Savant

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originally talking of 7 year old dying from cancer, would he prefer being aborted

Which is still 7 years of life, and

loss in terms of not having a want, rather than having want and not achieving it (which is a greater loss).

I dispute that's a greater loss. If someone has never heard of money and I scam them out of their inheritance, that's pretty much just as bad as stealing money directly.

Same applies to any other wish. You could say people who choose to not to give birth and not reproduce and who choose to keep lack of reproduction legal only do so after being born (so they are guaranteed not to be "not born").

Yes that's true, but as I said I'm not 100% utilitarian in all circumstances, we are just discussing this from a utilitarian perspective. I think the benefit of being born outweighs the convenience of not reproducing, typically speaking.

And there are cases where abortion is obvious gain for fetus too, such as cases where fetus would live very short after birth, and in great pain so giving birth in that case is just doing torture.

Those are a vast minority and not really what we were originally talking about though.

Majority of people (including future unborn) want abortion to be legal

But only after they have been born and are guaranteed not to be aborted; it's a perverse incentive. Also it's pretty easy to measure the loss and gain from pregnancy vs. dying. Account for how much people want each thing, which can typically be approximated for how much they will pay for certain things. Human life has been valued at several billion dollars based on what people will pay for safety features in cars and stuff, and pregnancy only lasts a fraction of a life typically.

Well, having a body to own requires actually being born/not killed in utero, so from a utilitarian lens the right to not be aborted is more important than the right to end a pregnancy. I do think the utilitarian lens is a bit reductive for the issue as a whole, but it's kind of what my dispute with SatanLucy was over.

A and B aren't absolutely true, but they are necessary proxies given that we don't have a better way to measure wants.

Most people support abortion being legal

But they are not at risk of being aborted and generally have less to gain from abortion than someone has to lose by being aborted.

a lot of people who commit suicide

A lot more who take significant steps every day to not die. Working out/going to the doctor/getting health insurance, etc. And those people tend to be in a much more rational mental state than the ones who kill themselves.

people who say their life is horrible

Yet more of them go to the doctor than kill themselves. Horrible means below average, not worse than nonexistence.

Those are just numbers you made up though. Even among those wanting to die there's a lot of hesitation; the desire to live tends to be much stronger and people fight tooth and nail to not die.

if you assume wants of most outweighs wants of few in all possible cases...if person has "do not revive" writing with them

No, we're discussing a case where we have no idea what the individual would want and we have to guess (unborn child, kid with cancer who has not expressed a desire to die).

I also lost $5 million day trading

Most people don't have $5 mil to lose

Borgninest

I don't see how that connects to wanting to keep living but still thinking nonexistence is better than existing.

Most people dont represent all people or all situations, or best wants.

Yeah but this was never about all people, just assuming what a person would want. So most is a good enough proxy. Also most "locked in" patients report being happy, contrary to common intuition.

Okay but you would still rather exist than not exist, because here you are. Like you still eat/choose to continue living which I would agree is a logical thing to do.

that entirely depends on quality of life

Yeah but I addressed that right after the part you're quoting. Most people don't want to kill themselves, even people with cancer. And those that do want to can usually be talked out of it with therapy.

I bet my 7 year old cousin that died from leukemia wished he had been aborted.

I mean I'd rather just speak in the abstract than use a personal example that could offend you, but generally, I would say that having 7 years of life is preferable to having 0 years of life. I don't think that dying at 7 is preferable to dying at 14, or that dying at 14 is preferable to dying at 21. So by the same token I think being alive for 7 years is better than living for 0. And while I can't speak definitively for other individuals, I think that the vast majority of lives are preferable to nonexistence, hence why most people have an aversion to dying, and why even suicidal people often decide they don't actually want to die after therapy.

Most of the population is straight (like 98-99% of couples). So per capita same-sex couples do IVF more.

I believe gay men are more likely to do IVF per capita since they can't have biological children otherwise. Yeah they also adopt, but your original post is just making negative generalizations based on stereotypes; obviously if you introduce nuance the whole analysis falls apart.

Gay men do not murder their unborn children

Some of them use IVF, which can involve destroying embryos.

he argues that because of a couple of bad predictions by a couple of scientists that long ago means the science behind demography and geology is discredited

He didn't say that about demography or geology. The closest he gets is asking how we know how long oil reserves last, and he's more skeptical about that than I would be, but he's technically right that exact numbers are estimates.

the denial of the current conclusions of the science of demography

He didn't say anything about those current conclusions or even what they are, just that there is enough space for the current population.

a common theme that argues that conservation and the development of alternatives are unnecessary

He didn't say either of those things though; I can see how someone could come to that conclusion but that's really on them for jumping to those assumptions from Malthus and Hubbert being wrong when faux doesn't tell them to jump to those conclusions.

How about everything.

He's right about Malthus and Hubbard being wrong; that's just history.

trying to discredit the science of demography

He says Malthus was wrong; that's not the same as trying to discredit the science of demography.

his argument against conservation and the development of alternative energy sources

Faux didn't directly argue against those things in this post.

enough oil to meet our growing consumption requirements

Humans are already shifting to renewables as they become more cost-effective; running out of oil isn't the critical bottleneck you are implying.

I think Fauxlaw got his Faux Science degree at Trump University

What specific things did he say in his post that you disagree with?

The word that makes more sense here is "inerrant." Infallibility is typically used when talking about councils.

where do we get off claiming the Bible's "infallibility?"

Well, the Catholics believe certain councils are infallible, and those councils said that the original written versions of certain books are inerrant, so they would say that everything in the Bible is true minus potential translation errors.

Paul wrote that all scripture is "god-breathed," so a lot of Protestants take that to mean the original meaning of the Bible is inerrant. However, there are technically a range of views on this: (a) traditional belief in biblical inerrancy, (b) "god-breathed" does not mean inerrant, (b) Paul was wrong on that specific point, (c) not everything in the New Testament is scripture in the sense that Paul meant, since he was referring to the OT, or (d) inerrancy only applies to faith and morals but not historical accuracy.

I don't think anyone is really arguing that the translators necessarily did a perfect job. But some would say that the original writings were inerrant when written.

I actually agree that many amendments are kind of too vague to be useful. Why not pass an amendment saying "only pass good laws" and let justices decide what good laws are? Or why not pass a law saying "only do good things" and let juries decide what good things are? The 9th amendment kind of does this anyway. At that point, just make justices kings. I used to think judges were stretching the constitution for activist purposes; now I feel bad for them having to enforce a poorly worded document.

Anyone can see it by visiting this website and tapping a button

Yeah, if people request to see offensive posts, we will oblige them. We're not going to protect people from seeing posts that they actively seek out.

Well, seeing offensive posts and comments is the price of agreeing to see offensive posts and comments.

Remy is already marked as offensive. Go to your profile > settings > hide offensive content if you don't want to see his posts/comments.

It's fine if you need a while, you can still stay in the tournament. If you really want to drop out though, we can find a replacement.

Okay, you two are the final ones up. Plz enter the queue when you get the chance.

I think it may have been the same thing in your case? Maybe Lance didn't join until the second time you did? Or maybe the notification was delayed because of an update or something.

No it's cause I haven't gotten around to putting Nyx in the queue yet. Sry, will do that tonight.