Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with?

dynomight.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 388 posts

Re: Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with?

#261

Post by adastra22 »

corrral wrote: post #35
MockObject wrote: post #17

It is frustrating. I am on one side of the abortion debate, but I understand the other side, yet I have no success in even explaining it to my side.

I'm pro-choice, but from what I can tell, the pro-choicers who are eager to post about it on the Internet have no clue whatsoever about the actual positions of the people they're arguing against. They're also weirdly-big fans of very weak pro-choice arguments. It's really frustrating. Attempts to explain the other side, or to knock down bad arguments from "my" side so better ones can replace them, are indeed often me…

Thank you for sharing this.

I used to be pro-choice. I think a lot of women (and men) are because of the fear they might be in a position of needing an abortion themselves, or other abstract/potential concerns. Framed as a right to body autonomy, pro-choice seemed the obvious position of any feminist, and how could you possibly believe otherwise?

Then I was in the position of having to make the decision myself. Now, years removed, I still don't feel comfortable posting details online, even under a pseudonym. But suffice to say my partner and I were in a position of having to decide whether to terminate a pregnancy that we had really wanted, due to unexpected medical news. Suddenly all those clever pro-choice arguments seemed hollow, now that we were in the position of making the decision ourselves. This was a real thing. She had a heartbeat. We watched her move and react on the ultrasound. We had, for weeks, imbued our hopes and dreams into this unborn child. We could terminate, but it'd be our call. We'd be pulling the trigger. In that moment I finally understood and emotionally connected with the pro-life position and "abortion is murder!" slogans.

Now I recognize it is a much more complex, multi-faceted issue than I ever previously thought. Every now and then I look and my daughter and think: I almost killed you. How could I have possibly done that? I get the arguments on both sides of the issue, and I don't think that there is any simple solution. It now frustrates me to no end to see people being very loud and very vocal about what are essentially straw man versions of the opposing side's arguments, and vilifying anyone who thinks differently or has lived a different experience. Whatever happened to civil society?

Re: Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with?

#262

Post by ouid »

car_analogy wrote: post #146
ouid wrote: post #53

Morality and law both work like mathematics. This means that my beliefs are constructed, and once I have a construction, the only in bounds way to convince me to change my mind about them is to show me that my beliefs are inconsistent. Moreover, understanding someone who has already demonstrated an inconsistent belief system is easy. They believe X because they believe something and its negation, and at least one of…

Calling inconsistent beliefs a sign that they justify whatever they want is overly harsh. Rather, it has been shown [1] that people come to their beliefs by intuition, and rationalize them post-hoc. Just because a belief is intuitive and not constructed from moral axioms (meaning their beliefs appear inconsistent by their stated rationalization) does not mean it is arbitrary ("whatever they want"). [1] https://en.wik…

This does not contradict anything that I said. It's not harsh to refer to the argument as being worthless in this case. It might as well not exist. One can be well served by a belief system that justifies nothing, or a belief system that is full of contradictions, but listening to them rationalize it isn't going to help me understand any better than it helped them (which was not at all).

Re: Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with?

#263

Post by car_analogy »

lemonlime wrote: post #221
SilasX wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t help. It just asserts that “oh no, it’s obviously not unlimited” but not how or why, in line with the core arguments used. Did you read the article? Its whole point is that Roe is a dubious application of privacy, even if you support the ruling’s conclusion. I assumed from your confident tone, and insistence that the parent comment was a strawman, that you would be able to shed more light on this topic.…

Their reasoning in Roe is pretty detailed and they do not come anywhere close to saying that the right to privacy legalizes everything done in private. Have you read Roe v Wade? Let's look at fraud. Who do you think is arguing that fraud is illegal if done in private. Can you link me to any example anywhere on any medium? Which part of the article do you think is relevant here? I have read many books by actual consti…

> I'm not just insisting it's a strawman. It is a straw man.

It wasn't a strawman (I do not claim anyone argued everything in private is legal), it was reductio as absurdum - taking the privacy argument to its logical limit. If a right to privacy makes abortion legal because it is private, why does this apply only to abortion? Actually, only to a subset of abortion, since "this right is not unqualified and must be considered against important state interests in regulation".

You quoted the court saying this is "not unlimited" and about "personal privacy" (distinguished from 'general' privacy?). How does any of this follow from "security against unreasonable search"? Or do I misunderstand, and they derived this right from some other amendment or combination of amendments?

The reasoning, so far as I understand it, is tortured at best, so I'd be grateful if you could clarify the court's logic for me.

Re: Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with?

#264

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

njharman wrote: post #219
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #150

> Given this disagreement, it’s not entirely obvious to me that we should resolve it through the Supreme Court rather than having people debate with each other and vote for legislators who will pass laws that reflect their views. This misunderstands the role of a Constitution. One of the central points of a Constitution is to mark certain things off-limits to democracy. People cannot debate with each other and vote f…

> One of the central points of a Constitution is to mark certain things off-limits to democracy. This only applied to federal portion of "democracy" until the 14th amendment which added restricting the states re Bill of Rights. 14th wasn't adopted until 1868. I don't think it's that central. > The Due Process Clause prohibits state and local governments from depriving persons of life, liberty, or property without a f…

> > The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

> The government can't pass laws against "Turtles Suck!" because that power is not granted them.

I find this way of explaining things somewhat disingenuous. Very few powers are delegated to the federal government, but all of those that are are (because of the limitations of language) sufficiently ambiguous that they can interpreted as allowing all manner of legislation and regulation.

> > One of the central points of a Constitution is to mark certain things off-limits to democracy.

> This only applied to federal portion of "democracy" until the 14th amendment which added restricting the states re Bill of Rights. 14th wasn't adopted until 1868. I don't think it's that central.

(1) you're suggesting that before the 14th amendment, a state could pass a "law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." ? That seems preposterous.

(2) It seems generally accepted that the supremacy clause of Article VI of the constitution is the basis for the US Constitution covering state law.

(3) we live in 2022, and the US Consitution is as-it-is-today. The fact that something may have been added via an amendment (though above I dispute this) doesn't make it more or less "central".

Re: Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with?

#265

Post by mdp2021 »

RobertRoberts wrote: post #245
mdp2021 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Civility and decorum ... taught in our schools today "Education" means "leading", think "as if hand in hand, in time": it is a matter (in this case) of transmission through /example/ - not of passing information. Then, you can bring awareness to it: and awareness raising passes through showing that one way is higher and the other is low. You must live that example. The rarer the example, the greater the evidence of…

Why was the first debate embarrassing? IMDB notes indicate it was "spectacle over substance", is this what you are referring to?

> Why was the first debate embarrassing?

It was "mud wrestling in a suit" - a pretense of civilization revealing very low urges in action; large investments in refinements spent to trick the surface. I could analyze, and I could have already written a short essay from reading your question to submitting the post, but insistence on the low unfortunately also promotes it.

If you want to take a look at it, it is on YT.

Re: Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with?

#266

Post by Clubber »

woodruffw wrote: post #223
Clubber wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The federal government derives much of it's power over the states using a controversial interpretation of the commerce clause: To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes; https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/commerce_clause Abortion tends to be single state centric, meaning the person getting the abortion and the abortion clinic are in the same state. Because of thi…

I think that oversells it. The current interpretation of the commerce clause is not particularly controversial in contemporary American politics (both dominant political parties are "big Federal government" parties; they just disagree on how to apply the USG's heft.) > Abortion tends to be single state centric, meaning the person getting the abortion and the abortion clinic are in the same state. Because of this, the…

> The current interpretation of the commerce clause is not particularly controversial in contemporary American politics (both dominant political parties are "big Federal government" parties; they just disagree on how to apply the USG's heft.)

It's not controversial to the layer of government to which derives power from it, certainly. I think politicians in states have issues with it when it's convenient.

>I think the 9th Amendment provides perfectly sufficient cover for a right to abortion, and that it would be reasonable to interpret the nonenumeration clause in a similar manner to the commerce clause (i.e., permitting federal law where required to protect rights that individual states might wish to infringe). But that's a parallel justification.

I think it will until states start banning abortion, which is their right (assuming Roe is overturned). I don't think the federal government will have power to override the decision of the states. It would be nice to see a strong interpretation for the 9th amendment come into action though. It might finally end moral crusades like the drug war.

Re: Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with?

#267

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

robonerd wrote: post #239
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #150

> Given this disagreement, it’s not entirely obvious to me that we should resolve it through the Supreme Court rather than having people debate with each other and vote for legislators who will pass laws that reflect their views. This misunderstands the role of a Constitution. One of the central points of a Constitution is to mark certain things off-limits to democracy. People cannot debate with each other and vote f…

If Congress could get an amendment passed to the effect of "Abortion is a right" , then the issue of how SCOTUS interprets the privacy argument becomes moot.

The likelihood of any amendment passing on any matter whatsoever seems about as close to zero as anything in the US political landscape. It's even smaller for one regarding abortion.

Re: Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with?

#268

Post by mbauman »

MockObject wrote: post #246
dvt wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> our particular system of government is a bit shit, and keeps getting worse the better everyone gets at gaming it. I agree that a "Union of States," being profoundly anti-federalist, is a pretty shit way of running a homogeneous world power with a shared language, shared culture, and (for the most part) shared ideals. The US fundamentally changed after the Civil War (which was probably the breaking point of anti-fed…

I can't tell if you're advocating for more centralism, or less.

The comment seems to be more descriptive than prescriptive.

Re: Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with?

#269

Post by guerrilla »

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #195
guerrilla wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's generally agreed upon in academia that ethics is an a priori science like math. I don't know about law but it sounds plausible.

I do not know ethics, nor any branch of philosophy (as my below comments show, the issue I could discuss was the "law" part). However, what I have never understood is how does the a priori science of ethics map onto real life, where morality is borne out of emotions and instinctual human social conditioning. I think it's rather obvious from observing young humans that they do not discover ethics from first principles…

.

Re: Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with?

#270

Post by car_analogy »

ouid wrote: post #262
car_analogy wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling inconsistent beliefs a sign that they justify whatever they want is overly harsh. Rather, it has been shown [1] that people come to their beliefs by intuition, and rationalize them post-hoc. Just because a belief is intuitive and not constructed from moral axioms (meaning their beliefs appear inconsistent by their stated rationalization) does not mean it is arbitrary ("whatever they want"). [1] https://en.wik…

This does not contradict anything that I said. It's not harsh to refer to the argument as being worthless in this case. It might as well not exist. One can be well served by a belief system that justifies nothing, or a belief system that is full of contradictions, but listening to them rationalize it isn't going to help me understand any better than it helped them (which was not at all).

It doesn't contradict most of what you said, except this part:

> their entire moral philosophy [..] is exclusively used to justify whatever they want

Unless by "want" you mean "selfishly desire or selflessly believe is the morally right thing", and not the common use of only "selfish desire".

Post reply on HN