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Conversation

I respect people who believe banning abortion is saving the lives of babies. You're not evil, you're doing the best you can by your own worldview. However I don't share this belief, and am thankful to any tech that gives me control over my body, even in violation of govmt law.

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So what part of “babies are humans that deserve constitutional rights” do you not believe in?

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"human" isn't a binary category, it's a fuzzy cluster of concepts, and fetuses are too far outside the edge of fuzzy cluster for it to trigger any sort of moral responsibility for me

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This really strikes me as a belief that is held merely as an excuse to justify abortion rather than one that is logical, much less scientific. It’s at the very least an extremely subjective belief.

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I hold the belief about a lot of things - this is at the core of how I engage with concepts. Concepts are not (rarely?) binary; they are clusters. It's a pretty common thing in ratspace with a lot of writing about it, and I've discussed it before in not-abortion contexts.

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@Gunnar_Zarncke

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Aella is probably referring to stuff like this; The Categories Were Made For Man, Not Man For The Categories lesswrong.com/posts/aMHq4mA2 and the Noncentral Fallacy lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8

The Categories Were Made For Man, Not Man For The Categories - LessWrong

I. • “Silliest internet atheist argument” is a hotly contested title, but I have a special place in my heart for the people who occasionally try to prove Biblical fallibility by pointing out whales a…

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Fish and humans are real categories though. There are important things that distinguish whales from fish. What distinguishes babies from humans? I think any argument used to justify abortion could also be used to justify other kinds of homicide, because babies are humans.

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@Gunnar_Zarncke

There's a lot of concepts that I perceive as mixed together in this your tweet. If you *assume* babies are humans in the way that we ascribe moral personhood to humans, then I agree that argument could be used to justify homicide. But the debate here *is the assumption itself*.

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@Gunnar_Zarncke

There is no debate about whether or not personhood should be ascribed to adults (thankfully). What makes babies any different?

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@Gunnar_Zarncke

We're using the word 'babies,' which evokes to mind something I'm not talking about, to be clear. In the interest of conceptual clarity I'd rather use words that evoke to mind exactly what it is I'm talking about. We can make up a fully neutral word for this if you like.

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@Gunnar_Zarncke

The lack of clairty comes from something like, if I go around saying 'I think we should kill babies,' people will grab their 3-month old in fear, even if I don't think we should kill their 3-month old. I'd like to use a word that is not incongruous with my intent.

10:46 PM · Jun 24, 2022

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@Gunnar_Zarncke

We can use "whatever is happening in the womb very early on in a pregnancy" and shorten it to WIHITWVEOIAP , or shorten that to WITOP, which will be my proposed neutral ground we both can meet

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@Gunnar_Zarncke

Okay, we can call them subjects of abortion. At first I wanted to say victims of abortion, but that’s not very neutral. Can you explain how to justify killing a subject of abortion in a way that wouldn’t justify any other kind of homicide that we agree is unjustifiable?

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@Gunnar_Zarncke

This is a big fractal rabbithole of stuff like morality and rights, which I'm saying to acknowledge that I'm doing some 'smoothing over the edges' of things that have a lot more depth nuance to them. That being said,

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