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How do you define a controversial issue and even media for that matter? Does your tweet about the pizza you enjoyed last night need to include an asterisk about

How do you define a controversial issue and even media for that matter? Does your tweet about the pizza you enjoyed last night need to include an asterisk about the children crazy people think are imprisoned in its imaginary basement? How do you define equal time? If you are trying to read about motorcycles do we need to inject enough pro/anti abortion articles to balance out the converse in your feed last night? So much of our media consumption isn't the evening news such a proposal has nearly no meaning and there is I think a larger issue. Many even most controversies aren't complex takes on deep issues. They are to be frank malicious bullshit. Taking pills to not continue a pregnancy isn't murder. There isn't a basement let alone kids under that pizza place. The election wasn't stolen. Societies without pervasive individual guns don't have people blowing away children meaning the issues with gun control are 99% logistical/legal. We could solve them we just willing and able to trade dead children for more freedom. There is zero moral implications to allowing gay marriage or gay adoption. Evolution is real as is systemic racism. Shall we designate a ministry of truth to decide what controversies we ought to teach or force our media to carry malicious lies?

Dig1t 4y ago
Well you seem to have your own, very strongly held, beliefs about all of these topics. The pizza thing is obviously wrong, the vast majority of people know it's wrong. Censoring those kinds of crazy ideas in public discourse just emboldens its believers further because they see your censorship as an attempt to stop them from getting their "truth" out. I think it would be better to let them talk openly about their crazy pizza conspiracies, eventually they will encounter better arguments and lose. If you are saying that there is no nuance, no gray areas at all, to the topics of abortion, election integrity, gun ownership, etc then you are no better than the ideologues on Fox news, just in the opposite direction.
- michaelmrose 4y ago
  More dialogue actually doesn't help conspiracy theorists learn better it just helps them spread their crazy to a broader audience which is why one in five Americans believe in some aspect of Qanon. It's not censorship to not spread the crazy. Let them spread it on their own platforms. There really is little nuance regarding election integrity. Trump definitively lost. The only disputes with a shred of substance were themselves procedural quibbles like arguing that a given legislature overstepped its authority by offering mail in balloting and attempting to use this to argue that the proper resolution to overreach would be to throw out the legitimately cast ballots of those following government instruction in order to reach claimants preferred outcome. Lets do abortion next. Almost all the meaningful brain development that produces a human like being rather than a human looking being happens in the third trimester whereas almost all abortions happen in the first and overwhelmingly consist of mom to be swallowing pills terminate something as intelligent as mold. The nuance was covered 50 years ago and then again and again with redundant laws designed to protect the fetus from fictional partial birth abortions that were already illegal twice or three times over. Having already achieved the goal of keeping human like beings from being killed decades prior there is little nuance left to deal with. If you have an hour we could do gun control too. I noticed you didn't mention the other controversies presumably because you don't regard them as meaningful controversies. Kudos.
AnimalMuppet 4y ago
Pregnancy continues without pills. The pill is to stop an existing pregnancy. That difference actually matters.
- michaelmrose 4y ago
  Why does it matter? in the first trimester the fetus is as intelligent as mold, in the second its less than a mouse, virtually all of what we think of as humanity grows in the third. The only way you can be against popping pills in the first trimester is if you either haven't realized maximizing utility + maybe people is a logical trap, want to use the law to oppress women, or believe a that a soul is instilled in the egg upon conception.
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    Why is infanticide illegal? Not for what the baby currently is capable of, but for what it can become. (And for what it is - human.) > The only way you can be against popping pills in the first trimester is... You're being awfully free there with the strawmen...
    - michaelmrose 4y ago
      An egg has the potential to be human but isn't afforded legal right to fertilization so it can reach its potential. A newborn babe on the other hand has a rights. That I hope we can agree on. Therefore there must be some point in time in which the babe acquires rights it didn't possess. To me the strongest contender for the crossover point is brain development in the third trimester. Do you have a different time in mind? Why?
      - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
        I could go with brain development (maybe - see the next paragraph). I'll even give you an additional argument for it. I'm an organ donor. If something happens to me, a bunch of doctors have to decide whether I'm alive or dead. If I'm dead, feel free to donate my organs. But if I'm alive, then taking my heart out is murder. How do they decide? If I understand correctly, it's by brain activity. If my brain has stopped, and isn't going to start again, then whatever I am, I'm gone, and feel free to take the spare parts. But you said "brain development", not brain activity. Do you have some developmental milestone in mind? If so, what? My standard hinges on electrical activity in the brain, which is there by the 24th week - that is, the second trimester. (And maybe earlier - detecting brain activity isn't as simple as slapping EEG electrodes on the skull, when the skull is inside the womb.) I would argue for that, rather than for a particular developmental milestone. Other possible milestones: The earliest that a child has survived being born prematurely. (22 weeks currently, I think.) If at that stage of development it has full human rights because it had the misfortune to be born prematurely, why shouldn't it have those rights if it wasn't born prematurely? Or, first heartbeat. (The heartbeat used to be the deciding line on the death side, before the brain was.) Or, fertilization or implantation. (I agree with you about the egg.) It will become possible to build an artificial womb that will take a fertilized egg and produce a baby in nine months. Does that change the boundaries for you at all? (Via my "premature birth" argument, does it change the boundaries if we can take an earlier, non-viable premature birth, stick it in the artificial womb, and have it survive?) This last position loops back to my argument about the organ donor. The question was whether the brain had stopped, and wasn't going to start up again. Well, in the case of the fetus, it will start up if you just don't kill it. (Whereas the egg, by itself, will just die in 7 or 8 days.) The fetus is "default alive"; the egg is "default dead". To me, that makes abortion different from birth control.

Dig1t 4y ago

Well you seem to have your own, very strongly held, beliefs about all of these topics. The pizza thing is obviously wrong, the vast majority of people know it's wrong. Censoring those kinds of crazy ideas in public discourse just emboldens its believers further because they see your censorship as an attempt to stop them from getting their "truth" out. I think it would be better to let them talk openly about their crazy pizza conspiracies, eventually they will encounter better arguments and lose. If you are saying that there is no nuance, no gray areas at all, to the topics of abortion, election integrity, gun ownership, etc then you are no better than the ideologues on Fox news, just in the opposite direction.

michaelmrose 4y ago
More dialogue actually doesn't help conspiracy theorists learn better it just helps them spread their crazy to a broader audience which is why one in five Americans believe in some aspect of Qanon. It's not censorship to not spread the crazy. Let them spread it on their own platforms. There really is little nuance regarding election integrity. Trump definitively lost. The only disputes with a shred of substance were themselves procedural quibbles like arguing that a given legislature overstepped its authority by offering mail in balloting and attempting to use this to argue that the proper resolution to overreach would be to throw out the legitimately cast ballots of those following government instruction in order to reach claimants preferred outcome. Lets do abortion next. Almost all the meaningful brain development that produces a human like being rather than a human looking being happens in the third trimester whereas almost all abortions happen in the first and overwhelmingly consist of mom to be swallowing pills terminate something as intelligent as mold. The nuance was covered 50 years ago and then again and again with redundant laws designed to protect the fetus from fictional partial birth abortions that were already illegal twice or three times over. Having already achieved the goal of keeping human like beings from being killed decades prior there is little nuance left to deal with. If you have an hour we could do gun control too. I noticed you didn't mention the other controversies presumably because you don't regard them as meaningful controversies. Kudos.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago

Pregnancy continues without pills. The pill is to stop an existing pregnancy. That difference actually matters.

michaelmrose 4y ago
Why does it matter? in the first trimester the fetus is as intelligent as mold, in the second its less than a mouse, virtually all of what we think of as humanity grows in the third. The only way you can be against popping pills in the first trimester is if you either haven't realized maximizing utility + maybe people is a logical trap, want to use the law to oppress women, or believe a that a soul is instilled in the egg upon conception.
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  Why is infanticide illegal? Not for what the baby currently is capable of, but for what it can become. (And for what it is - human.) > The only way you can be against popping pills in the first trimester is... You're being awfully free there with the strawmen...
  - michaelmrose 4y ago
    An egg has the potential to be human but isn't afforded legal right to fertilization so it can reach its potential. A newborn babe on the other hand has a rights. That I hope we can agree on. Therefore there must be some point in time in which the babe acquires rights it didn't possess. To me the strongest contender for the crossover point is brain development in the third trimester. Do you have a different time in mind? Why?
    - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
      I could go with brain development (maybe - see the next paragraph). I'll even give you an additional argument for it. I'm an organ donor. If something happens to me, a bunch of doctors have to decide whether I'm alive or dead. If I'm dead, feel free to donate my organs. But if I'm alive, then taking my heart out is murder. How do they decide? If I understand correctly, it's by brain activity. If my brain has stopped, and isn't going to start again, then whatever I am, I'm gone, and feel free to take the spare parts. But you said "brain development", not brain activity. Do you have some developmental milestone in mind? If so, what? My standard hinges on electrical activity in the brain, which is there by the 24th week - that is, the second trimester. (And maybe earlier - detecting brain activity isn't as simple as slapping EEG electrodes on the skull, when the skull is inside the womb.) I would argue for that, rather than for a particular developmental milestone. Other possible milestones: The earliest that a child has survived being born prematurely. (22 weeks currently, I think.) If at that stage of development it has full human rights because it had the misfortune to be born prematurely, why shouldn't it have those rights if it wasn't born prematurely? Or, first heartbeat. (The heartbeat used to be the deciding line on the death side, before the brain was.) Or, fertilization or implantation. (I agree with you about the egg.) It will become possible to build an artificial womb that will take a fertilized egg and produce a baby in nine months. Does that change the boundaries for you at all? (Via my "premature birth" argument, does it change the boundaries if we can take an earlier, non-viable premature birth, stick it in the artificial womb, and have it survive?) This last position loops back to my argument about the organ donor. The question was whether the brain had stopped, and wasn't going to start up again. Well, in the case of the fetus, it will start up if you just don't kill it. (Whereas the egg, by itself, will just die in 7 or 8 days.) The fetus is "default alive"; the egg is "default dead". To me, that makes abortion different from birth control.