Controversial opinions you hold

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Re: Controversial opinions you hold

Postby Krashlia » Mon Apr 08, 2019 1:01 pm

I don't really agree with the first. But, on that second part:
And Selfish to who, really?

The only ones likely to care about the fact that not enough babies are being had, or not enough people are having sex, are psychiatrists and sociologists (who are only interested in that as a proxy for sex, in order to figure out whats up with society) and various rational planners (capitalists and other economists and various institutions) who no one proclaims to, or wants to, live their lives for to start with.
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Re: Controversial opinions you hold

Postby jbobsully11 » Tue Apr 09, 2019 6:46 am

Krashlia wrote:I don't really agree with the first. But, on that second part:
And Selfish to who, really?

Your...self?

I guess it deprives would-be grandparents of a chance to exact revenge on their kids try to make up for the mistakes they made the first time. Not to mention it’s the precise opposite of having/raising kids, which is generally considered inherently selfless.
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Re: Controversial opinions you hold

Postby cmsellers » Tue Apr 09, 2019 2:18 pm

Most people who have kids want them. And if you don't want kids, you really shouldn't be having them.
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Re: Controversial opinions you hold

Postby 52xMax » Sun Apr 14, 2019 5:30 am

A lot of people who want kids shouldn't have them either. And there's definitely people who don't want kids who end up having them, usually more than one, frequently to different partners, and more often than not with terrible results.

There's people other than psychiatrists who worry about not enough people reproducing, on account of the replacement quotas not being met to run the human pyramid scheme that is social security and retirement plans. Some Scandinavian countries and Japan come to mind. Then again there's a lot of third world countries where people have way too many children and the conditions for them to develop their potential or even reach adulthood become very limited. So really, it's just a matter of allotting (human) resources properly.

As for whether it's selfish to want to have offspring, that's the whole basis of Richard Dawkins' seminal work, pun very much intended. But it is also the reason we are here along with all the other surviving species, and that same drive to pass on our genetic material manifests itself in other memes that incentivize us to help our kin and participate in communal activities or charity. So it is selfish, but not in the narrow way we usually think of that sort of behavior.
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Re: Controversial opinions you hold

Postby Krashlia » Wed Apr 17, 2019 7:14 pm

Manger Dog Laws should exist for creative works. I'm quiet ticked at the idea of games or films that can't see the light of day, because some company is holding the liscence but will never produce another copy, or some existing stock of products that won't be sold because of some nonsense to do with lawyers.

And, while we're at it, non-controversial opinion, screw region locking. You mean to tell me that we have 800 military bases across the globe, but somehow a DVD brought in Dominican Republic can be prevented from functioning in a player in Colorado?
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Re: Controversial opinions you hold

Postby cmsellers » Wed Apr 17, 2019 10:37 pm

So does this mean I'd be able to sell my unauthorized version of Winds of Winter? Sound good to me. I mean sure, I'd have to read the first five books and then write book six from scratch, but I bet I still finish before GRRM does.

Seriously though, this is an interesting proposal, and I tend to favor almost anything that shrinks the scope of "intellectual property" monopolies, but figuring out how to implement it would be tricky. It would involve radical revisions to both copyright and trademark law. Do you distinguish between an officially completed series, like JRR Tolkein and JK Rowling's books, series with no set finish like GRRM's Haviland Tuf series, and series with a set, but apparently abandoned ending, like GRRM's ASOIF series?

Applying this law to all series works seriously undermines trademark for creative works, but not other enterprises, which seems odd, and also encourages authors to turn out dreck just to keep the series in use. Applying it only to known serial works could be avoided by just saying each work is definitely the end. I'm not sure if there's a good way to let people build on old creative works, at least not where they are prominent enough to be trademarked.

You could also make a case for releasing out-of-print works into the public domain after a certain number of years, but a less-extreme version, releasing only orphaned works into the public domain, was roundly defeated by the copyright mafia.

However if we shrunk copyright back to 14 years from publication with a cost to renew for another 14, combining the automatic copyright we have now with the copyright durations we used to have, that would dramatically reduce the gap for when people have access to them freely, and even more dramatically reduce the gap between when works are released and when people can build on them, at least for works which aren't popular enough for trademarks. And this has the benefit of being a lot easier to explain to the public than orphaned works laws.
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Re: Controversial opinions you hold

Postby JamishT » Wed Apr 24, 2019 9:02 am

Recently there's been this news story going around about a lady in Texas who was caught on a security cam throwing a bag of puppies into a dumpster. Lots of people were horrified and I agree with them on that. However, my controversial opinion is that if you are going to get rid of an animal (or animals) and you can't be bothered to go to a shelter or some place that may give them a better life, you should kill them as humanely/quickly as possible. It's more heartless to abandon a pet than it is to kill them, so it should be like #2 on the list of possible actions behind re-homing.
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Re: Controversial opinions you hold

Postby cmsellers » Wed Apr 24, 2019 2:25 pm

Look, I get that if you're going to bring your children to crowded public places not specifically oriented towards children, they may be loud. If you do this, however, I strongly believe that you should work on trying to quiet your children down and not just let them run amok.

But what I absolutely think is absolutely, 100% unacceptable is giving them toys that make loud and annoying noises (in this case, a smartphone game that cheered with every successful click and said "uh-oh! uh-oh!" with unsuccessful ones. The toddler in question was very bad at this game, so it was mostly the latter) and allowing them to use those in public places. (Again, barring public places specifically designed for children, and public places with enough space that you can easily avoid the noises if you want to.)

It feels like you're abdicating your parental duties by letting them entertain themselves at the expense of others. I think most people would agree that it's absolutely not OK to allow your kids to pester strangers to entertain them. But honestly, I find that less annoying than the parents who let their kids take noisy toys into crowded public places, because when a strange kid comes up to me and expects them to entertain them (not much of an issue in the US, but it's happened a few times in Korea and Turkey) A. it's not only disrupting my reading but also distracting me from the fact that I can't read, and B. the children usually get bored and go bother someone else within a couple of minutes.
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Re: Controversial opinions you hold

Postby NathanLoiselle » Wed Apr 24, 2019 4:47 pm

Children should be heard and not seen.


That's right! I'm advocating ghost children!
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Re: Controversial opinions you hold

Postby iMURDAu » Wed Apr 24, 2019 8:06 pm

Paid video game reviews and articles are a problem, the previous grass roots "solution" wasn't ever trying to solve the problem, and if the industry doesn't understand why most people aren't willing to buy outside of established franchises or known developers then they need to start reading this long sentence over from the beginning.

When things like poor controls, repetition, failure to explain basic rules, and a lack of features available in lower budget titles in the same genre, and other such crap show up in games that I can't find a critical review lower than 8/10 of I can't help but think people got paid to keep quiet.
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Re: Controversial opinions you hold

Postby Krashlia » Mon Apr 29, 2019 8:59 pm

Not my real opinion. More of a speculative thing.
The reason why King Saul got bad press in the book of Samuel is because he was inconvenient to the Hebrew First Estate.
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Re: Controversial opinions you hold

Postby Malfeasinator » Thu May 02, 2019 6:38 am

Krashlia wrote:Not my real opinion. More of a speculative thing.
The reason why King Saul got bad press in the book of Samuel is because he was inconvenient to the Hebrew First Estate.


King Saul dies one way in the end of the first book of Samuel - he kills himself rather than wait around and see what the invading enemy's going to do. Fair enough. Second book of Samuel begins and now David's interrogating some guy about what happened with Saul. David promises the guy that there won't be any capital punishment as long as the guy is honest about what happens. So the guy opens up and admits that he murdered Saul. David has the guy killed, because Saul was anointed by God or some shit, but mainly because David's a dick and going back on his word is in line with his character.

But now we have 2 different accounts of what happened to Saul, and according to the Bible, both are true.
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Re: Controversial opinions you hold

Postby Krashlia » Thu May 02, 2019 10:39 am

Malfeasinator wrote:
King Saul dies one way in the end of the first book of Samuel - he kills himself rather than wait around and see what the invading enemy's going to do. Fair enough. Second book of Samuel begins and now David's interrogating some guy about what happened with Saul. David promises the guy that there won't be any capital punishment as long as the guy is honest about what happens. So the guy opens up and admits that he murdered Saul. David has the guy killed, because Saul was anointed by God or some shit, but mainly because David's a dick and going back on his word is in line with his character.

But now we have 2 different accounts of what happened to Saul, and according to the Bible, both are true.


I object to a certain part (oh, Jeez, I brought this on myself by bringing up bible stuff).
David doesn't seem to have promised the withholding of capital punishment to the guy (at least not in 2 Samuel).

As for the two accounts... I don't really know what to say about that. But there are a couple of (perhaps crazy) ways to interpret it, for fun.

1) Note that the guy David was talking to was an Amalekite, a national enemy that David just came from fighting days before. Maybe the Amelekite simply claimed that in order to get into David's good graces, either for himself or for all of his people, knowing that David was a claimant? and maybe David saw it coming a mile away or detested the attempt?

2) David killed the Amelekite in order to not look like he was a usurper or quisling complicit in Saul's and Jonathan's deaths, somehow, as someone might claim. It probably didn't help that he was hiding out with the Philistines for a while.

3) Tinfoil hat time: the Battle of Jezreel was an inside job, and David did it. Or the Amalekite dude had outlived his purpose as an assassin (or victim of torture). This story was just the official narrative negotiated between clergy and nobility, so that everyome was sure that he totally didn't do it. This was just a particularly smoothly sailing Tuesday for the Dastardly David.
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Re: Controversial opinions you hold

Postby Aquila89 » Thu May 02, 2019 6:32 pm

Malfeasinator wrote:
Krashlia wrote:Not my real opinion. More of a speculative thing.
The reason why King Saul got bad press in the book of Samuel is because he was inconvenient to the Hebrew First Estate.


King Saul dies one way in the end of the first book of Samuel - he kills himself rather than wait around and see what the invading enemy's going to do. Fair enough. Second book of Samuel begins and now David's interrogating some guy about what happened with Saul. David promises the guy that there won't be any capital punishment as long as the guy is honest about what happens. So the guy opens up and admits that he murdered Saul. David has the guy killed, because Saul was anointed by God or some shit, but mainly because David's a dick and going back on his word is in line with his character.


That part always bothered me too, but it's not exactly how it's described in the Bible (2 Samuel 1:1-16). David made no promises to the Amelekite who brought him the news of Saul's death. However, the Amelekite didn't admit to murdering Saul; he claimed that he delivered the coup the grace to a dying Saul, because Saul asked him to. But David still had him executed, which seemed unfair to me. It's because Saul was the Lord's anointed, so apparently it's wrong to kill him even if he himself orders it.
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Re: Controversial opinions you hold

Postby Cpt._Funkotron » Fri May 03, 2019 1:57 am

I'm %100 pro-choice, and I think the whole abortion process should be government funded and as accessible as possible, but I think any pro-choice argument that doesn't hinge on one or both of the following two points:

1) That embryos are not people
2) That even if they were people, fully sentient and perfectly virtuous and best friends with baby jesus, the medical autonomy of the mother over her organs, air, digestion and blood is inviolable and she has the right to rescind the use of her body at any time she likes. The hypothetical rights of the embryo are irrelevant, no matter how the woman wound up pregnant in the first place.

seems either at best to be missing the point, or at worst to be kind of evil. Not like Ramsay Bolton evil, I mean the banal everyday kind of evil. The "would have supported slavery", kind of evil. I think of these two points like elevator cables. Both of them hold up the "abortion is okay" car in my mind, but either of them could support it independently. With neither, car plummets down the shaft, and I think abortion would have to be classified as murdering a child, which would have to be opposed to the fullest extent possible, I feel. People who concede that abortion is by definition murder and support it anyway scare the shit out of me.

This is mostly going to be me propping up strawmen since I don't have direct quotes to draw from right now, but I've personally heard people say these things often enough that I hope y'all would agree that these are generally common sentiments and I'm not presenting them unfairly.

Argument: "People will figure out ways to do it anyway, you're just making it unsafe"
- My response: We're not talking about a harmless vice here, under the logic that embryos are people and that mother's right doesn't come first, we're talking about murder, something which most people agree ought to be against the law. Nothing can be completely eliminated just by making it illegal, that doesn't mean you should just not ever bother. Furthermore, murder is pretty much the ultimate crime, so while I oppose the death penalty, corproal punishment, or really any kind of retributive justice as a concept, I'm also not generally sympathetic of someone who inadvertently kills or severely injures themselves in the course of murdering a child.

Argument: "But most unwanted pregnancies are to poor uneducated people, surely you don't want more children born into poverty"
- My response: You know we've got people in poverty up and walking right now, if it's okay to kill a child to save them from growing up in poverty, why not kill the grownups while we're at it? Because this whole argument is a bunch of classist bullshit. No one needs to live in poverty, we have now and have had for quite some time the means to provide a reasonable level of comfort for everyone, what we lack is the will to make it happen. And don't start in with that Malthusian bullshit about the dangers of overpopulation, that's been discredited for over a century now. Fun fact, when people have good education, freedom of movement, economic stability, knowledge of and access to contraceptives, they tend to not have as many children, which is why wealthy western nations tend to have native birthrates below the rate of replacement. Furthermore, even though there is theoretically a point at which it wouldn't be physically possible to have any more people, nobody actually knows what that's going to end up being since since technological innovation means the capacity is always seems to be growing. Lastly, no one who ever suggests killing people as a solution to overcrowding includes themselves or people like themselves as candidates for destruction. 'Half the universe' really meant half the universe minus Thanos.

Argument: " I personally think it's evil but other people should be allowed to do it"
- My response: The fuck do you think 'evil' means? This argument either presupposes that abortion isn't really murder, which is arguing completely past the point in question, or this rejects the idea that morality has any kind of universality whatsoever. 'Sorry Kunte Kinte, I don't like slavery and would never own slaves, but I don't think there should be a law against it'. When I use the word evil to describe an action, I use it to describe something that I think no one should ever do, including but not limited to myself. To be clear, I'm not religious, and I don't believe in natural law. I believe that determining right from wrong is an ever-progressing human endeavor which is often flawed and probably never perfectable, but is nevertheless a noble and necessary pursuit. I'm not denying that legitimate differences of opinion exist, I am denying that using that as an excuse to abdicate any kind of responsibility to finding and enforcing common standards, refusing to even engage in the process, is what a good person does.
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