posted
The irony of this article is that OSC is making just the sort of off-the-cuff hypothetical claim that we need real economists, and "freakonomists", to fight against. Any economic argument worth its salt will pay close attention to the difference between causation and correlation, and will be able to demonstrate causation is actaully at work. Just stating that abortions increased as crime decreased, and making up a semi-plausible story to explain it from your armchair, proves nothing. That's speculative fiction writing, not economics.
When you get down to it, the question that must be asked is "Is this the simplest, most effective, most complete explanation?" And the answer is no. There is a far simpler, far more fundamental explanation that explains the drop in crime without having to resort to the convoluted chain of assumptions that connects abortions to crime rates. This easy explaination is this:
Crime isn't as cool now.
That's really all there is to it. The nation and the media has spent a great deal of energy trying to promote the argument that drugs, gangs, violence, etc. are not cool - and because those are good arguments, the public is buying it. I don't have polls to prove my point, but I can bet that if you went out and found some, you'd see that criminal behavior is frowned upon much more now, even among young or poor groups where it may have previously been somewhat accepted. If this is true, the jump to be made from that to lower crime rates is pretty tiny - if crime is less popular, then crime rates should drop, no? Compare different communities and I bet you'd see that those who look more negatively on criminal behavior consistently produce fewer criminals. Those where gang membership is more of an expectation or where drug use is considered normal probably has higher crime rates. This has nothing to do with abortion - it's just a matter of doing what's popular to do. In this generation, doing the "right" thing is more popular than it once was.
If you still think the abortion explanation makes more sense, take a look at conservative communities in which abortions are not commonplace. If OSC's argument were correct, such communities would NOT experience a drop in crime during the 90's, without the equivalent increase in abortions. Instead, I strongly suspect that the drop in crime will be sharpest in those communities, because I think the fight to make crime uncool has been fought with the most vigor in such conservative communities.
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quote:If you still think the abortion explanation makes more sense, take a look at conservative communities in which abortions are not commonplace. If OSC's argument were correct, such communities would NOT experience a drop in crime during the 90's, without the equivalent increase in abortions.
If OSC's argument is correct, such communities would not have a great deal of crime to begin with. Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
Yes, but what you're getting at is not correct. Whereas OSC's explanation was elaborate and lacking any method of evidence, my explanation requires only a slight leap and is fairly simple to prove or disprove, using the tests I suggested. You can poll people's attitudes towards criminal behavior, and it doesn't take much of a stretch to believe as people dislike being criminals more, they will be less likely to commit crime. In contrast, it's quite an elaborate, unprovable chain of assumptions to say that abortions are effecting poor communities the most, therefore creating fewer poor children, and since poor children make the most criminals, there are fewer criminals.
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Your suggestion of polling to prove the popularity of crime is ridiculous. Even if you could find a random representative sample (which I doubt) and they answered truthfully (which I doubt more), you still don't have any data to compare to.
How cool did crime used to be? You don't know, and unless you have a time machine and a lot of free time you're not finding out.
Your explanation might require only a slight leap on your part, but it requires a huge leap on my part. Spurious correlations aren't convincing anyone. Or, to quote you, "Making up a semi-plausible story to explain it from your armchair proves nothing."
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quote:Yes, but what you're getting at is not correct. Whereas OSC's explanation was elaborate and lacking any method of evidence, my explanation requires only a slight leap and is fairly simple to prove or disprove, using the tests I suggested. You can poll people's attitudes towards criminal behavior, and it doesn't take much of a stretch to believe as people dislike being criminals more, they will be less likely to commit crime.
Unless we happened to do this during the entire decline, we can't perform this test.
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quote:For the sake of accuracy, we should note that it is not OSC's explanation
Well, it's not OSC's argument originally, but he is the one advancing it in the article. I can't critique what the original economist says because I haven't read his book - it's possible (and likely, given he is a professional economist) that he has better answers.
quote:Unless we happened to do this during the entire decline, we can't perform this test.
Well, I was thinking that there's already research out there on this. With all the social scientists out there, some studies must have been done on social attitudes towards criminal behavior over the course of the past few decades.
quote:Your explanation might require only a slight leap on your part, but it requires a huge leap on my part.
You consider it a large leap to believe that people who don't want to be criminals are less likely to commit crime?
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No, I consider it a large leap that people now think crime is less cool. I haven't seen you provide any evidence that this is the case.
I'm just trying to point out that you did the exact same thing you crucified OSC for, less than five sentences after the crucifiction. You don't think it's the same because your theory is based on your preconceptions, just the way OSC's is based on his.
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quote: For example, many of you are going on and on about correlation not being the same as causation. If you'd read the book, you would have noticed that the author clearly and frequently emphasizes this very same thing.
Having read the book, I should point out that OSC's interpretation of the book is not in fact parallel to the author's intent.
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Are you seriously contending that crime is less cool? What on earth do you base this on that doesn't require a huge leap?
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I don't get the feeling that many people's main objection is the abortiona leading to lower crime rates thing. It's an interesting supposition. I haven't read the book yet nor seen a specific treatment of the analysis, so I can really speak to how plausible it is.
For me it's more stuff like this:
quote:Even though films and novels tried to spread the new belief and normalize promiscuity and premarital sex – and today have made many people believe it is completely normal – slightly more than half our society still believes these things to be wrong.
We just had this discussion. This just isn't true and it's ironically (or hypocritically) contained in an essay that has a section heading "Truth Doesn’t Change Because We Want It To". I suspect that OSC is using the survey that kacard brought up in the thread that I linked. The problem being that the interpretation that OSC gives to this data is clearly not at all justified by the data, such that an "intellectually rigorous" examination of it would not lead one to responsibly make the claim that OSC does.
Or let's consider this:
quote:Like the claim that schools are unfair to girls (the so-called “Ophelia Complex”) when in fact the opposite is dramatically true – schools are actually hostile to boys. There is no evidence that the person who claimed to have proved the Ophelia Complex ever had any facts at all. But the claim spread through our society and shaped our perception of school, without any scientific basis whatsoever and in the face of substantial contrary evidence
I don't think I've ever seen OSC write something about psychology in his column that was actually correct. He's certainly wrong here.
First, the assumption that there is some sort of zero sum game here, that schools being hostile to boys necesarily means that they are not damaging to girls too, is silly. As is the idea that because girls do better academically, that they're getting the good stuff.
I've not read Reviving Ophelia, which I figure is the book that people have taken the idea of the "Ophelia Complex" from - educational/developmental psych, especially the bitching kind, isn't really in my realm of interest - but the idea the girls are treated differently and unjustly in school and that this treatment leads to many psychological (and physical) problems is well supported and documented.
And I believe that boys are shortchanged too. I was on board the War Against Boys wagon before it the book was written, although I disagree with the premise that this was caused so much by feminists as much as feminzation - quick demonstration, which of you think that boys fighting is a bad thing? But the idea that this means that girls have everything ok doesn't make any sense. Rather, it's just another in a long line of cases of OSC talking ignorant crap about a field he doesn't really know much about.
And to cap off his piece, which prominently featured the importance of knowing what you're talking about and of not letting your agenda blind you to what is true, OSC pushes the same, tired fantasy of the way we never were back in the 1950s. If such a fairyland existed, of course the evil family/marriage hating people who set out to bring it down would be just awful, but it never did and, by and large, the monsters that OSC rails against were people trying to fix the many problesm of that era.
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Puppy -- I was mentioning what he does, not what happens behind the curtain. Saying "this isn't true, and its ridiculous they don't offer evidence, but this is true" and not mentioning even a place to go for evidence is pretty disingenuous.
And I did point out a serious flaw in his argument, in a rigorous fashion. I couldn't create a sound enough case about whether or not its an irreparable flaw, partly because I doubt the necessary evidence exists to judge that right now, but its clear he makes a massive step of illogic to go from fewer births outside of marriage to less sex outside of marriage.
And I did offer evidence for his assumption possibly being false, even though it wasn't really needed to make my negative argument sound.
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OSC did something rare and special here, for me: he took a book I'd already read and showed me something new about it.
I read it. I was very uncomfortable with the abortion chapter, because it suggested a social use for abortion. What OSC did was take that head on, invite me to consider that discomfort rather than avoiding it. Thus he brought out something new that the book didn't really consider.
The book showed these neat-o, weird connections I wouldn't have thought of. OSC took on a different subject: what do we do when we're presented with scientific evidence we're uncomfortable with? Ignore it? Try to minimize it? This happens all over. Consider the comet theory of dino-extinction. Paleontologists have loved other theories (the comet theory comes from astronomy and chemistry), and so, now that the evidence is overwhelming, they say, well, a massive blast that plunges the world into darkness for a year and poisons the top level of the oceans isn't enough -- the dinos must have also caught a disease! Or been unable to eat flowering plants!
Just one example, of rational people not considering theories that make them uncomfortable. Now we have the abortion-and-crime theory, which should make everyone uncomfortable, including me, and (judging by the posts here) including most other Jatraqueros. What will we do with it?
OSC ended up with a conclusion he could live with: that it is not evil to tell people to keep it zipped till they're ready to be parents. There's no guarantee he would. There's no guarantee we will. Let's let the facts drive us where they will, rather than us driving them where we will.
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quote:OSC pushes the same, tired fantasy of the way we never were back in the 1950s.
It's really easy for people to reinterpret the past, each in his own way, and then call each other ignorant for disagreeing about it, huh?
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quote:The part I don't buy is the suggestion that there's any intent on the part of anyone to use abortion as an anti-crime measure.
That wasn't actually in the book or the review: OSC suggested people didn't know and wouldn't like the idea; the author seemed to think it would surprise his readers.
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quote: OSC took on a different subject: what do we do when we're presented with scientific evidence we're uncomfortable with? Ignore it? Try to minimize it?
Except that we know from his previous articles that he falls into the same trap. OSC tends to herald as "accurate" science that science which already supports his worldview, and derides as "false" science that science which suggests conclusions which contradict his philosophies.
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Geoff, See, but there are actually objective reasons for believing things. The anti-intellectual relativism BS doesn't actually reflect reality or the limits of our knowledge.
The data from that time (collected in such books as The Way We Never Were) support one view and not the other. People have acutally studied things using reputable methods and come up with results that we can place confidence in.
Go ahead, guess who's view is closer to what they found.
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quote:Except that we know from his previous articles that he falls into the same trap. OSC tends to herald as "accurate" science that science which already supports his worldview, and derides as "false" science that science which suggests conclusions which contradict his philosophies.
I can't confirm that. Even if it's true...if OSC is doing something wrong, would we better to do the same thing in the opposite direction, or to do it right ourselves? If we find someone who fails to live up to high standards, should we then give up on standards? If so, we'll definitely be standard-less, since there will always be someone who falls short.
This may relate to a fundamental difference in world view. (Or not; I'm not sure.)
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quote:No, I consider it a large leap that people now think crime is less cool. I haven't seen you provide any evidence that this is the case.
You don't need to take that leap, though. It's either true or false, and observably so. If you don't observe the same shift in attitudes that I do, then you have no need to accept my argument. And if you want to determine it more objectively one way or another, you can, assuming someone has collected the statistics. I don't have those numbers, so feel free to deny it if you really don't observe the same shift that I do.
The same is true for OSC's claims about abortion increasing and crime decreasing during certain periods - observations he assumes to be true and gives no numbers to prove, but can be tested one way or another.
Leaps, in contrast, are things you can't simply show to be true or false. I can't prove the link between not wanting to be a criminal and not commiting crime, so it requires a leap, but I think a small one. I spoke inaccurately before when I said economists demonstrate causation - you can't 100% demonstrate causation. But what they do demonstrate is why a given explanation is more consistent with the data and requires less of a leap than other possible alternatives, which I think is as close as you can come to demonstrating causation.
I'm not "crucifying" OSC for leaving out the numbers to back his statistical claims. I'll accept that the numbers are what he claims they will be. What I'm complaining about is how he suggests one very elaborate explanation of crime decreases, as if it is the only acceptable explanation, without giving any real reason to reject other explanations that would fit the same data and require much smaller leaps or assumptions. In short, he's giving me a possible explanation, but no real reason to think it's the BEST explanation - no reason to think it is better than the explanation I gave above, which to me is much easier to buy.
quote:Are you seriously contending that crime is less cool? What on earth do you base this on that doesn't require a huge leap?
I base it on my observations, and yours. That's the best I can do, because I'm not an expert on the matter and don't have numbers. If you've not observed any change in attitudes towards crime, so be it - you won't be convinced.
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Tres, The problem (well, one of the many) you're looking at is that attitudes towards things are often more of an epiphenomenom than a root cause. A spedometer accurately reflects he speed that a car is going, but it has no causal role. The tests you're talking about would not give clear information as to the validity of your claim.
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Squick, I don't think that OSC is suggesting that the fifties were like Ozzie and Harriet for everybody. He grew up with family dysfunctions and watched people make choices that he disagreed with, even in his own young life in the fifties. He has no illusions about it.
But he also grew up in a society where the methods he is describing REALLY WORK to vastly reduce the occurence of unwed pregnancy and abortion.
And there has been a trend of change since that time, from American society generally pursuing those same strategies to keep people from making harmful decisions, to society rejecting those strategies and replacing them with other methods that seem, statistically, to be less effective.
It's not that "everything was great back then" and "everything is horrible now". I haven't read the book you cited, but are you suggesting that there were as many or more illegitimate children and abortions per capita sixty years ago as there are today? Are you suggesting that attitudes and cultural strategies have not changed? If you have access to new statistics I'm unaware of, please share them.
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Puppy: he provides no meaningful evidence they work to reduce unwed pregnancy; he provides mildly meaningful evidence (its entirely possible the lesser occurence of this wasn't actually caused by the systems of morality, but things like fears of consequences) they work to reduce unwed births, which is a very different thing, and from there goes on most tenuously about how these methods worked to reduce premarital sex, which isn't particularly supported at all.
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Geoff, OSC very often talks about the anti-marriage/family forces and how they severely damaged the good way thigns used to be. The statistics and other data I've seen dispute this rosy picture of the past or the reason for it's "downfall". Neither marraige nor family were valued anywhere near as highly then as OSC seems to claim and the people he inveighs aginst, such as the feminists, were concerned with dealing with that problems that existed, even if OSC denies that they did. They didn't have nefarious schemes to bring down what was good and right in western society.
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We already went into the divorce statistics for different religions. They don't support the claim that religious people are the ones who really take marriage seriously or that religion is the way to go for keeping marriages together.
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I have pretty consistently argued against the reliance on external repression as a way to deal with problems with sex and marriage. Not just because it tends to blunt human potential and discourage the growth of acutal maturity, but because it doesn't actually work. It may appear to superficially, much like the 50s looks like a Golden Age, but the problems exist deeper under the surface where they are not dealt with.
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porter, Fear of certain consequences, but not things like woman not getting a divorce because she'd be unable to support herself on her own.
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quote:Tres, abortion and crime increasing are based on collected statistics.
Yes, but OSC does not give them. I just assume he's correct about those stats because I recall hearing about similar statistics, and it fits what I've observed.
quote:The problem (well, one of the many) you're looking at is that attitudes towards things are often more of an epiphenomenom than a root cause.
This is true - it would be somewhat difficult to prove the causation is there, I suppose. However, if there is both a decrease in crime and a decrease in the desirability of criminal behavior, OSC needs to at least offer a good reason to get me to believe his more difficult-to-buy abortion cause rather than what seems to me to be a simpler alternative.
To draw a comparison, consider if somebody told me more Floridians voted for Bush because more Floridians support Bush. I would buy this straight out if I had no reason to think otherwsie, because it seems to be the clearest and most direct explanation for those votes. In contrast, if someone told me more Floridians voted for Bush because they actually intended to vote for Gore but got confused by a crazy ballot, I would need a good reason to accept that more complicated cause rather than the simpler explanation that Floridians simply support Bush more. If you suggested that polls showed Florida would go to Gore, or offered accounts of confused voters, or gave other evidence, I might be convinced of the more complicated explanation. But if you simply state (without giving a strong reason) that Bush won Florida because Floridians were confused, I'm not going to buy it, and suspect that you are advocating a more difficult explanation only because it fits other arguments you want to make.
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quote:This is true - it would be somewhat difficult to prove the causation is there, I suppose. However, if there is both a decrease in crime and a decrease in the desirability of criminal behavior, OSC needs to at least offer a good reason to get me to believe his more difficult-to-buy abortion cause rather my simpler alternative.
But we have fairly reliable statistics on abortion rates and fairly reliable statistics on crime rates. Where are the statistics on "desirability of criminal behavior"?
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quote: I HAVE read many of the books that he has based his opinions on (including Freakonomics and The War Against Boys ... where he got the stuff about the Ophelia Complex), and he DOES have good reasons to say what he says. You may not agree, but that's fine — just don't accuse him of making things up out of whole cloth. He really believes in and lives by the intellectually-rigorous attitude he promotes in the article. That doesn't mean he's always right, but it DOES mean that he doesn't deserve most of the harsh criticism he is receiving in this thread.
This is hilarious. He's intellectually rigorous inasmuch as it fits his anti-social liberalism agenda, which is patently obvious in almost every every civilization watch column that he writes, which is to say he's not intellectually rigorous at all.
Anyone who's been on this forum over the past few months has seen him totally misread posts people make and attribute to them meanings which are not there and, further, be unwilling to admit to that mistake.
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quote:Anyone who's been on this forum over the past few months has seen him totally misread posts people make and attribute to them meanings which are not there and, further, be unwilling to admit to that mistake.
If I didn't see that behavior almost daily from other posters I might comment more on it when he does it.
posted
porter, But a large part of the my point (and I imagine fugu's) is that social context, such as the financial hardship associated with divorce, masked the underlying poor state of people's marriages. As I said in the ore-marital sex thread I linked, I don't see how a preponderance of bad marriages is neccesarily preferrible to a higher divorce rate. Especially when you consider that current trends have divorce around the lowest in the "liberal" population that has a much lower level of the type of externally imposed morality that OSC is championing.
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quote:We already went into the divorce statistics for different religions.
When did this thread become a thread about divorce?
quote: Not just because it tends to blunt human potential ...
I would love to see the statistics you use to back up a value judgment like this
I'm still not sure where you feel we should draw the line between responsible impulse control and repression. It seems that the two are on the same spectrum, but you draw the line in a very different place than I do. How do you arrive at your decision to place it where you do?
I am living, right now, in a system where the strategies that OSC recommends actually work. They worked for me. They worked for many of my close friends. I was not psychologically damaged by the experience, and neither were they, as far as any of us can tell. We look back with relief at the decisions we didn't make, and we're glad.
I also know people for whom it hasn't worked, of course, and I can cite many reasons why. I think every day about how I can improve my own pursuit of these strategies to make them more effective in my life, and in the lives of my children.
The point is, however, that a strategy I have SEEN work, firsthand, again and again for my entire life, is being treated as though it is preposterous, impossible, and a lie. By you. You have to understand that no amount of asserting that "What your people are doing is repression, and repression is BAD!" is going to bear much weight against a lifetime of experience to the contrary. Maybe many people doubt this because they haven't lived it. Or because they have lived versions of it that failed for one reason or another. I can understand that. I'm operating from my own experience, so I can hardly expect other people to do differently.
But realize that if this strategy can work this well in small pockets of society, we have to consider that — at least MAYBE — it might have some value to the larger picture. Instead of dismissing us out of hand and batting our ideas away with the sort of ease that comes only from strong cultural prejudice, why don't you speak to us as equals — as people with a unique experience that might actually be relevant to the grander solution?
quote:I have pretty consistently argued against the reliance on external repression as a way to deal with problems with sex and marriage.
I've argued for it, but I think I should amend my argument somewhat. I focused probably too much, in the past, on the fear of social censure, when the real value of a system like ours is the fact that it trains people to share a common ideal. People make better choices more often, I think, because they aspire to achieve something admirable ... and to a lesser degree because they fear failure and disapproval.
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Dag, But you are then agreeing with Storm's assessment of OSC's behavior and disagreeing with Geoff's holding him up as a standard of intellectual rigor, yes?
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Dag: the polemics of a random hatracker have a rather different weight and relevance to discussion than the polemics of a widely-read columnist who's the current subject of the thread.
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quote:Especially when you consider that current trends have divorce around the lowest in the "liberal" population that has a much lower level of the type of externally imposed morality that OSC is championing.
Of course this probably has much more to do with members of those 'liberal' populations being less likely to get married in the first place. Which if the alternative is an earlier marriage that ends in divorce, if of course not a bad thing.
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I was going to write a very long reply to the posts that have accumulated since I last posted in this thread, but it really comes down to one thing:
Everyone that's posting that hasn't read the book should stop posting until they've read the book.
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quote:Conservatives want to get rid of abortion, and they want to cut much of welfare.
I'm pretty sure that welfare is one of the reasons Card continues to consider himself a democrat. I could be wrong about that, but it seems he has said fiscal policy is one area that he considers himself left. Any help on that, Geoff? Maybe a comment he made about Schwarzenegger.
It's interesting, this is one of the first columns that has given me any clear view on how OSC might feel about abortion and it's still not very clear. As one who was not offended out of the gate by it, it seems there is still room for him to believe that abortion should be legal, if not common.
The abortion statistics we had up last year-it was a power point presentation from a industry related conference- mentioned that most abortions are for economic reasons and less than 5% are for rape, incest, or birth defects. I don't believe they listed marital status as a criterion. So it would be very hard to look into the validity of fugu's assertion.
And for the benefit of anyone who is still reading this and has not read the article, Card himself said something very like "correlation is not cause."
P.S. It's funny to me that while many people seem quite sure what Card would think on many topics. While I'm sure that Card's idea of how he wishes society were is quite close to mine, I have no idea how he believes it would best be accomplished.
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I can't directly speak for OSC, but pooka does seem to have the right of it on a few points there.
1. OSC taught me that abortion was wrong, but that it was not murder, and should be allowed in certain cases.
2. OSC has said that he is the diametric opposite of Schwartzenegger, politically — he is a social conservative and an economic liberal. Anti-abortion and pro-welfare. (Though such a description oversimplifies his positions almost to the point of uselessness.)
3. Despite the irony Stormy suggests, Card DOES believe in, and practice, what he is preaching. You may notice patterns in his opinions, and suspect that he applies bias in his reading of the evidence, as do we all to some degree or another. If we didn't, we'd all go insane with indecision.
Card has been alive for over 54 years. He didn't just start formulating his opinions as you started reading them. He has spent decades applying his rigorous thought process to everything he has studied. If he seems a little set in his ways now, it is because he has come to trust opinions that have been borne out many times by his observations. None of you, chances are, possesses a magic-bullet piece of evidence that will shatter a lifetime of learning in a single shot.
Card is an independent thinker; a true original. It's fine if you disagree with him. He doesn't even mind when people disagree with him. But would you really try to shout down a voice like his without even giving him a little bit of credit? Come on, this guy has written things that affected all of you in profoundly positive ways, or you wouldn't be here. The same guy who wrote that fiction ALSO writes these essays. Disagree with him all you want, but quit trying to draw all these awful conclusions about his character, and quit making the ad hominem attacks.
OSC raised me to consider every alternative, to test my beliefs, to demand rigor and proof. That's who he is. When he says it in the essay, he means it. He WANTS you all to question his conclusions. He just wants you to question your OWN, too. I've seen precious little of that here today.
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Puppy, I have read a fair amount of Freakonomics, and I liked part of what I saw....and didn't like parts as well.
OSC's views in that article go a lot further than that book does...and not because anything other than it happens to match his existing views.
I paraphrased him, but I most surely did not put words into his mouth...
He said that abortions are mostly used by people with poor impulse control, as is the pill...and these people also commit more crime, so having abortions (i.e. being in favor or abortion rights, as only those in favor of those rights have an abortion) lowers the crime rate.
And even if you are married, if you have an abortion you were "probably" one of htos wiht poro impules control, and....
Well, you know.
So, lets get this straight....of you are in favor of abortion rights, or use the pill...in disagreement with his morals and values.... you are now much more likely to have poor impulse control and be a criminal,
If you disagree with his stance that abortion control is used as a form of crime prevention, you are more likely to be promiscuous, take the pill, and lead to the potential demise of western civilization...not in so many words, but....
Also, where did YOU lean to prove a negative? I can't, nor can anyone else I know. I am not making claims that challenge current reproductive rights, accusing SCOTUS on performing hitlarian eugenics experiments on future criminals-a judgment based primarily on social classes and race- am I?
Your dad is though....with a little help from that book.
I read parts of the book, and I read all of the article, and I stand by what I said in my first post.
I love your dad's fiction, but this article made me sick.
quote:Dag, But you are then agreeing with Storm's assessment of OSC's behavior and disagreeing with Geoff's holding him up as a standard of intellectual rigor, yes?
What is this, third grade, Squick? Is it some kind of victory for you if you can make Dag disagree with me?
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quote:OSC's views in that article go a lot further than that book does...and not because anything other than it happens to match his existing views.
Don't your views go a lot further than the last book you read? And don't you hold those views now because you held them before you read that book, for unrelated reasons? Sheesh, what kind of made-up, impossible standard are you holding him to here? Should he have given a book report, or an op-ed piece? I'll tell you which one his editor is asking him for ...
quote:So, lets get this straight....of you are in favor of abortion rights, or use the pill...in disagreement with his morals and values.... you are now much more likely to have poor impulse control and be a criminal,
That isn't what he said. He didn't say that people who believe those things have poor impulse control. Believing those things doesn't mean you'll run out and get an abortion just for kicks. People get abortions — which are often difficult, emotionally-devastating procedures — for the most part, because they feel like they have to. They are backed into a corner with no good choices. He is suggesting that many of those situations arise from an individual having poor or untrained impulse control. He wants to remove the demand for abortions by training people, in general, to make fewer destructive choices.
I'll admit it's not my favorite part of the article, mostly because I'm not sure we can establish a connection between a person's genetics and their ability to make wise, restrained decisions. But it's not a verse from the Necronomicon, either. Don't read a bunch of hateful stuff into it that isn't there.
[ September 20, 2005, 03:48 AM: Message edited by: A Rat Named Dog ]
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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Funny thing is, I bet on a personal leve, with regard to one should live their life, I bet Card and I pretty much see eye to eye about most things. I didn't sleep around much before marriage even though I didn't until I was 33, I don't even want to hear the word "abortion" from my wife's mouth (not would she ever say it ), and I live a fairly conservitie lifestyle in my own personal life.
I just don't think that my way is the only way to have a good life...I just know it works for me.
I know, or at least I believe, that a lot of what Card tries to do in these articles in just to stir the pot, to make people think, and in that he has succeded, at least a little.
Howerver, I still have a huge problem with both his methodology and his conclusions in this article.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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Here's a question for Squick. How would you recommend that we act to prevent people from making terrible decisions that harm themselves and others? If my people are doing it wrong, what is the right way to do it?
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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Hey, I just cleared up a sentence, and added something....didn't want you to think I was ambushing you by changing it, it just happened to be the part you quoted so I thought I would let you know.
I thin it is sickening that he thinks...and states in that article...that people might disguise these "results", which I don't think he actually proved existed in the first place, because it works but they don't want people to know about it.
So, if you are a judge that thinks abortion rights are necessary, you probably are aware (consciously of subconsciously) that it is just pre-crime prevention?
Talk about demonizing your opposition....
My main point was that his conclusions are unprovable at worst, tenuous at best...but that didn't stop him from claiming that the sexual repression of half the population is better than allowing people to decide what they should do with their own bodies, and implying that if they disagree with that view they most probably belong (or are affiliated with) a group of promiscuous, impulse challenged people who can't be trusted with decisions that affect their own lives...because they are geneticaly predetermined to make poor choices.... and that somehow we should just do what he says and revert to the 1950's morality he prefers.
I make assumptions about his personal views based on what he personally has written...he makes assumptions, completely unproven, on entire swathes of people based on social classes and political views, without ever having contact with them on an individual basis whatsoever.
Guess which assumptions are probably close to reality.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:How would you recommend that we act to prevent people from making terrible decisions that harm themselves and others?
I will take a stab at this , if you don't mind..
Either kill them as babies, so they don't EVER make a mistake....
Or let them make their own mistakes, and let them either learn from them or not, just like they will do for you.
The first suggestion being a joke, of course.
You don't have the right to prevent them from making those mistakes. They might not even consider the same things a msitake at all.
To some people, my cousin Tony might have been a mistake. He was born autistic, some people might have not had him if they would have known he was autistic at birth. With genetic tech advancing so fast, these types of tests will become availible to more and more pregnant wonem.
If my aunt didn't have Tony, I would have never met him, and my life would be poorer for it.
I would never assume to tell another couple that they had to make a specific choice about something like that, although MY choice would be completely clear. It isn't my responsibility, nor do I have the right.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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It's hard to argue against the fact that to SOME degree, we have not only the right, but the responsibility to intercede with people when they are making terrible decisions.
For instance. The father of a struggling family climbs a tower and threatens to commit suicide. It may be his life, but if he kills himself, his family will be left with no prospects, and will potentially face homelessness or a move to a dangerous housing project. Not to mention the emotional pain the loss will cause his family, and the far-reaching effects it will have on his children and their descendants.
Do we have a responsibility to intercede and stop this man from killing himself? To give him therapy and teach him that the feelings of self-loathing that led him to attempt suicide are wrong, and are not to be heeded? To search for the causes of these feelings and find ways to teach our own children such that those feelings are less likely to develop?
Would we have those same responsibilities to a person who DIDN'T have any dependents?
What if someone is making a choice that isn't as obviously self-destructive, but which can still have far-reaching effects on their and their children's futures? To what degree should we intercede?
I'm not talking about passing laws to force them to behave a certain way. I'm talking about shaping culture such that they are taught a constructive framework for decision-making that leads them away from destructive mistakes. It seems to me that creating such a framework for people isn't just a good idea. It's an obligation. If we don't offer something along those lines, we're little better than crocodiles (who live solitary lives and abandon their young to fend for themselves) at developing communities.
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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), and I live a fairly conservitie lifestyle in my own personal life.
