TheVat

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. Thomas Jefferson

Could the red herring be let go? No one is having abortions of sentient babies. The extremely rare abortions later than 22 - 24 weeks are allowed in only six states (and DC) and have generally been of anencephalics, or similar conditions where there can be no viable sentient existence and any "life" postpartum would be brief and horrible. There is no support for abortions of healthy babies at 25-40 weeks, not anywhere on the mainstream political spectrum. This is a controversy manufactured by media RW shock jocks to draw devil horns on the heads of pro-Choice Liberals.

Yes. Damn, you were doing so well with Constitutional Law 101, now this. JK. Yes, a small incredibly vocal, sometimes violent, activist wing of the Republican Party is sufficient to push the whole party to take up the cause, and even get some thumbsucking Independents to come over by relentless pounding of the infanticide red herring (red herring because almost nowhere are abortions post-viability being performed in this country, and the vast majority are done before 15 weeks). So we have a nation overwhelmingly pro-Choice being controlled by a minority that does indeed drown out a quieter majority. This was sorta my point, referring to Living Document. But you elucidated it neatly, which I did not. Yes, many cases aren't heard precisely so that Congress may have reasonable time to act, and lower level courts can handle cases where the path is clearer and the heavyweight nine aren't needed.

To interpret the Constitution in a nonpartisan manner, unswayed by public opinion. The Court was founded to be entirely independent of the legislative branch. The will of the people is supposed to manifest through the elected bodies, Congress and the Executive branch. The Court was founded to be something set apart from all that, answerable only to the principles codified in the Constitution. As you might imagine, this rather scary formula has moved many people to push the idea of the Living Document, and that interpretations by SCOTUS must follow changes in society and growth in human knowledge. What a shitshow Originalism (the rival to Living Document) has proved to be, especially on this day. Wow, a Canadian did their homework! Now if we could just get Congress to do ITS job and affirm the will of the people.

Justice Thomas's note on how this opens up the reversal of other (some very old) decisions on contraception, gay sex, and same-sex marriage, was chilling. He has basically said out loud what conservatives across the country were vehemently denying after the Alito leak this spring: that a Roe/Casey reversal would put other well-established rights in the crosshairs. Oops. (Welcome! Nice to see another fellow veteran of SCF.) Also ironic to hear Conservatives stress the importance of the Second Amendment as an overarching federal protection, but then just shrug and say "ehhhhh, it's up to the states to decide" when it comes to rights clearly protected in amendments like the 9th and 14th. More ironic still, given that the original purpose of the Second Amendment was to protect the autonomy and rights of individual states. Let me put this delicately: the decision today is taking a large smelly bowel movement on a cornerstone of constitutional law, the concept of stare decisis, one that is flouted only in the case of horrendously awful decisions like the infamous Plessy v Ferguson (which established legal race segregation).

Where public policy crosses borders, I would say therein lies the appeal of treaties - Kyoto, Paris, etc. The fossil fuel industry makes sure, via extensive lobbying, ad campaigns, carbon capture pipe dreams, and political campaign donations, that such treaties are usually toothless if not DOA. Unfortunately, the "we are all responsible, break out the bicycles and rakes" ethos doesn't really penetrate past a small minority that have a certain amount of free time and idealism to implement. Culpability is also elusive to calculate when wealthy nations partly rely on agri production in faraway lands. One example is rice consumption - when I eat methane-producing basmati rice, some of it comes from India. Indian paddies burble methane, oil they purchased from Russia or the ME helps harvest and ship it, plastic made from an ethylene plant in Alabama packages it, etc. And don't forget that a monoculture style of growing means that crop fields capture and retain less carbon. The webs of responsibility are so tangled, for almost everything, as to defy clear assignments of parties.

Some good replies to the OP. Worth noting that sweating often accompanies exercise, so it's possible the real benefit is how you came to be sweating, not the sweating itself. Sweating, btw, tends to lead some to more tapwater consumption, which increases chlorine or chloramine in the GI tract. While the hydration is good, it may help to use water that has been dechlorinated with a home purification system, or use water that has sat (in a safe place where foreign materials can't settle in it) for at least 24 hours. This is the same advice aquarium hobbyists get, btw, as many fish species are sensitive to chlorinated water. Also, sweating does deplete electrolytes. Sodium is not a concern, as most diets have more sodium than the body requires. But for heavy sweating, potassium should be recharged, with potassium-rich foods. And, btw, if you're retaining water, try not eating wheat, rye, barley, and oat products for a few days. These grains cause mild water retention in the muscle tissue. Every Python fan knows it's the randomly dropped sixteen ton weight that may get you in the end.

Wow, you are confused. At this website, it's not up to you to dictate people's comings and goings. Or how they should act on their feelings about another posters content. You are here to get feedback, and I see ZERO evidence of a good faith effort to understand our points of critique. Or even engage with questions of how terms are defined. Nonetheless I will post, or not post, as the spirit moves me, not because some arrogant newbie has decided to dictate terms of engagement.

Design is not being used in the sense of implied teleology. You can stop pretending you don't see that. And, given that human cognitive processes cause computers and artificial neural nets, it takes no great insight into the chain of causality to assert that, if there is no design to the human mind, then whatever arises from that mind and is implemented in a different substrate, also is not designed. IOW reductio ad absurdum. This absurd conclusion is what you get when you insist on a narrow definition of design. Again, neither you, nor the paper you keep insisting already answers all these objections, really addresses the blind watchmaker. You can't erase design because the causal origin is natural variations and then just drop it in later when those natural processes give rise to engineered structures that seek to replicate the natural ones. So knock off the strawman where you accuse of us "inserting teleology" and recognize the deeper broader meaning of design. And answer these points, instead of insisting (incorrectly) that they've already been preemptively dismissed.

Partial limits on destructive (ballistic) testing would make as much sense as partial bans on pedophile rape. There is no ambiguity on the immense danger of satellite debris. Or the existential threat to a modern tech society if satellites are taken out. Seems to me the nations have to come together on this and treat such weapons as on a par with nerve gas, nukes, or engineered pathogens. New START should be modified to include non-nukes, and ASW added to the menu, with an international UN monitoring team assigned to enforce a ban. Think about this: what if, unilaterally, a nuclear power develops an excellent laser system that not only kills satellites but also can reliably fry an ICBM? Not necessarily a big leap from the former to the latter.

In terms of comparatives we are somewhat limited by the reality that human experimentation is forbidden. Darn! (JK) We cannot, for example, give a random group from the general population puberty blockers and compare their outcomes to trans people who got PBs. I say this, not to advocate illegal mad scientist experiments, but to point out that it's hard to say if delaying puberty has positive psychological markers for everyone, not just possible candidates for GRA. IIRC, there are some studies that correlated later puberty (not artificially delayed) with better academic performance. I think most were questionable in their conclusions because later puberty also correlated with certain ethnic/cultural groups, and thus there were confounding factors from cultural valuations on certain study habits, as well as socioeconomic factors. And later puberty (the natural kind) also correlates with greater average stature, among males, which in some countries correlates with more job promotions and success. Again, I'm just trying to point out how muddy the waters are when we try to isolate causal determinants of happiness and well-being.

I think, to be fair to those questioning the basic psychology and wisdom behind all this, it's okay to ask how these correlations work. For example, does puberty blocking improve overall health because they are fitting in with their subculture in, say, California, and so their decrease in social stress is improving physical markers and decreasing suicidal ideation? Or is it because they are fundamentally a different gender than the birth one and this is a genuine improvement of physical functioning? Does the improved health effect show the same degree in Vickburg MS as it does in Berkeley CA? Is it roughly the same in Houston and Stockholm? (actually Stockholm wouldn't work now in such comparatives because Swedes have banned puberty blockers due to, cough, ahem, unresolved scientific questions) Causation is important here. If I reduce a child's suicidal thoughts and boost their health by raising them in a Truman Show simulation, that might not be worth it. I might choose some other therapeutic path for them to feel better, in spite of the positive correlation between Truman Show fake reality and "overall health." So it's fair for @MigL et al to ask if there are other solutions to alienation and depression of gender dysphorics that might lie in other domains than the pharmaceutical. Maybe there are no others that can work, but it's still worth exploring before seriously altering a child's body (or later on, removing pieces of it).

Maybe some uncertainty about hormone treatments and such is that most people don't understand, as they would with oncology say, where the expertise lies and why listening to the expert is vital. If you have a patient who would like chemotherapy, but the doctor vetoes it, then they don't get chemo - with a purely physical condition, we generally understand there's a clearly defined person or group who can determine the best interests of the patient. But if you have a ten year old boy who has been putting on dresses and insisting you call him Betty, there is an array of psychological and cultural perspectives vying for attention. So the decision to have Betty hold off puberty while many of B's friends are starting to get new hairy places and deeper voices, has all kinds of ramifications that aren't as clearly about the healing process or a single branch of medicine. To many people, the claim that a child can best find happiness by changing their gender is one subject to Sagan's Law, i.e. an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. And yes, that may be hard for the kid who would really benefit from a big gender makeover. But many parents are going to be reluctant to do anything so life-altering just because a doctor says so. Anyone who follows modern medicine is aware of the fallibility of doctors, even doctors with the best intentions and latest science.

If there's an aspect of science that's relevant, it may be in developmental psychology as well as medicine. And there may be some debate there as to how determined gender identity is early in childhood. And how much culture influences body dysphorias. And to what degree children play with alternative identities before finding their way towards a firmer sense of self. If puberty blockers allow more time to look before they leap, or snip, that may be a good thing. I still have personal reservations about GRA, while trying to support as much as I can the quest for identity. Sometimes it seems like our society has expectations of gender that make it difficult to fully embrace either set of traditional roles. Gender dysphoria is an understandable response.

Seems like a shallow interpretation of the decision. Oar maybe not.

Thanks, Stringy. Made this point earlier, but the OP seemed unwilling to consider a blind spot in their view, so I departed. It's too bad the "design means what" red herring took over here. Your blind watchmaker reference earlier was spot on. Self-programming, self-modifying neural nets arise in nature, and become aware. It's real, and it is the design (in the non-teleological, natural selection driven sense) that current AI research into neural nets are trying to model and give a medium for growth. I have yet to see a cogent argument as to why in principle this may not happen. The argument that "today's computers don't fit that model," is a Strawman. Of course they don't. Might as well be Lord Kelvin declaring we've reached the end of physics. @StringJunky

Even with the occasional moment of frustration for some, this is getting interesting, in terms of defining moral obligations versus moral guidelines. My guess is that the person donating to adult dentistry in a developing country will assume that, as he pulls on that one rope, others are pulling on the other rope of child dentistry. So he is not obligated to also fund child dentistry because there is a good faith assumption that collective social action is also at work on that. Sometimes that assumption is okay. Sometimes it is not so okay, as when people donate heavily to save baby seals because gosh they're cute while other species more crucial to our ecosystems perish because they are less photogenic and get neglected by charities. We might do okay without baby seals, but a massive collapse of bee populations or soil nematodes would be catastrophic.

I liked Ken Fabian's mention of technology as perhaps following an S curve and not just rising exponentially. And Michio Kaku has criticized some of the scenarios of massive energy economies (often associated with Kardashev and his three tiers of tech society) where they keep growing until they can harvest the energy output of a whole galaxy (Kardashev III) -- Kaku suggesting that technologies later turn more towards information, and less raw industrial power. If there were some natural trajectory of intelligence that led to massive energy cultures (the kind that would likely find interstellar travel most feasible), I would speculate that we would be seeing more evidence of Dyson structures (Dyson swarms, Dyson bubbles, and the Larry Niven classic, the Dyson ring) or would do soon as our remote sensing infrastructure is refined. The ring would be rare to spot, as it wouldn't likely have an orbit precisely aligned with our viewing angle, but the others could cause noticeable dimming and perhaps spectral alterations. But really, it comes down to what a society deems a worthwhile investment, in time, in energy, in allocation of labor and technology. While the British might not have sent James Cook to the South Pacific if it had been a one hundred year voyage, another culture might have deemed the area inherently worth a multigenerational trek across land and sea, with the object of settling there. And we are actually talking about alien beings whose values are so different that we literally cannot imagine their reasons for crossing the interstellar gulf.

Let's say I agree with you in principle, but reserve the right to carve out exceptions where there is a strong practical reason to bundle causes. Pragmatically, the anti-abortion person is going to save more infant lives (and reduce the cycle of poverty that leads to more abortions in the first place), if they get behind social policy that allows improved access to contraception, prenatal care and education, ease of adoption options, maternity leave, etc. Sometimes a "package" is the truly effective way to advance your cause. So I find it bizarre when anti abortion people actively OPPOSE such policy packages that would help to save many babies and make abortion rare. It just defies common sense.

Yeah, my understanding of the SAA is that it's about building security and protocol. When they say "violate Senate rules" they mean what you do in the chambers, being disorderly, yelling, channeling Al Pacino in And Justice for All, that kind of thing.

While I see your point, relating to how people focus on a specific social cause, I think there is one flaw there. If I crusade to save tigers, I will also likely want to support having nature preserves where they can have a life. Kind of a package. The tiger savers are not in it to save tigers then stick them in little cages where children can try to get a rise out of them and throw trash in the cage. Similarly, if I save a fetus, then what happens to it after birth is a consequence of its being saved. I'm not sure it's morally defensible to make sure the baby goes full term, be delivered, and then walk away saying "Yep, forced Mom to birth you, now she's facing more dire poverty and lack of support, but hey, you're on your own, kid!" Your own example on the DP is also subject to the same problem. Most people who march against the DP, do in fact also support better prison conditions. And they do so, again, because the years of prison life is a consequence of not being executed. In all my examples there is the common thread of: quality of life is part of valuing life. You just can't separate them without unfortunate consequences. (I thank @MSC for also underscoring this)

The process of voir dire is supposed to filter out the biased, but I agree that in this case the imperfections in that process would likely manifest. And, once a prosecutor has used up peremptory strikes, they can't move to strike on the basis of voting record. Yes, you've hit on a big problem in a country so polarized - hard to imagine any pool of jurors that wouldn't be reeking with bias. And some of it quite secretive.

I think many here acknowledge that pro-life and -choice might be compatible, and there was some discussion of the moral obligation of pro-lifers to also support life after birth, an area where many on the Right reveal hypocrisy. Also some discussion of unenumerated rights, and the ninth amendment, as they relate to Alito's radical departure from the norms of interpreting the full document. It ranged across several of the ethical conflicts, as well as the scientific basis for viability and citizenship status in the womb. Probably does help to read back through, yes. And welcome back!

The term "paid expert" should always arouse our skepticism.

Let people paint however they will. Since pretty much everything the RW does these days is a political maneuver, they are going to see everything that happens through those lenses. A public trial, and a conviction, would throw a wrench in the Trump machine and narrow the base further. And send a message to future would-be fascists. Of which I am sure there are plenty waiting in the wings.