Messages

251

General Comments / Re: Over the Top

« on: April 07, 2016, 01:43:25 PM »

It's not as easy to fix as it appears.  What's the solution for repeat offenders?  Three strike laws exit because of the consequences of using "proportional" punishments with individuals who demonstrate they will continually violate the law.

The solution of spending tens of thousands of dollars to incarcerate someone to prevent hundreds of dollars worth of theft is incredibly irrational.  When the punitive/deterrence model doesn't work, for some reason we idiotically prefer to double (or triple or quadruple) down on it instead of trying something else. 

In my view, the proposed punishment is clearly cruel and unusual.

252

General Comments / Re: Election Day

« on: March 28, 2016, 10:32:03 PM »

That sort of mockery would be a little ironic.  He can call her out, but he needs to do it respectfully.

253

General Comments / Re: In a self described serial rapist's own words, with an interesting twist...

« on: March 21, 2016, 02:53:49 PM »

The reason that the bright line is "sober, enthusiastic consent" is that there is no other bright line.  Reluctant or hesitant consent are red flags and potentially indicate some kind of coercion. 

It'd be good for everyone to make the distinction between sexual ethics and legal standards when talking about this stuff.  Pyrtolin is espousing a bright line standard for ethical sexual behavior, but is not proposing to use the same standard to distinguish between felonious acts and non-felonious acts.  However, he's using terms that often have a legal meaning, so it gets pretty confusing.

When teaching people not to rape, I think teaching them to follow the bright line ethical standard is the right thing to do.  We have to admit that there's gray area between this standard and the legal definition of rape, but that highlights the reason we should be teaching this stuff: not because we want to prevent violations of statutes, but because we want to prevent harmful acts.   

There's also some gray area between the bright line standard and harmful behavior, but there's no way to consistently navigate that gray area without making mistakes and causing harm. 

One could argue that teaching the bright line standard is counterproductive because no one actually follows it in practice, but I'm not convinced.  We DO need to straighten out the terminology so that "tipsy sex with a new partner may be unethical" doesn't get morphed into the claim "tipsy sex with a new partner means you have definitely committed a felony".  The latter WOULD be a counterproductive message in the cases where it isn't actually true.  But it's hard to draw the distinctions without softpedaling the importance of the message.  I don't think we've got it figured out yet.

254

General Comments / Re: Yoo hoo, Pyr, if you give a *censored* about black lives, answer me this

« on: March 16, 2016, 11:50:17 AM »

Pete, take a few steps back.  You've poured more invective in these pages about Johnson and Pyrtolin in the last couple of days than makes any sense.  What are you getting out of it?  You're annoying everyone and it's not productive.

255

General Comments / Re: Election Day

« on: March 14, 2016, 04:01:01 PM »

I vote for Sanders.  TEA Party and Trump would be extremely destructive.  Clinton won't change a thing. 

Say Sanders wins.  If Trump isn't the GOP candidate then they probably maintain their majorities in Congress.  They don't let Sanders do anything, but he consistently calls them out on it.  Given Sanders' upset victory, there's a chance the DNC will start to get behind him for fear of being replaced with more progressive candidates, and if the message coheres then he might get a more sympathetic Congress after people are sick enough of their do-nothing reps to stay home and let the Dems win the following election.

If Trump IS the nominee, Sanders gets his sympathetic congress sooner.

256

General Comments / Re: Finland is considering giving every citizen €800 a month

« on: March 10, 2016, 05:55:20 PM »

I don't think there's an alternative to a massive welfare state past a certain technological tipping point, and I think we're near it.  Well, there are alternatives, but they are bad.

257

General Comments / Re: AlphaGo just beat one of the 5 best Go players in the world

« on: March 10, 2016, 02:22:51 PM »

Seriati,

Not to be silly, but don't you think the complexity actually makes it easier for the computer to beat the human?  With chess there's a lot less (still quite a lot) of ways it can go and the human's have a strong sense of it.  I mean think about the much simpler game of tic tac toe.  A computer would never beat a competent player, all matches would end in a draw, no amount of additional process could change the result.  The only thing that would limit a computer in a super complex environment is if it's actually predictable - which wouldn't show for several games.

Say a computer can evaluate 100 billion moves per second.  at a branching factor of 200, depth 1/2 (i move) is 200, depth 1 (i move, you move) is 40000, depth 3/2 is 8,000,000 depth 2 is 1.6 billion, depth 5/2 320 billion, depth 3 64 trillion (6.4 * 10**13).  So to see just 3 moves ahead, a computer will take 640 seconds or 11 minutes.    To make a good move requires seeing ahead 20 or so moves - 1.0 * 10**92 possible moves, or using brute force would take around 3.5 10**73 years.  Since the average move of a game in go only allows about 1 minute of thought, it is simply not feasible.   You need some way to reduce the number of moves to consider.  Humans do this through pattern recognition and intuition.

I would amend: Humans do this pattern recognition and intuition that may involve unconscious mental processes that the players can't describe and we can't presently reverse engineer.  We don't know for sure how the best humans are good at Go, so it's not straightforward to apply computing to the problem to beat them at their own game. 

258

General Comments / Re: Hillary: Too risky a candidate (cont'd)

« on: March 10, 2016, 01:49:31 PM »

It scares me how willingly people jump down the propaganda rabbit hole and buy into fake versions of the story, even when they watched it unfold real time.

It scares me how you're standing up for the clearly corrupt and partisan politics being played by the Benghazi truthers in office.  The truth has been out for a really long time.  The chips have fallen.  But they are still after the "truth".

259

General Comments / Re: Say what?

« on: March 08, 2016, 02:17:07 PM »

With respect to the question of God''s existence, my understanding was that all atheists believe that God does not exist.  Am I mistaken? do you believe differently?

There's a slight but useful difference between the two following statements:

#1. I do not believe that God exists.
#2. I believe that God does not exist.

It is safer to say that atheists are defined by the first of the two.  Many of them will agree to the latter statement, but not all of them.

Some people think that #1 defines agnostics, but an agnostic rather believes that (#3) we cannot know whether there is a God.  I sort of think most people who adopt this belief are just hedging for some reason.

260

General Comments / Re: Say what?

« on: March 08, 2016, 02:07:28 PM »

Since there was more to the accused's statements than "There is no god", and whatever he did say is likely somewhat compromised in the translation to English, it's a bit hard to say whether the charges are off base or whether it's only a (very) bad law.  The latter I'm sure we can all agree on.

261

General Comments / Re: Say what?

« on: March 08, 2016, 02:04:38 PM »

Let me try to rephrase what Pete was trying to say (I think I can see it):

If an atheist claims that all religious believers are mentally defective, it is offensive to [at least some of] those believers.  However, the statement that there is no God is not an attack on believers, it is the expression of an opinion.

262

General Comments / Re: The end of the beginning of the middle of the federal western occupation crisis

« on: March 04, 2016, 02:04:44 PM »

Where's the mockery?

I do vaguely recall that article, but I figured you must have meant something more mainstream when you mentioned the press in the post I was responding to.  You said "leftist press", though, so I should have realized that you were referring to a niche. In which case, I don't really know what your point is.  Extreme viewpoints exist.


BTW, that's strikethrough, not underline. 

263

General Comments / Re: The end of the beginning of the middle of the federal western occupation crisis

« on: March 04, 2016, 01:43:33 PM »

Is that really even comparable to the disruption of lives of, say, the Ferguson riots or any urban protest where police end up getting involved?  Private businesses shut down, often permanently for lost revenue, if they aren't looted and burnt to the ground.  And as I've previously shown in other threads, the leftist press is unsympathetic and mocking of private businesses that get shut down in the glorious cause of a mass protest.

I'm not sure I agree with your assessment of how these things are treated in the media.

First, I would say that there's some editorial POV in media coverage of protests, and whether that POV finds any legitimacy in the protest definitely affects how the protest itself gets portrayed.  Nobody in the mainstream media found any legitimacy in the Malheur insurrection, and so the protest itself gets less sympathy.

Next, I guess I should point out that property damage and looting may have been precipitated by other protests, but it is not fair to equate the protesters with the criminals.  There was no distinction in Malheur, but there has been a distinction in other places and protests. 

Because of that distinction, when critics of the protest try to tar the entire protest with the crimes of a few, others defend.  I think this is what you interpret as mocking?  I certainly haven't seen any examples of the press going out of its way to mock people for being upset about property damage or lost business revenue, but I have seen lots of examples of the right wing claiming that protesters are lawless looting losers who have no legitimate grievance and others saying the existence of lawless looting losers does not mean the protest lacks legitimacy. 

Protests are of course disruptive by their nature, so maybe any mocking would be directed at the idea that protests should not disrupt anything.

264

General Comments / Re: The end of the beginning of the middle of the federal western occupation crisis

« on: March 04, 2016, 01:12:02 PM »

As for the article's implication that the protesters plan to do something sinister with the personal data of professional bird watchers, ... I'm baffled.

The protesters were a ragtag group of people in varying degrees of unhingedness, whose only common denominator was hatred of the federal government and willingness to commit multiple felonies in pursuit of their poorly defined aims.  And the private information belonged to federal employees who might have represented that government to some degree in the minds of some of the protesters. 

In other words, it's not an irrational concern. 

Maybe evacuating homes was an overreaction, but maybe not.  Just to give you an example, what if the protesters decided they needed some help unlocking things?  They had information about where the password/key holders lived. 

265

General Comments / Re: The end of the beginning of the middle of the federal western occupation crisis

« on: March 03, 2016, 01:04:43 AM »

About the people who were displaced from their jobs and homes by the occupation, and the mess they were left with:

http://www.opb.org/news/article/malheur-refuge-manager-its-one-big-mess-/

There's impact to the wildlife habitat, too:

Refuge employees would have normally spent all winter fixing and adjusting more than 1,000 irrigation gates and mechanisms on the 197,000-acre refuge.

“There’s a main water canal that needs repair, but that didn’t happen due to the occupation,” said Wenick, the refuge ecologist. “Water can’t flow down that main canal until the repair, and it feeds thousands of acres.”

That delayed repair means less habitat for the birds, for now.

“They need to land on water. And there was no water to land on, in certain areas,” Wenick said.  But I think because the occupation did end when it did, we were able to get folks on the ground to start addressing these things.” 

Another project delayed by the occupation was management of invasive carp. Karges said the refuge was in the middle of crafting a species management plan when the occupation began.

“We’re just not prepared to move forward with that right now because we weren’t doing that preparation during the winter months,” Karges said. 

266

General Comments / Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?

« on: March 01, 2016, 01:17:20 PM »

At this point, it remains to be seen who will repay the loans that Trump has made to his campaign.  I think it's somewhat likely that he'll have some large donors later on.  I agree that he's unlikely to be beholden to his small individual donors.  That'd count in his favor if he was remotely acceptable otherwise.

267

General Comments / Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?

« on: March 01, 2016, 12:55:40 PM »

I'm actually ambivalent about the implied standard that no one should accept or welcome support from someone who is evil.  It doesn't strictly make sense; it doesn't necessarily make you evil to accept votes from someone who is evil.  Of course we do want to pay attention to financial contributions and question the loyalties of those who accept money from evil people. 

But Trump is a liar who will say whatever he thinks is most advantageous at the time.  Given his inconsistency over mere few days, there just isn't any reason to give him the benefit of the doubt.

268

General Comments / Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?

« on: March 01, 2016, 11:34:45 AM »

Here's a decent rundown on the Trump/Duke inconsistencies:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/03/01/fact-check-donald-trump-david-duke/81146158/

He was lying when he said he didn't know anything about Duke.  The only explanations that make sense are:

1) memory/cognition problems that should disqualify him for office
2) hedging because he needs/wants support from Duke's allies but realizes he can't admit that

I'm leaning #2.  The whole "he says what we're all thinking" has all along been about race.

269

General Comments / Re: A comprehensive guide to Republican abuse of Benghazi

« on: February 25, 2016, 02:11:47 PM »

The GOP has relentlessly hammered on Benghazi using slogans about finding the truth about dead Americans. 

But the only truths they have uncovered aren't about mistakes that led to those dead Americans, they are about politicians being political.  Which is exactly the same thing they are doing with the Benghazi investigations.  They want the righteous justification of vital matters of security to cover their relentless abuse of office for political gain, because justifying what they are doing with their actual motivations would be too nakedly hypocritical.

The Benghazi investigations have done nothing to benefit the security of embassies.  They benefit only politicians.

It's not that I don't care about whether politicians are being honest with the public.  It's disgusting to lie to the public for political purposes.  But not as disgusting as lying to the public for political purposes while wasting millions of tax dollars searching for truths you don't expect to find, and that's the Benghazi investigations in a nutshell.

270

General Comments / Re: A comprehensive guide to Republican abuse of Benghazi

« on: February 25, 2016, 01:54:10 PM »

I'm really not sure "failed to take an action that wouldn't have helped, and hasn't been able to prove that they had sufficient certainty that it wouldn't have helped, where sufficient means even your political enemies can't construe a criticism" is quite the bombshell you seem to think it is.


What we really have is: it looks like the administration might have favored interpretations of available information that might have been politically beneficial for a while.  "Four Dead Americans" is not the proper rallying cry to get people mad about that, because it has nothing to do with how many people died.

271

General Comments / Re: What if taxes...

« on: February 25, 2016, 01:51:48 PM »

I like the idea of taxpayers being able to forgo a tax break and direct the funds accordingly, but I'm unsure how to fairly administer the available options.  Congress shouldn't have too much say in how all that works, if we want actual different results.

272

General Comments / Re: Bloggers yelp about Yelp firing employee for yelping

« on: February 25, 2016, 12:49:56 PM »

Yeah, SF is pretty messed up right now, and I think there's gonna need to be a bit more spreading the wealth around to keep it from going right to hell. 

Operating a call center there is madness.

273

General Comments / Re: A comprehensive guide to Republican abuse of Benghazi

« on: February 25, 2016, 12:45:12 PM »

That was more or less my reaction, WS, but I was too lazy to ask.

274

General Comments / Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?

« on: February 24, 2016, 05:31:06 PM »

Ha!

275

General Comments / Re: Justice Scalia dead

« on: February 24, 2016, 05:00:09 PM »

I agree, even though appointing a centrist goes against the grain of my personal political philosophy. 

Mine too.  But I'm starting to be more concerned about how well our government is able to function than about specific SC rulings.

276

General Comments / Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?

« on: February 24, 2016, 03:33:56 PM »

I've seen some of her work. :p It's softcore stuff, and it seems pretty likely to me that she auditions for advertising gigs just for the money and career furtherment (wouldn't you want to do TV ads in her shoes?).  If this was meant to embarrass Cruz why not a hardcore porn actress?

277

General Comments / Re: Rick Perry Indictment dismissed

« on: February 24, 2016, 03:25:30 PM »

"They pretty much acknowledged the charges were bogus..."

That's not how I'm reading what you quoted, there.  The "they" who raised those concerns are Perry and the amici who support him. 

Was there something additional from the opinion itself that pretty much acknowledged that the charges were bogus?

And just to be clear about whether the use of the veto power was illegal, they had this to say:

The governor’s power to exercise a veto may not be circumscribed by the Legislature, by the courts, or by district attorneys (who are members of the judicial branch). When the only act that is being prosecuted is a veto, then the prosecution itself violates separation of powers.

Which was fascinating, given the angst that idea seemed to cause.

It's important to remember that there was also the question of whether the threat to use a veto was illegal in this case, not the veto itself.  They've said that the veto itself can not be prosecuted, but did not say that the threat of a veto cannot violate the law.

The threat / coercion charge apparently fails because the statute was ruled unconstitutional on first amendment grounds, not because of a separation of powers issue.

278

General Comments / Re: Justice Scalia dead

« on: February 24, 2016, 03:11:19 PM »

I would be pleased if Obama nominated a centrist.  He'd have some credibility then to suggest the Senate get to work on new rules to de-escalate the judicial wars.

279

General Comments / Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?

« on: February 23, 2016, 07:38:17 PM »

A trampoline in every pot.

280

General Comments / Re: here comes the next ice age

« on: February 23, 2016, 02:59:08 PM »

I think your position amounts to "there's not enough proof to justify any difficult or expensive efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the purpose of slowing AGW".  I think you arrive at that position by exaggerating the uncertainty and giving too much credence to deniers and doubters.  So my impression is that what you mean by "listening to the scientists" doesn't amount to "trusting their interpretation of the data". 

Although we definitely need to carefully weigh the pros and cons of any given remediation strategy, I think in general we're stuck upstream from that on the question of whether there's a problem to fix - and that wouldn't be the case if we were listening to the scientists.

281

General Comments / Re: Grand jury returns criminal indictments in Planned Parenthood investigation

« on: February 23, 2016, 02:30:51 PM »

I'm just not sure what makes the axioms Pyrtolin is working from axiomatic - what elevates them over other considerations, and what moral reasoning makes them immune to further moral calculus.

But then, if we had someone here representing the most hardline pro-life position, we'd run up against the same kind of wall. 

282

General Comments / Re: here comes the next ice age

« on: February 23, 2016, 02:25:49 PM »

"Has it been conclusively shown..."

Well, if you listen only to the denialists, then I guess you would have to say that we shouldn't do anything until they all agree that the proof is conclusive.  Or we could listen to the incredibly large majority of the scientists who agree that the evidence is compelling.

283

General Comments / Re: A comprehensive guide to Republican abuse of Benghazi

« on: February 21, 2016, 12:20:58 AM »

I don't know how she can be helpful when the whole investigation is a political smear effort.  The Republicans don't investigate in order to improve embassy security or even to hold someone accountable for mishandling the Benghazi attack, they just investigate in order to try to embarrass their political opponents.

284

General Comments / Re: A comprehensive guide to Republican abuse of Benghazi

« on: February 19, 2016, 10:13:13 PM »

It was a remark made in exasperation, and so the wording should be taken with a large grain of salt.  The point she was trying to make seems to be that obsession with who knew what at a given moment in time isn't productive.

285

General Comments / Re: Grand jury returns criminal indictments in Planned Parenthood investigation

« on: February 19, 2016, 10:11:30 PM »

I would *really* like for unintended/unwanted/unlikely-to-continue pregnancies to become a rarity before the viability line gets pushed back, because it would be much better to leave abortion debates in the past as irrelevant.

286

General Comments / Re: Grand jury returns criminal indictments in Planned Parenthood investigation

« on: February 19, 2016, 05:51:55 PM »

I think that's mostly accepted by most people who lean pro-choice, Seriati.

Although, in my view, that is a reasonable compromise only because the present point of viability is past other milestones.  If, in 30 or 40 years, we can successfully and safely remove embryos from uteri and incubate them in artificial wombs, this compromise would no longer make sense; it doesn't make sense to assign the same rights - and make the same tradeoffs with regard to others' rights - to an embryo as to a late-term fetus. 

287

General Comments / Re: A comprehensive guide to Republican abuse of Benghazi

« on: February 19, 2016, 05:48:10 PM »

Even her very next sentence casts the remark in a much different light:

"Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they’d they go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator."

288

General Comments / Re: Apple's odd stand on privacy

« on: February 19, 2016, 03:31:07 PM »

It would be a mistake, IMO, to assume that McAfee both knows what he is talking about and is being honest.  He's generally an attention seeking blowhard, and his intent to use social engineering to unlock the phone doesn't make a ton of sense.  If the FBI doesn't take him up on the offer I don't think it means anything at all.

289

General Comments / Re: Pope Francis questions Trump's Christianity

« on: February 18, 2016, 05:16:11 PM »

I'd worry that the Pope's opinion would cost Trump some support, except that would be crazy on multiple levels.

290

General Comments / Re: Justice Scalia dead

« on: February 18, 2016, 10:57:10 AM »

 

Just checking, anyone want to defend the near unanimous decision of Republicans speaking on the topic to call for a blanket refusal of any Obama nominee within the last 11 months of his term?

Many Republicans have declared that they have Constitutional obligation for a schedule on which they are to play their necessary part in adding a member to the Supreme Court. Anyone agree? And if you do, would you also agree that if a Republican President is elected and the Democrats have enough votes, they could use the same principle and choose to delay until the winner of the 2020 election?

They are wrong.  But I want Democrats to acknowledge that they were also wrong to try to filibuster when Alito was nominated in 2006, and in general when calling the GOP on obstructionism to own up to and apologize for their own obstructionism in the past.  Obama has mentioned he "regrets" the filibuster, which is a start. 

I'm not saying these are equivalent offenses, but we can't pretend being less dirty equates to being clean if we want things to clean up in general.  When Democrats call out the GOP for obstructionism, they are implying a promise not to engage in these tactics themselves.  It's not a credible promise if they don't acknowledge and apologize for doing it in the past.

Meanwhile, the senior senator from my home state is about as dishonest as he can get:

"I don't think we should filibuster the Supreme Court nominee or any judgeship nominees. We wouldn't have to filibuster," Hatch said on "Wolf." "All it would take is for Sen. Grassley to just say, 'Look, we're not going to confirm anybody this year.' The reason we're not going to confirm is we value the court, we don't want it to be in this political atmosphere. We value the integrity of the court and we're going to put it over to next year."

Riiiiight.  It's because you don't want politics to interfere. 

291

General Comments / Re: Grand jury returns criminal indictments in Planned Parenthood investigation

« on: February 17, 2016, 05:10:36 PM »

Just one final permutation:
Unique DNA is usually a characteristic of a person, but knowing whether the DNA possessed by a candidate person is unique does not help determine if the candidate person is actually a person.

Denying the antecedent fallacy. From the fact that unique DNA does designate a unique person (assuming it does) it does not follow from this that a lack of unique DNA does not designate a unique person.

Unique DNA can exist in a mutated cancer cell.  It doesn't designate a person.

Not even sure what you're trying to argue here. It is a fact (not my opinion) that DNA fingerprinting is an accurate method of identifying individuals that are not identical twins (who are identical not by chance but because they came from the same source). The actual chance of two random people having the same sequence is exceptionally low. You're arguing as though DNA is some nebulous mash that we can't make sense of, and that things like cancer cells muddy the waters so that we can't say who has which DNA. Well we can:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA#DNA_profiling

Forensic DNA profiling is used precisely to designate one person as being distinct from another, so that a positive ID against a particular person can be found. I'm not even arguing that this should be some kind of determinant for personhood in some metaphysical sense, but I don't see the logic in arguing that having a unique and distinct DNA isn't directly pertinent to whether a fetus is a distinct organism from the mother or not, however much connectivity they have between them. If forensic DNA tests identify individuals, and if a fetus has an identifiable DNA that can be tested, it fits the bill for being an individual on at least some level.

That being said Pyr has now denied that personhood or individuality is even relevant to his position, so I await what he says about nothing being made to 'give birth.'

You are badly mangling my point; you seem to have been making assumptions about what I mean.  Maybe the permutation above will help.


Edit: I'm not saying that we can't use DNA to match a person to records or to physical evidence.  Your original point wasn't about forensics, it was about helping to define a separate person.

292

General Comments / Re: Grand jury returns criminal indictments in Planned Parenthood investigation

« on: February 17, 2016, 04:53:14 PM »

Uh, no, it's completely unique. What does variety in a person's biology have to do with whether his particular variety is unique from that of another person? Nothing at all. I haven't seen a calculation recently but how much do you want to bet that the odds of someone being born with identical genetic structure to another person are more astronomical than the amount of atoms in the universe?

What are the odds of identical twins, again?  Not astronomical.  Also, it was you who first brought up clones.  Human clones will happen at some point (if not already). 

I never said it should be the whole definition, but the argument being made is that it is totally irrelevant to the identity of the person. This is the point that I think is absurd. The burden is on your side to argue that DNA has no bearing at all on the identity of a person. If it has any bearing at all then it can be added to a list of evidence that an entity is a unique person.

Let's go back to your original statement:
"I think it's a fairly common-sense thing to say that one's body and organs are the result of having a certain set of DNA, and that beings with different DNA are by definition not the same person."

You are correct that DNA largely determines the structure of bodies.  But you are making a subtle claim by talking about "beings with different DNA", begging the question of how you identify separate "beings".  While you can say that two beings with different DNA are not the same being, it's circular logic, because you've begun by saying the two beings are separate.  And having "different DNA" is not what defines a person, as proved by the multiple counterexamples you've been presented with.   

"the argument being made is that it is totally irrelevant to the identity of the person"

No, the argument being made is that it's not sufficient to identify a person.  I don't need to show that different DNA has no bearing on personal identity, since I'm not making a positive claim.  I'm just agreeing with some others that having unique DNA is not actually a key characteristic of personhood, and hosting tissue with different DNA doesn't mean you are hosting a different person.   

I do actually agree with you that gestating inside of a woman's body is not sufficient to define a fetus as "not a person".  I think defining a person is an enormous challenge, so I'm not going to try to do it here, but I really don't think checking for unique DNA helps us decide whether something is a person, and you haven't shown in any way that it would help.

Denying the antecedent fallacy. From the fact that unique DNA does designate a unique person (assuming it does) it does not follow from this that a lack of unique DNA does not designate a unique person.

Unique DNA can exist in a mutated cancer cell.  It doesn't designate a person. 

293

General Comments / Re: Grand jury returns criminal indictments in Planned Parenthood investigation

« on: February 17, 2016, 03:07:18 PM »

"a person's DNA, whatever that may consist of, is unique to him and that this is a defining characteristic of that person"

Since it's not necessarily unique, and what everyone understands as a person might have different DNA in different parts, this isn't quite the defining characteristic that you are saying it is.

A tumor - with different DNA that is causing it to grow out of control - doesn't gain human rights, either. 

So really!  The DNA of the fetus isn't why we should recognize its rights or care about what happens to it.  It's got to be something else. 


Or we'll have to have a whole separate abortion policy for human clones gestating in their DNA donors, at some point.

294

General Comments / Re: Grand jury returns criminal indictments in Planned Parenthood investigation

« on: February 17, 2016, 03:03:39 PM »

"The fact that a woman's body may reabsorb and use such cells, is hardly dispositive on the question of when life begins, and in that case ends."

But of course that's not actually the question.  Anyone who argues that abortion is OK because life hasn't begun means something other than "life", and anyone who argues that abortion should be disallowed because life has begun should be against root canals. 

295

General Comments / Re: Grand jury returns criminal indictments in Planned Parenthood investigation

« on: February 16, 2016, 03:26:59 PM »

And that the woman should not be forced against her will to accept the additional risk from #1, because it's a violation of her bodily autonomy, which should trump the rights of the fetus.

Except that Pyr denied that this was the main issue, here:

In fact Pyr even said that if the fetus could magically be teleported out of the mother then there may be a point to be had,

Regarding safety, yes. But then that would get back to the larger issue of not being right to force her to have a child, unless you're intending to tell her that the bean disintegrated the child and close all records, etc... such that there's no chance of her later discovering that you secretly did trick her into giving birth, which opens up a boatload of ethical questions along with treating her like a baby factory.

While the risk to the mother is relevant, even if it were not the case he says she should not be made to "have a child" if she doesn't want to. What we're asking is what this means.

OK, you're right, I missed that. 

296

General Comments / Re: Grand jury returns criminal indictments in Planned Parenthood investigation

« on: February 16, 2016, 01:32:04 PM »

From what I can tell, Pyrtolin's argument is that between two options, all else being equal:
1) Induced labor and birth
2) Dilate and extract including a procedure to crush the skull of the fetus to make it smaller and easier to extract

#1 is typically more risky to the woman in the stage of pregnancy where the child might survive birth (which is, in fact, why #2 exists in the first place).  And that the woman should not be forced against her will to accept the additional risk from #1, because it's a violation of her bodily autonomy, which should trump the rights of the fetus.

I totally get why this is controversial.  My own opinion is that there are (extremely rare in practice) cases where maybe she SHOULD be forced to go with option #1, and I think that's how it currently is.

But it's a straightforward argument, and, IMO, there's no basis for the assertion that it's not actually about bodily autonomy. 

297

General Comments / Re: The end of the beginning of the middle of the federal western occupation crisis

« on: February 11, 2016, 06:05:20 PM »

Cliven is also now in custody and will likely spend the rest of his life in jail.

I'd be happy if he paid his overdue grazing fees, paid fines for his crimes, and surrendered all his firearms to live out his life on probation.  I think that'd take the wind out of his sails and be enough to discourage imitators, and he's a confused old man who probably wouldn't do too well in jail.

298

General Comments / Re: The end of the beginning of the middle of the federal western occupation crisis

« on: February 11, 2016, 01:43:24 PM »

Hopefully he gets lonely/hungry/discouraged enough to change his mind.

299

General Comments / Re: The end of the beginning of the middle of the federal western occupation crisis

« on: February 11, 2016, 01:24:18 PM »

http://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/163.115

Doesn't look like there's any way to bend this to fit a felony murder charge (I assume you mean in connection with Finicum's death).

Cliven Bundy was arrested after landing in Portland, too.  I am really glad that he's finally going to face some consequences for the 2014 standoff.  I think the government's inaction on that is largely responsible for the Oregon occupation.  Ammon Bundy really thought he had a viable plan, because it worked for daddy.

300

General Comments / Re: Leftists might as well flip coin to determine who raped whom in drunken hookup

« on: February 11, 2016, 12:55:08 PM »

Pyrtolin, I really have to disagree that this case (assuming we have all the facts) fits how people in general understand the definition of rape.  You would likely get nods if you ask people if they agree that rape is "sexual activity without consent".  But then if you asked them if two people could simultaneously rape each other, you'd get blank stares.  That's not how people understand the term.  But if they were both unable to consent, yet took equal part in deciding to have sex, either they raped each other the definition of rape is incomplete. 

If you are saying that John raped Jane, and not vice versa, because Jane experienced worse psychological or other damage from the event, I still disagree.  It's not a good idea to define an act as rape based on the psychological consequences of that act, unless you magically change all of the social ramifications of labeling someone a rapist or rape victim.  I agree with you that ideally, it wouldn't matter how we labeled it as long as we take the proper steps to mitigate the damage and prevent future damage, but that's not the world we live in.  Proscriptions on behavior generally need to be defined in terms of what can be known at the time the decisions are made, and there are ramifications to the labeling itself.  The "rape" label creates an automatic positioning of victim vs. aggressor, and there's too much social inertia in how this influences subsequent events to ignore.

We need a different label for "both unable to legally consent but both participated in deciding to have sex".  Perhaps "negligent sexual miscreancy" or something.