3 ms·

The ablity to sterilise people with a pill/injection is a fairly scary prospect.

jamesrcole 10y ago
Why? Having the means to do so is very very different from forcing it upon someone. Means to kill someone else are readily available to everyone -- kitchen knives, over the counter drugs -- but simply their availability isn't that scary.
- gaius 10y ago
  Slip it into someone's pills at a mental hospital say. Sweden was doing stuff like that up until the 1970s.
  - jamesrcole 10y ago
    What were they giving to the patients? Was the existence of what they were giving to those patients a scary thing just for existing - coz that's the question here.
    - gaius 10y ago
      The ease with which something can be done makes a huge difference and it's disingenuous to argue otherwise.
      - jamesrcole 10y ago
        a car can easily kill someone. As can millions of other things. It's ridiculous to suggest that that automatically makes their existence scary. Is the existence of injectable insulin scary just because someone could kill someone just by injecting them with it?
        gaius 10y ago
        Have a read of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilisation_in_Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilisation_in_Sw... 1975 isn't that long ago. If this technology is cheap and available, it will be abused.
        jamesrcole 10y ago
        You haven't responded to any of my points, just ignored them. What you're really trying to do is make out that somehow sterilisation is a special case of something with a potential negative use case, where if they can easily be used, they will be, without arguing why it's different from all the other things that meet that criteria.
        gaius 10y ago
        Not at all. It's similar to Google and the "right to be forgotten". In the old days something might be public knowledge but would say require visiting a records office to uncover. People could move on from things they regretted. Now it's just a search away. Aha, people say, but the knowledge was ALWAYS public. In practice the ease of doing it makes it completely different.
        Dylan16807 10y ago
        Which, again, is an argument about it being very easy to do. That does not address jamesrcole's argument. He's not saying "it was always possible, therefore being easier is no different". He's pointing out that there are worse bad things that are just as easy to do, yet they aren't considered scary. You can't make an argument that the ease matters, because he's asking about things that are equally easy if not easier. Why is easy availability of such a drug different from easy availability of the knife/car/etc.?
        gaius 10y ago
        It's a value judgement of course. As a society we accept that n deaths/year are worth it for the benefits that cars and butter knives bring to the wider population. In very recent history, sterilisation techniques have been massively abused by governments in an organised way. There was never a large-scale, systematic programme of running people over as policy. Forced sterilisation is still a thing in India...
gnaritas 10y ago
Not really, tens of millions would line up for it; it'd be vastly better than surgery and plenty of pills can kill people now but we deal with that just fine and death is much scarier than sterilization. What you're doing there... it's called fear mongering. If you're really scared of something like that, you probably have some issues you need to resolve because that's a silly thing to be afraid of.

Why? Having the means to do so is very very different from forcing it upon someone. Means to kill someone else are readily available to everyone -- kitchen knives, over the counter drugs -- but simply their availability isn't that scary.

gaius 10y ago
Slip it into someone's pills at a mental hospital say. Sweden was doing stuff like that up until the 1970s.
- jamesrcole 10y ago
  What were they giving to the patients? Was the existence of what they were giving to those patients a scary thing just for existing - coz that's the question here.
  - gaius 10y ago
    The ease with which something can be done makes a huge difference and it's disingenuous to argue otherwise.
    - jamesrcole 10y ago
      a car can easily kill someone. As can millions of other things. It's ridiculous to suggest that that automatically makes their existence scary. Is the existence of injectable insulin scary just because someone could kill someone just by injecting them with it?
      - gaius 10y ago
        Have a read of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilisation_in_Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilisation_in_Sw... 1975 isn't that long ago. If this technology is cheap and available, it will be abused.
        jamesrcole 10y ago
        You haven't responded to any of my points, just ignored them. What you're really trying to do is make out that somehow sterilisation is a special case of something with a potential negative use case, where if they can easily be used, they will be, without arguing why it's different from all the other things that meet that criteria.
        gaius 10y ago
        Not at all. It's similar to Google and the "right to be forgotten". In the old days something might be public knowledge but would say require visiting a records office to uncover. People could move on from things they regretted. Now it's just a search away. Aha, people say, but the knowledge was ALWAYS public. In practice the ease of doing it makes it completely different.
        Dylan16807 10y ago
        Which, again, is an argument about it being very easy to do. That does not address jamesrcole's argument. He's not saying "it was always possible, therefore being easier is no different". He's pointing out that there are worse bad things that are just as easy to do, yet they aren't considered scary. You can't make an argument that the ease matters, because he's asking about things that are equally easy if not easier. Why is easy availability of such a drug different from easy availability of the knife/car/etc.?
        gaius 10y ago
        It's a value judgement of course. As a society we accept that n deaths/year are worth it for the benefits that cars and butter knives bring to the wider population. In very recent history, sterilisation techniques have been massively abused by governments in an organised way. There was never a large-scale, systematic programme of running people over as policy. Forced sterilisation is still a thing in India...

gnaritas 10y ago

Not really, tens of millions would line up for it; it'd be vastly better than surgery and plenty of pills can kill people now but we deal with that just fine and death is much scarier than sterilization. What you're doing there... it's called fear mongering. If you're really scared of something like that, you probably have some issues you need to resolve because that's a silly thing to be afraid of.