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Dr. John Plunkett died this week. He spent nearly 20 years arguing in court against bad forensic science, for which he was maliciously prosecuted and received false ethics complaints. Through his efforts, 300 innocent people were exonerated. (This sentence from fark.com)
Like a lot of other doctors, child welfare advocates and forensic specialists, John Plunkett at first bought into the theory of Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS). It's a convenient diagnosis for prosecutors, in that it provides a cause of death (violent shaking), a culprit (whoever was last with the child before death) and even intent (prosecutors often argue that the violent, extended shaking establishes mens rea.) But in the late 1990s, Plunkett — a forensic pathologist in Minnesota — began to have doubts about the diagnosis. The same year his study was published, Plunkett testified in the trial of Lisa Stickney, a licensed day care worker in Oregon. Thanks in large part to Plunkett's testimony, Stickney was acquitted. District Attorney Michael Dugan responded with something unprecedented — it criminally charged an expert witness over testimony he had given in court. Today, the scientific consensus on SBS has since shifted significantly in Plunkett's direction.
[...] According to the National Registry of Exonerations, 16 SBS convictions have been overturned. Plunkett's obituary puts the figure at 300, and claims that he participated in 50 of those cases. I'm not sure of the source for that figure, and it's the first I've seen of it. But whatever the number, Plunkett deserves credit for being among the first to sound the alarm about wrongful SBS convictions. His study was the first step toward those exonerations.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @03:31PM (4 children)
You have failed to explain, in a way so simple only a fool could disagree if they grant your assumptions and inference rules (aka a good argument), why consenting adults being in love makes it morally acceptable for them to be in a relationship. You might think that this is obvious, but enough people disagree that it clearly isn't obvious and that's just wishful thinking.
The point of making clear and complete arguments is to be confident in a lack of edge cases. The goal isn't to enumerate all possible edge cases (you can't), but to find the underlying rule you're using to determine the outcome of those edge cases (which must exist, even in the worst case scenario where the rule is to emulate your whole brain and ask that) and then argue for that instead of a complex and long list of 'obvious' exceptions.
Stop currying your morality by circumstance and belief (at least without explicitly stating those circumstances and beliefs) and just argue for it in the most general form you can.
That way your argument should handle edge cases you have failed to consider, which is valuable because the goal isn't to describe your position on situations, but to argue for a given rule to determine how one ought judge a situation. We don't know what Locke thinks of ISIS because we asked him and ensured there isn't something implicit and obvious to him which he assumed wasn't the case, but because he laid out the underlying rules he used to determine all cases.
You might claim that almost all humans are similar enough that they wouldn't disagree with things you claim are obvious and so there's no point explicating morality, but consider the brainwashed*. What exactly is ok and what isn't? Manipulating their utility function by being nice to them, bringing joy into their life, and making them happy would probably be considered an acceptable way to manipulate someone's utility function into wanting to be around you more. Beating and threats wouldn't be. But what about the slew of accidentally-manipulative people who were raised that way and don't realize it's abusive? They certainly would disagree with you about what is OK and what isn't, and your argument is most important to them, not those who are similar to you.
For example, some paedo's legit do seem to buy into those arguments. They share fucking memes, which are almost identical but with age added to the skin-colour/sex/gender list of shit that doesn't impact the ability to feel love. And they are convinced that paedophilia is acceptable because all of society is telling them that this is a valid argument. If the assumptions were stated, this couldn't have happened.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/9Fajg4lg9Ho [youtube.com]
Real arguments don't normally fit into a tweet/meme/soundbite. They're often long and tedious and dull (this comment isn't an example, it's just long and tedious and dull because I'm a shit writer who can't organize his points into a coherent structure, hopefully some of what I'm trying to say comes across). That's no excuse to revert to circlejerking and othering those you disagree with in lieu of carefully deciding WHY you think consenting adults being in love makes it OK for them to marry. (inb4 if it isn't obvious fuck off, that's exactly the response I'm arguing against, do the work and figure out why you think that. (not for a response, I already agree its fine, but for convincing those who you'd normally alienate and drive further into their foolishness))
* ...or abused or whatever word you prefer to use to describe manipulating someone's utility function in a certain easy-to-intuit-but-hard-to-describe way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @04:00PM (3 children)
Sorry for the rambling mess again, it's a bad habbit.
My main points are that:
The general aggressive tone wasn't intended, but using 'one' instead of 'you', while solving a good chunk the problem, sounds pretentious. It's more directed at the world, than at your comment.
If I'm unclear, it's probably because I don't really know what I think about this yet, and am just starting to properly consider it after years of eyerolling and ignoring daft not-arguments.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday April 12 2018, @08:50PM (2 children)
How about this argument: why do you care about gay marriage? Why do you feel the need to argue about how others should live their lives? Do you have so much time of your hands that you have nothing better to think about than gay people marrying?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 13 2018, @03:23PM (1 child)
I'm pissed about people making shitty arguments for it which only hiders its acceptance by spreading the notion that those are among the best arguments there are. Literally nothing I've posted should have given you the impression I oppose gay marriage.
It so happens I oppose all marriage-as-a-legal-thing on the grounds the state can fuck off regulating relationships, but so long as marriage-as-a-legal-thing exists it ought permit any combination of mutually consenting partners in any number.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Friday April 13 2018, @06:51PM
Your incoherent, rant like post didn't help at all. So the fucking idiot is you. Stop drinking, get your head strait, and try again.