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Confessions of a bitter cripple (2015)

politicalphilosopher.net

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Re: Confessions of a bitter cripple (2015)

#41

Post by DoreenMichele »

In the Bible, someone asks "Who sinned that this man was born blind, him or his parents." Jesus says "Neither," rejecting the assumption that his disability is a punishment.

Mozart was deaf and five of his six siblings died young. He was constantly I'll, couldn't figure out how to manage money, was physically deformed and died at the of 35.

https://www.grunge.com/194140/the-tragic-real-life-story-of-...

You have no doubt heard of Stephen Hawking, one of the great minds of our era and seriously physically disabled.

A controversial bit of trivia is that Ashkenazi Jews win a relatively high percentage of Nobel prizes. They also are a population that sees a lot of genetic disorders and no one knows how to really sort out if or how those two things are related.

Genius is defined in part by simply being different. Being different is often reviled.

What is a bad thing in some situations can be a good thing in others. Evolution sorts "good" adaptations from "bad" based on who survives long enough to pass on their genes and this is why Sickle Cell Anemia is common in some populations: It confers a survival advantage to the population as a whole for the gene to proliferate (though it's better for the individual to have only one copy, not two).

There is no clear bright line between disability and "normal people." We all tend to see a loss of various abilities as we age and some studies suggest that most people (around 60 percent) struggle with some ordinary tasks while two thirds of them actively eschew the label disabled.

Re: Confessions of a bitter cripple (2015)

#42

Post by brazzy »

bserge wrote: post #25
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #5

I can understand where the author is coming from, but this is the cruel reality of the world. > "I have sat in philosophy seminars where it was asserted that I should be left to die on a desert island if the choice was between saving me and saving an arbitrary non-disabled person" I would compare this to situations where you are choosing a person with high IQ vs low IQ, or to choosing someone very attractive vs very…

Yeah, such is the world and it is pointless to get angry about it (although often hard not to). What gets me personally is the hypocrisy around it. "Don't worry, you're just as good as everyone else", "you can do it", "you can fix it". But you know they don't mean it. So why say it? Ever think it makes the person feel worse rather than better? Probably makes you feel better, I guess that's enough of a reason to sugar…

> But you know they don't mean it. So why say it?

Certainly not hypocrisy. It's platitudes. Polite, positive things you can say when you can't think of anything better.

>Ever think it makes the person feel worse rather than better?

What statements would make them feel better?

>Probably makes you feel better, I guess that's enough of a reason to sugarcoat the truth.

If anything, it allows them to avoid feeling worse. And why should they not be allowed to do that in a presumably casual conversation?

Re: Confessions of a bitter cripple (2015)

#43

Post by omginternets »

wavepruner wrote: post #17
xf1cf wrote: post #10

This is really just a tirade. She's angry because rational philosophy, essentially, is not "intersectional" enough. We've seen the damage this has done to social science (just look at how well it has solved pre-college education). The thesis of her tirade, the desert island and taking the "more capable" person, really left a lot of details out. It appears poised to support her argument rather than pose an interesting…

This "who should be saved" question is so silly to me. In reality, the person that gets saved is always the person that the savers want to save. From situation to situation there are a huge number of variables affecting what the savers' desire is. These situations are often unrelated to a person's disability status, and usually have a lot more to do with how much the saver likes the savee. I'm physically disabled, an…

The question is “who should be saved”, not “who will be saved”. It’s normative.

The point of the exercise is to try to figure out which variables are most valued in theory.

Re: Confessions of a bitter cripple (2015)

#44

Post by nefitty »

boffinism wrote: post #36
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #5

I can understand where the author is coming from, but this is the cruel reality of the world. > "I have sat in philosophy seminars where it was asserted that I should be left to die on a desert island if the choice was between saving me and saving an arbitrary non-disabled person" I would compare this to situations where you are choosing a person with high IQ vs low IQ, or to choosing someone very attractive vs very…

Sorry, what? You're saying that an attractive person is more deserving of being saved than an unattractive person? Just so you know, a bunch of people, whi identify as 'not eugenicists' do not agree with you.

Just pick any random trait and assume that society values that. The hypothetical is basically saying, “This human has traits that society values, therefore, between a choice of someone who has the trait vs not, we should side with society and choose the person who has the trait.” In this case, the assumption is that society values beauty or aesthetic pleasure (which might be connected to some evolutionary imperative).

It does require a cold distancing to arrive at conclusions like that. Some people find it hard to betray their own internal moral intuitions. I think that that is a symptom of the radical subjectivism/individualism that is dominant in Western thought. The question then is, do you value your individual, subjective intuitions, or do you value objective, disembodied concepts? For example, some of the conclusions that Peter Singer has reached are controversial, but his lines of thinking are arguably consistent, insofar as his ultimate aim is toward a system that respects all sentient beings’ interests judiciously, and does not prioritize the interests of any individual.

Re: Confessions of a bitter cripple (2015)

#45

Post by indymike »

trashtester wrote: post #37
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interpreted it in the opposite light. To me, it sounds like the author is angry that people perceive disabled people as being worth less than able people. I see this as being in line with the experience of incels because their perceived worth is so low that no woman wants to be with them.

I would expect that a relatively large percentage of disabled people are also incels, and that being an incel may be one of the more challenging consequences of being disabled. I wonder how the experience of these disabled incels compare to people who are incels for other reasons.

My Dad had MS, lost leg function, and as a result we had a huge number of family friends who were disabled. The surprising part was how many had a significant other. There's an interesting phenomena: disabled persons value companionship and on many cases having a companion is necessary for survival. On the flip side there is something innately human about serving others. The level of sacrifice was huge, and that was often offset by the level of gratitude and appreciation. I'm sure there's a little self-selection bias in my sample, but to assume involuntary celibacy is rampant on disabled people is just a bad assumption.

Re: Confessions of a bitter cripple (2015)

#46

Post by nefitty »

sterlind wrote: post #4
__s wrote: post #2

So a lot of the views she's angry against are because there's a tendency to consider extremes: would it be better for everyone in the world to be disabled, or not? Surely it's easier to argue that we should have no people without legs rather than no people with legs But that's not the question at hand. Maybe there's a benefit to diversity of perspectives. In which case the question should be is society better for hav…

> Surely it's easier to argue that we should have no people without legs rather than no people with legs I have never heard anyone be this reductionistic and be serious. that's not at all what the conversation is about. > Maybe there's a benefit to diversity of perspectives. In which case the question should be is society better for having 1% (or 10% or 0.001%, anything above 0%) of the population disabled? Pretty mu…

It sounds like your disorder might cut the quality of your life much earlier than people without. I’m taken aback at how cavalier your conclusion is. I don’t think it’s wrong for you to want to have children, but it seems wrong to me to have children when you know that their quality of life will deteriorate much earlier than usual.

I sympathize though. I never wanted to have children because of the inevitable hardships they’ll face in a post-climate catastrophe world. I now find myself pushed by the inertia of life, and beginning to prepare to have kids. There’s some part of me that won’t respond to the rational arguments. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be for people with inheritable disorders to face the choice of having children or not.

Re: Confessions of a bitter cripple (2015)

#47

Post by jorl17 »

JetSetWilly wrote: post #28
AQXt wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can understand where the author is coming from, but this is the cruel reality of the world. This article was written in 2015, when this kind of dilemma (who would you save) was purely theoretical. Fast-forward to 2020/2021, and it became real: we had to decide how to allocate scarce, life-saving resources -- COVID-19 vaccines -- and we decided to distribute them to the elder and most vulnerable first. I hope this…

That's a fallacy though. If COVID killed the youngest and most able among us equally or more than the most vulnerable, then vaccine distribution would have been different. Vaccine distribution was given to those most likely to suffer negative effects. If covid struck entirely randomly there's no reason to prioritise it on the elderly and vulnerable, you'd look at maximising QALYS instead.

Exactly this.

Re: Confessions of a bitter cripple (2015)

#48

Post by boffinism »

omginternets wrote: post #40
boffinism wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, what? You're saying that an attractive person is more deserving of being saved than an unattractive person? Just so you know, a bunch of people, whi identify as 'not eugenicists' do not agree with you.

Im curious, what do you think or his stronger argument: that intelligent and able people should be favored in the event that only a handful of people can be saved? I’m not sure I agree, but I can see where he’s coming from.

I was brought up to believe we should aim to save the people least able to save themselves. That we shouldn't make comparative value judgements about human lives in that situation. In the old days they said "women and children first", not "strong, attractive geniuses first".

Re: Confessions of a bitter cripple (2015)

#49

Post by cracker-news »

trashtester wrote: post #37
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interpreted it in the opposite light. To me, it sounds like the author is angry that people perceive disabled people as being worth less than able people. I see this as being in line with the experience of incels because their perceived worth is so low that no woman wants to be with them.

I would expect that a relatively large percentage of disabled people are also incels, and that being an incel may be one of the more challenging consequences of being disabled. I wonder how the experience of these disabled incels compare to people who are incels for other reasons.

Nah, I guarantee you the average HN poster has 10x the incel qualities compared to an average disabled person, who by virtue of their experience are probably profoundly more mature than the eugenics-minded dimwits here.
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