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Comment by thecupisblue | Hacker News Reader

First off, this thread seems to bring out the most "reddit-like" posts on HN. If you've come here to shoot a funny one-liner comment, please reconsider - the point is discussion, not karma farming.

Now, on the topic itself - I really wonder about the safety profile of these. While this selectively inhibits only RARα and is thus "biased" towards mostly acting on testes, it could also have side-effects - and while the effect might not be pronounced yet, with long term use it definitely could be, especially if all the RARα receptors get inhibited (will beta and gamma pick up the slack? what is it going to cause?).

Considering the 99% effectiveness claim and the method of action, I wonder if the embryos in that 1% case can even survive.

View on HN

1) Long-term effects are surely a topic but as with female birth control and the risks connected to it, as well as female-male couples where the female has an incompatibility with birth control, the male partners might take the risk of using it

2) Does it matter if the embryo will survive even in the 1% case? Somebody who uses birth control would not want a child anyway, right?

2) but it can still be very traumatic. Miscarriages are traumatic. Getting abortions is traumatic.

And many people are opposed to abortion for moral reasons.

As they have the right to…for themselves.

This is absolutely the most critical point.

Contraception should be readily available for those that want it. Abortion should absolutely and definitevely be available for those that want and need it. There are far too many opinions connected to religious dogma, both consciously and unconsciously, that seek to deny women and couples access to abortion. Even the damned bible offers up instructions on abortives and how to use them, but this seems to be glossed over by hand wringing people who want to insert their rosaries into women's ovaries.

That quickly breaks down when you apply it to some of the recent culture war topics. For instance:

* as it relates to vaccine mandates: "As they have the right to…for themselves.

* as it relates to calling people by their preferred pronouns: "As they have the right to…for themselves."

Of course, both issues are far more nuanced than a simple "As they have the right to…for themselves" can refute, but so is abortion. You can't take complex issues and take potshots at them with one sentence comments.

It's all so much more simple than that. It boils down to a social contract.

The contract being common decency. Vaccinations are part of that contract (it affects others), pronouns are part of that contract (they affect others), abortions _are not_ (the only affect those having them, and potentially the medical professionals).

There is no nuance at all. You are free, of course, to not "sign" that contract - but that means that those who have are not obligated to apply it to you.

The anti-abortion "argument" (everyone on all sides are really just asserting things because there doesn't appear to be anything to argue about) is that abortion is murdering a child.

If someone accepts that frame, would you attempt to argue that there is no social contract to protect the lives of children? That seems like a tough argument to carry.

Unfortunately, that argument tends to break down almost immediately after birth, so “protecting the children” becomes a cheap catch-all excuse for selective engagement. Defunding education, defunding school food, defunding numerous programs that actually protect children in favor of cash in their pocket. Morality sold cheaply or abandoned for convenience, except when forcing their will on others, especially if it only affects someone else.

Did you narrow down that topic to American conservatives? I'm not familiar with your politics but that doesn't sound familiar in context of my country.

Also, this is whataboutism. If someone cares about A but not enough about B, it doesn't mean that A is not a good thing.

Of course this predicates that there are differences between A and B. The GP is, I believe, making the point that claiming to protect unwanted unborn children (A) when campaigning for anti-abortion regulation is just a power-play to dictate a lifestyle choice, if it does not follow up with protecting the unwanted born children (B). I think, there is merit to this.

Observations shows that most societies forbid woman to throw their unwanted born child into a garbage bin, so if you claim that women are or should be as free as men in their lifestyle choices, where does that leave the woman? Either you need birth control to prevent that situation, or a social security network that takes care of the unwanted child after the fact. In my simple, male mind this should be a given. Otherwise, if I were a woman, I would refuse sex. The ancient Greeks have a funny story about that [0].

Of course, you can also say that women aren't allowed to be as free as men in their lifestyle choices. And I think, I'm not going too far out on a limb when I say that's actually at the bottom of this issue. Some people think it is OK to make women less free than men in the service of their ideals, while others think it is not. Resolve this tension and you will make progress.

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

Can you help me understand how criminalizing abortion makes women less free than men?

It sounds like your premise is that women have less freedom in personal choice than men when abortion is not available. Presumably this is because men can walk away from a child while women are physically bound to them. Do I have that correct?

If so, women are really only physically bound to the child through the pregnancy. Once the child is born, the woman can give it up for adoption and be done with it forever.

I would also contest that men aren't totally free of sexual consequence. If they do happen to impregnate a woman, they can be forced to pay child support while the child is a minor.

The "abortion is murder" argument also doesn't totally meet the GGP's premise necessitating A and B. That is, if society is unwilling to provide a safety net for born, unwanted children, no contradiction exists if society also refuses to allow abortion. This just means society does not allow murder. After all, a society that does not provide a safety net does not explicity allow the murder of poor people. Just as a society that disallows murder does not necessarily have to provide nourishment via the government.

> If so, women are really only physically bound to the child through the pregnancy.

Financially also. In America, child birth will set you back 10-15k insured or 30-50k uninsured. Who pays for that? The woman who has been unable to work due to the debilitating condition that late stages of pregnancy is for most woman?

> Once the child is born, the woman can give it up for adoption and be done with it forever.

That doesn't deal with what happens to the child. I assume the GP comment is concerned with "pro-life" vs "pro-birth." Many self-proclaimed pro-lifers actually advocate for birth, not life.

> Financially also. In America, child birth will set you back 10-15k insured or 30-50k uninsured.

Source? This Forbes article shows <$3k mean out of pocket costs. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/health-insurance/how-much-doe...

I had a baby 3 months ago. It was nowhere near $10-15k, and for some completely unknown reason to me and my spouse the hospital applied a 75% needs-based discount. I'm not even sure if we hit the total out of pocket max for the year, but even if we did the cap is only roughly $6k.

> That doesn't deal with what happens to the child. I assume the GP comment is concerned with "pro-life" vs "pro-birth." Many self-proclaimed pro-lifers actually advocate for birth, not life.

Birth is life.

True, babies will die if not cared for, and that would be seen as a child abuse murder. But there are plenty of adoption agencies, etc. that exist. Plenty of non government orgs that exist. It is unlikely a child will die of hunger, especially in a developed country.

And if there are no people willing to adopt the child with which the new mother is burdned? Tough. Maybe consider that when one engages in sex. But in a society that views abortion as murder: murder is murder. Having flippant sex and then murdering a child to prevent raising it should probably be at least equated to voluntary manslaughter. Sure, you didn't mean for the situation to arise, but your previous decisions resulted in the outcome nonetheless.

It seems the push for treating abortion as non-murder is really a push for a world in which sex and babies are decoupled. But just as sex and disease cannot be decoupled except through careful planning and purposeful engagement, neither can sex and babies.

A woman who is pregnant is tagged by society with "mother". The man who leaves is not. Legally yes, but socially not.

The mixer who abandoned her child is "a mother who abandoned her child". The father is not even in the picture.

I would live to live in a world where the rational words cubby, but culture, history, religion is still very strong.

And I live in France, love of the most free countries in the world in this regard.

> Can you help me understand how criminalizing abortion makes women less free than men?

Imagine there would be a law that disallows men to cut their hair, but allows it for women. Who would be less free here?

> It sounds like your premise is that women have less freedom in personal choice than men when abortion is not available. Presumably this is because men can walk away from a child while women are physically bound to them. Do I have that correct?

Your presumption is partially correct.

> If so, women are really only physically bound to the child through the pregnancy. Once the child is born, the woman can give it up for adoption and be done with it forever.

They are also less free because such a law -- even if only for the time of pregnancy -- prescribes a lifestyle with very limited choices. Ignoring that the physique of a pregnant woman makes some things mostly impossible, thus making the woman less free, I also guess anti-abortionists are not in the habit of applauding pregnant women who drink and smoke while stage-diving on a heavy metal concert. And while this is hyperbole I assume you get my drift.

> I would also contest that men aren't totally free of sexual consequence. If they do happen to impregnate a woman, they can be forced to pay child support while the child is a minor.

But would you accept that men are mostly free? For example, where's the woman in child support? Do the men have to pay the woman 9 month+ for pain, puking, limited lifestyle choices, and possible health consequences, too? Or how about strapping an additional 100g of weight to the man's belly for each week of the 40+ weeks of pregnancy? While we are at it, let's give him a good kick in the stomach once or twice a day for that time. What about the misery you feel when you are forced to do something you don't want to every waking and sleeping minute? You know, its not like a job where you are done and go home at 5 p.m. These arguments about money treat women as unfeeling delivery machines, nothing but cattle really, which in itself not only makes them less free, it makes them less than men.

> The "abortion is murder" argument also doesn't totally meet the GGP's premise necessitating A and B. That is, if society is unwilling to provide a safety net for born, unwanted children, no contradiction exists if society also refuses to allow abortion. This just means society does not allow murder. After all, a society that does not provide a safety net does not explicity allow the murder of poor people. Just as a society that disallows murder does not necessarily have to provide nourishment via the government.

Leaving aside the question if the removal of a lump of cells that can not be sustained outside of a woman's womb is homicide, let alone murder, in any meaningful sense, I am happy to engage with your premises.

So, the society you paint does not care about the child or the woman, it cares about murder. That's technically fine (the best kind of fine) if you are honest about it. Opponents to abortion in that society do not claim they care for children or women. Because, again according to your premises they don't, they just want that no murders happen. So nobody cares about the children, thus there is no inconsistency, which is great. It follows that this society should be fine with the woman, or anybody really, leaving the unwanted newborn on a park bench where is dies from starvation or weather, because that's not murder.

Frankly, I would be shocked if anybody would think that would be fine, but the premises and line of argument you offer would allow just that.

> It follows that this society should be fine with the woman, or anybody really, leaving the unwanted newborn on a park bench where is dies from starvation or weather, because that's not murder.

I addressed this in the child of a sibling to your comment, "True, babies will die if not cared for, and that would be seen as a child abuse murder."

If society wanted to define exposure to be non-murder, then there are no inconsistencies, as I think we both agree, just a strange society.

That said, I do not think a contradiction is introduced if the same society treated exposure as murder. In fact, it is similar to removing a clump of cells that cannot live outside the womb: purposeful death through exposure. It seems similar to murder if person A locks person B in a room and provides no food or water. Eventually person B starves, which would likely be seen as murder.

> Imagine there would be a law that disallows men to cut their hair, but allows it for women. Who would be less free here?

I think our main clash is in how we treat fairness. Of course your proposed hair-cutting law would be unfair. Both men and women exist such that it can be applied. Abortion is inherently asymmetric: men cannot get pregnant. [1]

As such, the law has two options: write it in such a way that 1. outcomes can be completely fair (or as close as possible given the biological differences) or 2. write laws that are tailored to the asymmetry of sexes.

(1) Provides a solution where abortion is allowed. The outcome must satisify the condition that both men and women can walk away from a pregnancy without burden.

(2) Recognizes that men, being incapable of bearing children, must be held accountable for their actions somehow, and monetary damages are probably the most fair way to provide compensation. Maybe the damages need to be increased when compared to current US society, but alternative solutions like forced marriage or forcing the man to be in proximity to help a women through pregnancy probably lead to less free outcomes.

Given the two choices, constrained by a society that equates abortion to murder, (2) is the only valid choice. Yes, there is an enormous burden physically, mentally, financially for the women. Given a deadbeat father, the only way to help the woman is by penalizing him enough financially to try and relieve these burdens as much as possible.

This is why I would suggest that, in such a society, both men and women make sexual decisions with careful forethought and premeditation. One should ask themself if they are prepared to birth or financially compensate their tango partner before getting on the dance floor.

[1] The asymmetry cuts both ways. Under prochoice laws, men cannot choose to have a child; all a man can do is impregnate a woman. Women get the only say in whether a child will be born, fairness be damned.

> I addressed this in the child of a sibling to your comment, "True, babies will die if not cared for, and that would be seen as a child abuse murder."

> If society wanted to define exposure to be non-murder, then there are no inconsistencies, as I think we both agree, just a strange society.

I think, the concept you are looking for is "negligent homicide", which is not murder. You can look it up. But this is just the same territory of discussion where we argue how many cells in a womb make a human being. It is pointless. You apparently have a loser understanding of murder and what makes a human being than I do and just as you will not convince me that a blastocyste is in any shape or form something that can be murdered, I will not be able to convince you that I'm right. So let's agree to disagree on this topic.

But since we have to live together in this society and being civilized and educated people, we can have a fruitful discussion on the topic of justice and fairness anyway. I happen to think your options do not exhaust the solution space, for example we could also reverse the responsibilities. We could make the "enormous burden" you mentioned the man's burden by law, while the woman after birht washes her hands of the issue and lives a life of her choice. You want to hold your wiener into a woman and you accidentally make a baby, someone said you you have brought it upon yourself and you just have to deal with. So it's "tough beat hombre", look forward to be a single dad the next 20 years. This would not be more suppressive than making abortion illegal, or what do you think?

Maybe this would even soften the bondage and misery women suffer with being forced to birth a child in a sense of cosmic justice or whatever. I'm not a big believer in cosmic justice so let's ask, how do we deal with 9 month of involuntary bondage and misery? How do we create a society where we do respect the women's liberty and rights and not force them to birth children through suppression by law, but make it the sensible and voluntary choice?

> We could make the "enormous burden" you mentioned the man's burden by law, while the woman after birht washes her hands of the issue and lives a life of her choice.

I think this would be a completely satisfactory outcome in a world where abortion is considered murder. And regardless of cosmic justice, it would be a more fair outcome in some sense as the burden of child rearing is at least nonzero for both parties.

> How do we create a society where we do respect the women's liberty and rights and not force them to birth children through suppression by law, but make it the sensible and voluntary choice?

This is the tough question. Your proposed solution of legally burdening the man with the child post birth seems fine. Or any other division along the line between man and women.

I think the major issue I am internally trying to resolve is where does humanity start? I'm not much a fan of laws that are time or tech variant, meaning that laws enacted today that say a fetus is human when it can survive outside the womb have the potential to be walked back to the moment the egg accepts the sperm, as at some point in the future it's probable we'll have tech to non-invasively extract the fertilized egg and grow it to maturity artifically.

But if the law makes a hard cutoff, what is it? Is there a difference between a 1 day fetus and a 10 day or 100 day or 270 day? If so, what is it materially?

I think the US has some places where heartbeats are the defining factor, which is something like 6 weeks. Seems kind of sensible from the outside, but considering the week counting is based on the last missed period, that basically gives only about two weeks to get an abortion done after being able to confirm one is pregnant if one is being vigilant. That's a tough timeline. This also excludes the complicatiom of how such laws would be applied to IVF or other involuntarily fertilizations.

Personally, I think I fall along the lines of "I probably would not personally get an abortion but also don't quite think the government should be able to step in and disallow others from doing so." I'm a big fan of negative rights, so that seems pretty aligned to me. It also seems to satisify your goal of allowing us to meet in the middle in what I would hope is both a respectible and satisfactory way for an educated society that tries to maximize individual liberty.

My solution violates the "treat abortionists as murderers" ideal for which I was arguing, but I was arguing from the viewpoint of a society in which that is the concensus. I fully recognize that such a society is not necessarily one in which I would prefer to dwell.

Edit: I did kind of veer away from my congruence of abortion and murder. To specifically answer your question under such a pretense:

> How do we create a society where we do respect the women's liberty and rights and not force them to birth children through suppression by law, but make it the sensible and voluntary choice?"

The answer here is likely abstinence. No woman is forced to bring a child to term in the absence of a child. Therefore the only fair solution would be for people to abstain from sex unless the outcome of a child was acceptable. This applies fairly to both men and women regardless of whom must raise a child that is conceived.

It does if A always comes at the expense of another person C. Morality only via the sacrifice of others isn’t belief, it is control and punishment.

> It does if A always comes at the expense of another person C. Morality only via the sacrifice of others isn’t belief, it is control and punishment.

Hypothetically [0], if someone saved another person from being murdered by a close relative would that count as proving to you their morality system is based on freedom and forgiveness?

[0] Imagine my poker face.

And if they are “saving” a terminally ill patient who wanted to go peacefully rather than continuing to endure pain and suffering? So if you are suggesting that walking in, saving someone, then walking away feeling good about yourself while not caring about the pain and suffering you may have inflicted on that person by your actions is justification of morality, I’d say that is just as equally a disgusting of a display of selfishness at the expense of others. Since we are making up hypotheticals, we might as well use this one that is more similar to what happens in reality.

I think that framing makes the argument vacuous. If an action is framed as murder, how would OP defend in the first place? Any argument would be tough to carry. It would be arguing against a tautology. You are right to mention how the "debate" here is people asserting their arguments.

What I find most tough to carry is the consequent: there are ~600,000 (rough number of abortions per year in USA) people "murdering" their own "children" every single year. I suppose in the process of putting their faith in god these people have removed all their faith in humanity...

Again, vaccinations and pronouns directly affect more than a handful of people. Each abortion affects only the individuals involved.

Furthermore, hypotheticals are all fine and good, but society exists the way it does right now. The argument is only difficult to carry in a society where unwanted children have a reasonable chance at basic outcomes. That is not the world that we live in: what you are actually arguing is against a mercy killing, or expecting the baby to pull themselves up by their nappy-straps (they almost universally can't/won't). "Mercy killing" is brutal, I know, but it's not my beliefs that have established a world (and continue to push the world further towards) such a place where dying in the womb is a more merciful outcome.

Make hope more universally accessible and I'll have a much more difficult time with my argument. I am not carrying my argument, it is the broken state of society that is.

It's not a child at the 3th month mark.

I'm pro choice, but let me play devil's advocate.

If you view the fetus? embryo? as a human life, then abortion doesn't just affect the person having it, but also the life being aborted. Not only that, but what are the moral implications to the rest of society if "murder" is allowed?

So for some people it's not that simple.

Yet they often have no problem with destroying life that doesn’t share a common DNA sequence? An interesting morality basis.

I must be misunderstanding because that seems like the most common morality basis in the world. People who equate running over a squirrel in the road to vehicular manslaughter (as if you had hit a human child) are seen as extremists, and someone who was OK with hunting deer as well as humans would be seen as having some sort of mental condition. The majority view is that species matters

I’m all aboard for that when it is something that exists in our world as the same species rather than a collection of DNA. It’s a miracle that must be protected for about 9 months until it’s then fine to die in a gutter as long as we punish the parent after, all because we need to respect that one collection of DNA happened to hit and another collection of DNA and therefore multiplied. Further, the claimed examples of “protection” were only examples of things resolved by punishment, not protection, which is telling about what goal is truly fundamental.

> It’s a miracle that must be protected for about 9 months until it’s then fine to die in a gutter as long as we punish the parent after

I think the entire reason the parent is punished is because it is not okay for a child to die in a gutter...

> all because we need to respect that one collection of DNA happened to hit and another collection of DNA and therefore multiplied

People don't experience spontaneous conception. The one collection of dna hitting the other is the result of a deliberate act of both dnas' owners [1].

In the scenario in which a fetus is regarded as a child, abortion is obviously equivalent to murder. It is death of a human against their volition by another.

The interesting future to me, policy-wise, is what happens when we have the ability to extract fetuses from mothers and grow them to maturity artifically? Will society determine that abortions are a no-go at that time since literally all fetuses can be saved without impact to the mother in excess of an abortion operation, or will society state that mothers must be allowed to murder [2] their children?

[1] Ignore rape, incest, etc. for argument's sake because we're discussing the freedom between men and women.

[2] Remember this scenario equates abortion to murder. I am not espousing personal beliefs. My username was chosen when I was contemplating suicide, not due to religious leanings.

I'm pro commenting, but let me play devil's advocate.

If you view leaving a comment as murder, then commenting doesn't just affect the person partaking in it, but also the life of everyone reading the comments. Not only that, but what are the moral implications to the rest of society if "murder" is allowed?

Here's is my point though: if you assume something is murder, of course you will conclude that it is bad. There's no "Devil's advocate"—or for that matter—any argument at all to be had. The entire debate revolves around the assumption you simply asserted for "Devil's advocate".

Well if we go to an even more extreme degree with the devil’s advocate thing: what is the difference between an ~4 month embryo (or any cutoff after which miscarriage becomes very unlikely) and a newborn?

Either of them isn’t a real person, neither is fully conscious. Sure a newborn can feel pain but infanticide can be done in a humane way. What we are depriving from the newborn is the opportunity to live and experience the rest of its life but the same applies in both cases.

And in a quite a few ancient societies infanticide was fully acceptable (killing slightly older children was generally not) and used as a somewhat safer alternative to abortion.

> Well if we go to an even more extreme degree with the devil’s advocate thing: what is the difference between an ~4 month embryo (or any cutoff after which miscarriage becomes very unlikely) and a newborn?

From a practical perspective, giving up the newborn for adoption is significantly easier than the 4 month embryo - it's already been carried to term and birthed. And quite a few humans, correctly or otherwise, feel a lot more 'ick' around the idea of infanticide vs. abortion. But they also feel a lot more 'ick' around late gestation abortion too - most states have had gestational limits around abortion. Very few have had none. (Many of those with gestational limits do have exceptions around health/safety issues for the mother, or significant medical issues with the fetus, etc.)

It's kind of a strange argument because most of the US did accept the premise that at a certain point in the embryo's development abortion becomes less acceptable. I can't speak as definitively for the rest of the world, but a cursory google shows that the situation is quite similar - most countries that allow for abortion have gestational restrictions.

> world, but a cursory google shows that the situation is quite simila

IIRC US is quite permissive in that regard? 12-14 is generally standard across much of Europe while in US that’s generally viewed as quite restrictive?

Why so snarky? It's pretty clear cko understands that and is trying to convey your exact point to the person they responded to (who made the opposite assumption)

>abortions _are not_ (the only affect those having them, and potentially the medical professionals).

Strong disagree. They affect at minimum 2 (potentially 3 depending how you define life/person) by default. Both the parents are impacted by the choice either physically, emotionally, financially, and responsibility.

Situations where the two parents conflict on this choice are common and the power is incredibly asymmetrical and can/does lead to abuse.

> Strong disagree. They affect at minimum 2 (potentially 3 depending how you define life/person) by default.

That's exactly what I said?

no - what you said is:

>The contract being common decency. Vaccinations are part of that contract (it affects others), pronouns are part of that contract (they affect others), abortions _are not_ (the only affect those having them, and potentially the medical professionals).

You say it only affects those having the abortion (ie, female), I was pointing out that there is AT MINIMUM the other parent involved, and there are tons of arguments a person could make about it impacting a much larger portion of people due to the societal/social impact this option brings out.

So I would go as far as to include medical professionals, but not the other parent? For lack of any actual argument, you've turned to such a degree of pedantry that it changes the spirit of what I said. Not that your pedantry adds anything to the discussion one way or another.

The problem is that the "spirit" of what you said was pretty confusing.

You seemed to imply that a social contract requires people to take actions they may not want to do because by not taking those actions, they impact "others" and then said abortion doesn't fall into that because apparently that "others" group is so small it doesn't count as "others"?? Yet you included people using incorrect pronouns to an INDIVIDUAL... so your entire argument feels pretty arbitrary.

The pedantry response was to hopefully make you realize that your argument was arbitrary, I had hoped you'd come to that on your own - but here we are.

People who oppose abortion usually consider abortion to affect 3 people, which probably influences their opinion on that topic.

Can you describe which asymmetry you mean?

The female has asymmetrical power in this situation regarding the two parents.

Example:

- Most pro-choice supporters would support the female deciding that she was too young to become a mother and terminating a pregnancy not because of any medical reason, but because of the changes to her life it would cause (ie, "I'm not ready to be a mother yet"). This same option is not available to males. If the female has decided to keep the child, the male in most countries is now automatically bound to this decision and generally, at least financially, will have their life impacted even if they have the same reasoning (ie, "I'm not ready to be a father yet"). Alternatively, if the female has decided to terminate and the male desperately wants the child, there is no recourse.

I say asymmetrical because the results/responsibility of the decision are forced to be shared, however, the power to make said decision lies only with a single party.

I do not propose a solution here or make a judgement I'm simply pointing it out because the person I replied to made it sound like this decision is a simple and doesn't impact others.

The social contract is "hack all the social contracts" and take decency hostage to trojan horse all the things

I for one reject your social contract and despise the self-righteousness of people who think a social contract overrides personal liberty.

You want others to partake in your social contract, but you would probably be appalled if that contract demanded people not be overweight (affects others wherever healthcare is in limited supply), or maybe the contract demands people not be gay (lowers birth rates and therefore societies GDP… also increases disease transmission). Social contracts come and go with time and yours is as wrong tomorrow as my proposed one is today

I have made a lengthy comment on the burden of obesity on our healthcare and people in general.

I have a radial nerve injury (and no text-to-speech) so I cannot find it right now nor re-write it.

I absolutely agree with you and your conclusions.

I made my reply here, from a slightly different perspective: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43749123

> social contract overrides personal liberty

Not signing the contract simply means having no right to the protections that it affords. I have no responsibility to treat you with respect if you don't go out and vaccinate yourself. I have no responsibility to entertain traditions that you value, if you don't value the traditions of others.

You have attributed a loss of liberty to it, from the comment that you are replying to:

> You are free, of course, to not "sign" that contract - but that means that those who have are not obligated to apply it to you.

Participate in the social contract, or don't, your choice.

Traditions have nothing to do with it. In America we have liberty and your worldview is not compatible with our constitution. Wars have and will continue to be faught to preserve my version

So I am not free to engage in a contract with like-minded people? The constitution demands that I don't use pronouns?

That sounds like limiting speech.

Personal liberty is fine, until it starts infringing on my own, which these include. You don't want to vaccinate? You being infringing on my ability to stay healthy while participating in society. Vaccines aren't fully effective, not everyone can be vaccinated, etc., so to eradicate disease we rely on the majority of people getting vaccinated.

You not using my preferred pronouns or name is simply a rude thing to do. If we remove the bizarre political fixation on it, if I tell you my name is John and you call me Joanna just because you think I look more like a Joanna, you're an asshole. I'm not in favor of making being an asshole illegal, but I will call you one.

I'm actually fully OK with there being consequences to being overweight! It does put a large burden on the healthcare system. Right now the healthcare system is largely privatized so, well, it's not like public health is the primary concern for it anyway, but if it were, sure I believe that there should be actions taken to reduce obesity. We have a lot of promising anorectic medications right now, primarily in the form of the GLP-1 and related medications, and I'd be in favor of overweight and obese people needing to also go on these if they want access to public healthcare for issues that are related to metabolic disorder, etc. But we're in a privatized system, so...

You're starting to really stretch the argument thin with the gay bit, though. Disease transmissions here still requires the informed consent of both parties - I'm not going to get HIV from a gay person without having some form of consensual sex with them, outside of behaviors that are already criminal - rape, contaminating something I'm eating with their semen, etc. This isn't the same as refusing vaccination and then participating in society for diseases that are transmissible like covid or ebola or similar. For birth rate/GDP, we do not enforce actions on straight couples when it comes to childbirth (or STDs, which while transmission rate is generally lower for some STDs for heterosexual intercourse it's obviously not exclusively limited to homosexual intercourse) so these suppositions seem to be targeted based not on the general outcome but simply on the fact the person is gay. If we started mandating child birth for straight people for whatever reason, then we can start having this conversation - but even in a fairly dystopic world where we are requiring married couples have kids, we can still provide options for gay people. Require them 'sponsor' an additional child for a straight couple, require them adopt, require surrogacy and them raising a child, etc. But targeting them just because of their sexual orientation would be quite obviously bigoted.

"Social contract" is a made up term used to legitimatize government intervention, i.e. statist by nature, and built upon violence. It is a myth used to justify state coercion and centralized authority.

> A society is certainly conceivable in which there was no governmental intervention in family life or education and in which the sole function of law enforcement was the upholding of universal rights.

I would also refer you to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43748473.

https://store.mises.org/Myth-of-the-Social-Contract-Refuting... and https://cdn.mises.org/1_3_3_0.pdf and whatnot.

common decency? mutual respect? live and let live?

the government has a role in doing the most good for the most people. for example, keeping companies from dumping poison into rivers.

I am in favor of "common decency, mutual respect, live and let live".

That is not what "social contract" is about (unless you keep playing the redefinition of words game, which many people do when arguing in favor of "muh social contract"), and no, we do not need the Government for that.

https://www.academia.edu/7185307/Libertarianism_and_Pollutio...

https://mises.org/mises-wire/why-government-pollution-contro...

https://mises.org/mises-daily/libertarian-manifesto-pollutio...

Among others... Please do ask if you want to read more about it. I personally like to read a lot of things with what I disagree.

Please reply to the other person's comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43748473), too, I wonder what you'd come up with. :)

Reading a bit of the first paper...

In a Libertarian system what the remedy is for people whose lands have been polluted?

And what about CO2 pollution the affects everyone everywhere, not just the local river? What's the remedy then?

And if I own a factory is it not personal liberty to make a profit with it even if it causes pollution?

> despise the self-righteousness of people who think a social contract overrides personal liberty

my reply to this bit is: Take your personal liberty to Libertarian Island.

That is fine if you do not care about your own liberty.

What is liberty? Is it freedom from vaccinations, or freedom from getting vaccine-preventable diseases?

Is it freedom to carry a gun, or freedom from getting shot?

Is it freedom to pollute, or freedom from pollution?

Is it the freedom to pay as little as possible, or the freedom from others pushing their tragedy-of-the-commons cost onto me?

Is it freedom to choose the ideal healthcare plan for me, or freedom from spending hours deciphering healthcare mumbo-jumbo and ending up in medical debt if you get it wrong?

Liberty is subjective and opinions differ. The social contract is society's collective détente.

Liberty is indeed subjective, but unless it is rooted in a consistent framework of consent and non-aggression, it risks becoming a mere euphemism for majority rule or state coercion. The social contract, if used to justify that coercion without consent, becomes problematic. Liberty should not mean trading one form of oppression for another under the guise of collective benefit. The social contract is a fraud: no one ever signed it, and the State enforces it at gunpoint. True contracts require explicit, informed consent - not mere residence in a geographic territory. Thus, the invocation of a "social contract" often becomes a rhetorical tool used to justify state coercion without genuine agreement.

Freedom to own a weapon is not equal to freedom to commit violence.

Pollution is an invasion of property rights, and should be treated as such under the law - i.e., as a tort or nuisance, actionable by the victims. In other words, pollution should be punished - not because the government says so, but because it constitutes an aggression against another's property.

Liberty means non-aggression and voluntary interaction.

If you want me to expand, please say so.

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If you prescribed to that particular facet of belief, that is are you problem. Don't try and push your dogmatic views down others throats.

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Each of those has sects that do not follow the talking point you're putting forward. If it isn't clear to them, then by what right do you get to declare the truth for everyone else? Go debate some more, before trying to unilaterally rule for all mankind.

For most of it's history Protestantism did not take any specific issue with abortion and considered it a weird Catholic thing similar to their views on birth control. It wasn't until the 1960s that this shifted, largely due to political machinations.

Islam typically sides with people doing what they have to to live, including eating pork if that is what it takes to survive. In regards to abortion, the mothers life takes paramount.

Case in point, quit waving your religious dogma in my face. Its not wanted. I've no desire, and quite frankly, absolutely no need, to be careful what I bet on in terms of beliefs. Anything that requires belief without proof meeting even the most meagre bar height is nonsense.

Since you seem to be giving others here a hard time about Abrahamic ideas of belief, hell, and morals, I'll leave you with a quote from your own book:

Matthew 6:1: “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.

Do you have a soul? Do I?

You can indeed live a life in fear of holy retribution, but you do not have the right to force others to do so as well.

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I think trying to appeal to divine authority is unlikely to get you far with a group of people who reject divine authority.

I'm not sure why people get religious about this. The far more interesting approach is to try to use reason along side other current laws to determine the answer to two questions - what defines a human life, and when is it acceptable to take one? For example, trying to compare things like medical support for preterm babies to medical support of coma patients to investigate the logic behind viable fetuses vs various life support methods, etc.

A similar interesting situation is how in some cases murdering a pregnant woman counts as a double homicide because the law includes the unborn child

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I didn't say anything; I'm not the person you were replying to. But I will say that I suspect your arguments that God has the authority over a document people wrote is, again, unlikely to find an audience among those who don't think He exists.

Yes, and this is why the fact that hormonal birth control can be abortifacient is often downplayed, hidden, or denied.

Do you think we should do something about that?

what are those?

> Miscarriages are traumatic.

not if you're pro-choice, because you don't believe it's a human life in the first place.

Many things in life are traumatic. Me leaving the Catholic church was traumatic for my parents. My years-long girlfriend cheating on me was traumatic for me.

Does trauma for the 1% outweigh the benefits of the 99%?

Did I say that it does? The post above mine asked if it mattered. It matters, but it is one factor among many that goes into family planning or sexual relationships.

With medications, 1% chance of a traumatic side effect is indeed considered very serious.

The target group may well be strongly biased towards failures resulting in children born. Using birth control for, well, being in control. And we lack data on how bad messing with RAR regulation really is.. too much confounding effects from how bad deficiency & over-supplementation are on the mother.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com