Ask and answer stupid questions here! - Page 600

On April 06 2017 20:13 opisska wrote:
Your argument boils down to "this is how things are know so this is how they must be". No greater principle prevents the formation of a group of people qualified enough to perform major surgery yet unbound by an oath created in completely different times.

As an interesting note, the whole Czech healthcare runs on doctors' sense if duty as they are terribly overworked and underpaid, so this hypocratic spirit is actually useful. But this is not a desirable state anyway, so what.

Again, your sense of responsibility is appreciated, but it doesnt give you the right to decide upon life of others. Forcing people to live to pay up is horribly inhumane and it is basically slavery.

On April 06 2017 23:20 farvacola wrote:

I mean, this is the starting position for most arguments in favor of socialization of essential goods/services, as it seems clear that the alternative puts undue burdens on folks like yourself.

On April 06 2017 23:15 Uldridge wrote:
How am I assuming a ton of things? Reread my words and maybe you'll understand that I haven't assumed anything about you in the slightest, but the fact that you feel an obligation towards those that teach/nurture you.

I might see how the first sentence might seem as an assumption, but that's because I generalized here as this will be more rule than exception (what child will feel like they owe their parents something when their parents have been nothing but abusive? as a hyperbolic example). I said you're blessed not in the sense that you're blessed with a good upbringing per se, but with the sense of purpose because you've clearly conveyed that in your previous posts.

You're both looking at a "normal" family, but in reality I think the normal family is going to be found far less than you think.

On April 06 2017 23:24 Acrofales wrote:

A "normal" family is going to be found in approximately 68% of the time, if we make some mild assumptions, like that the normality of families follows a Gaussian distribution, and we call anything within 1 std deviation of the mean "normal". Of course, given that this is two-tailed, we could make some further assumptions that you are talking in particular about the chance of encountering a subnormal family and are less interested in those supernormal ones, so encountering a random family, there is effectively an 84% chance of that family being at least as good as "normal"

On April 06 2017 19:31 Acrofales wrote:

This kind of libertarian point of view breaks down when you start picking at it.

For starters, suicide. What if someone truly feels they are not made for this world and want to end it (lets call it trans-living, because apparently adding trans in front of your shit makes it hip). Should you try to stop them? In my opinion, you should. Not only because there is probably something clinically wrong with them, but also because by being alive you incur obligations, and ending your life thus has effects that go beyond the very simplistic "my body, my decision".

Perhaps more to the point in this case, assisted suicide or assisted *anything* that has more harm than benefit (such as amputating perfectly good limbs): doctors swear the Hippocratic oath for a reason, and amongst other things the modern version contains:

And simplified versions are often simply "primum non nocere", or "first, do no harm". Most doctors, in most situations will have real problems with performing some cock-a-mamy surgery while upholding their oath. There's a case to be made for assisted suicide in the terminally ill. But beyond that, it is very very hard to find a justification for saying "the person wants this, so hell, lets do it".

And furthermore, this complete self-determination over your body would allow one to sell bodyparts. In fact, in the extreme, what is to stop someone from selling his heart? The problem here is not in the self-determination, it's in the corrosive power of money. We can have this discussion, but in short it's an aberration of perverse incentives.

Of course, most of this doesn't apply to post-humanistic arguments, where the surgery will lead to an "improvement". As for your immortality bit, I am ambivalent. I don't think immortality is an issue we have to worry about: our bodies are not immortal, and in fact very vulnerable (although longevity can continue to increase for a while more), meaning we will either be post-humans in a physical world by the time immortality comes around (aka robots with a human consciousness) or we will be uploaded into a virtual world and achieve immortality in that manner. In either case, lebensraum is far less of an issue (as is, in fact, reproduction).