and not a life, as it is in you infanticide example.  As long as you are causing no physical harm you are not creating any outcome different than using a condom or a birth control pill, or not having sex at all.

And, like you said, there are some cases where abortion is simply a viable option, like when both the mother and fetus is at risk (or so I think most people would agree--there's no use in putting both lives, the human and fetus, at risk).  Who can decide where the line is drawn.  Who is to say, "you can have an abortion, but you cannot."  Humans are imperfect, and no person or group of people is truly wise enough to make decisions for everybody--especially not when those decisions are being based on holy doctrines or ideas that not everybody conforms to, as a majority of anti-choice arguments stem from (either underneath the argument or blatantly in it).

Also (and this is simply food for thought, not an argument necessarily for pro-choice) a large percentage of abortions are had by the lower classes, theoretically because the woman cannot afford the to raise a child in some resource (money, time or love--something).  If you outlaw the choice in the case of abortions, you're likely to have one of three outcomes. 
A) The law does not have a large effect on the illegal behavior, but instead the behavior is happening in an undocumented, unsupervised and unsafe way, leaving nothing but a negative effect (as was the case with prohibition). 

B) The law is effective to a capacity, and slightly more fetuses are allowed to be made babies than the number of extra lives put at risk.  A slight gain if you are in the camp that a fetus life is equivalent to a human life.  This is probably the least likely of these three "likely" scenarios, and will still eventually have the effect of the third situation...

C) The law is effective to a moderately large capacity, more lower class children are being born.  Note that back alley abortions are still going on, and you are adding to the pool of those who are most likely to RECEIVE an abortion, especially a back alley abortion.  This is also the group of people who are most likely to have pregnancy at a young age.  As you raise the number of people in this category (which, if your law is somewhat successful, will occur at a steadily exponential rate generation to generation), you are also increasing the number of people receiving unsafe, illegal abortions.  While your percentage of abortions will have gone down, as time goes by you will actually be RAISING the number of abortions, and doing so in a way that is unsafe for both mother and fetus instead of just the fetus.

A situation in which an abortion law is completely successful is a statistical impossibility and therefor not even worth looking at.  The likelyhood of an abortion law being even 90% successful is extraordinarily low, as people who have made the decision to receive an abortion have already made a very difficult decision to which legality probably is hardly an issue.  I mean, if laws against marijuana, which is not a hugely driving decision, can hardly keep people from using it, then laws against abortion, which is a much more serious, life changing situation, are not likely to have a near-perfect effect.

I think there's a difference between somebody who has a machine as an organ and a growing creature which is not yet advanced enough to have said organ, and I think you know there is a difference.  Again, just like the comparison between paralysis and abortion, it is something that is just not a good comparison because of hugely different circumstances.

The idea behind my statement was that a fetus is not a human as we perceive humans, people try to humanize them because they know it will someday become a human.  The decision to abort isn't usually made on behalf of the fetus, it is usually made on behalf of the mother.  Every sperm in the future could be a person, should we make a law against masturbation or safe-sex practices which kill sperm?  Every egg has the ability to become a human, why aren't we arresting women for murder once a month?

We should not judge something based on what it could be, or what it will be, but what it is.  And what a fetus is, especially before the third trimester, is a growing parasite which will someday (in most, but not all cases) become a human.  But it is not a human.  No harm, no foul as long as you are not harming another sentient being.  What is the difference (other than religiously, which is not a valid reason to put a rule over everybody) between a couple who used safe sex practices and killed off the chance of a baby during sex, or a couple who did not and got an abortion, thus doing the same thing to the same sperm and egg?  We are not causing any pain, or any suffering and the outcome is the same.  For that matter, what is the difference between a couple who did not have sex and thus killed off the sperm and egg over time?  All three end in the same result, that is, a suffer-free removal of the sperm and egg, sometimes in the form of an embryo or fetus.  At the point in time when you are causing suffering, abortion laws are separate issue which need to be considered separately.

as for the statistics, it essentially means that less than half of the time people react in a predictable way according to their personality, which includes personal beliefs.  Also, about thirty to forty percent of times any person is in the same situation they react in the same way, despite differences in personal beliefs.  It was just an example to show how morality, along with other parts of who we consider ourselves, is more or less shifting all of the time, depending on dozens of unrealized factors.

As for my view on animal rights, I didn't mean to say all creatures have the same rights as humans (and while this is getting off topic, I don't really feel it matters because this thread usually would have fallen into degenerate flaming and been shut down by now, anyway).  I simply mean to say that all sentient beings have some natural rights (or so I feel is obviously correct, but you are also right in saying I may not be).  After that, self-aware beings such as humans have additional natural rights because of our ability to use said rights.   It doesn't do a cow any good to give it free speech, after all.  But the right to life (within reason) is a right I feel that all beings have.  That is, the natural way of things is creatures kill other creatures to eat.  That's fine--there are situations in which it is perfectly okay to kill, or even to raise with intent of killing.  But there's no use in going about an simply killing animals (except for overpopulation), and there's simply no need to put animals through suffering when killing them (in the instance of veal, for example, which I think is a terrible and brutal practice).

As for third-trimester abortions, I feel this could be a good compromise (as long as both sides of the issue understand it is a compromise--not a step to full outlaw of abortions).  Honestly, if you've gone through six months of pregnancy and haven't yet decided to get the abortion, clearly something is stopping you.

I think the ability to feel pain is the simplest way to determine if something is a complex living being, and more importantly, a living being which will have any (if only a vague) realization that it is being killed.  I don't think there should be a law about euthanasia in the situation of full paralysis for similar reasons to no law about abortion: it tramples on people's rights.  At a certain point in full paralysis, the brain begins to die.  At that point, the creature itself is no longer but a shell of itself.  It should primarily be up to the individual creature whether or not it wants to live (in the form of a living will), and secondly it should be up to those that know the creature best to decide at what point it would want to be let go of.  I mean, sometimes (because of the way our world is set up) neither of those is the case, and people who are in paralysis are let to die because of monetary issues.  It's a shame, but that is how the world works.

Primarily, prohibition made a dent in the amount of drinking.  Not a significant dent.  Just in Chicago Al Capone ran 10,000 speakeasies.  In addition, the Volstead Act (sect 29) allowed for the making of up to 200 gallons of home made alcoholic fruit drinks (not including beer), and it was common practice to sell grapes or other fruits specifically for use in creating alcohol at home.  So I would say, statistically, it is likely a majority of the people who wanted a drink had a drink through either some legal loophole or illegal scheme.

That being said, on an issue such as abortion, it seems to me to be less likely that laws would affect a person's choice.  It is much easier to not have a drink (for most people) than it is to deal with pregnancy for nine months, followed by a painful birthing process, followed by raising a child (as while adoption is an option, a large majority of people who have a child keep it).  So I think that saying abortion laws would reduce abortions by 70% is a gross overstatement.  That being said, there's no way I can prove that statement, it is just what I have concluded by looking at the data available to me.

I think that the phrase "Many religions and ethical codes (including my own) do exactly that." sums up perfectly the problem with anti-choice argument, and that is it assumes that a person holds a specific religion or moral code, or that a specific religion/moral code is correct.  Morality is seen differently from every person in every situation, and morality is seen differently by an individual in different circumstances.  You may be surprised to know that your perception of morality shifts more than you might think, as "personality traits", including personal belief, only run about +.3 to +.4 correlation with a persons response to a situation.  Which means that the rest of the time, despite a person's beliefs on ethics, the outcome is largely decided based on factors outside his or her control, such as the situation (which also runs about a +.3 to .+4 correlation between individuals, for example). 

This goes to show, I think, that making any laws about morality which force a person to do a specific thing should be considered gravely, and from as much of an unbiased view as possible.

And no, slavery should have been outlawed as early as possible because the slaves were, in fact, people.  We now consider people to have natural rights (I think all sentient beings have natural rights, and this is an opinion most of the world shares).   People did not consider slaves persons, which is why they were misinformed about the morality of the situation.

I'll cut off the argument of "unborn babies are persons and thus should not be able to be aborted, just as slaves are persons and should not be put into slavery" now.  This would be a valid argument if an embryo or fetus before the third trimester had an ability to feel pain, like a person of African descent does.  As it is now, our leading scientists state that it is hard to determine exactly when a fetus has the capacity to feel pain, but it is extraordinarily unlikely that this point is reached until AT LEAST the third trimester.   

And an embryo is no different than a single egg or a single sperm in the matter of "sentiency"--the only difference is it is growing.  But it is most definitely not a sentient being--if it is, then all simple organisms could be considered sentient beings, at which point the it would become immoral to trample on the rights of the common cold germ (and our thoughts about natural rights would have to be completely re-examined).

I think my take on the morality or immorality of abortion is a non-issue when it comes to making a blanket law about it.  There are some rules that all people of all creeds can live by, but as for the rest--we have too many rules trampling a person's ability to be free as it is.  Do we really need more, especially on such a controversial issue as this?

(that being said, I know nothing I say could convince you against your point, and likely the same is in reverse.  I make these statements more to demonstrate why I believe what I believe, rather than try and convince you to change what you believe)