This is something I’ve thought about for a long while. As a socially awkward kid, I read the stories of King Arthur. One of the stories about one of his knights (can’t remember which) the knight is given an enchanted item that charms everyone he speaks to and makes them like him. This immediately captured my fascination as a socially inept kid, but the more I thought about it, it would be living hell.

You would never EVER believe anyone genuinely enjoyed your company again, constantly wondering if it was the enchantment. Even if you removed the item and found someone who liked you natrually without it, normal appreciation or regard would NEVER come close to the enchanted one, and it would now FEEL like they disliked you. It would poison your entire life

I mean, we need scale on the luck too. What is a normal amount of luck. Is +100 luck 200% your normal luck? If so that might kind of suck. If it’s normally ranked out of 10, +100 is worldbreaking shit

I’m confused, how can you ‘burn’ anything without oxygen? Burn literally means to oxidize

You are assuming that they think rationally

Santa has always worked on tips, that’s what the cookies and milk are for

I don’t really have a counter argument that I would like to make, because it’s not and never was my goal to convince you that your opinion was wrong I only intended to critique the way it was made.

However, I am curious where you would personally draw the line on a human infant becoming sentient. This not intended as a trap or an argument- as a conflicted person, your certainty is interesting.

Now I want a fiber optic keyboard cleaning brush

You seem unimagitive and boring: 0/10, would not watch any TV show you write

I love the thought that instead of pooping in the indestructible hut, then going out in sorties, throwing poop on its food, you decide to straight up pop a squat over the only food source while locked in an area with a t rex. You are a very bold person, your bravery has my respect, if not your intelligence

Imagine being able to talk to oysters only to find out that oysters can’t talk back

Somehow I doubt oysters have anything interesting to say

Because as I read this, you are setting up the argument to be:

Pro choice believes in protecting individual autonomy, as opposed to Pro life, which believes in telling people what to do, because of insert any number of reasons here

This is pretty true of a lot of the pro life apologists and political campaigners, but I feel is a pretty ineffectual argument against the people who truely believe this as an ideology.

The people that truely believe in pro life genuinely don’t see a difference in values about protecting individual autonomy- they believe that’s what they are doing by banning both murder and abortion (something that they don’t differentiate between)

Plenty of these would agree with you that this execution was in fact a murder.

Except tumors don’t have the potential to grow into sentient animals, so those are pretty different things too. Also, where are you getting this definition from? I study biology for a living and I don’t know anyone who doesn’t consider the term “human being” to include the whole life cycle of the organism.

Frankly, I think a lot of the issue lies with where you decide the value of a life comes from.

Species? Speciesism is kinda fucking the world right now as we make tons of species go extinct to make room for humans above all things.

The sum of a being’s autonomy or it’s life experiences? Kinda ableist/ leads to saying children have less intrinsic value than the elderly (which is not exactly a common viewpoint)

It’s potential for life? That would mean we should value fetuses above all other life

Sky Daddy said so? …doesn’t really need any criticism as it’s so inherently problematic

My personal feelings are almost entirely mixed and agnostic on this subject, so I’m trying to keep them out of this discussion, but my point here is I don’t think you are seeing double enough to realize how easily a different perspective changes the whole argument into a “righteous” one.

The people you are arguing with ABSOLUTELY have hypocritical stances, but we should focus on attacking those, not straw man arguments that don’t take into account that they have ENTIRELY alternate world views, that are frankly, not simply as dismissable as saying “well, WE define it differently”

Disregarding my personal views on this subject, this is a straw man argument.

You have very noticably left out that pro-lifers view the fetus as one of these individuals you say the Pro-choice regard so highly. The Pro life argument is that it should be systemically illegal to end the life of what they view as innocent individuals.

Which… yes, is kind of similar to the general take on this article, regardless of your views on the individuality of fetuses

No, you are completely right, but it’s kind of the same with the “we are living in a simulation” thing (there isn’t really a functional difference between a God’s imagination and a simulation).

A more interesting question to me is not where we came from, but if there is an endgame. Created 5 seconds, 500 million years ago, ‘real’, or just avatars in a superconsciousness, the question remains- is there a “RIGHT” way to use our agency and experience?

It always annoys me how hard it is for me to make people understand this. I often debate the concept of spirituality and Gods in general, and people (in the US) always reply with some response like ‘but catholic church bad.’ Which, sure, I’m not disagreeing, but is such a narrow viewpoint and doesn’t exactly have anything to do with the possibility of a God or Gods existing.

I mean according to some religions he was the one who told people to put some clothes on in the first place

Nah it wouldn’t make him a liar- it isn’t necessarily an attempt to fool humans, in my opinion any God capable of doing something like that did it for their own reasons, not as some cosmic prank

I mean the “fool unbelievers” thing is stupid but also it’s not really unreasonable that if you could speak things into existence and did so for cosmic entertainment or whatever that you would make it at the point that it’s actually interesting. Like if I was going to make people I probably wouldn’t start with infants, I would start with actual independent ones. Likewise I wouldn’t start with an infant universe

An ex of mine would keep a tissue to spit it out in. I know it’s a personal thing but was always weirdly hard not to be a little offended. Like I doubt a girl would love it if I immediately grimaced and spit after going down on her. I don’t really expect bj’s, but to me, it’s all psychological, and apitters kinda ruin all the fun.