Meh. I’ve seen similar on here.
I got a ban the other day for pointing out some memes about blowing up McDonald’s.
Funny part was I was immediately downvoteded to oblivion (one of the .ML domains) when I pointed out that they’d all freak the fuck out of it were abortion clinics.
Is it just me or does the author just… not really spend any time trying to defend forced birth? Like, other than quoting counterarguments to abortion defences. It’s like he’s sort of assuming everyone already has ideas about why abortion itself is bad, but find it permissible for whatever reason. Is this a correct characterisation of the EA community? That they all harbour anti-abortion sentiment but for whatever reason permit abortion?
Overall it reads like a business proposal. Is this how you’re supposed to talk to an EA person? Instead of saying “here is why you should care about x”, you have to pitch them on the potential ROI of caring about something? If so, that’s a fucking frustrating way to think about the world, and this was a fucking awful article to read, just like every other treacles-y long form logorrhoea you get from these people.
Is this a correct characterisation of the EA community? That they all harbour anti-abortion sentiment but for whatever reason permit abortion?
I actually wouldn’t be surprised if this were the case – the whole schtick of a lot of these people is “worrying about increasing the number of future possibly-existing humans, even at the cost of the suffering of actually-existing humans”, so being anti-abortion honestly seems not too far out of their wheelhouse?
Like I think in the EAverse you can just kinda go “well this makes people have less kids which means less QALYs therefore we all know it’s obviously bad and I don’t really need to justify it.” (with bonus internet contrarian points if you are justifying some terrible thing using your abstract math, because that means you’re Highly Decoupled and Very Smart.) See also the quote elsewhere in this thread about the guy defending child marriage for similar reasons.
being anti-abortion honestly seems not too far out of their wheelhouse?
I actually wouldn’t be surprised if this were the case – the whole schtick of a lot of these people is “worrying about increasing the number of future possibly-existing humans, even at the cost of the suffering of actually-existing humans”, so being anti-abortion honestly seems not too far out of their wheelhouse?
Same energy as those score-maximising Tetris AIs that taught themselves to stack blocks to the kill line and pause.
Like I think in the EAverse you can just kinda go “well this makes people have less kids which means less QALYs therefore we all know it’s obviously bad and I don’t really need to justify it.” (with bonus internet contrarian points if you are justifying some terrible thing using your abstract math, because that means you’re Highly Decoupled and Very Smart.) See the quote elsewhere in this thread about the guy defending child marriage for similar reasons.
Ughhh yeah that sounds about right.
He says like “well actually having access to abortion doesn’t make women happier” , as if abortion isn’t pretty essential to the happiness of SOME women. But he thinks if women are forced to have babies they’ll realize that they really like it actually, because he’s a wretched dog.
Bonus points for the part where he rails against contraception and sex education in the appendix, because we all know what this is really about.
Ah just like the prolife campaigner I argued with recently who said that in his* ideal world, abortion, contraception, and the morning-after pill would all be illegal. Apparently having an abortion is “irresponsible” because you’re acting as if it’s “someone else’s problem”. That really threw me for a loop. I mean, it’s not like you can get someone else to have the abortion for you! He justified a contraception ban along the same lines - that people needed to accept the consequences of having sex, or something. I suggested to him that contraception was actually very effective at preventing abortions, and he frowned as if he couldn’t understand what I was saying.
*Yes, he was a cis man who has never been pregnant or made anyone else pregnant. Sure, what else would you expect?
EA is a movement for rich philanthropists to justify whatever they want to do, with data* and studies**. It’s literally ends justifying the means.
*data it’s heavily cherry picked for whatever you, the powerful and so smart philanthropist, want to accomplish
**studies are funded to guarantee results that you want
@dgerard looks like Dr Miller here is completely rationally and altruistically examining the issues despite being one of the go-to “sciencey words” providers of various fundamentalist organisations in the UK.
I remember when LW at least tried to prevent this by doing the ‘epistemic status’ thing (which was a bit silly as it depended on the honesty of the author but at least they tried, and I am annoyed they gave up on that).
Edit: I was looking up a source for what you said (and discovered Miller has deleted his twitter) and came across this: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cpk3gZqLkQ1/ “Ever wondered what it’s like to be pro-life and in the medical sphere? Look no further and join Alexandra as she speaks to the UK’s most prolife-ic (see what we did there) doctor against abortion, Calum Miller.” yeah really something he should have disclosed.
Edit 2: lol ow god he didn’t delete his twitter he actually renamed it from cdoggmiller to DrCalumMiller but forgot to update his own blog. ‘cdogg’ ow god. He is also a pretty vocal anti leftwinger (at least in his student days). Edit 3 No wait, he still is
@Soyweiser He’s also oddly reluctant to disclose in his polemic that his ongoing association with Oxford is as a research fellow at the tiny Blackfriars Hall, which is a combination Dominican friary and heavily Catholic college. Not wholly out of the question that the post is funded by, you know, “a group of concerned individuals”.
Tradcaths gonna tradcath, but it’s interesting he feels he can reach the EA audience with his views.
He also went on a ‘why I changed my mind on abortion’ video. ‘changed your mind’ sure buddy. I’d hope at least that his association with friars makes it very unlikely he actually pipebombs anything, he also didn’t seem (in looking at his socials for like 5 minutes) to be the stochastic terrorism promoter type.
Not a huge distance to travel from Bayesian reasoning to Stochastic terrorism
There is a good case that abortion is morally impermissible – or at least there is significant moral uncertainty.
it’s actually kind of rare that one of these loses me in the first sentence (cause TESCREALs don’t know about brevity so usually their point is buried under an avalanche of words) but here we are. the only people who can’t imagine a morally permissible abortion just don’t give a fuck about women
Moral uncertainty is reason to become pro-life? We do morally uncertain things every day. That’s no reason to legislate.
“Put another way, even if one believes abortion is permissible, it likely remains a comparable problem to any problem of infant mortality – but with even more lost life-years, and occurring on a much larger scale than infant mortality”.
Well, it isn’t comparable, because abortion prevents forced birth, and forced birth is a form of torture. As indeed is being forced to care for a child in poverty.
“Other responses to Thomson highlight various other disanalogies between pregnancy and the violinist situation: In most cases of abortion, the woman is responsible for both the child’s neediness and their intimate biological relationship with the woman – unlike the violinist case. Other responses to Thomson highlight various other disanalogies between pregnancy and the violinist situation: In most cases of abortion, the woman is responsible for both the child’s neediness and their intimate biological relationship with the woman – unlike the violinist case.”
Bit of a bold statement, and likely untrue. It is impossible for a woman to know even when having unprotected sex if it will result in a pregnancy. Contraceptive technologies fail. And what about the responsibility of the father? It takes two.
“n the case of abortion, the woman is the mother of the child[6] – unlike the violinist case.[7]”
Ok, this is meaningless.
“The violinist is in an unnatural situation and being hooked up to the stranger is an unnatural position – by contrast, the fetus is exactly where she is supposed to be in her ‘natural habitat’.”
Not in my womb, it isn’t, motherfucker!
Quite a lot of pregnancies end early in miscarriage.
“6)deaths from abortion are a function of infrastructure, not law: pro-life countries/regions with good healthcare (e.g. Chile, Poland, Malta, South Korea (until recently), Ireland (until recently), North Africa, UAE, and almost all of Europe pre-legalisation) have very few, in many cases zero, deaths from abortion .”
Despite our good (?) healthcare, there was a high-profile death due to lack of abortion access in Ireland: Savita Halappanavar. And that’s despite the fact that from 1996 (?) to 2018 abortion was legally permitted to “protect the life of the mother”, if a panel of doctors agreed her life was in danger. In addition to Savita’s death there was a case in which a raped, pregnant teenager became suicidal, but because doctors did not agree she should have an abortion, she was committed and put on suicide watch. How’s that for harm? Women who travelled abroad for abortions also experienced significant medical and psychological harm as a result: consider the case of A, B and C vs. Ireland.
Well, it isn’t comparable, because abortion prevents forced birth, and forced birth is a form of torture. As indeed is being forced to care for a child in poverty.
Fun fact, abortion also prevents infanticide. Prolifers either don’t realise how pragmatic humans are, or are really into killing actual babies.