Catsnakes_
2yr ago
- The real-or-feigned inability to build a mental model of the majority of conservatives that aren't "internet-brained rightoid" is a problem that extends beyond this immediate topic.
- To respond to your specific point, I wouldn't expect anyone who got a win that big to immediately change horses. Their choices are between the guy that indirectly got them their biggest wins in 50 years, or more of the same losing strategy. Why wouldn't they vote for him again?
Catsnakes_
2yr ago
But in a wider sense, American conservatives aren’t serious people. They consider forcing impoverished black single mothers to give birth to more children higher priority than ending mass immigration.
How many times does it need to be expressed that a huge chunk of American conservatives are also religious and consider ending what they conceptualize as mass scale baby murder to be extremely serious? Please stop using this like it's some kind of a dunk, all it does is indicate that the person using it like a dunk doesn't have a good mental model of the minds of the people they are trying to dunk on.
Catsnakes_
3yr ago
I wasn't talking about long term memories. There seems to be a consensus amongst experts that the fetus recognizes the mother's voice and heartbeat sounds, and recognizes her scent via exposure to amniotic fluid. This recognition continues when the baby is born, and it is believed that these familiar senses calm the newborn among other things. I'd prefer to give you links to research, but you'll have to settle for the deluge of popsci articles I can find on google, and knowing that this is what we were told by doctors as well. Here's one link [1], it's not an isolated example and there are tons more. Most of them seem to have at least some kind of citation at least. That said, expert consensus and common wisdom via experience is a kind of evidence of its own, even if there's not bulletproof research papers on the topic.
There's also evidence that skin to skin contact with their mother immediately after delivery results in lower stress, better ability to regulate body temperature, and other improved outcomes. I sincerely doubt that this suddenly stops being important after a week. This is easier to find research on, as well as a wealth of consensus online and it's standard practice in hospitals. [2]
It's also known that while obviously the mother goes through hormonal changes, even the expectant father in a pregnant couple goes through pre-partum hormonal changes that have an impact on parenting outcomes. [2] I can't find research on the topic, but it seems reasonable to assume that this is due to chemical signalling between mother and father and requires proximity, and not something that is likely to materialize spontaneously in the couple waiting to be handed a baby.
Frankly, I don't even think the burden of proof is on me. You want to deviate from a state of nature and the common wisdom, so you prove there's no harm. What do you think is more likely: the mother's womb is a sterile vessel, bonding with the mother that birthed it has absolutely no impact on life outcomes, and the hormonal changes that mothers and fathers go through are just for laughs? Or that the complex auditory, chemical, and physical signaling and bonding between newborn and mother throughout early infancy have a purpose of some kind that has a relevant impact?
[1] https://www.romper.com/parenting/how-does-a-baby-know-its-mother-it-comes-down-to-the-senses-25678
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6860199/
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5313241/
ed: fixed links
Catsnakes_
3yr ago
People live and get along with missing limbs, no eyesight, and so on too. That doesn't mean it's just as good as being whole.
Catsnakes_
3yr ago
Hetero surrogacy is just as bad. There is an important bond which is lost. A child carried in the womb for 9 months knows its mother. It already knows her voice and is familiar with her. This is not insignificant.
To go somewhat off topic for a moment: I am disgusted by the transhumanist fascination with artificial wombs for the same reason. A mother's womb is more than a growing medium. Nothing we can construct is going to be able to replicate it-- the entire thing is a wire monkey with extra steps.
Catsnakes_
3yr ago
That seems obviously the case to me.
Catsnakes_
3yr ago
We'd be doing a lot better if we shamed more prospective parents, frankly.
For centuries it was common practice for women to defer their mothering to working women in the form of nannies, midwives, and wet nurses.
Stealing a loaf of bread because you have no choice and stealing a loaf of bread because you just can are two different things. Furthermore, nannies, midwives, and wet nurses did not all entirely deprive the child of their mother, and plenty of people have turned out mighty fucked up due to a dead or distant mother.
Countless women have also died in childbirth, leaving children with no mother at all.
Horrible tragedies occurring naturally is not an excuse to manufacture them.
I find it hard to imagine that the legions of drug-addicted single moms saddled with kids they resent are going to offer their children a much better life than a couple of men raising a kid- that they greatly committed to before birth- simply by virtue of their irreplaceable feminine touch, or whatever.
Those women shouldn't have had kids. That they did doesn't excuse wrong done by anyone else.
Catsnakes_
3yr ago
Neither IVF nor paying the hospital for delivering the baby involves paying someone else to make a baby and abandon it. Helping a woman give birth to her own child does not permanently deprive that child of their mother. Surrogacy does. Have you grappled with that?
Catsnakes_
3yr ago
A child needs its mother. A baby knows its mother from the time it is sensate. It knows her sounds, her voice, how she moves. She is safety and comfort and everything else to that child. Physical contact with the skin of the baby's mother, especially immediately after birth but throughout its early infancy is known to be important to the baby's well being. It's already an agonizing tragedy that there are so many orphans that already have to grow up without theirs, and those who adopt are doing a good thing but something that is a distant second best to the child being with its mother. But to specifically pay to create a child so that you can take it away from its mother is a disgusting evil worse than almost anything I can think of. What you are talking about doing wrongs a child in a way you can never repair. Your husband should not be, does not deserve, and does not need to be a father. The degree of selfishness involved in this entire concept disqualifies both of you permanently.
Advance warning: I started writing a short answer, but the process of doing so dug up a bunch of things I've had rolling around in my head but haven't thought much about in 15+ years. There's no thesis here beyond the first paragraph.
I haven't considered myself Christian in a long time, but I don't think you're going to find a satisfactory answer to this line of questioning. If you're taking the words of Jesus and the general message in the New Testament seriously, you should have already given away all you possibly could and thus effectively have nothing left to give to such a beggar. If not, there's no settled doctrine I'm aware of (raised Protestant, maybe Catholics have one) that dictates how you should cut this particular knot. Church doctrine and the words of Jesus are often only loosely connected, anyway.
He didn't say "donate to every beggar you see", and he didn't say "work to give, become an EA and feed all the poor", he said to his would-be followers to give away what you have and follow him into an entirely different sort of life. He didn't tell the rich man to give away what he had because it wasn't fair he had too much, but because his material entanglements would distract him from following wholeheartedly and lead to destruction. The epistles double down on the idea that wealth and greed leads to suffering and destruction. And while the New Testament certainly contains explicit directives to take care of the destitute, those directives are not always unconditional. 1 Timothy has a long list of rules for how to give charity to widows and under what circumstances to give it, warning that although the Church should take care of those who really are sincerely destitute, there are many circumstances in which giving would be worse. It's far from the unconditional charity that commonly gets associated with the church:
Honor widows who are really widows. But if any widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show piety at home and to repay their parents; for this is good and acceptable before God. Now she who is really a widow, and left alone, trusts in God and continues in supplications and prayers bnight and day. But she who lives in pleasure is dead while she lives. And these things command, that they may be blameless. But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
Do not let a widow under sixty years old be taken into the number, and not unless she has been the wife of one man, well reported for good works: if she has brought up children, if she has lodged strangers, if she has washed the saints’ feet, if she has relieved the afflicted, if she has diligently followed every good work.
But refuse the younger widows; for when they have begun to grow wanton against Christ, they desire to marry, having condemnation because they have cast off their first faith. And besides they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house, and not only idle but also gossips and busybodies, saying things which they ought not. Therefore I desire that the younger widows marry, bear children, manage the house, give no opportunity to the adversary to speak reproachfully. For some have already turned aside after Satan. If any believing man or woman has widows, let them relieve them, and do not let the church be burdened, that it may relieve those who are really widows.
What does all this mean for us today? I don't know, I guess I ought to pick that book up and try to figure it out again. It doesn't seem to suggest that we are obligated to give money to every random drunk on the street corner just because they asked though.
Catsnakes_
3yr ago
Would you mind elaborating on that thought? It’s not immediately obvious to me why that should be the case.
Catsnakes_
3yr ago
I don't think I agree with your take as far as COVID normalizing masking on public transit. I think that in some places it may have had the opposite effect. Anecdotally, when I would in the past see a person on the train or walking along a city street with a mask on, I barely thought anything of it. To the extent that it stood out, I just assumed that person maybe had a cold and was a little extra conscientious than the average. It didn't seem particularly weird, and it communicated a completely negligible amount of information to me about that person.
But now, after everything, when I see a person in a mask it means something different. It's no longer an empty signal that tells me nothing about the person. Now it communicates to me that the person is weird. That they may be still gripped by fear, that they may be mentally ill, that they may be excessively credulous when it comes to authorities that I consider untrustworthy, or that they may be an extreme partisan of some kind. For some reason they are still not over COVID as a phenomenon.
It's hard to see a random masked individual any other way now, and I don't like that. I don't like that my initial read of someone who is wearing a mask is now "this person is a COVID weirdo that I should avoid", rather than "this is just a slightly more conscientious person than average." For one thing, now I don't even like putting on a mask at times when my own personal level of conscientiousness suggests would be appropriate, due to the perceived symbolic power of the mask. I don't want to look like a weirdo.
Catsnakes_
3yr ago
I believe it is urgent, and I don't believe these comparisons are excessive. It seems to me that if the procedure were invented today, those precise comparisons would stop it dead in its tracks. A portion of society has been mutilating children for millennia for nonsense reasons, and all of the modern reasoning around cleanliness and STDs are epicycles tacked on well after the fact.
Catsnakes_
3yr ago
I think they should be allowed to go through with it, because the evidence is strong that adult circumcision greatly reduces sexually pleasure, where as the evidence that circumcision as a baby reduces sexual pleasure is weak.
I'm sorry, this doesn't make any sense. You acknowledge that circumcision reduces sexual pleasure in adults, which makes intuitive sense being that it removes a portion of the penis that contains a huge proportion of the total nerve endings, provides lubrication, and protects the glans from keratinization. Why would you need special evidence that this also applies to people who are circumcised as babies, and what evidence would possibly satisfy you? How would you possibly distinguish between "this has no effect on pleasure" and "they couldn't possibly know the difference, because they grew up without their foreskin"?
Catsnakes_
3yr ago
When I started, I got nothing out of it for quite a while other than sore. Over the course of several months as I kept lifting and running and got healthier there were substantial psychological benefits (my anxiety has been gone for years now), but it wasn't until I was really pushing myself and seeing continuous week-over-week improvements to stamina, strength, and the scale that it became an activity that felt great and that I craved more of. It may be that you need to see some results before you get those psychological benefits, or it may just be that you're not pushing yourself hard enough to get a runner's high.
Best of luck, and keep at it.
To echo Fruck, I think you've unfortunately got twisted round the axle on the specifics of the analogy and it makes it hard to engage with the rest of your post as a consequence.
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