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@3RU7AL
do you even have a single example of this ?
It's a hypothetical question. If someone has no moral issue with it, whether it's common or not shouldn't matter. But yes, elective late term abortions do happen in places where they are legal, I'm surprised that this is controversial. They are a small minority of the total, but I'm trying to see where people stand. The denial that it happens at all is pretty telling
Here's what that looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HslaMej6TlA How is doing that to viable fetuses preferable to telling the mother no, you can't do this at this point
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@Earth
Ideally we would have an extensive adoption organization, but I'm okay with something like ~12 weeks to get an abortion.
This is the standard position most Americans hold. If congress had codified this back in the 70s through the legislative process instead of the Supreme Court imposing an extreme standard based on a totally ridiculous reading of the law I don’t think abortion would be a serious issue today. People supporting abortion up to the moment of birth is absolutely insane to me. I consider that to just be straight up murder/infanticide
Also as far as adoption goes we actually do have that in the United States. Most babies get adopted quickly or even before they are born, the situation for children who are given up when older is a lot rougher
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@SkepticalOne
Roe provides a good standard. As for abortion 'up to the moment of birth' - it should be legal. Abortions late in the pregnancy are rare and done, not for convenience or whim, because of extraordinary circumstances.
But if someone did do it just as a whim, you’re good with that? A 39 week old fetus is of no value to you?
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@FLRW
God gives you a soul?
If you’re not going to engage in a discussion go troll somewhere else
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@oromagi
Obviously, for folks who read in context, unwanted by mothers and doctors not unwanted by you. You solicited my opinion when you said, "What do you think the limit should be and why?"
You’re now three posts in and you still haven’t made your position clear. I asked you about your thoughts on a specific example (an elective abortion of a healthy fetus two or three weeks before birth) and all you said is that such a thing would never happen, which isn’t true and isn’t relevant to whether you think it should be legal or not. Doctors like this exist (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_Gosnell) and someone in this very thread said they believe in abortion up to the moment of birth. Do you?
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@FLRW
Yes, it is my position that elective abortions should be permitted until the moment of birth.
In your view what distinguishes birth from any other developmental threshold such as conception, heartbeat, viability, ability to form long term memory, etc?
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@Novice
DebateArt is a terrible website, it's simply the lesser of two bad websites for online debating. Anyone has to choose one based on subjective criteria if they wish to debate in public online spaces in an organized format.
I think the biggest problem with this website is that most of the people who post on it are just unbelievably disingenuous and dishonest. I think it’s a symptom of American (and western more broadly) politics becoming so polarized. I don’t enjoy posting here very often because when I do it’s like engaging with defense attorneys instead of actual people. Reaching fundamental disagreement is way more interesting than trying to smear the other side but most people are more interested in the latter
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@FLRW
I'd say a fetus should be able to be aborted up to first breath. That is when God breathes a soul into it.Do you remember anything when you were in the womb?
I can’t remember anything before my third birthday either. Unless you think parents should be able to kill toddlers the ability to form long term memories isn’t a good threshold. Is your position that elective abortions should be permitted until the moment of birth? If not, what is your position?
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@oromagi
Feelings make bad law. An obstetrician would not perform such a dangerous procedure unless the health of the mother was at risk and only an obstetrician could make such a determination. Government insertion in that determination is bound to be less well informed of the facts on the ground and is unwanted by almost all doctors and mothers when a decision must be made.
Morality is the foundation of law, so the morality of an action is relevant on what the law should be. You say your opinion is “unwanted” and yet you post on a thread unsolicited about the subject. So you clearly have a position, and your position is that there should be no legal limit on abortion until the moment of birth. Elective third trimester abortions are legal and are performed in several states so saying no doctor would ever perform one for that reason is untrue, around 10% of people support abortion until the moment of birth for any reason and no doubt some of those people would be doctors. Why not just come out and say what your position actually is? If you truly don’t have a position, than don’t respond to a thread asking you your position.
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@oromagi
I have zero expertise in the matter and so my opinion is worse than unwanted but also probably oversimple and wrongheaded. I suggest we leave the entire question in the hands of obstetricians and their patients.
What you’re saying is that you don’t think there should be any legal limit on abortion. Do you really not feel comfortable to render moral judgement even in an extreme case? A woman who is 36 weeks pregnant wants to abort a perfectly healthy fetus just because she doesn’t want it anymore, you’re good with that as long as she can find a doctor willing to do it?
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@Double_R
Yes it’s obvious by now that the cost of college will quickly rise to swallow up whatever amount of money is available. Relief right now helps current borrowers but doesn’t help the problem. At this point the government probably needs to get involved in some way to force universities to lower costs
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Most people don’t want to ban abortion entirely but also don’t think it should be legal up to the moment of birth. What do you think the limit should be and why?
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A poll conducted in the last few days found that Americans would favor a six week abortion ban in their state 50-46%. A fifteen week ban wins 54-41%. However 6 in 10 want to uphold Roe v. Wade, which doesn’t permit these restrictions. Color me skeptical that Americans are extremely in favor of the decision instead of just not really understanding it.
Which itself demonstrates how little pull this issue has with most people who aren’t advocates for one side or another. I don’t think this impacts the midterms at all
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@FLRW
Countries and regions where abortion is illegal
Now do “countries and regions where abortion after the first trimester is illegal”
That would include almost all of Europe. Americans don’t realize how liberal abortion laws in the US were everywhere until recently and how extreme Roe v Wade actually was
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@oromagi
30% of pro-lifers say that they can only vote for a candidate that shares their view on abortion, up from 15% in 2008 and compared to 19% of pro-choicers who would only vote for a candidate who shares their view.
Yeah I misspoke, what I meant was that the people who are the most fervently pro choice are already almost exclusively hardcore democrats
Only 40% of Republicans or just over 1 in 10 Americans believe abortion should be illegal in all cases as the Supreme Court stands poised to justify. We are already seeing poor pregnant girls going to jail in Texas, which was almost never true before Roe. In months, we will be seeing cases where the state forces young girls to remain pregnant to death which is an entirely radical new level of state intervention into the private lives of citizens. By the time the election comes, some Republican states will be executing more girls for getting pregnant then men for murder.
All the Supreme Court is doing is returning the power to regulate abortion to the states. The position of the average American voter on abortion is as sensible as it is overwhelmingly supported: legal in the first trimester, illegal after that outside of extreme circumstances. If Republicans go overboard they are likely to face voter backlash. Similarly if democrats go overboard such as allowing abortion up to the point of birth or something they will also face backlash. Would this really be such a bad thing? I really don’t see it impacting the midterms at all but it will be an interesting test case. I don’t think voters care nearly as much about it as elite democrats do, and I also am not sure if losing actually galvanizes voters instead of demoralizing them. “This happened under a democrat president? What’s the point of voting…” isn’t an implausible thing to imagine happening
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Hilarious that this happened because of exactly one specific persons hubris. And that person, RBG, is considered a liberal hero
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@oromagi
I'm thinking Republicans just lost 2022.
I tend to doubt that, the people who care the most about abortion are almost universally democrats at this point and highly likely to vote. Polls show that Americans support Roe v Wade by about a 2-1 margin but that’s always seemed a little misleading to me…it seemed to be more status quo bias/Americans not actually understanding the decision rather than supporting it. “Pro life” and “pro choice” identifications, which seems like a better way to measure how people feel about abortion, is evenly split and has been for a while…and the parties have had 50 years to sort themselves on this issue, very few people voting Republican don’t understand what they’re getting into on abortion.
It gives Dems something to run on which is helpful but probably not nearly enough to change the trajectory unless inflation stops. Long term it might help Dems though because there do seem to be a lot of single issue pro-life voters who might not need feel the need to vote as much in the future but who knows
Source for pro life v choice https://news.gallup.com/poll/244709/pro-choice-pro-life-2018-demographic-tables.aspx
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@Double_R
The difference is that you extend the overlord concept to the owners of those platforms while I don’t. I view companies like YouTube and Facebook as part of the debunking process - these platforms have an interest in shielding themselves from liability, legal or in the court of public opinion, so when dangerous content is purposefully left unchecked they are obligated to do something about it. To me that is part of how dangerous information gets checked.
Yeah I guess to me I consider true information being labeled false a lot worse than free exchange of information even if that means that false information is available. I also don’t trust the people making these decisions. But it does seem like we reached fundamental disagreement so this was a productive conversation
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@Double_R
That said, the huge hole in your case is the answer to this question: who has the right to decide whether one can use a platform to spread their views?No matter which way you answer this, it defeats your concept. If no one has a right then you are not advocating for free speech because you are against the right of the rest of society to express it’s dissent. If you say the owner has the right then you are advocating for the system we’re already have.
It isn’t a hole because I think the platform has the right to censor, I just don’t think they should. I have the right to be rude to a guest in my house, but that behavior is still worthy of criticism. Make sense? I don’t see a lot of people on the modern left criticizing the behavior which makes me think their revealed preference is that they support it. And I would rather talk about that than if a platform has the right to censor because they do
Question for you, do you agree with YouTube’s decision to ban all content propagating the Sandy Hook conspiracy theories?
I think it’s generally better to debunk conspiracies instead of censor them. Tons of people love getting clicks making fun of conspiracy idiots, there used to be a huge ecosystem of debunkers for that reason. The problem I have with banning “conspiracy theories” is that a minority of them turn out to be true. A billionaire running a sex slave island visited by dozens of prominent politicians and celebrities sounds like a conspiracy but it’s something that actually happened. Also like I said there ARE at least some people willing to change their minds, and if you can’t expose their arguments to scrutiny because they aren’t allowed to put them forward the change won’t happen.
And on a personal level I just prefer the Wild West style pre 2020s internet. I’m an adult, while I’m sure I can fall for misinformation occasionally I don’t like having an eternal child lock on the content I can access
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@Double_R
I think it’s a bit disingenuous to use the term free speech in this way given the context of this discussion. Words have power given their historical usage, free speech is well known not only as a fundamental American right but perhaps the most fundamental right there is outside life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Because of that the term tends to sneak in a connotation that isn’t earned given how you are using it. And it may not matter within this particular conversation, but at large I guarantee you that is manipulating a lot of people into taking a position they do not understand.With that said, let’s continue based on your definition…
Well I did jump in on the conversation so it's possible I am missing some context. But let me explain a little more what I mean. The head mod on this site, Barney, is staunchly pro-choice. Imagine if he decided to remove all posts advocating for the pro-life position, and even started banning users who expressed pro-life views. Then someone says hey, I don't think that kind of suppression of views is appropriate for a debating website, a debating website should be a free speech zone and he responds "I'm totally committed to the principle of free speech, but that only applies to the government, I'm not violating anyones free speech rights by removing them from a private platform." That's true from a legal standpoint...but is that the way a person who supports free speech as a principle would behave?
So if someone supports the social media giants colluding to censor debate on, say, if the COVID-19 virus leaked from a lab or had a natural origin, or suppressing a major news story about a presidential candidate a few weeks before an election they don't really support free speech. There is a lot of reasonable debate to be had about where the principle of free speech ends (fire in a movie theater, where libel/slander start, obscenity on TV, etc) but absolutely nobody who supports the examples I listed is in favor of free speech as a principle. I really wish people would just admit that so we could talk honestly about it.
Most of us don’t because the principal is logically self defeating. If Person A uses Platform 1 to spread their ideas and the owner of Platform 1 stops it, that is the owner of Platform 1 using his freedom of speech. To be against that is to be against the very principal you are espousing.Andwhen it comes to social pressure it’s even more logically contradictory. Social pressure is nothing more than people within a society each exercising their own right to free speech to criticize someone else. To be against that is to remove everyone’s right to free speech in favor of one individual.What you are ultimately advocating for is not a right to free speech, it’s a right to shove your ideas down the throat of a society that does not want to hear you.
Well if I were advocating forcing private actors to platform people then I would be violating their rights. Since as you noted these platforms are basically a monopoly and since we know they collude to determine acceptable bounds of speech there may be some argument for doing that but it's a lot stickier than what people on the right often think. What I'm advocating for is free speech as a principle, they may have the right to ban people for expressing perfectly rational and ethical viewpoints but I also have the right to criticize that.
As for the highlighted bit I was going to say that's a strawman but that's actually fairly close to my view even if its an uncharitable way to phrase it. I absolutely think society would be better if there was a stronger social norm that people should not be punished for privately holding or advocating for a political position.
I said in another thread that I think the solution to misinformation is good information, not censorship. I'm going to tell you a story and I would appreciate your thoughts on it. When the results of the 2020 election were rolling in, 538 (a popular left leaning elections blog) was live tweeting batches of votes as they came in. There was a batch of votes that came in from Philadelphia and 538 described the batch as something like "38,000 votes, all for Biden." I thought surely they are exaggerating, they can't ALL be for Biden, 38,000 to 0. But they linked to a file from the state that showed votes as the batches were processed and this one was indeed close to 40k votes for Biden and zero for Trump. Even if 99% of these votes were expected to go to Biden, NONE going to Trump is incredibly unlikely. My scientific calculator returns a result of zero when I plug in .99^38000. Clear evidence of fraud, right?
Well, me and a few other people noticed this and asked 538 about it, and to their credit they actually provided a good explanation. In the very next batch of votes from Philadelphia, Trump did twice as well as expected. What likely happened is that some ward sorted their votes by Biden vs. Trump, and in the process of uploading their "vote dumps" at one point they reported a bunch of the Biden ballots, then in the next report they reported more Biden ballots + all the Trump ballots they had missed. Now it's possible that these were fraudulent votes still and the next batch Trump just happened to overperform for some reason but I find the explanation that they were uploaded weirdly more plausible. If instead of answering my questions, 538 had reported me and gotten me banned I would have thought that the 2020 election was rigged until the end of my days. Would that really have been a better outcome than rational discussion? I'm fairly certain that if someone is inclined to believe something anyway, shutting down all discussion of it makes them double down a lot more than proving them wrong does.
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@bmdrocks21
Something needs to be done. I liked the talk of income sharing agreements years back (we get x% of your income for x amount of years and then you don’t owe us anything else, differing years and percentages based on degree). It’s good because if you aren’t making much money, they don’t take much. You won’t be struggling for interest payments in most cases
Andrew Yang suggested if you pay 10% of your income for 10 years the balance should be forgiven. I think that’s fair, or something close to it. But forgiving the debt of doctors and lawyers who just graduated is disgusting. If he does cancel some debt it better be capped at some modest level or I’ll be furious
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@cristo71
I think that cancelling loan debt causes greater problems than it solves. My biggest concern is what incentives it would possibly create, not the least of which would be encouraging colleges to raise, not lower tuition. And, as you said, the slap in the face it is for people who either paid off their loans at great inconvenience or simply went to less costly programs. It would also be a pro inflationary measure.
Exactly, any long term solution has to go after the universities for charging such exorbitant tuition. A good solution is making the loans dischargeable and bankruptcy and making the schools cosign.
I have no student loan debt and never had, but it’s because for the 8 years my sister and I were in college, my dad worked a second job. He was working 70 hour weeks and having an average of one day off a week for almost a decade. Biden would make all that for nothing to try to buy votes…
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@Double_R
No, it’s not. The principal of free speech is that people in government positions are accountable to the people they serve, therefore the people have a right to express their views in order for the citizenry can make informed decisions regarding their representation. This creates a conflict of interest for any government official to decide whether someone can have a platform to speak.
That’s not how I define free speech as a principle. To someone who is close to a free speech absolutist, like me, censorship is something I consider bad whether it’s done by the government or a private entity. The reason I bring this up is because I don’t think most people actually support free speech, they openly celebrate when people they don’t like are forced to shut up through social pressure or a private entity censoring them and they say “but it’s not the government!” I wish people would just admit that they don’t support the principle of free speech and believe that certain people shouldn’t be allowed to speak or certain ideas ought not be discussed so that we could talk about it.
The thing that concerns me about the Twitter move is that there is a legitimate debate regarding how large Twitter is and whether they have reached monopoly status in this regard, EM’s purchase elevates that problem because at least before these decisions were made by a CEO accountable to the shareholders, now it’s being made by one man accountable to no one.
Does his stated intention to make the platform more pro free speech alleviate your anxiety or make it worse?
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@SkepticalOne
"Free speech" is literally about speech with relation to government. If someone (other than the government) wants to prevent me from preaching in their yard or on their social media site, my "free speech" hasn't been affected.
Do you really believe this? Free speech is a principle. Elon Musk kicking someone off Twitter because they criticize him is a violation of the principle of free speech, it just isn’t a violation of the first amendment or the law. But for people who value free speech as a principle, as most do, it’s still something worth criticizing
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@oromagi
I’m sure Trump tax returns were obtained in a totally legal and legitimate manner as well. It doesn’t matter in my view, the counter to misinformation is good information not censorship.
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Rumors are swirling that Biden is considering canceling a large portion, or potentially all, of federal student debt.
I have mixed feelings on the matter. On the one hand making it more difficult for high IQ people to start families and have kids is obviously a bad idea. And a lot of students did basically get tricked as foolish 18 year olds into signing on to life ruining debt that isn’t dischargeable.
At the same time this is incredibly unfair to the parents who scrimped and saved for their children education, or for the students who sacrificed retirement savings, vacations, home buying etc so that they could pay down their debt. Around 60% of student debt is held by graduate degree holders, so this would be a handout to some of the most privileged people in society. Moreover it doesn’t solve the actual problem, which is continuously growing college costs driven in part by access to large amount of loans.
My position is that something like a means tested forgiveness or making loans dischargeable in bankruptcy would be the ideal. I would also cancel the interest due on federal loans because we shouldn’t be usurious to our young people for getting an education. But I don’t think we should punish responsible people and perpetuate a flawed system. What do you guys think
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@oromagi
Jared Kushner takes $2 billion dollars from the Saudi dictator last week out in the open and GP has nothing to say but Giuliani gets a laptop from the Russians that suggests that Biden's son offered to introduce his father to some Ukrainian officials after his father was out of office and GP wants a congressional investigation. If every accusation leveled at Hunter proved true (unlikely or why would Russia need to handle his laptop first?) it would still not amount to 1/1000th of the bribes the Trump family openly admits to taking just last week. Double standard much?
The point isn’t that Trump/his family aren’t corrupt, it’s that the public was allowed to be informed about allegations against Trump/the Trump family, whereas allegations against Biden and his family faced unprecedented censorship. Unfortunately it seems like the temptation to easily get rich using your office is too much for almost all politicians to pass up
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@Greyparrot
The story isn't even about "true or false"The evidence is in the picture, everyone can see the picture. Nobody argues the image of Biden holding his hand out with an open palm is a fake.What's being argued as true or false is the interpretation of the picture. Imagine going to an art gallery and being told what the painting factually means by some truth authority.
I saw the video in question. It sure looks like he could be trying to shake hands with someone and then confusingly wanders off stage. On the other hand, the crowd behind him did stand up. My point is that he’s not as senile as Republicans claim but if I were a democrat I would be very worried if republicans could finally ditch Trump and nominate someone young like DeSantis. The contrast would be enormous. Biden’s age and demeanor is a huge liability, not even the biggest partisans would believe that Obama or the similarly aged Trump would try to shake hands with a ghost
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@Double_R
It’s called propaganda.Biden certainly has his moments, but they don’t justify the senile old man who doesn’t know where he is caricature Fox News and right wing media have been obsessively propagating since his candidacy took off. The fact that this latest made up story is so easily provably false and yet is still spreading like wild fire through right wing America headed by their leading trusted “news” sources perfectly demonstrates that point.
I do think that he is starting to lose it a little even though he obviously isn’t senile. The fact that he’s able to give a speech proves that he’s not completely gone. But he definitely has a bunch of senior moments and they are increasing in number. This specific story might be completely made up (I don’t know and don’t care) but my point is that you’d never be able to portray a young candidate like that. It’s a mark against Trump as well who would be as old as Biden if he won in 2024. I’m pretty concerned about having a president in his 80s
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This from a private account on Twitter is basically my take:
“Macron is a committed neoliberal who hates the welfare state, moved right on immigration, and thinks the EU should be a militaristic power that controls large parts of Africa. Seeing libs pretend he is Just Like Us because the alternative is Le Pen is v funny”
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Also all the people talking about how Biden was OBVIOUSLY gesturing to the crowd behind him using the exact same hand gesture one would use to shake someone’s hand…that’s certainly possible. But you should question why it’s so easy to portray Biden this way, and why things like this keep happening. Perhaps he often comes off as a confused and feeble old man because like the average 80 year old he’s simply not up to being President. If Republicans nominate Trump in 2024 Biden will be bailed out but having a president who will be 86 by the end of his presidency is a bad idea. Hopefully both parties nominate someone not born in the 1940s next time around
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@coal
While I never put much stock in “fact checks” this article is the one that convinced me that biased “fact checks” can be very dangerous things. It’s funny because this is one of the most benign and non controversial topics fact checked, whether Paul Ryan hurt Mitt Romneys chances. I mentioned in passing to someone that I thought Paul Ryan was a bad pick and he linked me this article, and me tearing it to pieces wasn’t good enough, it was like talking to a brick wall. “It’s fact checked as false!”
Because this is such a benign topic very few people have strong emotions on, it’s a good demonstration of how this works. Whether or not Paul Ryan was a bad pick is a very subjective question, since we can’t go rerun the 2012 election without him we need some incredibly strong evidence to say it’s a “fact” either way. The primary argument made in the article is that picking Paul Ryan didn’t *immediately* crash Romneys poll numbers. It should be self evident why this is not relevant. It also talked about how Romney did better with senior citizens than McCain or Bush did which is marginal evidence against Paul Ryan being a bad pick but he could easily have won them by even more. It’s just an incredibly stupid thing to try to “fact check” and this does real damage imo
The article clearly exists just to pump up the number of official “lies” from Trump, which is unfortunate because there were plenty of genuine ones to go around.
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@RationalMadman
This is pretty much how I feel. I don’t have any particular animus towards trans people and while I don’t have any in my immediate social circle if I did I would call them the name/pronouns they want. That doesn’t change my personal opinion that fighting biology is a bad idea. It doesn’t change how I take in the information that given the massive proportion of people who suffer gender dysphoria who also have some other sort of mental illness there’s probably something deeper going on than just not liking your body. I personally don’t think it’s ethical for doctors to remove functional/healthy organs but for consenting adults I can understand the “it’s none of your business” argument.
What gets me with this stuff is the kids. I’m deeply alarmed by the skyrocketing rates of trans identification among kids (1 in 50 now) and I’m deeply suspicious of anyone who thinks that these kids need to be medically transitioned. People who say that there are no long term side effects to puberty blockers or opposite sex hormones are liars and their arguments should be discounted accordingly. A lot of these kids are mentally ill (and no it isn’t because they’re so oppressed) and are doing permanent damage to their bodies long before they are considered able to consent to alcohol, sex, military service or even driving. The so called “doctors” involved with this stuff should lose their license to practice medicine and should face criminal prosecution.
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I don’t really either but she has the Instagram influencer look which I think is the revealed preference of what elite women think is hot/want to look like. Which makes her doxx incredibly funny
Sometimes you have to take a step back and appreciate the humor in life. The libs of tik tok lady being a rich urbanite who looks like an Instagram influencer and has the ideal life most of her most fervent haters would aspire to…is so funny. I would have expected her to be a boomer lady in Florida
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@cristo71
The claim is that The Libs of TikTok founder violated Twitter’s TOS. How was that done?
By reposting publicly available content apparently. The entire thing is such bullshit. Ultimately it seems that elite progressives truly believe that they own other peoples kids, so showing parents what kids are really being taught or who is really teaching them is something that can’t be permitted
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@RationalMadman
I genuinely do not find her hot btw but it could just be a personal taste thing, what do I know.
I don’t really either but she has the Instagram influencer look which I think is the revealed preference of what elite women think is hot/want to look like. Which makes her doxx incredibly funny
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@coal
What’s interesting about the Libs of Tik Tok account is that literally all it does is share content that liberals in important positions (typically teachers) post publicly. But even just being an aggregator of content isn’t enough and is apparently a harassment campaign. It boggles the mind.
On the other hand, being doxxed and turning out to be rich and hot and having a career that’s highly unlikely to be impacted by the doxx is a pretty great flex.
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@TheMorningsStar
As such we need to push back on the pro-affirmation view.I also think that a lot around the pro-affirmation view involves denial of reality (again, the sports debate), and I think that promotion of any view that includes reality denial on any level is inherently dangerous.
I agree with everything you said but would just like to add that the biggest problem is the gigantic increase we now see among the young, where 1 in 50 now say that they are trans. There has always been a background rate of gender dysphoria, mostly in men, of around 0.1-0.5% and a lot of them historically try to present as women as adults. They’ll never be women but I would agree it would be rude to rub that in their face and insist on calling them a name or pronouns that distresses them, even if ideally they would come to terms with their body as it is.
But…it’s absolutely skyrocketed, especially among teenaged girls who are being encouraged to take medical interventions and the long term impacts aren’t very promising. That’s the real issue here. It’s just sick, and I don’t see how anyone can see surgical interventions on teenagers and blocking puberty and everything as not a problem
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@Double_R
Yes that is my idea of how it works. What’s so inconceivable about it?
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@Double_R
If someone feels so strongly that their body is not right for them that they decide to cut off their dick, your lack of affirmation is not going to help them nor anyone else one bit, but you act as if you’re doing them a favor. It’s absurd.
Well if not affirming them leads to them not cutting off their dick and becoming comfortable in their body you are doing them a kindness actually. Thats TheMorningStars point. Everything is geared towards “affirming” the dysmorphia because people want to be nice and thinks that it helps but it could well be the opposite.
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@Barney
Wow I’m sorry to hear that. Certainly one of the crazier backstories I’ve heard of. You seem well adjusted all things considered
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@Barney
Why did you change your name to Barney?
Also I saw on your profile you said you were born a slave? What do you mean by that?
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@oromagi
I really don’t want to get into this because it’s a very stupid and irrelevant argument but I think Romney was acting in good faith. Here’s some commentary from the time:
Obama said during the speech that “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation” — but at no point was it clear that he was using that term to describe the attack in Benghazi. He’d also spent the previous two paragraphs discussing the 9/11 attacks and the aftermath. “Acts of terror” could have just as easily been a reference to that. Or maybe it wasn’t a direct reference to anything, just a generic, reassuring line he’d added into a speech which did take place, after all, the day after the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
I didn’t realize Obama said “act of terror” in his initial speech, so you’re right that it wasn’t cut and dry like I thought it was—the narrative that solidified in the ten years after the fact was a bit one sided it seems. But we can agree that the moderator intervening like she did wasn't appropriate at all, I can understand why republicans got mad. The debates are basically just theater anyway
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@Greyparrot
Moderators also shouldn't be a 3rd debater with "fact checking"
I think the big mask off moment for presidential debates was in 2012 when a moderator wrongly “fact checked” Romney. What they were arguing about was a stupid point (whether Obama called something an “act of terror” quickly enough iirc) but Romney was objectively right on the timing and Obama was objectively wrong. And before the entire country, Obama appealed to the moderator to affirm that he was right, and she did. A lot of establishment republicans never forgave the media for how they treated Romney, which made them more willing to make nice with Trump and his scorched earth war against the media
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Possibly unpopular opinion: revealed preferences > absolutely everything else in assessing motivation and future behavior
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@RationalMadman
You are a married/engaged man... are you telling me every time you and your non-pregnant wife have pleasurable... third base experience, you would want her to get pregnant as a result?
No, and I think since we can so easily control it now the Catholic Church asks a LOT of its members to not use contraception. Virtually nobody follows the teachings and those that do follow natural family planning which just means the woman tracks her cycle and they don’t have sex on days she could get pregnant. I view that as birth control as well even if the church approves of it through basically a loophole
What I mean is that the pill changed society in a negative way. Even leaving out how I feel about casual sex, it seems to me that reliable birth control demographically destroyed every developed country. In short the preference for number of children averages out to two, and a large number of people don’t end up reproducing…so the population continuously shrinks. This basically means either severe economic contraction or mass immigration. In the past people relied on more crude contraceptive practices that resulted in more unintended pregnancies. Bad for the individual people but better for society
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Unpopular opinion: the Catholic Church is basically right about contraception, although there really isn’t any way to turn back the clock on it
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@TheMorningsStar
Change that to "kalam debate" and that is exactly how I discovered DDO to begin with.
In high school I once wrote a pretty half assed and pathetic case for a public forum topic and put it on DDO. It ended up being one of the top searches on Google for the topic and got many thousands of views. I was watching a debate round at a tournament a few weeks later and some kid used it verbatim lol. Spoiler alert, they lost because it was a very weak case but I was definitely shocked. Didn’t say anything of course
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@oromagi
It is funny to think that our little cadre would have any influence in American politics, even if just a domain name. Seems fair, though since DDO does way more debates than they do.Perhaps that domain name will be available soon.
I don’t remember the price that Juggle paid for the Debate.org domain but I think it was in the low six figures which I think was a steal. Especially since in the last few years it seems like Google has tweaked their algorithm to direct more towards sites with articles and such but until recently if you Googled something like “abortion debate” something from ddo would come up. Lots of legacy content to get ad clicks fron
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@SkepticalOne
Maybe the 5th time will be the charm
"You should be able to justify your positions on their own merits instead of simply claiming that the "experts" are on your side. My position in short is that gender dysphoria is a body image disorder, in which individuals are uncomfortable in their own bodies and believe that if they were born the opposite gender they would be comfortable in their bodies. People can not be born in the "wrong" bodies because for all intents and purposes, your body is you, a boy or a girl born in your place would not be you but instead would be someone else. You can make changes to your body, but the changes made in an attempt to change sex are not positive ones but ones that limit a persons potential or actively harm them (sterilize them, block puberty in prime growing years, mutilate their genitals/sex organs into organs that do not function and make them ill.) There is literally no other body image disorder in which we accept that the persons viewpoint is valid and try to change their body to match. There are people who for some reason want a healthy limb removed, imagine if physicians agreed to remove them. Imagine if an anorexic or bulimic 14 year old girl was given liposuction or put on a weight loss diet. This is the same as removing a young girls breasts to try to make her a "man" or giving a teenaged boy estrogen.
The liberal position is that the above makes me a monster because unlike those other disorders trans people are ACTUALLY born into the wrong sex, and their sex doesn't match their gender identity. I believe that sex and gender are inherently linked (if indeed there even is a difference) and brute forcing your body into a pale and sad imitation of the opposite sex never works. The liberal position, in my view, is fundamentally incoherent because it simultaneously argues that gender identity is unrelated to sex in that an individual can choose/"discover" their gender identity but at the same time it is imperative that we allow children to transition as young as possible so that they can look as close as possible to...the opposite *sex*, as in the secondary sex characteristics derived from biology. The entire thing presupposes valid and consistent definitions of "man and woman" in the first place, otherwise no one could be born in the "wrong" body, but this takes us back to the gender binary. The ideal situation for a person suffering from gender dysphoria is that they come to terms with the body as it is and foster a positive self identity on that basis instead of chasing the impossible. TheMorningStar, being smarter than me on philosophy and actually having experienced this stuff first hand put it much better. But since you won't accept a link to a discussion on this website, that's my position.
For a number of complicated reasons, including but not limited to an ongoing societal fixation on identity and the elevation of "oppressed" identities, identifying as trans is a growing trend among the young."
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