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Comment by toyg | Hacker News Reader

In Italy, in the '90s, we had a popular tv program with comedians doing sketches. One of those sketches was written and interpreted a guy who used to work in important advertising agencies. The sketch had a corporate manager who always started as a calm and devout supporter of buddhist-like tranquility in the workplace, all meditation and zen and care for personal wellbeing; by the end of the sketch his schizophrenic double (or rather true persona) would violently emerge, utterly angry and materialistic.

This sort of attitude, at the time, was lampooned because it was limited to the upper echelons of society (sure enough, the only buddhist in my extensive family was a corporate manager). I bet such a sketch would cause outrage these days.

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The TV show Silicon Valley also satirises the aggressive, egotistical CEO (a character called Gavin Belson).

Belson spends some time at a Buddhist retreat which seems to impart nothing from his experience. The attraction to Buddhist ideas are only at shallow, surface level.

He also employs a full-time spiritual adviser. Even the adviser looks out for opportunities advantageous to him and manipulate situations.

It's a cynical (but honest?) look at personality traits in tech.

It also shows an opportunistic, career-driven teacher. There's a whole bit about the teacher losing his parking pass and finessing his way back into the CEOs council.

And doesn't Gavin kill someone at his Buddhist retreat?

Oh well this reminds me of a certain prime minister of a certain two letter country starting with U and ending in, K having a full time ethics adviser, which he subsequently fired...

My favorite moment in perhaps the entire show is where Gavin Belson has a (mild) flash of self insight and asks:

> GB: Have I just surrounded myself with sycophants, who tell me whatever I want to hear, regardless of the truth?

> Spiritual advisor: <swallows awkwardly> ... no?

> GB: Thank you Denpok, I really needed to hear that.

> I bet such a sketch would cause outrage these days.

I remember the times when people whose pastime was to get offended at stuff were ridiculed by most of the society.

For all our social progress in this millennium, we regressed in many ways people don't readily notice. This was mostly an American thing in the past; but it spilled into Europe over time.

We have regressed by overturning abortion, enacting subversive election laws and in general destroying the fabric of democracy.

> overturning abortion

More accurately, the US Supreme Court returned the situation in the US to the status quo in most advanced countries: regulating abortion as a legislative matter, not a “right.” It did what the EU Court of Human Rights has repeatedly done in declining to recognize a “right” to elective abortions,[1] that can override legislation. A putative right that, 100 years from now, may well be seen alongside eugenics (alongside which it originated) as a mistaken wrong turn in the arc of progress.

[1] In a series of cases, most recently RR v. Poland, the EHCR has declined calls to overturn Poland’s near ban on abortions, deciding them on narrow grounds that the government had prevented abortions that were legal under exceptions to Polish law. It has gone only so far as to suggest there is a right in case of risk to maternal life.

Did you just liken abortion to eugenics?

I'm no expert on the topic but there are articles that contain both words...

https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/08/14/43208...

The history is that it did start that way and one of the current discussion points is whether or not to allow people to abort children that are found to have genetic abnormalities such as pre-natal screening for Down Syndrome.

Oxford Languages defines eugenics as "the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable."

Of course the unspoken corollary here is that to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics one must prevent the reproduction of undesirable heritable characteristics.

It's plainly obvious to many of us today that such a policy is dangerous if we decide to select on characteristics such as color of skin, but as the GP says, maybe in 50 years we will find that people with Down Syndrome will consider today's approved abortions for their condition to be just as barbaric.

Abortion has a millennium-long history that precedes eugenics.

"Recent history" if you would prefer.

They say Sparta practiced eugenics with late-term abortions according to legend though we don't have any physical evidence of this to my quick search. Wikipedia offers this quotation as a source[0]

Haeckel, Ernst (1876). "The History of Creation, vol. I". New York: D. Appleton. p. 170. "Among the Spartans all newly born children were subject to a careful examination or selection. All those that were weak, sickly, or affected with any bodily infirmity, were killed. Only the perfectly healthy and strong children were allowed to live, and they alone afterwards propagated the race."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics

Sparta was a small, barbaric slave city state that after a flash in the sun, quickly faded into obscurity due to its ossified economic and political structures.

There's six orders of magnitude more people who have lived in political, and ethical systems over those thousands of years that had nothing to do with Sparta. I'm not sure why you are cherrypicking needles out of haystacks, but it's as much a fallacy as pointing out that since Ghenghis Khan wore pants, ergo, pants are evil.

I'm not sure what you think my position is as you seem to be arguing past me about something else completely.

My position is that I agree with a specific claim of the GP whose exact words were "A putative right that, 100 years from now, may well be seen alongside eugenics (alongside which it originated) as a mistaken wrong turn in the arc of progress."

The specific parts that I agree with are that:

1) Abortion and Eugenics are related and originated somewhat together, and

2) 100 years from now Abortion as a Right instead of as Legislation may be seen as a wrong turn much like Eugenics is now

In your first response to me you only addressed point #1 by stating erroneously that "Abortion has a millennium-long history that precedes eugenics". I clarified in my response that I meant "recent history" in which Abortion and Eugenics were very intertwined; however, I also provided a link to a Wikipedia page that starts out telling us that Plato in Ancient Greece was a proponent of Eugenics which shows that concept also has a millenium long history. I didn't quote that section, but instead, I quoted a section referring to the legendary tales of Sparta engaging in eugenics and late term abortion.

In your second response you failed to read the source link I provided detailing the history of Eugenics and pick up on your mistake; instead, you have gone down some strange argument disparaging Sparta and claiming I am cherry picking needles out of haystacks.

It doesn't matter that you view Sparta as a "barbaric slave city state" which "faded into obscurity" -- that doesn't change the fact that they are a millenia old example of eugenics and potentially very late term abortions.

Even if it did, none of this works to refute my position that possibly 100 years from now Abortion as a Right instead of as Legislation may be seen as a wrong turn much like Eugenics is now. The specific example I gave of Down Syndrome stands as a current issue that may turn into a future view of our current peoples as barbaric for aborting babies with Down Syndrome.

Do you have any arguments against that, or do you think I'm just anti-abortion in general and you're having a general argument with me about abortion? Because I am neither anti-abortion nor am I arguing against abortion.

>Oxford Languages defines eugenics as "the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable."

So, for abortion to be a eugenics project, they should be arranged by some central governing body - a "board of eugenics" or "baby optimization committee" if you will - and not simply done by the choice of each pregnant person. Maybe you could argue that a high-level propaganda campaign could have the same effect, but that's beyond the realm of the legislative or judicial branches of government, and possibly beyond government entirely.

I think the biggest implication of any type of abortion being outlawed is that it subjects all pregnant people to the potential violence of the state on behalf of anyone close enough to know about their pregnancy. Add to this the massive grey areas introduced by the base rate of miscarriage, drugs that can be used for multiple things including abortion, what defines a threat to the life of the mother, and you've got a recipe for endless justifications for violations of privacy, bodily autonomy, and completely arbitrary prosecutions of uterus-havers.

There is no requirement for Government to be involved in eugenics given the definition I quoted -- you put that forward as assumed, but you recognize that it can happen beyond government entirely.

I would suggest that eugenics could also happen at a local level. Specifically for the only argument I am making here, a mother deciding not to have a child that is likely to have Down Syndrome.

This is an example of non-government enforced hyper local eugenics that is currently seen as okay but maybe in 50 to 100 years may be seen as barbaric the way that we currently see the idea of aborting babies based on the color of their skin.

As another commenter noted, the reasons that some people choose to abort their children would likely be cheered as a good example of eugenics in practice from the perspective of a historical eugenics loving evil caricature of your choice. If we're being charitable, we might term this "accidental eugenics".

Given what you have written, I believe I may presume that we are both on the same page that you would potentially be upset if the government forced people to get abortions for eugenics purposes as well, but perhaps I am wrong on that.

Regardless, I am not making any arguments for or against abortion here; rather, I am arguing first that there is some necessary overlap between abortion and eugenics and second that our current view of which kinds of eugenics are acceptable may be found to be distasteful to people in the future who are even more progressive than ourselves.

Abortion legalization is an offshoot of the same early 20th century progressive anti-natalism as eugenics. Planned Parenthood was, of course, founded by a eugenicist. In most of the developing world, like my home country of Bangladesh, abortion is still justified primarily to avoid poor women having too many children.

There’s other justifications for it now, of course, but I’m not drawing a novel comparison here. In those hypotheticals of “what do we do that future generations will view as evil” eating meat and elective abortions are probably near the top of the list. (In both cases, I suspect technological and economic change will make us forget why we did it in the first place.)

Nice "Genetic Fallacy".

Abortion gives women control of their body, no more reason or justification needed.

I whole-heartedly disagree with elective abortions being one of those “what do we do that future generations will view as evil” things. I think the opposite is true and that forced birth is what future generations will view as evil. Younger generations are trending pro-choice. [1]

1. https://news.gallup.com/poll/246206/abortion-trends-age.aspx

LOL abortion has been done since before homo sapiens branched off into their own species. Christians believe that their god performs millions of abortions every day (they call them miscarriages).

Abortions are in every culture on every continent.

Claiming it stems from the 20th century is insane.

You have it wrong, future humans will look back and wonder why we didn't abort more when we clearly couldn't even meet the needs of the babies we already had.

> Christians believe that their god performs millions of abortions every day (they call them miscarriages).

I’m pretty sure it’s not just Christians that distinguish between a child dying of natural causes and a deliberate killing.

> Abortions are in every culture on every continent.

Abortion restrictions also exist in a vast variety of cultures in every continent: https://vividmaps-com.cdn.ampproject.org/i/s/vividmaps.com/w.... It’s not something “Christians” came up with.

> distinguish between a child dying of natural causes and a deliberate killing.

You must have responded in the wrong thread, since this one isn't about children. Christianity is relevant where others aren't since they're the reason everyone is having this debate in the US.

And Christians don't consider "natural causes". A foetus is either delivered by the mother, aborted by the mother, or aborted by god.

There's certainly a certain relation between them. What's more, as genetic screening of early-term pregnancies becomes more common, the inevitable abortions that result due to real or perceived defects or other random personal reasons are things that many eugenicists of the past would have probably been keenly interested in, and even applauded in certain ways.

Are you implying they aren't related at all?

Well, what's the data on the types of pregnancies that get aborted? You could then use such data to make the argument that abortion achieves some of the same goals of eugenics, even if only loosely related in the currents that made these ideas mainstream. I predict this will become even more interesting when embryo modification becomes more popular and mainstream.

It's not not eugenic https://www.cbsnews.com/news/down-syndrome-iceland/

Should US also offer free healthcare like most advanced countries? Why compare where it's convenient? I'm talking about progress.

Yes we should. We already took major steps in that direction with Obamacare. I hear it’s popular.

I doubt that a century from now, eugenics and fundamental body autonomy will be spoken of in the same breath, despite the intervening efforts to conflate the two.

Abortion has existed since before recorded history. Eugenics is 150 years old at most. I certainly wouldn't advance such a dishonest and immoral argument and it certainly illustrates why people like you should have little input into the definition of civil rights or society in general.

Sparta is much more than 150 years old.

It looks like you need to edit the wikipedia page on the history of eugenics[0] because it is claiming that Plato was a proponent of eugenics and he was born over 2000 years ago which seems like a lot more than 150.

Similarly, you might want to contact Stanford so they can update the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy which is the source for the above statement.

The way you are gatekeeping people while subtly insulting them makes me thankful that you are defending everyone's rights because you are so clearly thoughtful of everyone and forgiving.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics#cite_note-...

[1] Eugenics". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI), Stanford University. Jul 2, 2014. Retrieved January 2, 2015.

What a twisted version of reality you just presented. The US has in no way, shape or form returned to the "status quo in most advanced countries". Perhaps with some convoluted rhetoric you can argue that, but in practice the difference is undeniable. Policies regarding abortion have one gone in one direction in recent decades (in both advanced and less advanced economies) and there is only a single massive outlier that has jerked aggressively back in the other direction.

You’re confusing the concept of “status quo” (the current state) with the direction of change. Roe took the US outside the mainstream among developed countries. Just a couple of years after Roe, the German constitutional court found that legalized abortion violated the Basic Law’s right to life. In the intervening decades, only a handful of other high courts recognized abortion as a right, rather than a legislative decision. The EHCR repeatedly rejected the idea, even though the EU Convention on Human Rights has an explicit right to privacy.

So yes, undoing Roe returned us to the mainstream.

abortion has been a natural right for thousands of years. women cerainly don’t need you nor the state to intercede in what is essentially a right to bodily autonomy.

It’s as “essentially” about human life as it is about “bodily autonomy.” As to “women”—they’re voting for these laws. The Mississippi electorate that voted in the 15-week ban at issue in Dobbs had 25% more women than men. And the large majority voted Republican.

ah, well if mississippi is doing it, that just settles it once and for all i guess. diehard partisanship gets us nowhere. women wanting to coerce other women is nothing new, but it’s still against our natural rights.

and yes, it’s essentially about the woman’s life too, i agree there.

No, it doesn't settle it once and for all. It settles it once for Mississippi. Other states are free to have different laws. That's the point of Dobbs.

ordinarily, i'd agree that by the constitution anything that's not a federal concern (principally international relations and interstate disputes) is a state concern, but the constitution also notes that neither the states nor the federal government can alienate residents from natural rights. bodily autonomy is a natural right, full stop, and it need not rest on a shaky privacy-based foundation, as roe had institutionalized it.

in time, this will be a case where the court will be found to be right in the small and wrong in the large.

"So yes, undoing Roe returned us to the mainstream."

Repeating that just makes you sound like a pedant more concerned with crafting an argument than grappling with the real world situation. In terms of abortion access, the thing actual humans care about, the US just joined the cultural hinterland in denying abortion access to a vast amount of its populace.

And prior to Dobbs the US was part of a small handful of countries that guaranteed the “right” to kill humans that had developed a face, feet, hands, and could suck their thumbs.

Abortion law requires balancing individual autonomy against a nascent human life. It’s not an issue where “progress” marches in a single direction. That’s why considering the actual legal effect of Dobbs is critical. We replaced a regime that imposes a nationwide viability standard that the majority of Americans oppose (see the second chart: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23167397/abortion-pu...) with the same regime that applies in Europe: voters decide.

Yes, the US has more parts that resemble Poland than the EU does. But, on the flip side, the Mississippi law upheld in Dobbs reflects the mainstream view in large European countries: elective abortion in the first trimester, with certain exceptions applying after that.

Many, many nations allow 2nd trimester and late term abortions, though those are always extremely rare and often have complicating circumstances. I don't tend to respect people who use the fringe case to argue the mainstream point as I find it disingenuous.

Only two EU countries allow elective abortions—what we’re talking about here—significantly into the second trimester. The Netherlands applies a viability standard similar to Roe, and Sweden draws the line at 18 weeks.

Every other EU country has found that a fetus is sufficiently developed at 12-14 weeks that its life can’t be extinguished absent extenuating circumstances. For that reason, you can’t sweep them under the rug because they’re rare compared to first trimester abortions. When society draws a moral line—and every EU country recognizes society’s right to draw a line here—we don’t just dismiss conduct in the wrong side of the line on account of it being relatively rare.

And drawing the line at 12 weeks versus viability makes a big difference. In Germany, which bans abortions after 12 weeks absent exceptions, 97% of abortions occur in the first trimester. In the Netherlands, which permits abortions to viability, only 82% of abortions occur in the first trimester. Given the 600,000 abortions annually in the US, there are likely tens of thousands of fetuses killed each year that would have been protected under German (or French or Italian or Spanish) law.

Your effort to dismiss that as a “fringe” issue underscores how far out of the mainstream Roe took us. It turned conduct that the vast majority of the EU deems illegal, which occurs likely tens of thousands of times annually, into a Constitutional “right.”

We are not talking here about "elective". We talk about all with little to no exceptions including for rape and being child.

Europe countries have exception and also easier access. Also, you don't need bodyguard to approach the clinic and you don't get yelled going in.

Terrorists attacks against clinics were also comparatively nonexistent.

MS has a trigger ban, talking about what Dobbs upheld is moot

This might be something Americans think about legslislation, but in a European context legislation in practice is not something you just rip off, either you increment it or subtract it.

Essentially you will notice a lot of European Supreme courts and constitution is very different than usa.

But besides that, there are now calls in multiple European countries to make abortion a right.

Wow this guy really wants to divert the online conversations attention away from 90s Italian TV comics... I wonder what they're hiding..

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Political_correctness

> I remember the times when people whose pastime was to get offended at stuff were ridiculed by most of the society.

Which specific time period are you speaking about? The time period when the existence of gay people (not even speaking about married gay people) was offensive to the point of intolerance? Or perhaps the time period when interracial marriages offended the majority of the United States? Or maybe the time period when half the country was offended by a black person sitting in the front of a bus? Or by a flag hanging upside down?

People taking offense at stuff that does/doesn't affect them isn't some woke 21st century invention.

> Which specific time period are you speaking about? The time period when the existence of gay people (not even speaking about married gay people) was offensive to the point of intolerance? Or perhaps the time period when interracial marriages offended the majority of the United States? Or maybe the time period when half the country was offended by a black person sitting in the front of a bus? Or by a flag hanging upside down?

I came of age in the late '90s. I don't think most people were offended by any of your list. A few churches would complain about gay people, but they were ridiculed for it.

> People taking offense at stuff that does/doesn't affect them isn't some woke 21st century invention.

It isn't, but it's something that we had seemed to be finally moving past. It's frustrating that only a few years after casting off the oppression of religious attitudes we now seem to be diving back into much the same thing.

Yeah, maybe it fills a need we don't like to think we have...

I don't think it's worth to be outraged, logically. After all, if the manager can stay calm and all, that means he's close to attain (or one step closer to attain) buddhahood, which is a very difficult thing to attain.

I'd love to watch it. Do you mind sharing a link?

Sadly it doesn't seem to have made it to YouTube. The character was called Dottor Frattale, by comedian Walter Fontana https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Fontana

If you read Italian, I'd recommend tracking down his short comedy novel L'Uomo di Marketing e la Variante al Limone, which satirizes the milanese advertising industry of the '90s (but I bet it's still mostly like that, lol).

Found one on FaceBook, I think: https://www.facebook.com/Mai-Dire-GialappaS-109451077867913/...

There's a couple facebook videos:

https://www.facebook.com/MaiDireGol/videos/tutti-vorremmo-pe...

https://it-it.facebook.com/MaiDireGol/videos/la-filosofia-de...

It was one of my favorite as well!

That reminds me of Monty Python's cheese shop sketch. [1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz1JWzyvv8A

Is Steve Jobs a great example of this?

Jobs wasn't really like that as in "zen and care for personal wellbeing" at the start and then switching to "angry and materialistic". He seemed to combine a fairly consistent zen like focus, more on great objects like the iPhone rather than care for people, and a fairly consistent edge of angry materialism. It didn't really flip from one thing to the other.

A well known video of him for example on changing the world https://youtu.be/kYfNvmF0Bqw?t=7 He was a complex character

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