site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   33970 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

8
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

wasted equipment

This idea is just fundamentally incompatible with my morals. Where does this lead?

Just about everything about your life is a “waste of resources”…but human life is valuable.

If you have a heart attack and need an ambulance to take you to the hospital, isn’t it a waste of diesel, and an inconvenience to everybody having to wait for the ambulance to go through lights?

This idea is just fundamentally incompatible with my morals. Where does this lead?

This idea is ubiquitous. One of the point I realized this, was COVID era argument: we have to lock people down in order not to overburden healthcare system. It was one of the most stupid arguments I have heard - my purpose and governing principle in my life is now supposed to be not to overburden healthcare system? This amorphous system is actually more valuable than human life as it is embodied in my daily activities and pleasures. I exist for the benefit of this system - not the other way around. No more dangerous activities such as skiing or anything else. By the way the same goes for other similar arguments: smoking and being fat and chronically ill is terrible for the healthcare system, so you should stop doing it.

It reminded me of the old Monty Python skit.

I find your comment really strange.

The impetus to not overload the medical system during a given situation is not to benefit “the system” but rather to benefit human life.

E.g., if you get sick enough to need medical care then you’ll be likely to receive that care.

During the early days of COVID when it quickly overran hospital resources in places like Italy, Spain, Hong Kong, etc., this was a very present danger and the likelihood in some cases tipped towards being that no, you might not be able to get a lifesaving treatment had you needed one.

This was all fake unless you put up some evidence otherwise

Tone matters. The point of this place is to encourage discussion and let people test their ideas and conclusions, which means thinking can be challenged, but preferably in a way that invites dialog, not just seeing how pithily you can dismiss someone.

"I don't think that's true; do you have any actual evidence that that happened, because I think a lot of it was hysteria and false reports during the pandemic" would be perfectly fine to say. Essentially calling someone a liar or just summarily dismissing what they say as "evidence or it's fake" is not.

You get it, if you reduce and equate “human life” with medical system in your assumption, then the rest of the stuff follows. You treat the system as human life, so everyones perogative is to serve the human life medical system. I refuse this equivalency to begin with.

But I am not surprised that for instance utilitarians think this way, it is the same idea to sublimate/identify values into something else like utils, and then just follow the calculation to its inevitable and logically sound monstrosity.

The medical system is human life.

How can you not equate those two?

If the medical system goes down, you immediately get loss of human life.

See, for me the human life is about enjoying life, meeting your family and friends, being able to grieve for your lost parents or even putting yourself through some tough events subtracting some supposed utils to achieve one of the myriad of goals you may have. Medical system is down there on the chain of what human life represents to me. I thought most people implicitly understand it, but that is apparently not the case.

I’m having trouble distinguishing your responses from just garden variety selfishness to be honest. Of course you like the good things in life.

The people who die due to lack of medical care usually like the same things too, so we don’t have to redefine the meaning of human life or anything here. It’s just that since they (in this example) have died due to lack of medical care that now they cannot enjoy those things.

Me behaving slightly differently for a few weeks during a triage event in the local hospital is a pretty small price.

A small bit of sacrifice for the wellbeing of others is a relatively common human characteristic, but there are definitively also a number people who don’t come equipped with that chip.

I’m having trouble distinguishing your responses from just garden variety selfishness to be honest.

Of course you would have such a trouble, you worship the system. And now we are back to 2020 shaming, the modus operandi during lockdowns: "no, going to funeral of your grandmother and meeting with three or more people is selfish, we are now saving human life medical system". The point is, I don't care about monsters trying to shame me anymore. That is what I realized. Some people just have different moral assumptions. I am sure that there were people in some Aztec village shaming their neighbors, who refused to offer their children to rain god Tlaloc. Do they wish drought and calamity upon good people of the village? We are trying to save lives here! Sacrifice to the system at once! It is a small price to pay.

Me behaving slightly differently for a few weeks during a triage event in the local hospital is a pretty small price

Oh, your moral highness deems it a small price to pay, so everybody should do the same. Please talk more about selfishness. I will not even comment on "for a few weeks" part, yeah the famous two weeks to stop the spread lie to drop-feed the measures .

Sometimes I wonder if part of this is that where I lived during COVID, the measures taken by the government were extremely lax.

Life wasn’t really disrupted all that much, we were told by the governor to go outside and enjoy the open air and hiking trails, although social gatherings were discouraged, I don’t think much of anything of the sort was ever actually banned. There was no curfew, nothing like this. Although there were some limits placed on in restaurant capacity for a while.

When I say “a few weeks”, I’m talking specifically about the period of time in which the local hospital was at max capacity. Since measures of reduction of community spread were mainly up to the individual, then the result here is just a simple question: my community is currently in a wave of a new pathogen and there’s a shortage of beds to treat people who got very sick.

Given that, should I hang back and not go to a big party right now?

For me that’s a simple yes, it’s relatively easy for me to put myself in the place of not having enough beds to treat the sick.

Does that mean I behaved like that during all of the year or so of COVID times? No, I more or less lived normally during most of it.

I do also empathize with people who had their lives severely restricted by the government too, and I do believe that given the nature of the disease what we did was overkill. I remember I visited Peru in late 2021, and wow, in the capital they had implemented a whole host of very strict measures. (To be fair to them, they did have the highest morality rate in the world). Overall our response may have been more appropriate for a Spanish Flu type scenario but COVID ended up being much milder.

My perspective may be biased somewhat in that during COVID for me, I pretty much lived normally and very little changed or was restricted for me. So to the question of “hey the hospital is currently at capacity, would you modify your behavior a bit to put a damper on community spread of this new virus until the surge starts to fall a bit?” … my response is pretty much, yeah. Not much of a problem.

You can make anything sound stupider if you stop halfway through the reasoning. Preventing the collapse is valuable if it prevents massive amounts of unnecessary suffering. Doesn’t that sound like something people might want to avoid?

I observe that skiing is not actually banned. Neither is smoking or being fat. There is legislation to make them more difficult, especially smoking, but the reasoning is more “to reduce the bad thing itself” than “to prevent healthcare collapse.”

I observe that skiing is not actually banned. Neither is smoking or being fat.

One of those things was banned during COVID lockdowns, the other two were exempt. Maybe somebody thought through it stupidly, stopping halfway through and other stupid people ate it.

Maybe somebody thought through it stupidly, stopping halfway through and other stupid people ate it.

I mean, I agree, but that’s because I think you’re the one stopping early.

Do you think the average lockdown enthusiast would have said defending the healthcare system was their purpose and governing principle?

Yeah, the whole "flattening the curve" slogan by measures such as social distancing and lockdowns was based on not overburdening the healthcare system as the primary argument. Were you living under the rock? Elective surgeries were cancelled, medical screenings were postponed and more - all in the name of "the system". I had a friend working in a hospital during lockdowns, when self-isolated people were beating on pots from their balconies, giving praise to heroic doctors, while she was sitting in empty hospital doing nothing. She thought it was stupid. And I really think that the system was the primary concern, stupid halfway-thinking people just substituted "human life" with "healthcare system" and then went from there.

So yes, I do think that "saving the system" was the primary concern, with some vague nod to "human life" to justify it. And as I said, this thinking is now pervasive and it will get worse.

I saw the same actions you did, but I don’t believe people stopped reasoning at the vague nod. It was all “one hopes, resulting in fewer deaths” and think of the children. Those are pretty explicit substitutions for human life!

Saving lives was used as an underlying assumption, I freely admit it. But in the end this intuition was equated - or if you will sublimated into the form of serving the healthcare system. Then it took life of its own, the discussion revolved around what was good or bad for the system, human life was subtracted and extrapolated from in these discussions. That is why we got into the monstrous results of lockdowns.

Do you think the average lockdown enthusiast would have said defending the healthcare system was their purpose and governing principle?

Only in the UK would it be the modal response. But it was common in the US as well.

The idea is that overburdening the health care system risks other people's lives, so you're actually still comparing your life to lives, not your life to an amorphous system.

Of course, even this version can be criticized in the way that socialism in general can be criticized.

Sure, but there is more to the life than just your pulse. Should we ban kids skating, because they can break their bone and thus be the burden on the system? What I found more scary is how readily this thing was accepted without question. Ask not what the healthcare system can do for you, ask what you can do for the healthcare system. And again, this is nothing new, I just realized it at that point. For instance in the UK there is heated debate if immigration is good or bad thing for their National Health Service. The NHS is like a sacred cow, people accept it without thinking and put such an importance on it, that it is almost as if NHS has agency of its own, and we need to think what will harm NHS. It is just weird.

It’s just a garden variety situation where you’re asked to pitch in so as to avert larger scale hardship.

Was that so alien to you beforehand?

For example, during the world wars people had to ration their goods so that everyone can eat and so that the soldiers could be supplied.

Would you have pushed back and eaten a second sandwich at lunch because you’re not going to sacrifice your personal enjoyment for some “system”?

Say you’re in a house with 3 other people. You all want a hot shower because you just got back from a long trek. You get the shower first. Are you really going to use ALL the hot water just because you like long hot showers? Or do the preferences of others enter into the mind at some point? Because if so, well it’s just the same logical process.

I know where I was at during COVID, the hospitals weren’t at capacity, but there was a time when it stayed right at the edge of capacity for a few weeks, and they had to roll up a few mobile morgues during that time (air conditioned shipping containers) to process the extra bodies.

I did personally see it as valuable for me and the community I was in to take at least some small sacrifices to make sure that those morgues didn’t fill up too quickly during those few weeks.

Britain could have just not fought the world wars and not rationed, next

Why am I in the house with three other people? Are they my immediate family? If yes, then obviously I will let them shower and skip my entirely because I love them.

If no, then I will pay for my shower and everyone else will pay for theirs, as befitting our agreement. Next.

I know where I was at during COVID (WTF is that? who came up with that? It's like Kyiv) and it was trying to get my dad an "elective" surgery that they cancelled because all the doctors wanted to televisit

Then he died.

Think about him please before the next time you start lovin' on 'the system' -

WTF is that? who came up with that?

Ah, diseases used to be named by places where they are first discovered (Ebola, Marburg, Spanish flu, West Nile virus, Zika, MERS, Lyme, etc.) But when the deplorables started using "Wuhan flu", the left declared it racist because naming anything bad after anything non-Western is clearly white suprematism, so they renamed it to COVID (which is an awful name since it means "coronavirus disease" and there are tons of coronaviruses which can cause all sorts of diseases, but anything not to be racist). They also renamed "monkeypox" to m-pox because mentioning monkeys is somehow racist too (don't ask, I have no idea).

BTW can confirm denial of medical services during the pandemic panic. Fortunately, in my wife's case we were able to find a less insane provider and also the services we needed didn't require a lot of personal attention, most of it could be managed by email, so it ended up well, but the state of utter panic and disarray which was everywhere among people who were supposed to know better and serve as guardians for the masses (I know, way too naive) is something I will never forget.

Ah, diseases used to be named by places where they are first discovered

Ebola

Okay, I'm with you, Ebola river

Marburg

Not the same as Ebola, because it wasn't 'discovered' in Germany but rather scientifically categorized. But okay, still with you

Spanish Flu

No! No God please, no!

Don't worry, I know the story of the Spanish flu. Still, it was named so because people thought it came from Spain, even though later it was found out not to be true. So, again the tradition was supported.

so they renamed it to COVID (which is an awful name since it means "coronavirus disease" and there are tons of coronaviruses which can cause all sorts of diseases, but anything not to be racist).

That's why they renamed it to COVID-19, after the coronavirus identified in the 2019 outbreak.

That’s a shame to know that your father died due to inability to access medical care

However it’s illustrative that the medical system is obviously important, and of what happens when people cannot access it

That presumes the people who received medical care in lieu of my father would not have been better served by staying home. Which the official corona statistics seem to suggest because the average age of a corona fatality was above the average life expectancy and the survival rate of those who sought treatment was lower than the rate of those who didn't

('Ackshualllyyyy that's what we'd expect since sicker people would be more likely to seek treatment.' Fair enough, but it holds true if you normalize for presenting symptoms)

Also but importantly, it's weird that I have to say it again, but it's not like there was a binary choice between my dad and someone else. This was not triage after a battle. I had multiple zooms with the surgeon while he was on his couch in his sweatpants.

Lastly and not for nothing. I would have gladly paid whatever had I that kind of money but it was 7 figure stuff to bring the surgeon here. Had travel been 'permitted' for him then he'd also still be alive

Well, to me the whole point of this conversation is “if there’s a risk of overloading the medical system, should we alter our behavior to reduce that load?”

Your argument is that it wasn’t justified in that case because the system wasn’t truly overloaded.

Whereas the original comment seems to be about even in the case that the system is overloaded.

More comments

Just about everything about your life is a “waste of resources”…but human life is valuable.

No, it’s not. I contribute to the world around me in many very tangible ways, and I’m certain that everyone in my life would readily agree. I barely even interface with the healthcare system, I have never taken one cent of welfare, unemployment benefits, etc. I just don’t know which resources you believe I’m wasting.

If you have a heart attack and need an ambulance to take you to the hospital, isn’t it a waste of diesel, and an inconvenience to everybody having to wait for the ambulance to go through lights?

The reason I’m on the ambulance is so they can take me someplace where I can get better. The health condition I’m suffering is, hopefully, temporary. This is fundamentally different from an infant with anencephaly or cyclopia or some such condition. That child will never ever recover from this; their body has failed to develop in a way that is necessary for life. There is no chance whatsoever - barring medical technological advances that we can’t even currently imagine - that such a child will live long enough to even make it out of that operating room. Such a child is often in significant pain - it lacks lungs, so it can no longer breathe once removed from the womb, etc.

If it is true that “God makes no mistakes” he has some very serious explaining to do in regards to why he engineers certain pregnancies to result in a fetus with half a brain, or with no lungs. These children are set up to die; whether they die on the operating table, or they die a few hours later in an incubator, there is nothing we can do to keep it from dying very soon after birth. I don’t think you’re really grappling with the question of what it even means to say that such a life “matters.”

I don’t think you’re really grappling with the question of what it even means to say that such a life “matters.”

What if the existence of that child - just its existence, no concern for it's "productivity" - brings unquantifiable joy to its parents?

Do you know how many people I know? Less than most of them. Like, I might now a couple hundred people. Most of human productivity is completely disconnected and alien to me. Sure, you can make the argument about the man downtown who puts peaches in a can that I then enjoy, but that's a very transactional exchange of value. And zero exchange of meaning.

I get meaning from a subset of the group of people I know. You do too. We all do. We call these people close friends and family. We like that they exist and just that they exist.

What if the existence of that child - just its existence, no concern for it's "productivity" - brings unquantifiable joy to its parents?

This is not the case for a baby with anencephaly or cyclopia. These babies are, besides being very obviously deformed in a way that is highly distressing to look at (go look for yourself if you want to see what I mean), an unequivocally disastrous result for a pregnancy. Again, they are absolutely unable to survive for more than a few days at absolute maximum, because their bodies lack basic components required to sustain a human life.

This slippery slope argument in roughly the shape of “If we admit that the life of an infant who literally never grew a brain doesn’t matter, we have to admit that no human life has inherent value” is, in my opinion, obviously specious and not worth taking seriously. No, I’m perfectly capable of believing that the lives of normal, functional, reasonably healthy people have inherent value, while rejecting the idea that there is significant inherent moral value in a clump of human-adjacent body parts which are not animated by a functioning human brain, or which are missing parts so crucial that its impossible to survive without them.

This is not the case for a baby with anencephaly or cyclopia. These babies are, besides being very obviously deformed in a way that is highly distressing to look at (go look for yourself if you want to see what I mean), an unequivocally disastrous result for a pregnancy.

That's just, like, your opinion, man!

But, seriously, you understand what I was trying to do there and with the rest of my comment; the "worth" of a human life is dependent upon its subjective relationship to other humans. Of course I can see that maybe a majority of parents with a child with those conditions you listed would be distraught. I also believe that some portion of them would treasure the fleeting moments with their child as worth it nonetheless (try to detect the anecdotal experience I'm insinuating here...).

The only remedy to this is to draw a line on when human life starts versus when it doesn't. I'm happy to have that discussion because I think it is unresolved at various levels (scientific, philosophic ... not religious, however). What I'm saying is that your rubric of "usefulness" or "worthy enough life" is specious because you're trying to apply an objective rule to what is a subjective problem.

What if the existence of that child - just its existence, no concern for it's "productivity" - brings unquantifiable joy to its parents?

Then by all means, don't abort, just no endless media campaigns asking for money keeping Johnny who's sick with Fucked-for-Entirety-of-Brief-and-Stunted-Lifeitis alive for one more year, please.

Yeah but the tribe that's generally pro-abortion also tends to be pro public healthcare spending and bottomless purse spending on life extension for the elderly and/or their pets.

Which is the confusing issue here since based on all other Blue Tribe beliefs you'd think they'd really be the pro-lifers and vice-versa for the Conservatives. The whole script gets flipped essentially for this one issue.

No I don't think that follows, blue states (and canada) are implementing right to die and red media is calling it forced suicide of undesirables. Terri Schiavo case was all right wing people trying to keep a vegetable with no brain matter left alive. I don't see right wingers actually taking their parents out back when they get demented. I see a lot more DNRs being set up by my blue family and old school repubs as opposed to the MAGA ones who are leaving it in Gods hands (Gods hands being extraordinary medical interventions at end of life).

Yes, it's almost like we're legitimate when we talk about choice and freedom when it comes to health care choices that doesn't effect other people - want a baby, great we think the state should support you heavily. Don't want it, great, here's state funding for abortion. Want to rage against the dying of the light? Let's use public health to do so? Don't want to be a burden, that's cool too.

I don't understand what you're saying here. So you do support assisted suicide?

This is a fair and valid opinion, albeit a touch indelicate.

It’s not that fair. What if those donors get some amount of joy from helping fund Johnny’s life extension treatments?

If you don’t like the media campaigns, just tune them out. Heaven knows conservatives have had to do it for decades.

I think you realize that this line of argument applies to you as well should you suffer a stroke that renders you a net drain on society for the rest of your life. You might fall back on “my family would be sad if I were left to die,” but there are millions of Christians saddened by the availability of abortion and especially infants born and left to die.

Utility-based moral systems tend to have these problems.

Yes, I have had this conversation with my family multiple times and made it very clear that I would like to be euthanized/taken off life support if such a thing were to happen to me. I do not believe that my physical body is so sacrosanct that it should be kept alive, at great expense, if and when my mental faculties are gone. My mother feels the same way, and as her power of attorney I may one day need to make that decision for her; I plan to honor her explicit desire.

This is part of why I advocate so strongly for eugenics: I would like to eliminate, to the greatest extent possible, congenital conditions which have a strong likelihood of rendering humans mentally inert or broken, such that they become (or just are, from the very beginning of life) a pure burden.

Still there are going to be grey areas where you have retained enough mental faculties to not be 'gone' but you are still nonetheless a burden in the utility scale.

Most of us would trust our immediate family to make the correct decision in these grey areas more than we trust the legislature. Given the general views of conservative Republicans on family values and the trustworthiness of the government, it is odd that the conservative movement thinks that this particular deeply personal decision needs to be taken once-and-for-all by politicians who don't have to live with the consequences, but the nature of American coalitional politics is what it is.

If it is true that “God makes no mistakes” he has some very serious explaining to do in regards to why he engineers certain pregnancies to result in a fetus with half a brain, or with no lungs.

Creationists say there would be no such mistakes were Adam not to have eaten a specific delicious fruit. There would be no mutations, humans would live a thousand years even without eating the fruit of the tree of life, and T-Rexes would still be vegan to this day.

Christian evolutionists have a much simpler answer: God used the death-churn of evolution to make us, so we should have no complaints about the problem of evil/suffering.

Both of these answers are equally batshit. I fail to understand how either of these answers is compatible with the Christian idea of a God who so loves humanity that he sent his own incarnate son to be tortured in order to redeem us. Such a loving and powerful God could surely come up with a plan for humanity that does not involve this level of utterly wanton suffering and ugliness.

A woman had to nurture and grow that fetus inside of her for months, eagerly and lovingly expecting to bring into the world a beautiful new life full of possibility, and at the last possible second she discovers she’s actually growing a broken, functionless monstrosity within her. It’s the stuff of body horror science fiction. It’s the kind of thing that makes me very sympathetic to the Gnostic urge to overthrow the sadistic demiurge.

The point of believing in a God is that you don’t understand every decision He makes, because God is too far above us to understand.

That sounds more like Cthulhu than the God any Christian I know seems to believe in.

"If you treasure the life and well-being of your colonists so much, why did you start a RimWorld game in a challenging location?"

Then what is the point of praying to Him? Do you think he loves you enough to make sure you get that promotion at work, or that your football team wins a game, but doesn’t love those mothers enough to prevent them from having catastrophically deformed children?

I’m all for a Deist conception of an inscrutable alien intelligence who created the basic rules of physics and then sat back to passively watch the simulation play out. What I cannot understand is a conception of a loving God who made humanity in his image, who intervenes positively in quotidian human affairs, and yet who allows, either through direct control or negligence, things like catastrophic natural disasters and anencephalic newborns.

I’m all for a Deist conception of an inscrutable alien intelligence who created the basic rules of physics and then sat back to passively watch the simulation play out. What I cannot understand is a conception of a loving God who made humanity in his image, who intervenes positively in quotidian human affairs, and yet who allows, either through direct control or negligence, things like catastrophic natural disasters and anencephalic newborns.

Is it specifically the catastrophic natural disasters and anencephalic newborns that raise the objection, or is it in fact any form of suffering at all?

I observe that suffering is highly useful, even from a materialist perspective. We suffer hunger and thirst, and it motivates us to eat and drink. More abstract and generalized suffering provides the contrast necessary to recognize the difference between good and bad; if you agree that the "experience machine" is repugnant, that necessarily requires suffering and pleasure to be different from good and bad. From there, general acceptance of suffering, even of natural disasters and anencephalic newborns is not a large step: suffering is a reminder that there is a reality outside our selves that must be grappled with, and this is an insight we cannot dispense with.

Then what is the point of praying to Him?

The point of praying to Him is to build a relationship with Him. When we encounter suffering, we ask for his help, and when we encounter joy, we thank him for it. A similar process can be observed in the parent/child relationship; young children suffer greatly for reasons they do not understand and their parents cannot explain to them, but their parents mitigate some of this suffering and comfort them in the rest, and without gaining any insight into the causes or reasons for the suffering or indeed the reasoning of the parents, children hopefully learn that their parents are not its ultimate source, even when they are the proximate source. My eldest reliably starts screaming and crying when I turn off Cocomelon, but still lets me pick her up and soothe her until the discontent passes. So it is for me and the greater sufferings of pain and sickness and weakness and death.

There's a sense in which none of the above is rational, but then, rationality is a spook. Your rage and disgust at the evil of pain and suffering brings you no closer to solving them, and my acceptance of them produces no additional obstacle to fighting against them. Certainly sterilization or euthanasia are not general or even notably broad solutions to the problem. Humans will continue to live and die in pain no matter what you or I choose to believe or to do, short of complete extermination of the species. Nor does it appear that suffering is, in fact, in any fundamental way connected to material circumstances. Perfectly healthy, rich, comfortable people frequently demonstrate that suffering expands to fill the available space of one's psyche, regardless of material circumstances. The most concrete quantization of suffering available, the experience of physical pain, observably expands and contracts dramatically, and possibly without limit, based solely on how we engage with it, and particularly with choices we make when engaging with it.

Is it specifically the catastrophic natural disasters and anencephalic newborns that raise the objection, or is it in fact any form of suffering at all?

It’s specifically the very bad forms of suffering.

From there, general acceptance of suffering, even of natural disasters and anencephalic newborns is not a large step: suffering is a reminder that there is a reality outside our selves that must be grappled with, and this is an insight we cannot dispense with.

The Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 killed about 230,000 people. Many were killed fairly quickly, although in one of most distressing ways I can imagine - for example, being swept away by a rushing deluge after slipping from the grasp of a family member clinging to a building, who then has to watch you slip away to your death - although a great many died later from starvation, disease, etc. All because they simply happened to live somewhere within the affected zone.

You want me to believe that this level of unspeakable death and suffering was the most effective way for God to send the message that suffering is real and that there are things more powerful that humanity? And you also want me to believe that such a God loves me? (Did he not love those 230,000 people?)

similar process can be observed in the parent/child relationship; young children suffer greatly for reasons they do not understand and their parents cannot explain to them, but their parents mitigate some of this suffering and comfort them in the rest, and without gaining any insight into the causes or reasons for the suffering or indeed the reasoning of the parents, children hopefully learn that their parents are not its ultimate source, even when they are the proximate source.

Imagine if every time your child cried, you grabbed a random stranger’s child and strangled it to death in front of your kid. This might indeed demonstrate to your child that there are worse things in the world than having Cocomelon turned off. It would also be an incredibly psychopathic and gratuitous way to teach that lesson - especially if the idea is that you love every child equally, and don’t just arbitrarily pick favorites.

Your rage and disgust at the evil of pain and suffering brings you no closer to solving them

Again, totally risible. It is precisely the recognition that a state of affairs is monstrous and unjust which provides the impetus to begin working to change it. For the vast majority of human history, childbirth was ridiculously dangerous to women, and children so often died young. Entire religious traditions sprang up to teach us that these things are just an inevitable part of life, that we are powerless to stop them because God wills them, and that they’re actually our fault for being so wicked and fallen. But hey, what do you know: they actually weren’t an inevitable part of human life, and the second we figured out how to exercise agency over them, we eagerly did so; in the 21st century, they are now incredibly rare in every society that has access to the technologies to prevent them. The same is true of disease; plagues used to be the inescapable will of a vengeful God, but now we can usually stave them off with some basic vaccination. I’m really fucking glad some enterprising souls decided that God’s inscrutable will might be worth defying. I desperately hope that one day humans get good enough at geo-engineering that we never again need to be smugly told that earthquakes and tsunamis are just part of God’s plan.

Humans will continue to live and die in pain no matter what you or I choose to believe or to do, short of complete extermination of the species.

You’re once again doing the thing where you pretend not to understand that there are degrees. It is possible for some suffering to be inevitable, but at the same time for us to have the power to massively reduce it. I don’t want to live in the “experience box”; I also don’t want to have my fingernails ripped out, or to burn alive, or to see my infant be born without a brain. You’re welcome to throw your hands up and thank God for suffering; I’m going to go a different path.

Agreed, I much prefer a disinterested clockmaker that implicitly says "as for your comfort, that will depend upon your efforts" than an all-loving deity who lets a devoutly Catholic Lisbon be razed by an earthquake on All Saints Day.

There is no good reason the arc of history (and physics itself) needs to involve such enormous amounts of suffering. An omnipotent being could structure the universe like a slice-of-life anime where the worst that could happen is that you look foolish in front of your friends.

The point of praying to Him is to build a relationship with Him. When we encounter suffering, we ask for his help, and when we encounter joy, we thank him for it.

Further, when you look at the teachings of Christian spiritual teachers, the point is very often that you shoudn’t be praying for random things you want, you should be praying for God to do what he wants. The Lord’s Prayer has no place for the Chiefs winning the Super Bowl; instead it says, “thy will be done.” I would argue that any prayer that goes “God give me this thing I want,” is a bad and spiritually dangerous prayer.

Instead you should be praying for strength, or peace, or any of the mental and spiritual gifts that can help you deal with whatever’s going to happen. The point of Christianity is not material success but spiritual growth. That’s why prosperity theology is such a dangerous heresy.

Also, I believe in a vision of Christianity where suffering is itself almost a positive good, because it creates closeness to Christ the suffering servant, and I believe the world was created in order that we could suffer with him. Or, at least, so that our slate of experiences and God’s slate of experiences could be the same — God’s passability and ours is the point of the world. So I find the classical answers to the problem of evil unsatisfying, though I understand their point.

I know that sounds nuts to non-Christians, but I don’t have a high view of folk Christianity and I think it very often misses the mark.

Further, when you look at the teachings of Christian spiritual teachers, the point is very often that you shouldn't be praying for random things you want, you should be praying for God to do what he wants.

Just so. For myself personally, though, I think I've leaned too hard in that direction in the past, verging on a sort of fatalism, to the point that I no longer prayed for people to be healed, but only for what God wanted to happen, to happen. It seems to me that this verged on a sort of cowardice, where it became more about not asking for things because I didn't believe they'd happen anyway. On the other hand, I've found the faith to pray to God for things that seemed highly improbable, have in fact received some of those highly improbable things, and am very grateful for them. To a great extent, my life is now defined by those positive answers to specific requests, which inspires great thankfulness to God for granting them.

The rational perspective would point out that this is all just confirmation bias. I've chosen to believe in God axiomatically, and I interpret all evidence I receive according to that axiom. But of course, there is no other way to reason from incomplete data; Axioms are necessary precisely because they cannot be proven, and they are necessary because it is impossible to reason without them.

Agreed that Prosperity theology is radioactive trash.

I don’t claim to fully understand the problem of evil in the same way a two year old doesn’t fully understand why he can’t have candy for dinner. But the issue of original sin ensures there will be bad things until the end of the earth as the fault of man; that much I can say.

A truly wretched ideology, I’m sorry to say. I have a ton of cultural affinity with Christians, and devout Christians have been some of the kindest people I’ve ever known. But that is just colossally repellent metaphysics.

Scott’s short treatment of the subject in his review of Malleus Maleficarum gives the most defensible explanation:

God isn’t trying to maximize a 21st century utilitarian view of the Good, He’s trying to maximize His own glory. Allowing some evil helps with this, because then He can justly punish it (and being just is glorious) or mercifully forgive it (and being merciful is also glorious). But, if God let the Devil kill everyone in the world, then there would be no one left to praise God’s glory, plus people might falsely think God couldn’t have stopped the Devil if He’d wanted to. So the glory-maximizing option is to give the Devil some power, but not too much.

This is the best they can come up with. I’m serious. I don’t believe in God, but conditional on there being a magic sky fairy, this is the most likely explanation.

Paul himself gestures in this direction. Read Romans 9 sometime, especially the metaphor about the potter and the clay.

https://www.fortressofdoors.com/four-magic-words/

The idea of 'wasted equipment' is omnipresent and simply emerges out of scarcity. There is only so much time, energy and resources to allocate. Organ recipients are ranked according to how likely they are to survive and thrive if they were to find a donor. MIT allocates seats to those who are most likely to thrive in that educational environment, rather than 'wasting equipment' by admitting affirmative action students who are more likely to drop out. Spending maximal resources irrespective of the background of the recipient results in worse outcomes.

The other poster's hypothetical situation is one of a baby with a severe genetic defect and unlikely to survive. To completely ignore the reality of the situation leads to 'The Hartley Hooligans' with a delusional mother keeping her kids with microencephaly alive, despite the fact they're effectively braindead. Or any number of needless procedures to extend the life of the terminally ill.

I really have no idea about the legal basis of what is happening here, or even the details. That's why I asked for clarification. But since late second trimester abortions are only legal in a handful of severe cases almost anywhere, I assume it all plays out like this:

A women presents around the third trimester for the first time. They discover the baby to be severely malformed, e.g. anencephaly. Since the baby would not survive its own birth for even an hour (and is likely to die in utero before birth), an abortion is performed. This late in the pregnancy, the abortion is indistinguishable from an emergency induced birth. The baby lives briefly after the procedure. Apparently, legally, a doctor in Minnesota would have had to put it into an incubator before 2019. Everybody knows this to be in vain.

I'm happy to be corrected here. If they leave the baby to die from exposure in cases where the 1 year mortality is comparable to that of a heart attack before 40, I strongly oppose everything about it. But since neither the article nor you have explained any of the details of what they are doing, I'm starting to think this is a pretty poor attempt at propaganda, and it's trying to exploit the emotions of people who also don't understand what's going on. Because it sure sounds inviting to just believe they are double-tapping cute little preemie babies because mom didn't want them.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats