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Imagine the potential

January 21, 2009 By kai

I don’t have much to add to this except congratulations, Mr. President.  

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Filed Under: User Tagged With: abortion, obama

Comments

  1. bob-neer says

    January 22, 2009 at 1:27 am

    Barack Obama is the first African-American president, not that animation.

    <

    p>Doesn’t everyone in the world know that.

    • kbusch says

      January 22, 2009 at 10:19 am

      Since nature eliminates many more possible outcomes than human intervention, this argument has always felt like thrown spaghetti slipping off the wall.

      • centralmassdad says

        January 22, 2009 at 6:08 pm

        Nature eliminates more possibilities than human intervention after birth as well, but this is no justification of homicide.

        <

        p>The what-if argument against choice is one of the more powerful arguments against choice, IMO.

        • mr-lynne says

          January 22, 2009 at 6:45 pm

        • kbusch says

          January 23, 2009 at 11:38 am

          Yeah, but that’s the point. We don’t penalize homicide because it reduces possibilities; we penalize homicide because we value people.

          <

          p>To the extent this argument has strength, it is based on the bias toward what we have, the same bias that slows the fall of housing prices. (Just read Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational.) A world without an Obama might just as well contain a Super-Obama.

          • kai says

            January 24, 2009 at 12:38 pm

            This election shows that we as Americans value all people.  Just as it doesn’t matter if you are black or white, it also shouldn’t matter if you have been born yet.

          • centralmassdad says

            January 25, 2009 at 12:13 pm

            Or at least proto-people.  That is the point.  

            <

            p>Only people can be a possible future president.

            • kbusch says

              January 25, 2009 at 12:39 pm

              Yes, but if you change one thing, events cascade and you get a different population of proto-people and proto-presidents.

              <

              p>One might well wonder why one set of DNA gets to become a proto-person and another does not. Who is to judge that the large number of never-expressed DNA contains only unworthy possible human beings? A combinatorial calculation, by the way, easily shows that that there are many more unrealized DNA than realized DNA. We, among the instantiated, are but a tiny, tiny minority of possible human beings.

              <

              p>Imagine all the great leaders, scientists, musicians, novelists, and jurists who will never, ever come to be.

              • centralmassdad says

                January 25, 2009 at 3:42 pm

                These things get written in the passive voice, as if things happen, in all instances, all by themselves.   That proto-person is different from the ones that don’t make it because biology is complex, and only a fraction of successfully fertilized embryos make it to viability even when nurtured.  It is different because this one didn’t make it because someone choose to actively kill it.

                <

                p>The logic of the committed and comfortable pro-choice set are truly disturbing in their capacity to reduce something that is well on its way to being a child to a glop of meaningless crud.

                <

                p>At best legal abortion is a necessary evil.  But a horrific evil it will always be.

                • kbusch says

                  January 25, 2009 at 9:38 pm

                  By your response, it seems you too have given up the human possibility argument and returned to the “it’s another human life” argument. That was my goal. That was all I was arguing.

                  <

                  p>Beyond that, there are very sticky ethical questions. I’m reminded of Singer’s arguments about how many animals are more sentient, more aware of pain, and higher functioning than all human embryos and even some live humans. I don’t know his work very well, but what I have read raises questions about how we make these kinds of ethical calculations as to what life is and is not inviolate. Why, for example, are there more citizens involved with rescuing cats than Congolese? I’ve always found that troubling. On an operational level it certainly suggests something not too pretty.

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