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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 24, 2024

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I think that the first half of your post is the very charitable explanation that I think is false for the majority.

And that Shirley exception post is like, one of the worst examples of deceptive argumentation I've ever seen and is a rebuttal of an argument I've never seen.

Sorry, can you be clearer about what you think is "false for the majority"?

I understand that you may not have seen that precise argument... but it's in the quotes upthread. “You can’t get rid of it.” “I guess I thought that, you know, he would not do this, he would not take health insurance away knowing it would affect so many peoples lives." Surely this bad thing can't actually happen.

As it's written:

Once upon a time, I believed that the extinction of humanity was not allowed. And others who call themselves rationalists, may yet have things they trust. They might be called "positive-sum games", or "democracy", or "technology", but they are sacred. The mark of this sacredness is that the trustworthy thing can't lead to anything really bad; or they can't be permanently defaced, at least not without a compensatory silver lining. In that sense they can be trusted, even if a few bad things happen here and there.

There absolutely is disbelief that awful things could actually happen; you see it everywhere. Surely it won't be that bad. Surely people will be reasonable. Surely it will work out for the best.

I think you're being overly narrow in what you think of as The Shirley Exception.

Sorry, can you be clearer about what you think is "false for the majority"?

On the left, it's not so much the idea that women in the 40th week can and should and would just change their minds like that, but rather that in situations like, say, this one, having the heavy hand of the government involved will just make things worse. And that narrowly written exceptions don't actually help, given situations like this.

This. I think they just really like abortion and the idea that a woman can change her mind about child rearing at any time.

I understand that you may not have seen that precise argument... but it's in the quotes upthread. “You can’t get rid of it.” “I guess I thought that, you know, he would not do this, he would not take health insurance away knowing it would affect so many peoples lives." Surely this bad thing can't actually happen.

I dont encounter this in real life. This is just a weaponization of womans tears argument. People intrinsically know hurting some people is almost always going to happen for anytime you make an optimal policy. These tears are why destructive policies like medicare and medicaid almost never get dismantled. We operate in the opposite environment than "The Shirley Exception", we live in the tear win almost always world. Even though tears are almost always wrong.