ITT: Craigslist, Nazis, Atomic Bombs, Paradise Rakes in the Dough

[Kolar]

Development and use of the atom bomb killed thousands but helped to stop a war thereby saving thousands.

Then we dropped 2 more.

[Epinephrine]

You are only focusing on the negatives (which by the way is my job) of the proposal. As a doctor you should also be aware of how much our health care system is struggling to provide the bare minimum of care. IF some of my proposals led to a system that improved life expectancy, ensured everyone had access to full medical with zero waiting time and saved tens of thousands of lives every year in Canada alone would you at least consider our government investigating them? You are treating this as a logistics/reality based debate when it is meant to be theoretical/philosophical in nature. Development and use of the atom bomb killed thousands but helped to stop a war thereby saving thousands. Again, in times of crisis a government often pushes or breaks the moral line. All I'm suggesting is that it might be beneficial for governments to be proactive and investigate morally questionable avenues that may avert possible global crises, some that will almost assuredly come in our lifetimes.

Well my philosophical part is that human nature always tends to take things to the extreme in the end unless a system is designed with heavy moderating influences. A system where the 'weak are killed before they are born' is the kind of system that tends to lead to extremes in the end.

[Eric is God]

Then we dropped 2 more.

Never claimed to be a history expert Am I correct in assuming that many historians believe the use of those bombs saved more lives than they took?

[Eric is God]

Well my philosophical part is that human nature always tends to take things to the extreme in the end unless a system is designed with heavy moderating influences. A system where the 'weak are killed before they are born' is the kind of system that tends to lead to extremes in the end.

Only if you assume that killing off the weak (your words not mine) would not have a moderating effect on society. It depends on what extremes you are referring to. Removing all rapists and mass murderers from a society would reduce the level of violent crimes (less extreme) while at the same time decreasing the rights of the individual (more extreme). Maybe that wasn't the best example, but you get the idea. It all depends where on the curve you want to be...

[paradise!]

the reason is because you would probably be mistaken as a retard and executed for the betterment of this nation. You know people with Down Syndrome don't think they have Down Syndrome? They just think they are acting normally. Maybe?

My grandmother works every day with people with learning disabilities, and some of the kids are mentally retarded. I see the love she has for those kids, and I see the joy she brings those kids, and it makes me CRAZY to hear things like this. Normal people (if you guys can even be considered that) saying things like this makes me more scared for humanity than Joe Schmo having a retarded baby.

You are an absolute moron, im pretty sure i said "severely mentally retarded", why would you have your child live in a wheelchair for his entire life? How would you know if he is suffering? It is amazing how many stupid Americans there are that can put their kids through this. I want to see my future children happy living healthy lives, i'm not Hitler, i'm not a oppurtunist, i am a humanist.

[Squeezer]

You are an absolute moron, im pretty sure i said "severely mentally retarded", why would you have your child live in a wheelchair for his entire life? How would you know if he is suffering? It is amazing how many stupid Americans there are that can put their kids through this. I want to see my future children happy living healthy lives, i'm not Hitler, i'm not a oppurtunist, i am a humanist.

your child's life is only important if he isn't "in a wheelchair for his entire life."

shut the fuck up like you know anything about humanism or the importance of life.

[DoTheFandango]

You are an absolute moron, im pretty sure i said "severely mentally retarded", why would you have your child live in a wheelchair for his entire life? How would you know if he is suffering? It is amazing how many stupid Americans there are that can put their kids through this. I want to see my future children happy living healthy lives, i'm not Hitler, i'm not a oppurtunist, i am a humanist.

You're a humanist? You? This is humanism? Vonnegut is ROLLING IN HIS GRAVE, SIR, and it is because of the bad name you just gave him.

I ask you, hypothetically, if it is impossibly for me to know if that child is not suffering, then how do you know he is suffering? How can you be so sure that if a child, God help me, was mentally retarded, how could you possibly tell me that he was suffering? I can understand if he was hospital-bound, needed assisted-living (meaning things to do bodily functions for him like breathe or eat food) where you could say that, but saying that about someone, a person that you have no contact with, is just downright silly.

I will debate any issue as logically as I can but calling me a Nazi is just plain wrong, beyond the obvious reasons.

I was kidding, hence the reference to Godwin's law. Please, keep up sir.

Individual rights and freedoms are not be followed in America and all over the world as we speak so it's fairly ignorant to take a moral high ground on this topic.

Just because they are not typically followed (and I am well aware of this, trust me) does not mean that new laws should trample on them. While the idea of a freedom-giving nation is of course idealist at best, it does not stop the individual from getting the rights set for them by the Constitution and the laws of the land.

Financially successful, highly educated individuals are having fewer children than people with low paying jobs and little education. I would not go as far as to suggest that children born from low income families deserve few rights or are less intelligent than children from wealthy families. My concern is that society is moving in a direction that will only accentuate the disparity between the have and the have nots. Does anyone out there truly feel that we will reach anything near a utopian society without drastic measures being taken? A world without crime, starvation. A world where every child has the same opportunities to succeed based on their individual abilities. It can't happen the way society is moving because too much money is being wasted on areas like the military and redistribution of wealth through various social programs is also highly inefficient.

Reaching a Utopian nation, as some of my favorite authors will tell you, is impossible. In doing so, you need to subdue the innate natures of human beings to want and to have what pleases them the most, and doing that can only be obtained through methods like those of Stalin and Hitler, sorry to bring him up again.

But the point that I struggle with is that you want every child to have every possibility to succeed, but you don't want to give every person a right to live a happy life? Mentally retarded people, and I'm talking severe cases here, are not detrimental to our society in anyway. They don't procreate. People that cannot care for their children that multiply in the dozens are. P.S. stop watching Idiocracy.

Now onto the issue of terminating fetuses. If the technology one day exists where we can determine that an unborn child is destined to spend their entire life costing a government millions of dollars in educational and medical support how does that help society as a whole? Call me immoral even call me evil, but if terminating just one fetus would save a government enough money to save 100 lives through better health care or homeless programs, which is the morally superior choice?

The problem is just that. How can you equate one life lesser to another? As far as costing the government millions of dollars, I don't know where you got that figure from, but I would fact-check it, sir. In any sense, I fully agree, that if this method was not automatic, but left up to the parents. I wouldn't agree with their decision, but I damned if I would take away their right to make it.

What I want to be clear about is that I am not against people aborting kids because they may be retarded, in the political sense. I am against it, personally, but one has to set that aside in order to convey an idea that is right for the people. I am, however, against automatically doing it in all cases, as you have stated.

It's not so clear to me because I value those 100 lives above the life of an unborn child. I look at the cold hard facts of economics and I've studied population demographics. Parents who would choose to raise an extremely mentally or physically handicapped child rather than abort a pregnancy are not making the decision for the child's well being, but for their own.

How can you be so sure? I don't see this assumption being true, because a.) they don't know it is going to be retarded when it is born, at least most of the time, and b.) just because they didn't abort it doesn't mean anything less of them if they did know. They wanted to let the kid live, how does that hurt you in any way? J.S. Mill's direct harm principal -- if they are doing no bodily or physical harm to you, then it is of no concern what they are doing.

I would never advocate killing mentally or physically handicapped people currently alive (my original post was more a statement of shock at just how messed up some individuals can be). There is no question such steps would take us down a slippery slope, but I still believe it's a road worth researching at the very least. Attacking my intelligence is probably not the best route as I qualify as gifted base on IQ. However, I have ADHD, multiple anxiety disorders and have suffered from depression.

Welcome to the club, asshole. You, me, and around 25% of my graduating class (not an inflation), have a "gifted" IQ on that greatly outdated system. Really, what point does this make? I am also riding on a half-payed tuition to the University of Connecticut, if we are bringing up accolades. Further, I have ADHD (I take Concerta, look it up), have acute anxiety disorder (I become immobilized and suffer from severe abdomen pain when I have a panic attack) and suffered from depression as well (I took Zoloft for 1.5 years). Your points, moot, good sir. The reason you brought this up... doesn't seem to fit. I can insult your "intelligence" all I want, so long as you show a lack of it.
Go ahead, make my day fuckface.

For many years I was not contributing to society so I will concede that if we lived in a society that decided to kill anyone who was unproductive (which again is not what I advocate) then I may have been executed and so be it. A better approach would be to invest large amounts of money to analyze a child's potential at an early age and if their potential is high but it is discovered they are more susceptible to certain disorders later in life, then steps should be taken to deal with those disorders before they manifest.

Whoa. Since when do we live in/will we live in such a land? Whatever, either way, of course I would agree to such a thing, as I too suffered from undiagnosed ADHD long into my academic career. That would be great, except why would we invest the money, that you didn't want to spend on teaching mentally retarded people, when in actuality, if the kids HAD the potential, they would make something of themselves anyway? I just see hypocritical notions here.

Again you are taking the moral high ground based on second hand feelings from a woman that works with these children, not a woman who has experienced what they have first hand. Your last argument is at least partly based on the fact that certain things I have proposed would rob your grandmother of something she enjoys which is such a selfish and depressing thought.

This comment is downright rude. I brought up my grandmother to show you that these people, the ones you want to automatically take their chance to live, are thinking, breathing, loving people. Sure they may not be able to show this, or be able to communicate well, but you can feel it. I have worked with them as well, and they yearn for any sort of affection. It's just wrong to say that people, like them, shouldn't be born just because of their disorder. Obviously, this is where my feelings come from for these people, but to say that I am arguing for them because I want to protect "something my grandmother enjoys" is fucking asinine and, honestly, fucked up.

You called me a Nazi (again a joke) and I have been called a humanitarian by others. I am neither. Just someone who has dealt with a lot of shit that no one should have to go through. I'm a realist and I see this world degenerating one day at a time. I may be wrong, but argue with my theories, leave the personal attacks for another topic.

The personal attacks, so long as you make them worth my time, will stay. While I would love to argue formally, I feel that calling you a smug bastard works just as well.

TL;DR? Fuck you, EiG.

[Zeebu]

you dont exactly have to destroy the kid right away eric. you could probably accomplish the same thing other ways

the parents should be allowed to have a mentally handicapped child if they want, but they may not ask for any special government help to pay for the kid


not my actual opinions, but i wanted to see if you could still argue for killing the kid right away

[Eric is God]

DoTheFandango,

All I would suggest is that you read my more recent posts on this thread and if you still feel the same about everything I've said, I'll just agree to disagree. I've made all the points I intended to make and don't believe there would be any value added by revisiting my original posts. I'm not trying to be smug at all, just very polite as I am in real life.

Cheers,
Eric

[Eric is God]

you dont exactly have to destroy the kid right away eric. you could probably accomplish the same thing other ways

the parents should be allowed to have a mentally handicapped child if they want, but they may not ask for any special government help to pay for the kid


not my actual opinions, but i wanted to see if you could still argue for killing the kid right away

I've often felt this would be a good way to deal with smokers. I'm not talking about people who got addicted to smoking 40-50 years ago because they didn't know what we now do about smoking. However, teenagers who start smoking now have less of a right to receive treatment later in life in my opinion. No clue on how you would enact such legislature, but it's a thought. Of course that opens up a whole can of worms regarding alcoholics, drug abuseres etc... which would require any solution to be much more complex.

[paradise!]

You're a humanist? You? This is humanism? Vonnegut is ROLLING IN HIS GRAVE, SIR, and it is because of the bad name you just gave him.

I ask you, hypothetically, if it is impossibly for me to know if that child is not suffering, then how do you know he is suffering? How can you be so sure that if a child, God help me, was mentally retarded, how could you possibly tell me that he was suffering? I can understand if he was hospital-bound, needed assisted-living (meaning things to do bodily functions for him like breathe or eat food) where you could say that, but saying that about someone, a person that you have no contact with, is just downright silly.


.

look, how can you ever know if this person is sad for being how they are? Why should anyone bring a severely mentally child into this world, if the child will be:

1) in a wheelchair for the rest of his life
2) can never, ever speak a coherent word
3) never have the oppurtunity to do what anyone else can

You being the special education guru right now, tell me can't a mentally retarded child grasp the idea of this "i am a person in a wheelchair, those are kids my age playing outside, why can't i join then"

I know you will argue the fact that he cannot have that much intuition in order to be truly mentally retarded. However, i'm willing to bet that a mentally retarded person can look at someone see what they are doing, they way they move, and he/she will eventually understand they, the person in the wheelchair, aren't doing that.
Period.

[phata$$]

I know you will argue the fact that he cannot have that much intuition in order to be truly mentally retarded. However, i'm willing to bet that a mentally retarded person can look at someone see what they are doing, they way they move, and he/she will eventually understand they, the person in the wheelchair, aren't doing that.
Period.

Have you ever known, let alone, been in contact with someone mentally retarded?

[Zeebu]

and for the record, there is a difference between mental and physical retardation... why does everyone assume if youre in a wheelchair youre mentally retarded (or the other way around).

hell, one of the most intelligent men alive is about as mobile as a tomato plant

[Kolar]

You can't speak for people who have no mobility, you can't speak for the parents of a child in that situation. Most of us can't speak to having a child period because we're all mostly in our early 20s. All of us have different standards of living and definitions of quality of life, I personally couldn't think of living and functioning if I were blind. But put in that situation I am sure my life with the proper support and technology would be well worth living. It's subjective because that's the human experience.

paradise!, one of the definitions of consciousness is self-actualization. Now unless you're dead or in a comma human beings will have on some level an identification with their body in relation to their environment. As for Humanism, please read more on the subject.

All I would suggest Eric is that for someone who has openly shared your problems on this forum maybe reflect on that fact that you may not be socially well adjusted enough to be making statements on the social order of this country.

[Squeezer]

look, how can you ever know if this person is sad for being how they are? Why should anyone bring a severely mentally child into this world, if the child will be:

1) in a wheelchair for the rest of his life
2) can never, ever speak a coherent word
3) never have the oppurtunity to do what anyone else can

You being the special education guru right now, tell me can't a mentally retarded child grasp the idea of this "i am a person in a wheelchair, those are kids my age playing outside, why can't i join then"

I know you will argue the fact that he cannot have that much intuition in order to be truly mentally retarded. However, i'm willing to bet that a mentally retarded person can look at someone see what they are doing, they way they move, and he/she will eventually understand they, the person in the wheelchair, aren't doing that.
Period.

Because everyone, once they've taken their first breath of fresh air, is entitled to a right to life in this world. It may not always work out that way, but justifying your personal ethics any other way is downright scary. Period.

Where do you draw the line after that? It's okay to kill some people if they aren't as smart as the rest of us?

Whatever, you're some dumb fuck farm kid from Ohio. You always spout your ignorant shit like it's a fact. It's none of your fucking business what people do with their retarded children anyway. Just be glad you were lucky enough to salvage enough brain cells to keep you barely out of a wheelchair, (because being in a wheelchair is an accurate appraisal of someone's competence) and prevent you from having your life completely disregarded by morons.

And to top all of this off, you have yet to draw from any experience. Just because YOU speculate something does not make it correct.

edit: And since when is executing innocents anywhere near a part of the Humanistic perspective? That flies in the face of every ideal they hold (especially the #1 mantra: All people are entitled to life)! Go at least wikipedia what you're saying before you waste our bandwidth.