3 ms·

> Here's something else that's argument-destroying: the ban doesn't apply to the people born after 2009, it applies to anyone trying to sell them tobacco or vap

by troad 6mo ago

> Here's something else that's argument-destroying: the ban doesn't apply to the people born after 2009, it applies to anyone trying to sell them tobacco or vapes. This falls under the aegis of regulation (can't sell heroin either) and applies to all sellers regardless of race, age, sex, etc, so it's not even discriminatory. Claims destroyed, nice try token conservative at liberal outlet. This is a terrible argument. Imagine a law that prohibited ALL vendors, regardless of age, race, sex, etc from selling to people of a certain race. Would you claim that such a law is not discriminatory, because it affects vendors of all races equally? > particularly lazy article > just a bunch of trying to troll the libs > Here's something else that's argument-destroying > Claims destroyed, nice try token conservative at liberal outlet > Just, chilling detachment from humanity I don't agree with CF on many things, including this smoking ban, but I'd point out these kinds of flourishes do nothing but weaken your overall point.

camgunz 6mo ago
> This is a terrible argument. Imagine a law that prohibited ALL vendors, regardless of age, race, sex, etc from selling to people of a certain race. Would you claim that such a law is not discriminatory, because it affects vendors of all races equally? This isn't the same thing; race is a protected class; "birth year" isn't. Also is this a flourish: "This is a terrible argument"??? I welcome you to the land of polemics and hyperbole, united against the soul-eating bland vomit of AI compositions.
- troad 6mo ago
  What you said is "it's not even discriminatory". Now you're moving the goal-posts to "protected class" (ie illegal discrimination versus legal discrimination). I note that the US concept of "protected class" has absolutely no relevance to the UK; the British parliament is sovereign and not bound to care at all about whichever random characteristics are enumerated among America's "protected classes". (The roughest European equivalent is the ECHR, which prohibits discrimination "on any ground", making the idea of protected classes even more redundant in this conversation. The British Equality Act explicitly does mention age. Of course, none of this is really relevant. The British parliament has the power to make its laws as discriminatory as it wants, unlike in the US, under the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty.) A law that imposes a general obligation to discriminate against a specific group is obviously discriminatory, and no amount of juvenile word games makes it not so. The question isn't whether this is or is not discriminatory - it clearly is - the question is whether this discrimination is justified. In thirty years, if this law stands as is, we'll have forty-seven year old men and women who cannot legally buy a product, and forty-eight year old men and women who can. We've not really had many laws like this before, so it's worth considering whether this discrimination is justified (or even workable). It's a good question, and one I don't have an answer for. It is also the question engaged in by CF in TFA, and a much more interesting question than the relatively much less sophisticated arguments you've very bombastically put forward. > united against the soul-eating bland vomit of AI compositions This seems like a total non sequitur to me. AI exists, so you don't have to comment in good faith? AI exists, therefore you get to couch bad arguments in overheated rhetoric? AI exists, therefore you get to deepen the partisan divide by lazily dismissing CF as a 'token conservative', when he's not even talking about a left-right issue?
  - camgunz 6mo ago
    > What you said is "it's not even discriminatory". Now you're moving the goal-posts to "protected class" (ie illegal discrimination versus legal discrimination). You said "would you claim" and I said no based on US statutes and case laws as a US citizen. You can't discriminate against a non-protected class, for example ignorant HN posters. You'd probably get a different answer from a bona fide European. Friedersdorf is also American, so eat that one too. > In thirty years, if this law stands as is, we'll have forty-seven year old men and women who cannot legally buy a product, and forty-eight year old men and women who can. No one cares even a little about this. Of course the best thing to do is to kick anyone selling tobacco or vapes to anyone of any age into a lake of fire. This is the next best thing. > AI exists, therefore you get to deepen the partisan divide by lazily dismissing CF as a 'token conservative', when he's not even talking about a left-right issue? Friedersdorf is trying to outflank the libs while simultaneously painting the UK as some sort of fascist hellscape. It's craven and pathetic. The nicest thing I can do is deploy hyperbole.
    - troad 6mo ago
      > It's craven and pathetic. The nicest thing I can do is deploy hyperbole. The only one taking things to such extremes is you. You've largely ignored the content of the article, countered with barely coherent counter-arguments that you're awkwardly couching in Twitter-circa-2014-style "dunks", and ultimately you're the only one walking away with a feeling of hyperpartisanship, because it is what you've arrived with, and what you're projecting onto the world around you. > ignorant HN posters > eat that one too > craven and pathetic You imagine everyone else as being at the bottom, and so you race to the bottom yourself to meet them. Except they were never there, that was just your hyperpartisanship blinding you to the nuance and good faith of others. And in the end, the only one who ends up on the bottom - lashing out in bad faith and trying to drag everyone else down with them - is you.
      - camgunz 6mo ago
        > You've largely ignored the content of the article I have given Friedersdorf's article and subject more attention than he did: > Of course, although the law may reduce smoking, it won’t actually yield a smoke-free generation any more than Prohibition yielded a gin-free generation. Black markets for cigarettes will expand. Many people will buy them, even if they’re unregulated and potentially more dangerous than legal cigarettes (and end up enriching criminals). Addressed: Friedersdorf fails to address similar arguments against drug laws. In particular, this is an argument against all laws, which is reductio ad absurdum, and the type of faux intellectualism we've come to expect from the right. > The law’s design raises equal-protection concerns too. At first, it will affect only people ages 17 and younger. Addressed: not an equal protection concern as it applies to vendors, not buyers, and "birth date" isn't a protected class. This is the kind of lazy "dunk" the right loves ("oh I thought you haaaaaated discrimination, what hypocrites!"), albeit in cozy-writer-sweater Atlantic form. Friedersdorf is the one lowering our discourse here, not I. > It will violate the liberal principle that although the state may initiate force to stop an adult from harming others, it should not do so to stop an adult from harming themselves. Addressed: Friedersdorf fails to address similar arguments against drugs, requiring seat belt laws, etc. In this case, it would be "the state has a vested interest in its people being healthy", which the UK discovered when they had practically no healthy men in the wake of WW2 and birthed the NHS. This is the kind of historical ignorance we've learned to expect from the right. > There is inherent dignity in making choices and living with the consequences Addressed: there is no dignity in suffering/dying from what tobacco and vapes do to you. > As I see it, the conviviality that cocktails, wine, and beer add to meals and social life is worth the health risks, whereas the costs of smoking cigarettes far outweigh the benefits. Addressed: Friedersdorf fails to address similar arguments against drugs. In this case, all drugs aren't created equal, i.e. tobacco isn't comparable to alcohol. Alcohol contributes to ~178k deaths/yr in the US. Tobacco contributes to over 490k/yr, 2.75x. Secondhand smoke exposure causes 1.2 million premature deaths annually worldwide. In 2021 alone, exposure to second-hand smoke was linked to nearly 8.45m years of healthy life lost in children worldwide due to respiratory infections and tuberculosis. Why should children suffer the consequences of their parents' decisions here? https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/health-professionals-communities/core-resource-on-alcohol/medical-complications-common-alcohol-related-concerns https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/health-professionals-communities/c... https://progressreport.cancer.gov/prevention/tobacco/adult_smoking https://progressreport.cancer.gov/prevention/tobacco/adult_s... https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/public-health-education/health-effects-tobacco-use https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/public-health-education... https://europeanlung.org/en/news-and-blog/children-lose-8-45-million-days-of-healthy-life-due-to-second-hand-smoke/ https://europeanlung.org/en/news-and-blog/children-lose-8-45... > Although a majority of U.K. citizens support the smoking ban, more may come around to Hockney’s position if, as I suspect, the paternalists in Parliament are emboldened rather than satiated by their ban on cigarettes, and expand their ambitions to a broader array of unhealthy behavior. I’d hate to bet on what exactly they might attempt to control next. Addressed: Friedersdorf fails to address similar arguments against drug laws. In this case, it's a slippery slope fallacy. Actually, this article is something of a menagerie of fallacies. --- Maybe you think I'm rude, dismissive, arrogant, privileged even. Maybe I am. But that's nothing against a guy wielding his vast influence to try and addict, sicken, and kill untold numbers of people. I am 1000% over conservatives/MAGA/libertarians fucking literally everything up with their idiotic takes and hot trash ideologies. Take my example. Save your ire for people doing actual bad things.

by troad 6mo ago

camgunz 6mo ago

> This is a terrible argument. Imagine a law that prohibited ALL vendors, regardless of age, race, sex, etc from selling to people of a certain race. Would you claim that such a law is not discriminatory, because it affects vendors of all races equally? This isn't the same thing; race is a protected class; "birth year" isn't. Also is this a flourish: "This is a terrible argument"??? I welcome you to the land of polemics and hyperbole, united against the soul-eating bland vomit of AI compositions.

troad 6mo ago
What you said is "it's not even discriminatory". Now you're moving the goal-posts to "protected class" (ie illegal discrimination versus legal discrimination). I note that the US concept of "protected class" has absolutely no relevance to the UK; the British parliament is sovereign and not bound to care at all about whichever random characteristics are enumerated among America's "protected classes". (The roughest European equivalent is the ECHR, which prohibits discrimination "on any ground", making the idea of protected classes even more redundant in this conversation. The British Equality Act explicitly does mention age. Of course, none of this is really relevant. The British parliament has the power to make its laws as discriminatory as it wants, unlike in the US, under the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty.) A law that imposes a general obligation to discriminate against a specific group is obviously discriminatory, and no amount of juvenile word games makes it not so. The question isn't whether this is or is not discriminatory - it clearly is - the question is whether this discrimination is justified. In thirty years, if this law stands as is, we'll have forty-seven year old men and women who cannot legally buy a product, and forty-eight year old men and women who can. We've not really had many laws like this before, so it's worth considering whether this discrimination is justified (or even workable). It's a good question, and one I don't have an answer for. It is also the question engaged in by CF in TFA, and a much more interesting question than the relatively much less sophisticated arguments you've very bombastically put forward. > united against the soul-eating bland vomit of AI compositions This seems like a total non sequitur to me. AI exists, so you don't have to comment in good faith? AI exists, therefore you get to couch bad arguments in overheated rhetoric? AI exists, therefore you get to deepen the partisan divide by lazily dismissing CF as a 'token conservative', when he's not even talking about a left-right issue?
- camgunz 6mo ago
  > What you said is "it's not even discriminatory". Now you're moving the goal-posts to "protected class" (ie illegal discrimination versus legal discrimination). You said "would you claim" and I said no based on US statutes and case laws as a US citizen. You can't discriminate against a non-protected class, for example ignorant HN posters. You'd probably get a different answer from a bona fide European. Friedersdorf is also American, so eat that one too. > In thirty years, if this law stands as is, we'll have forty-seven year old men and women who cannot legally buy a product, and forty-eight year old men and women who can. No one cares even a little about this. Of course the best thing to do is to kick anyone selling tobacco or vapes to anyone of any age into a lake of fire. This is the next best thing. > AI exists, therefore you get to deepen the partisan divide by lazily dismissing CF as a 'token conservative', when he's not even talking about a left-right issue? Friedersdorf is trying to outflank the libs while simultaneously painting the UK as some sort of fascist hellscape. It's craven and pathetic. The nicest thing I can do is deploy hyperbole.
  - troad 6mo ago
    > It's craven and pathetic. The nicest thing I can do is deploy hyperbole. The only one taking things to such extremes is you. You've largely ignored the content of the article, countered with barely coherent counter-arguments that you're awkwardly couching in Twitter-circa-2014-style "dunks", and ultimately you're the only one walking away with a feeling of hyperpartisanship, because it is what you've arrived with, and what you're projecting onto the world around you. > ignorant HN posters > eat that one too > craven and pathetic You imagine everyone else as being at the bottom, and so you race to the bottom yourself to meet them. Except they were never there, that was just your hyperpartisanship blinding you to the nuance and good faith of others. And in the end, the only one who ends up on the bottom - lashing out in bad faith and trying to drag everyone else down with them - is you.
    - camgunz 6mo ago
      > You've largely ignored the content of the article I have given Friedersdorf's article and subject more attention than he did: > Of course, although the law may reduce smoking, it won’t actually yield a smoke-free generation any more than Prohibition yielded a gin-free generation. Black markets for cigarettes will expand. Many people will buy them, even if they’re unregulated and potentially more dangerous than legal cigarettes (and end up enriching criminals). Addressed: Friedersdorf fails to address similar arguments against drug laws. In particular, this is an argument against all laws, which is reductio ad absurdum, and the type of faux intellectualism we've come to expect from the right. > The law’s design raises equal-protection concerns too. At first, it will affect only people ages 17 and younger. Addressed: not an equal protection concern as it applies to vendors, not buyers, and "birth date" isn't a protected class. This is the kind of lazy "dunk" the right loves ("oh I thought you haaaaaated discrimination, what hypocrites!"), albeit in cozy-writer-sweater Atlantic form. Friedersdorf is the one lowering our discourse here, not I. > It will violate the liberal principle that although the state may initiate force to stop an adult from harming others, it should not do so to stop an adult from harming themselves. Addressed: Friedersdorf fails to address similar arguments against drugs, requiring seat belt laws, etc. In this case, it would be "the state has a vested interest in its people being healthy", which the UK discovered when they had practically no healthy men in the wake of WW2 and birthed the NHS. This is the kind of historical ignorance we've learned to expect from the right. > There is inherent dignity in making choices and living with the consequences Addressed: there is no dignity in suffering/dying from what tobacco and vapes do to you. > As I see it, the conviviality that cocktails, wine, and beer add to meals and social life is worth the health risks, whereas the costs of smoking cigarettes far outweigh the benefits. Addressed: Friedersdorf fails to address similar arguments against drugs. In this case, all drugs aren't created equal, i.e. tobacco isn't comparable to alcohol. Alcohol contributes to ~178k deaths/yr in the US. Tobacco contributes to over 490k/yr, 2.75x. Secondhand smoke exposure causes 1.2 million premature deaths annually worldwide. In 2021 alone, exposure to second-hand smoke was linked to nearly 8.45m years of healthy life lost in children worldwide due to respiratory infections and tuberculosis. Why should children suffer the consequences of their parents' decisions here? https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/health-professionals-communities/core-resource-on-alcohol/medical-complications-common-alcohol-related-concerns https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/health-professionals-communities/c... https://progressreport.cancer.gov/prevention/tobacco/adult_smoking https://progressreport.cancer.gov/prevention/tobacco/adult_s... https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/public-health-education/health-effects-tobacco-use https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/public-health-education... https://europeanlung.org/en/news-and-blog/children-lose-8-45-million-days-of-healthy-life-due-to-second-hand-smoke/ https://europeanlung.org/en/news-and-blog/children-lose-8-45... > Although a majority of U.K. citizens support the smoking ban, more may come around to Hockney’s position if, as I suspect, the paternalists in Parliament are emboldened rather than satiated by their ban on cigarettes, and expand their ambitions to a broader array of unhealthy behavior. I’d hate to bet on what exactly they might attempt to control next. Addressed: Friedersdorf fails to address similar arguments against drug laws. In this case, it's a slippery slope fallacy. Actually, this article is something of a menagerie of fallacies. --- Maybe you think I'm rude, dismissive, arrogant, privileged even. Maybe I am. But that's nothing against a guy wielding his vast influence to try and addict, sicken, and kill untold numbers of people. I am 1000% over conservatives/MAGA/libertarians fucking literally everything up with their idiotic takes and hot trash ideologies. Take my example. Save your ire for people doing actual bad things.