Debate thread (revived)

CompWiz · Post by **CompWiz** » Fri 20 Jan, 2006 2:13 am

necro wrote:Wow...I was completely ignored. To comp wiz, it is a matter of who has greater rights. A sentient, or a parasitic cellular mass. If an alien race overtook the world and reproduced via a tape worm like parasitic larval (exrutiatingly painful, physicaly damaging, and some time psycologicaly shattering, but not a high fatality), and they deemed it immoral and illegal to kill this life form in your body, how would you feel? It is going to become a fully living being, it isn't right to murder them is it? Well...IS it?

Me, I would not like that at all, nor would I put up with it...perhaps your diffrent...and I would likely try and kill it even at my own risk, more risk than if it was legal. Now, say I was a woman...I might similarly feel as if I don't want a child, who gives you rights to controll a body not yours? Hell, perhaps rape should be legalised as it alows babies a chance at life that wouldn't other wise get a chance...right? No...not so...why is that? It is this simple, if you dislike abortion, that is your right. But you have no right to try and force your morals on others, just like the formentioned alien hypotheticals.

It is wrong to kill a human. I've said this many times.(I have specified "human") If aliens invade and try to do things contrary to the will of humans, then you can feel free to fight them off, in any way needed. Obviously our species comes before theirs(at least to us)

And if you are a woman and you don't want a child, just don't have sex. It's the only surefire way not to become pregnant. You do have a choice, and you must face the consequenses for the choice you make.

And you can't kill someone who doesn't exist in the first place, therefore rape is not in any way right. When the egg and sperm combine, they form a new human. Sure, that human is in the earliest stages of life, but it is still a discernably new and different human within the mother. I should hope that your morals include not killing a human.

dysfunction wrote: what I disagree with is the policy of "pro-lifers" to attack abortion without providing reasonable alternatives.

an orphanage is better than getting murdered.

DarkerLine wrote:Consider this:

Case 1 - Joe and Mary not to have sex until marriage. After five years, they get married and have two children.

Case 2 - Joe and Mary do have sex; Mary is pregnant, and aborts. After five years, they get married anyway and have two children.

How is Case 2 murder and Case 1 not? Who is being murdered? And what happened to him in Case 1?

In case one, they create two new humans. In case two, they create three humans and kill one of them. It is your choice when you want to create a new person. You don't have to if you don't want to.

necro · Post by **necro** » Fri 20 Jan, 2006 3:04 am

What if a horrificly evil man was raping an alien being, we should support the man of course...or not? Personaly, I'd rather see a horrible man with the shit beat out of him than suffering based on species. Rape is not the only way to end up with an unwanted baby, get smashed at a party and you may get more than one kind of fluid exchange. Secondly, a sperm and egg is human? If I used a little gene modding to give him a developmental decapitation (you can create animals and theoreticaly humans with little to no head protion) would his lack of a brain still make him or her human? What if a full concence was in a non-living being, ala cyberbrains and prostetic bodies like in ghost in the shell. Which is the human, and who are you to blankedly claim it so. Stop living and black and white, there are millions of shades of gray. And I can not say killing some one is immoral in every concievable, such as if they were a threat to me or another, or if they were dying slowly of a mortal wound, I doubt I would hesitate to abide their request to end it if it was so. To me, death is nothing special, it is the lack of life that is sad, and when it is going to end anyways, I think people should have the right to die. Me, I hope to get a quick death...I'd prefer not to know I was going to die, though that is a bit off topic.

I disagree with your logic about in 1 and 2, again, I define "human" as a gray.

dysfunction · Post by **dysfunction** » Fri 20 Jan, 2006 3:32 am

Man necro, I didn't understand a bit of that. What the hey are you talking about?

threefingeredguy · Post by **threefingeredguy** » Fri 20 Jan, 2006 3:32 am

CompWiz wrote:In case one, they create two new humans. In case two, they create three humans and kill one of them. It is your choice when you want to create a new person. You don't have to if you don't want to.

And that baby goes straight to heaven.

necro · Post by **necro** » Fri 20 Jan, 2006 4:34 am

forgive my extremely abstract thinking, I am a rational type personality so you'll probably find my logic does an irish step dance around conventional expression.

Any ways, in summury: Calc, you say aliens are less important than people, I disagree if a person is 'evil' and attacking an alien of human like sentinence, not having sex is harder than it may seem to some as there are MANY factors including Koolaid and lucy, it is hard to define "human" IMO, is a person with no brain a person if they have a body? Is a human mind in a fake brain and body human? To me, though makes humanity and not flesh binding it...Killing I can condone if it were to be merciful for some one dying anyways, or in immidiate self-defence. And I think that in the case of baby aborted compared to baby never born, if pre-cognitive developement, they are in no way moraly diffrent to me.

More understandable? No? Three mice were walking in an ally and they see cheese, so the first pushes the second how pushes the third who is knocked over. One and two both manage a big bite when a metal bar snaps down and breaks there rip cages and ruptures their organs. The third gets up, luaghs, and enjoys cheese with a side of meat. Moral, it can be better to be last when things seem to good to be true...moral 2, I will write in completely roundabout ways that have no surface meaning, but instead are symbalic.

dysfunction · Post by **dysfunction** » Fri 20 Jan, 2006 4:41 am

Yeah wow, I completely fail to see how you said anything relevant there.

necro · Post by **necro** » Fri 20 Jan, 2006 5:01 am

look deeper...look at this as if it were like bible parables*5^99 deep...

even more simplified: I think that compwiz has the view humans are bodies, while I think humans are thoughts (as far as difining what is and isnt human, not literaly) and I have no remorse for the body, it is the mind I treasure and grieve. To me, no mind should suffer for a body unless they wish to. That is the fundemental diffrence. IOW, He is endeared to the hardware while I to the soft code. He to the box while I to its contents. Now do you get what I mean...or not?

<off topic>Woah! TFG joined a day after me? Thatz crazy...</off topic>

dysfunction · Post by **dysfunction** » Fri 20 Jan, 2006 5:06 am

Ok, I get it, but I don't agree. Of course I agree that the mind is what makes us human, but I don't believe that CompWiz believes otherwise. What is not at debate is whether a fetus is mentally human; what is on debate is whether the potential for the fetus to become a functioning human outweighs the gains from abortion.

necro · Post by **necro** » Fri 20 Jan, 2006 5:11 am

But my believes are so far to the mind and not the body that I have NO remorse for aborted life forms if before mentaly developing. I don't consider it remotley human till it acts remotely human, that simple (for me at least). However, even something remotely human that acts human is very 'human' to me.

Post by **Patori** » Fri 20 Jan, 2006 4:33 pm

What is human again, necro?

dysfunction · Post by **dysfunction** » Fri 20 Jan, 2006 5:27 pm

Ok, I think what necro is trying to say is he would accept utlanning, framling, and ramen (no, not the noodles) as being human, even though the last category isn't physically human, but would not accept varelse as human, even though they may be intelligent. I agree with that. I'll even agree that a fetus is varelse- for the moment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy_of_Alienness

But a fetus has the potential to become not varelse; in fact, it will not even fit on the Hierarchy of Alienness, as it will not even be a stranger at all, and we may not kill anything that is not varelse. Animals are varelse. For all intents and purposes, a fetus is a (basically harmless) parasitic animal. But as the fetus will soon become no longer varelse, and a creature capable of understanding and being understood, we may not kill it unless a.) it chooses such death itself, which is impossible, or b.) it's life will not be worth living. However, proving b.) beyond all doubt is also impossible, unless the fetus has some physical or mental defect that will prevent it from living anything close to a meaningful life. Missing limbs don't count, blindness doesn't count; only things that would prevent it from experiencing life at all, such as things that would cause it to die within, say, the first two years of life. Mild retardation doesn't count, nor does any mental affliction, short of ones rendering the future child incapable of conscious thought. This is all about the weighing of two evils here; killing a child, or possibly allowing a child to lead a horrid life.

necro · Post by **necro** » Fri 20 Jan, 2006 6:05 pm

well, to me the feti is not a human unless it thinks, like wise, something that thinks is to me more important on a rights hierarchy, even if it were a non-human to a feti. the fact that a feti MAY become a person does not make it one, just a person prone to become a psycotic shouldn't be locked away while he is still saine. So, a thinking robot>feti, robot=?=human, depending on circumstances (look at the tachikomas in Ghost In The Shell:Stand Alone Complex. I'd concider them semi human, while major and bato would be completely human IMO, but untill a baby thinks, it is non-human)

Post by **Patori** » Sat 21 Jan, 2006 5:42 am

I don't quite follow you, necro...

lloydkirk1989 · Post by **lloydkirk1989** » Sat 21 Jan, 2006 6:02 am

wow, this thread has become senile. Why does necro feel the urge to speak in such an abstract manner? It seems the biblical parables have greatly influenced your method of thought. I should be happy. Even necro has embraced the literary brilliance of the Bible. It does start to become repetitive though. What happened to "Let your Yes be yes and your No be no"? Thats why I like calcs, everything is black and white. *sigh* I forgot that we live an a society where a toilet brush sprayed with lysol is considered a form of modern art.

axcho · Post by **axcho** » Sat 21 Jan, 2006 8:44 am

I don't have a problem following necro's posts.

What I have concluded from the various online debates I've read over is that you can't really convince people this way. Instead of posting my opinions in online forums, I think I'd like to try other methods, like making games about the subjects in question. It might be useful to discuss how to design these games though, with people who share the same viewpoint.

In this particular discussion about abortion (and maybe the one on evolution as well), I think the main problem is in definitions of "human" and "life" and other strong but perhaps imprecise words. Many phenomena are more complex than a simple boolean statement can express.

The famous game designer Chris Crawford wrote about this in his essay The Operational Approach, as did Douglas Adams in the introduction to his speech Is there an Artificial God?.