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I'm probably going to be corrected by some theology major (I don't care) but let me give my best explanation of Calvinism:
Before you're born, it's already predetermined whether you're going to heaven or hell.
"So why, pastor, should I be good and righteous"
"My son, when you sin, it reveals that you're wicked and going to hell. Best, therefore, to abstain from sin."
As a persuasive technique, this probably works just as good as anything. It's often difficult to tease out causality in noisy data. I point this out in the context of Scott's latest post. Look at the graphs here and tell me what you notice:
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-polyamory
I notice that choosing to be monogamous or polygamous barely matters at all across many aspects of wellbeing. But there is one key difference: fertility. Polygamous people have many fewer children.
Does polygamy cause infertility or does infertility cause polygamy? Does it matter? It's extremely dysgenic and bound to go the way of the Shakers.
Except that virtually every current polygamist was born to a monogamist, just as virtually every homosexual was born from sex between two heterosexuals and every transwoman came out of a biological vagina. Polygamists aren't an insular ethnic tribe whose fertility matters, they're a meme, they can spread even without having children.
In Elizabethan England, London was a population sink, without a constant flow of people from the countryside London would have emptied. By your logic therefore, London was Dysgenic and bound to die out (as were European cities in general at the time). Between the fertile countryside and London, which was more influential on the future?
This is usually a thought-terminating phrase and should probably be avoided here. Arguing that because someone thinks X about Y, they might also think A about B, and since you disagree with A and B, they should reject X and Y has several problems.
Where I come from we call it "proof by contradiction" and it's a fundamental tool of logic.
I don't think that's an accurate characterization of how it was used here or how it's typically used (Which is often the inverse, e.g. 'Oh republicans want to save unborn babies? then by their logic they should also support free universal healthcare for everyone ;) ') At the very least the total population of London vs the surrounding countryside is not an apt comparison to the portion number of people in LA or Portland or wherever that practice a certain lifestyle, and is certainly not a demonstration a formal logic syllogism.
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