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Forums - Politics Discussion - What is a political issue that you want to understand the opposite viewpoint more?

CrazyGamer2017 on 08 October 2017

Ok so here goes: I'm a freethinker, meaning I do not adhere to either Republican or Democrat views. I say Rep and Dem cause I assume most people here are American so if I talk about "liberal" views which in my country means right-wing whereas in the States it means left-wing, we are going to get confused.

Point is, as a freethinker I follow no generally adpoted views by any groups that wield any kind of power, whether in my country, in the States or anywhere else.

So my question would be: Why would ANYONE want to lock themselves into a political party, into a philosophy, into a religion too for that matter? How do you decide one day that everything a party believes in is fine and no matter what they choose to say or do, you're all good with them?

That was my question, thank you.



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AngryLittleAlchemist on 08 October 2017
Ka-pi96 said:
AngryLittleAlchemist said:

So where should it stop?

That's one of the worst arguments trends that i've heard a lot recently. It's the same argument that conservatives use to stigmatize gay marriage, it's the same argument that people use for gun control laws, etc etc.

"Where should it stop" is just a version of the "you give them an inch they take a mile" mentality, which while useful in many debates, the former just feels like a stigmatization of such argument. It's always important to ask the question "If I support this nuanced position, will the people supporting such position take it to an extremity?" I get that. But at some point it becomes questionable whether such doubts are taken to the point of lunacy. 

To be clear i'm not employing guilt by association, i.e. saying that because other people have used it for ridiculous arguments it makes your argument ridiculous. I'm also not lumping in all conservatives together. But, I do think it's important to take into account how many times that mentality has been used recently to justify slippery slopes and arguments not based on solid foundation. 

No, nobody is going to support post-birth abortion just because they believe in opportunities for pre-birth abortion. There are too many variables that make the two scenarios different, and honestly Ka-pi, I know you're intelligent enough to get the huge difference between the two scenarios. So I honestly don't know why you're lumping them together.

Yes, there are differences. But fundamentally they both result in someone's life being taken away. That's the thing, from my point of view you're essentially arguing that it should be ok to kill someone. That's not a viewpoint I'll ever understand.

That said, I should mention that while I am ethically and morally against abortion I'm not legally against it. To me whether abortion should be legal or not is a separate argument from whether it's ok or not. One with different reasons, primarily that abortion would be all but impossible to actually stop and legal ones are almost certainly better for both mother and baby than illegal ones.

Fundamentals have essentially become a way of people dissolving nuance into nothing more than a few words. Fundamentals are important I guess, since it's more or less what you're arguing for in the end. But I don't think I choose what I argue for based on just the fundamental, at the end of the day. 

I'm glad you said that I was just about to say that, me being for abortion, doesn't mean I think it's right in every scenario. Just that, I think it's more so right to accept legal abortion than it is the alternative. I think it's personally ok in most scenarios, but that's really just personal opinion over arguments over law.



OhNoYouDont on 08 October 2017
the-pi-guy said:
Ka-pi96 said:
Why would you want to understand a viewpoint that's wrong though?

Because the world isn't black and white with one right answer. 

All propositions are binary so actually yes it is black and white. See: Law of the excluded middle.

I'd like to understand the pro life position better in a way that isn't contingent upon a particular religion. It seems an important issue to raise in a secular manner; this isn't Jerusalem. 



Zkuq on 08 October 2017
palou said:
Zkuq said:

1. At first glance, they seem entirely different to me. What makes you think they're the same?

Think train dillemma. 

 

On a more political note: Suppose someone is dying of a fairly preventable disease somewhere near by, helping them would make you lose around 500$ (due to lost time), you decide that it's not worth it. That, to many, is not an action, and while assholish - in the right of the person. On the contrary, suppose you kill the for a prime of 500$. That, to many, is seen as an action, and should definitely send you to jail.

Looking at the 2 situations, there seems to be an equivalent choice, in terms of a decision tree based on outcome. They both chose a situation in which they came out with 500$ more, at the cost of a life.

The train dilemma forces it to be a conscious choice. Most of the time, inaction isn't a conscious choice. Instead, it's something that pretty much happens because of the way a person thinks. Choices happen all the time in life, but we don't really think about most of them. There are definitely cases where action and inaction are quite similar, but in the general case, I don't think that's the case.

palou said:
Zkuq said:

I'm not in your target group, but my impression is that basically limiting freedom of speech is seen as a slippery slope.

I feel that, looking at history, this is strictly untrue. Minor infringment on freedom of speech doesn't precede, or indicate a slippery slope into totalitarianism. Pre-Nazi Germany had free speech, almost all of the rights to censor were applied in a single day.

You require a sound justification, explanation for any infringment on freedom of speech - and it seems to me that it wouldn't create much more of a slippery slope than anything else. It's, to me, just as bad of an argument as saying that banning hard opioids will lead to the ban of alcohol, saying that allowing 18 year olds to vote will lead to toddlers making decisions in the country. 

I wasn't talking about history though. I was talking about the present and what I've seen people opposing limitations to freedom of speech talk about. I didn't even voice my own opinion; I simply stated what I believe to be a common reason to oppose limitations to freedom of speech. (I think I lied a bit about not voicing my opinion: I said I wasn't in your target group, which implies a certain opinion.) In my opinion, that's a reason that's easy to understand, even if you don't agree with it. Remember, this thread is about understanding other viewpoints and not about whether they're logically sound or whether you agree with them. The fact is that the opposing viewpoint often makes sense for the person having that viewpoint, even if it isn't logically sound once you look deeper into it, or even if you disagree about it.



HomokHarcos on 08 October 2017
RolStoppable said:
Ka-pi96 said:

Yes, there are differences. But fundamentally they both result in someone's life being taken away. That's the thing, from my point of view you're essentially arguing that it should be ok to kill someone. That's not a viewpoint I'll ever understand.

That said, I should mention that while I am ethically and morally against abortion I'm not legally against it. To me whether abortion should be legal or not is a separate argument from whether it's ok or not. One with different reasons, primarily that abortion would be all but impossible to actually stop and legal ones are almost certainly better for both mother and baby than illegal ones.

Much of human morales come down to discernible faces.

How do you think about beating a dog to death? How do you think about squatting a fly? Chances are that you consider the former to be appalling while the latter evokes a feeling of good riddance, because flies are annoying. And if the faces of flies were easily discernible, they'd be perceived as so disgusting that the killing of flies wouldn't cause any uproar. It's an easy conclusion to make that the life of a mammal enjoys much greater respect than the life of an insect.

So why are there people who consider it morally okay to abort babies? The legal standards in many countries only allow abortion up to a certain stage of pregnancy, commonly the third month where the conceived child transitions from embryo to fetus. It's in the fetus stage where limbs and the head, and obviously the face, develop. Before that, it's more of a blob. I don't think it's a coincidence that the cutoff for legal abortions is before a face develops.

I'm morally against killing insects now. I absolutely hate having to kill spiders when my sister is scared of them. Yet I eat meat so I guess I'm a hyocrite.



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JWeinCom on 08 October 2017
OhNoYouDont said:
the-pi-guy said:

Because the world isn't black and white with one right answer. 

All propositions are binary so actually yes it is black and white. See: Law of the excluded middle.

I'd like to understand the pro life position better in a way that isn't contingent upon a particular religion. It seems an important issue to raise in a secular manner; this isn't Jerusalem. 

That's not how the law of the excluded middle works.  The law of the excluded midddle simply states that something can not be A and not A simultaneously.   If I have an object in my hand it is either a potato or not potato.  It can't be both, but that doesn't mean that those are the only ways that the object can be described.  The object can be described as not potato, not carrot, not duck, sock, cotton, etc.  

In the case of a proposition the proposition can be right or not right.  But, that doesn't mean there's not a gray area.  Because a proposition can be both not right and not wrong.  And that is a pretty gray area.  

Not sure why you picked Jerusalem as an example (Israel is a pretty secular state actually), but the prolife secular argument is pretty simple.  The baby is a living human, and therefore should not be killed.  I don't necessarily agree with that, but it's pretty straight forward.

If you're interested, there is a secular debate that was done on the issue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P78_V1Z9CO4  I don't think the prolife speaker is especially good, but those are basically the arguments used.



Arminillo on 08 October 2017
VGPolyglot said:
Dulfite said:

God often does things not to verify HIS own knowledge of us, but it helps us humans realizehow much devotion we have or lack towards God.

So, why something so extreme then? He wants humans to realize they have devotion to God because they're willing to kill their own child merely because he says so?

I'm not sure if you know this, but Abraham is a pretty important dude, he ended up being key to three of the major religions of the world (Judaism: A New Hope, Christianity: Satan Strikes Back, and Islam: Return of the Prophet), I think the fact that Abraham was willing to do something like that shows that he was in fact THE guy you'd want to have being father of nations. Also, God seems to be a big parable guy. In the Old Testament, he pulled tons of stuff like that, symbolizing something or another. Then he sent Jesus who just told parables rather than act them out.



Muda Muda Muda Muda Muda Muda!!!!


HomokHarcos on 08 October 2017
RolStoppable said:
HomokHarcos said:

I'm morally against killing insects now. I absolutely hate having to kill spiders when my sister is scared of them. Yet I eat meat so I guess I'm a hyocrite.

Spiders aren't insects, but the other part of your post is more interesting.

Eating meat is an easy thing to do for most people because they don't witness the act of killing. A burger patty, a steak or whatever has no face and it tastes good, and it doesn't really cross your mind what had to happen in order for you to eat it. The people whose job it is to kill animals are legally allowed to do so, because human morales dictate that it's okay to kill animals for food purposes.

Real hypocrites are people who don't eat meat to reach a moral high ground, but don't refrain from wearing leather. For some reason that seems to be quite common in the punk scene.

LOL I guess I didn't learn anything from Peter Parker. I guess it makes sense why people are less sensitive to eating meat than killing animals.



JWeinCom on 08 October 2017
Ka-pi96 said:
AngryLittleAlchemist said:

So where should it stop?

That's one of the worst arguments trends that i've heard a lot recently. It's the same argument that conservatives use to stigmatize gay marriage, it's the same argument that people use for gun control laws, etc etc.

"Where should it stop" is just a version of the "you give them an inch they take a mile" mentality, which while useful in many debates, the former just feels like a stigmatization of such argument. It's always important to ask the question "If I support this nuanced position, will the people supporting such position take it to an extremity?" I get that. But at some point it becomes questionable whether such doubts are taken to the point of lunacy. 

To be clear i'm not employing guilt by association, i.e. saying that because other people have used it for ridiculous arguments it makes your argument ridiculous. I'm also not lumping in all conservatives together. But, I do think it's important to take into account how many times that mentality has been used recently to justify slippery slopes and arguments not based on solid foundation. 

No, nobody is going to support post-birth abortion just because they believe in opportunities for pre-birth abortion. There are too many variables that make the two scenarios different, and honestly Ka-pi, I know you're intelligent enough to get the huge difference between the two scenarios. So I honestly don't know why you're lumping them together.

Yes, there are differences. But fundamentally they both result in someone's life being taken away. That's the thing, from my point of view you're essentially arguing that it should be ok to kill someone. That's not a viewpoint I'll ever understand.

That said, I should mention that while I am ethically and morally against abortion I'm not legally against it. To me whether abortion should be legal or not is a separate argument from whether it's ok or not. One with different reasons, primarily that abortion would be all but impossible to actually stop and legal ones are almost certainly better for both mother and baby than illegal ones.

That's not what anyone's saying. Mostly they are debating that it is someone.

When does something become someone?  A sperm is something.  An egg is something.  When they combine are they instantly someone?  Is the zygote someone?  Is two cells someone?  Four cells?  Are my organs someone?  They're more complex than a fetus at their earliest stages. 

Personally, until it has a functional brain, I would still use the term something.  There's no real concensus (it's as much as a philosophical as scientific question) so the mother is the best person to decide.




JWeinCom on 08 October 2017
Arminillo said:
VGPolyglot said:

So, why something so extreme then? He wants humans to realize they have devotion to God because they're willing to kill their own child merely because he says so?

I'm not sure if you know this, but Abraham is a pretty important dude, he ended up being key to three of the major religions of the world (Judaism: A New Hope, Christianity: Satan Strikes Back, and Islam: Return of the Prophet), I think the fact that Abraham was willing to do something like that shows that he was in fact THE guy you'd want to have being father of nations. Also, God seems to be a big parable guy. In the Old Testament, he pulled tons of stuff like that, symbolizing something or another. Then he sent Jesus who just told parables rather than act them out.

Not sure why that kind of blind obedience would be considered a good thing.

But beyond that on a purely practical level, why would god need to do any such test?  Assuming god is omniscient, then he already knew how devoted Abraham is.  He knew that Abraham would be willing to sacrifice Isaac before he did anything.  So, he was just kind of fucking with him for no reason.