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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026

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I don’t think we apply such a black and white understanding of causality to every risky activity.

Most risky activities don't potentially create and subsequently harm a third party. I'm open to better comparisons here but off the top of my head, pregnancy is unique in terms of causality.

Like... if two people go rock climbing, use their equipment poorly, and risk injury, it's quite unlikely that they fall and crush a third person that was just walking around the base of the cliff. Or whatever.

Most risky activities that injure third parties, there is a lot of regulation! Smoking bans come to mind. Pollution. Hmm... Maybe vehicular accidents are a better comparator- harm comes from (generally) unintentional misuse, and there's relatively lower consequences compared to other forms of manslaughter.

A surprising amount of fertilizations don’t result in a viable pregnancy.

Shooting into an occupied dwelling is illegal even if no person gets shot, so there are also other situations where causality and consequence are treated in quite a black and white manner. Bit of a stretch though.