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You didn't actually rebut his point though Isaac Send a noteboard - 23/08/2013 09:42:02 AM

His core point, that objecting to unethical clean ups of problems by people who screwed up doesn't mean we should have to do clean up for them. Accidents happen, but they tend to happen when people aren't acting responsibly and its hard to call them an accident. Telling someone that the consequences are something they have to accept is not the same as me accepting a share of the effort for them dealing with those consequences.

"I'm broke, I want correct that, I'm thinking about mugging someone"

"No, you can't do that."

"All right, can you give me some money then?"

Now you raise the reasonable doubt issue about personhood and that's a fair point but also backwards. That's not how we do it. If I hear what I think is a child's voice coming from a well I need to go and establish that there is almost certainly not a person down there, not 'a non-remote chance that there isn't'. If we encounter artificial or alien intelligence which doesn't scream totally human we don't demand proof beyond a reasonable doubt that it is a person before we extend it the benefit of the doubt and demand people not kill them on whim. It is not how rational humanists think, but then I'm pretty convinced secularists are pro-choice mostly because religions are anti-abortion.

My position is a simple one, I don't know how to define 'person' or determine when something is one. I give the benefit of the doubt to them. I am not sure a fetus is a person, not sure an infant is either, since there is decent reason to believe they may be I will act as though that is true unless presented overwhelming evidence they aren't.


The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
- Albert Einstein

King of Cairhien 20-7-2
Chancellor of the Landsraad, Archduke of Is'Mod
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You didn't actually rebut his point though - 23/08/2013 09:42:02 AM 976 Views
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