A tricky question.

[Stark]

Don't be retarded. Without souls, there's no 'potential human' nonsense. A fertilised egg is just a cell, it's not a thinking, feeling human being. Destroying it is thus not a particular tragedy. Non-religious people usually have no problem with such 'early term' abortions, and NOBODY advocates casual third-term abortions.

[brianeyci]

This is very true. You'll also note that I never used the term "sperm cell" in my post, so your point doesn't really apply.

Why don't you tell me what you consider a human being then, before we get started. None of this arguing in circles and not defining your position so it's harder to attack bullshit. Lay it out in the open so people can tear it to shreds, or shut up.

[Magus]

How do you get to 50-50?

If you believe that anything that can/will be a human is human, then a fetus is human (and a sperm half a human?).

If not, it will depend on how long since conception and your definition of 'human', but still no randomness involved.

So, are you arguing that what constitutes human life is an individual, personal choice based solely on one's opinion of what a human life is? If so, does that not mean my position is as rational as anyone's - since it's my "personal choice?"

Cons: We inconvenience a lot of women

This is just fucking disgusting.

I was contrasting the possible impact if a fetus is a human(death), with the assured impact on women (considerably less than that). With the exception of pregnancies that may result in death, nothing a women goes through comes close.

Pardon my euphemism.

[Feil]

Not at all. I'm saying that our chances of being correct in a baseless assumption about whether a fetus is a human being is 50-50.

Demonstrate that the assumption is baseless.

[Stark]

Demonstrate that the odds of being correct in a baseless assumption are 50%.

[brianeyci]

With the exception of pregnancies that may result in death, nothing a women goes through comes close.

Goddamn you are a stupid moron. So the pain of childbirth, throwing up, mood swings, helplessness, morning sickness, watching everything you eat, is incomparable to death? Let me give you a hint, death can be painless. Nothing is comparable to death? Haven't you ever heard of "there are worse things than death?" You buffoon.

[Rye]

We can assume that a fetus is either a "child's life" or not. It's guaranteed to be one or the other, and science has yet to provide a conclusive answer as to when human life begins.

Life is a self replicating function of organic chemistry, mostly defined by metabolism.

This is understandable, as the concept of what defines a "person" is more in the realm of philosophy than science.

Right, so it's not whether a bunch of cells are alive or not, just whether they're aware and capable of personality. If the cells were dead but had personality, then we'd treat that as a person, irrespective of the chemistry involved.

But regardless, a fetus is either a human life or it is not, and we have a 50-50 chance of getting it right.

You're conflating the two concepts, human life and human person. Cancer cells and eggs and sperm are all alive, but they're not people. It's the brain's activity that supplies all the properties of personhood, consequentially, I do not feel especially compelled to care about sub-animal intellects that happen to have human dna being slaughtered for convenience any more than I feel bad about eating animals because they taste nice. I do feel that it's not ideal, but it's also an acceptable loss.

Suppose we assume a fetus is not a human:

Okie dokie.

Pros: Many women who do not want to carry their fetus to term are spared the trouble.

Cons: We risk killing a whole lot of innocent humans (50% chance)

They're biomass at this point, the "50% chance" sounds like someone not understanding how probabiltiy works.

Suppose we assume a fetus is a human:

Pros: We could possibly be saving many lives (50% chance)

Cons: We inconvenience a lot of women

Yeah, plus we have broader social issues since a lot of the people that want abortions cannot successfully care for their babies and we end up with poor upbringings, crime, etc. Governmental care is also not great, in such cases, stopping these people from existing in the first place is probably better, since the ideals are intangible and unworkable.

What it comes down to is acceptable risk. If an individual decides that a 50-50 shot of being a baby killer is an acceptable risk to take to guarantee a better life for women...then logically they should assume a fetus is not a human life. If, however, the 50-50 odds are less than appealing to you, then you should operate under the assumption that a fetus is a child.

The old adage, I believe, is "Better safe than sorry."

Cease the probability talk when you clearly have no grasp of it at all.

[Magus]

Not at all. I'm saying that our chances of being correct in a baseless assumption about whether a fetus is a human being is 50-50.

Demonstrate that the assumption is baseless.

The scientific community has not published a scientifically grounded definition of when human life begins - what's more, they're not equipped to - as such an issue is a matter of philosophy, not science. Therefor, one cannot define a point at which life begins without resorting to personal definitions. Personal definitions cannot be used as a basis for arguments - thus, the assumption is baseless.

Demonstrate that the odds of being correct in a baseless assumption are 50%.

If I flip a coin 1000 times, and ask you to call it heads or tails without seeing it (baseless), and after the flip - so that the status of the coin is a matter of fact and not chance - You will be right about 50% of the time.

Goddamn you are a stupid moron. So the pain of childbirth, throwing up, mood swings, helplessness, morning sickness, watching everything you eat, is incomparable to death? Let me give you a hint, death can be painless. Nothing is comparable to death? Haven't you ever heard of "there are worse things than death?" You buffoon.

Wow... You're unbelievable. So, supposing there were no methods of abortion, you'd argue that women would prefer to kill themselves rather than carry through with the pregnancy? And before you start citing pregnant suicide - most pregnant suicides occur among young ladies because of fear of social repercussions - not because they couldn't cope with the throes of pregnancy (which are massive, as I'll be the first to recognize).

[Magus]

Right, so it's not whether a bunch of cells are alive or not, just whether they're aware and capable of personality. If the cells were dead but had personality, then we'd treat that as a person, irrespective of the chemistry involved.

Very true - and science is also unable to determine a precise time in which personality appears.

You're conflating the two concepts, human life and human person. Cancer cells and eggs and sperm are all alive, but they're not people. It's the brain's activity that supplies all the properties of personhood, consequentially, I do not feel especially compelled to care about sub-animal intellects that happen to have human dna being slaughtered for convenience any more than I feel bad about eating animals because they taste nice. I do feel that it's not ideal, but it's also an acceptable loss.

You're right - my apologies. I meant to say "human person" in that case.

With regards to sub-animal intellects - Wouldn't you agree that a human baby is less intelligent than many animals for quite some time after birth?


Regarding the probability comments - I'm not giving a probability of such things being fact - I'm giving a probability of human beings accurately making baseless assumptions.

[Surlethe]

Demonstrate that the odds of being correct in a baseless assumption are 50%.

If I flip a coin 1000 times, and ask you to call it heads or tails without seeing it (baseless), and after the flip - so that the status of the coin is a matter of fact and not chance - You will be right about 50% of the time.

I can't let this butchery of mathematics pass. Suppose you have a weighted coin; if you flip it 1000 times, heads could come up 25% of the time. Therefore, the probability of being correct in a baseless assumption is 25%.

[Magus]

Demonstrate that the odds of being correct in a baseless assumption are 50%.

If I flip a coin 1000 times, and ask you to call it heads or tails without seeing it (baseless), and after the flip - so that the status of the coin is a matter of fact and not chance - You will be right about 50% of the time.

I can't let this butchery of mathematics pass. Suppose you have a weighted coin; if you flip it 1000 times, heads could come up 25% of the time. Therefore, the probability of being correct in a baseless assumption is 25%.

There is no butchery of mathematics, Surlethe. In discussing a hypothetical coin toss, one assumes an equally weighted coin, no air resistance, and that I am not a cheating bastard who will change the coin after you call heads or tails. Grow up...

[brianeyci]

Goddamn you are a stupid moron. So the pain of childbirth, throwing up, mood swings, helplessness, morning sickness, watching everything you eat, is incomparable to death? Let me give you a hint, death can be painless. Nothing is comparable to death? Haven't you ever heard of "there are worse things than death?" You buffoon.

Wow... You're unbelievable. So, supposing there were no methods of abortion, you'd argue that women would prefer to kill themselves rather than carry through with the pregnancy? And before you start citing pregnant suicide - most pregnant suicides occur among young ladies because of fear of social repercussions - not because they couldn't cope with the throes of pregnancy (which are massive, as I'll be the first to recognize).

Accusation of me being unbelievable coming from someone who thinks that pregnancy is an "inconvenience?" That's a riot. And no, I don't have to play into your false dilemma numnuts. The woman can choose not to kill herself and instead "kill" the zygote (which I assume is what you're saying is a human, who knows since you haven't defined your position.) Why don't you look at what you said.

I was contrasting the possible impact if a fetus is a human(death), with the assured impact on women (considerably less than that). With the exception of pregnancies that may result in death, nothing a women goes through comes close.

The assured impact of women is not less than death, because death is not always more impact than anything else. Your logic is flawed dumbshit.

Now are you going to tell me what you consider is a human being instead of running in circles.

I can't let this butchery of mathematics pass. Suppose you have a weighted coin; if you flip it 1000 times, heads could come up 25% of the time. Therefore, the probability of being correct in a baseless assumption is 25%.

I already mentioned the stupidity of him considering all outcomes as equally weighted, but he seems to have no answer to that.

[Surlethe]

We can assume that a fetus is either a "child's life" or not. It's guaranteed to be one or the other, and science has yet to provide a conclusive answer as to when human life begins. This is understandable, as the concept of what defines a "person" is more in the realm of philosophy than science.

But regardless, a fetus is either a human life or it is not, and we have a 50-50 chance of getting it right.

Stop right there. You need to justify this with more than a circular analogy.

Suppose we assume a fetus is not a human:

Pros: Many women who do not want to carry their fetus to term are spared the trouble.

Cons: We risk killing a whole lot of innocent humans (50% chance)

Suppose we assume a fetus is a human:

Pros: We could possibly be saving many lives (50% chance)

Cons: We inconvenience a lot of women

Look up at Darth Wong's post on the previous page. It's a whole lot more than "inconvenience".

What it comes down to is acceptable risk. If an individual decides that a 50-50 shot of being a baby killer is an acceptable risk to take to guarantee a better life for women...then logically they should assume a fetus is not a human life. If, however, the 50-50 odds are less than appealing to you, then you should operate under the assumption that a fetus is a child.

The old adage, I believe, is "Better safe than sorry."

Again, the introduction of probability is completely unfounded. You did manage to catch onto my hint, though -- it's a nice cover for the circular assumption you otherwise would have invoked to pull out "better safe than sorry".

[brianeyci]

There is no butchery of mathematics, Surlethe. In discussing a hypothetical coin toss, one assumes an equally weighted coin, no air resistance, and that I am not a cheating bastard who will change the coin after you call heads or tails. Grow up...

How did you come up with your idea that it's 50-50 if there's no other evidence? This is a child's way of thinking, if I go outside I can get an ice cream or if I stay inside I can not get an ice cream... an adult would realize that you can't pull statistics out of an ass like that and say that even though there were two possible outcomes, he didn't know the possibility of one happening over the other. Why don't you grow up you cunt, and maybe read Mike's probability essay at the same time. You mentioned 1000 times like a fucking moron, probably because you don't realize there's no "karmatic bonus" as Mike puts it to probability and 50% of 1000 flips is the same as 50% of 1 flip (more flips do not mean anything just like playing the lottery more in different draws doesn't increase your chances of winning.)

[Surlethe]

There is no butchery of mathematics, Surlethe. In discussing a hypothetical coin toss, one assumes an equally weighted coin, no air resistance, and that I am not a cheating bastard who will change the coin after you call heads or tails. Grow up...

You're attempting to universalize from a specific, non-arbitrary instance of baseless assumptions having equal, fifty-percent probability. The question is mathematical, and you're butchering it by committing a Hasty Generalization fallacy.

Or, if you prefer, I could accuse you of a question-begging analogy. Either way, you're in the wrong.

[Magus]

Accusation of me being unbelievable coming from someone who thinks that pregnancy is an "inconvenience?" That's a riot. And no, I don't have to play into your false dilemma numnuts. The woman can choose not to kill herself and instead "kill" the zygote (which I assume is what you're saying is a human, who knows since you haven't defined your position.) Why don't you look at what you said.

Are you completely unfamiliar with a little device known as a euphemism? You must be, or you wouldn't still be harping on this issue despite my pointing out that it was a euphemism earlier. Look it up. Get back to me.

False dilemma? Excuse me? You said that pregnancy is worse than death. I presented a scenario in which women would have to make the choice between the two. I think we can all agree that the vast majority of women would go with the pregnancy rather than the death. Thus, your claim that death is preferable to pregnancy is utter bullshit. Abortion has nothing to do with the issue I was addressing, which was "Which is worse, death or pregnancy?" You sling around accusations of fallacies like a giddy monkey throwing shit in his cage. At least take the time and find an actual fallacy before acting like an idiot.

The assured impact of women is not less than death, because death is not always more impact than anything else. Your logic is flawed dumbshit.

You accuse me of faulty logic, by saying that:

A. Death is not always more impacting than anything else (general truth)
B. Therefor - the impact of a pregnancy is definitely more than death(specific case)

Do you not see how this reeks of a non-sequitur?! You cannot argue that "because death isn't the worst thing in the world, pregnancy is worse than it." Yet you seem to be doing just that!

I never said that death is more impacting than anything else - I said that it is worse than what one encounters in a pregnancy. When we speak in general terms like this, I'm obviously referring to a typical pregnancy.

Now are you going to tell me what you consider is a human being instead of running in circles.

As I said before - I do not believe that there is enough evidence to determine the specific moment a human being comes into existence. Thus, I act as though a human being is pregnant from the moment of conception. I do this because I believe the possibility of killing a human is less desirable than a typical pregnancy.

I already mentioned the stupidity of him considering all outcomes as equally weighted, but he seems to have no answer to that.

The fact that you think I'm weighting all outcomes equally shows that you're not paying attention. If I were weighing all the outcomes equally, then the certainty of helping women with unwanted pregnancies would far outweigh the possibility of killing a human being. But I'm not weighting all the outcomes equally - I weight the possibility of killing a human being much higher than forcing women to carry their offspring to term.

[Darth Wong]

We can assume that a fetus is either a "child's life" or not. It's guaranteed to be one or the other, and science has yet to provide a conclusive answer as to when human life begins.

Bullshit. Human life does not "begin" anywhere in the reproductive chain since every single element and step in that chain is alive, from the egg to the sperm to the zygote. The question is when human rights begin, not human life. Scientifically, there is no question whatsoever that there is no point during this entire procedure where life actually "begins". You're simply parrotting the idiot rhetoric of anti-abortionists.

The point at which we decide that something has rights is not a matter for science to determine, but a question of philosophy. What are rights and why should anyone have them? Ultimately, it comes down to a realization that legal personhood is defined by the brain. No brain, no person. Similarly, if you could hypothetically transplant person A's brain into person B's body, you would regard the resulting person as person A, not person B. So, having established that our conception of personhood is based on the brain, it is rather obvious that until the brain goes "online", so to speak, you do not have a person. Period. Ergo, a zygote is not a person.

[brianeyci]

Are you completely unfamiliar with a little device known as a euphemism? You must be, or you wouldn't still be harping on this issue despite my pointing out that it was a euphemism earlier. Look it up. Get back to me.

False dilemma? Excuse me? You said that pregnancy is worse than death. I presented a scenario in which women would have to make the choice between the two. I think we can all agree that the vast majority of women would go with the pregnancy rather than the death. Thus, your claim that death is preferable to pregnancy is utter bullshit. Abortion has nothing to do with the issue I was addressing, which was "Which is worse, death or pregnancy?" You sling around accusations of fallacies like a giddy monkey throwing shit in his cage. At least take the time and find an actual fallacy before acting like an idiot.

Learn the difference between a claim and a rebuttal moron. I never said that death was preferable to abortion, I said that your logic that death was worse than anything else because the impact of death was worse than anything else was wrong. And asking me a question with the two choices "woman kills herself" or "woman has baby" is a textbook false dilemma. Assuming the retarded premise that we don't know anything about when an fetus becomes a human being, how about, I don't know, "woman 'kills' (I use kill here to work with your stupid assumption) baby" which is what many women do anyway rather than go through the pain and suffering of childbirth. And guess what, raising a child in destitute conditions where you can't take care of him may be worse than death. Responsibility is often a death sentence, as many parents know. What kind of immature brain considers painless death to be worse than anything else? Apparently you.

You accuse me of faulty logic, by saying that:

A. Death is not always more impacting than anything else (general truth)
B. Therefor - the impact of a pregnancy is definitely more than death(specific case)

Do you not see how this reeks of a non-sequitur?! You cannot argue that "because death isn't the worst thing in the world, pregnancy is worse than it." Yet you seem to be doing just that!

I never said that death is more impacting than anything else - I said that it is worse than what one encounters in a pregnancy. When we speak in general terms like this, I'm obviously referring to a typical pregnancy.

Again, learn the difference between a claim and a rebuttal. Your claim was made with the idiotic assumption that nothing was worse than death. Obviously false. And get to replying to my probability point, where it's obvious you have no understanding of probability at all or you wouldn't have mentioned 1000 times instead of 1 time (both are 50 percent chance of heads or tails) so you obviously thought 1000 times would even the distribution like a moron who knows nothing about probability.

As I said before - I do not believe that there is enough evidence to determine the specific moment a human being comes into existence. Thus, I act as though a human being is pregnant from the moment of conception. I do this because I believe the possibility of killing a human is less desirable than a typical pregnancy.

Egads, we don't know the exact moment! Excuse me while I barf. We know it doesn't happen in the first trimester, so abortion then is fine. Or are you one of those "science doesn't know exactly so science doesn't know anything" retards? And are you playing devil's advocate? I thought you were, but apparently you are really anti-abortion.

The fact that you think I'm weighting all outcomes equally shows that you're not paying attention. If I were weighing all the outcomes equally, then the certainty of helping women with unwanted pregnancies would far outweigh the possibility of killing a human being. But I'm not weighting all the outcomes equally - I weight the possibility of killing a human being much higher than forcing women to carry their offspring to term.

You're a dumbshit. By saying there's a 50-50 chance and making a conclusion based on it you are weighing need to avoid "inconvenience" as even with the need to avoid death. And you misquoted my words as Surlethe's idiot.

[Darth Wong]

I like the way Magus thinks there's actually a realistic "possibility" that a clump of cells an hour after conception is actually capable of thought, hence should be considered a person.

And to address his other logic, there is a "possibility" (a real one this time) that Magus is going to mutate a cell in his penis which would turn into lethal cancer. We should cut off his penis now, because the possibility of death is worse than the certainty of castration.

[Magus]

Stop right there. You need to justify this with more than a circular analogy.

Analogy? What analogy? All I've said so far:

fetus = human being OR fetus != human being.

Look up at Darth Wong's post on the previous page. It's a whole lot more than "inconvenience".

Please see def. of euphemism.

Again, the introduction of probability is completely unfounded. You did manage to catch onto my hint, though -- it's a nice cover for the circular assumption you otherwise would have invoked to pull out "better safe than sorry".

I'm sorry, I must be confused. Pray tell, what is the error in representing as a 50% chance the fact that a baseless assumption is equally as likely to be right as it is to be wrong?

You mentioned 1000 times like a fucking moron

Or like someone who realizes that a sample size of one won't demonstrate anything useful - and I was asked to demonstrate a 50% correctness rate of baseless assumptions.

[Darth Wong]

Look up at Darth Wong's post on the previous page. It's a whole lot more than "inconvenience".

Please see def. of euphemism.

News flash, genius: a euphemism is a form of dishonesty. The whole purpose of a euphemism is to be misleading. So don't keep quoting that word as if it's an excuse, asshole.

I'm sorry, I must be confused. Pray tell, what is the error in representing as a 50% chance the fact that a baseless assumption is equally as likely to be right as it is to be wrong?

It's not a "baseless assumption", fucktard. There is plenty of reasoning and scientific evidence to show that there is no personhood without the capacity for thought, there is no thought without the brain, and there is no brain 5 minutes after conception. The fact that you are too fucking stupid to recognize any of this does not make it untrue. Did you also believe there was a "50% probability" that Terri Schiavo was anything more than a vegetable?

[brianeyci]

Or like someone who realizes that a sample size of one won't demonstrate anything useful - and I was asked to demonstrate a 50% correctness rate of baseless assumptions.

Again, you prove you are a moron. Flip a coin once, there's still a fifty fifty chance of it turning up heads or turning up tails. Flip a coin a thousand times and there's still a fifty fifty chance each individual time. Your point could've been made with a single coin flip, but you chose 1000 times like a moron who doesn't understand probability. A sample size of one could easily have made your point, as stupid as it was.

And to address his other logic, there is a "possibility" (a real one this time) that Magus is going to mutate a cell in his penis which would turn into lethal cancer. We should cut off his penis now, because the possibility of death is worse than the certainty of castration.

No, no, you got it wrong. There's a possibility of two outcomes, cancer or no cancer. Therefore there's a 50-50 chance that Magus is going to mutate a cell in his penis. Clearly such high odds means Magus must be castrated for the good of the species. Since you suggested it I nominate you for the task of cutting off the penis Mike. Bend over Magus, it doesn't hurt much, I heard a story of a guy who let another guy cut off his penis and ate it.

[weemadando]

OTOH, think about how the mother would be feeling, and how loved the baby would be..

Just to clarify. Have you ever had any experience with victims of rape or attempted rape? And based on that - do you have any idea of how the child of such an intensely and deeply disturbing experience would be seen by the mother?

It MAY be loved, but its just as likely that the child would be a reminder of the events. Throughout the entire pregnancy and the life of the child, the mother owuld have to deal with those emotions and the trauma every day with that stimulus being present. And believe me - those emotions are strong and very, VERY destructive.

I'd back the abortion or the right to have an abortion based on that fact alone.

[Magus]

I like the way Magus thinks there's actually a realistic "possibility" that a clump of cells an hour after conception is actually capable of thought, hence should be considered a person.

I don't believe it to be realistic - but at the same time I don't have a magical cut-off point where I say "Uh-oh...intelligent thought is just too unlikely after this point."

And to address his other logic, there is a "possibility" (a real one this time) that Magus is going to mutate a cell in his penis which would turn into lethal cancer. We should cut off his penis now, because the possibility of death is worse than the certainty of castration.

Of course, this decision is based completely on the odds of me getting such a cancer. Frankly, I'm confident that the chances are low, so I'm not too concerned.

You know, it's a shame everyone keeps making arguments with me about my supposed belief that "Death is worse than everything else in existence." Nowhere did I make this claim. Nowhere did I base any argument off that premise. I merely said that death is worse than what a woman typically goes through in pregnancy.

[Darth Wong]

I like the way Magus thinks there's actually a realistic "possibility" that a clump of cells an hour after conception is actually capable of thought, hence should be considered a person.

I don't believe it to be realistic - but at the same time I don't have a magical cut-off point where I say "Uh-oh...intelligent thought is just too unlikely after this point."

The fact that there is no brain tissue at all at this point would be a clue to most people. Perhaps you are deficient in brain tissue yourself.

And to address his other logic, there is a "possibility" (a real one this time) that Magus is going to mutate a cell in his penis which would turn into lethal cancer. We should cut off his penis now, because the possibility of death is worse than the certainty of castration.

Of course, this decision is based completely on the odds of me getting such a cancer. Frankly, I'm confident that the chances are low, so I'm not too concerned.

They are far, far higher than the odds of intelligent thought from a zygote, you fucking moron.

You know, it's a shame everyone keeps making arguments with me about my supposed belief that "Death is worse than everything else in existence." Nowhere did I make this claim. Nowhere did I base any argument off that premise. I merely said that death is worse than what a woman typically goes through in pregnancy.

Bullshit. Here, let me perform a demonstration. *scratch scratch* I just scratched my ass. In doing so, I killed numerous skin cells. That is death of human tissue with just as much sentience as a post-conception clump of cells. Are you saying that this is worse than what happens to a woman in pregnancy?