Comment by philsnow | Hacker News Reader

Comment by philsnow | Hacker News Reader

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Are you arguing against certain people or against certain positions?

> The self-proclaimed "pro-life" movement also strongly supports the death penalty, strongly oppose any sort of financial aid for poor children, are typically strong supporters of the military and violent intervention, unconditionally support the police in police violence cases, support corporal punishment of children etc..

This is an incoherent straw man caricature of "the right". Unfortunately for us all, there are tons of people in every side of politics who hold incoherent sets of positions. They're the "sound of a potato rotating" [0] kind of folks.

By "incoherent" I mean that I agree with you that it doesn't make sense for somebody to both be "pro-life" and also support the death penalty. But there are people who hold positions that are at least internally consistent.

Why bother crafting arguments against the former (where you'll gain little if anything from winning) when you could against the latter (where you have a chance of changing the minds of a lot of people, if you make a strong argument)?

[0] https://twitter.com/onlinegrapes/status/970945537435303936

> This is an incoherent straw man caricature of "the right". Unfortunately for us all, there are tons of people in every side of politics who hold incoherent sets of positions. They're the "sound of a potato rotating" [0] kind of folks.

I actually very much dislike labels such as "the right" and "the left", that said the "pro-life" movement as in the political movement that is trying to overturn Roe are very much exactly how I portrait them above. Name any prominent figure in the pro-life movement who also strongly opposes the death penalty.

> By "incoherent" I mean that I agree with you that it doesn't make sense for somebody to both be "pro-life" and also support the death penalty. But there are people who hold positions that are at least internally consistent.

> Why bother crafting arguments against the former (where you'll gain little if anything from winning) when you could against the latter (where you have a chance of changing the minds of a lot of people, if you make a strong argument)?

The issue is that the debate is not about convincing the fundamentalists, they can not be convinced, this is about pointing out the motivations of the fundamentalists to others. There is a very good book in German (unfortunately I do not believe there is an English translation): "Wie man mit Fundamentalisten diskutiert, ohne den Verstand zu verlieren: Anleitung zum subversiven Denken" which analyses forms of argumentation and historical debates and their philosophical underpinnings. One of the central concluding arguments is that in fighting totalitarism and fundamentalism the debate with a fundamentalist can will never convince them, because fundamentally their belief trumps rational arguments (something that fundamentalists on all sides of the spectrum consistently repeat), the debate should be to convince/warn the observers, to point out the inconsistencies, the real motivations.

> I actually very much dislike labels such as "the right" and "the left"

I do as well, because they conflate too many unrelated things together, and it's impossible to pin down something as amorphous as "the [direction]".

> the "pro-life" movement as in the political movement that is trying to overturn Roe are very much exactly how I portray them above

So are you against this "movement" or the position? I'm in the pro-life movement and I don't support the death penalty.

> Name any prominent figure in the pro-life movement who also strongly opposes the death penalty.

Oh, I'm not prominent though.

Archbishop Gomez, president of the USCCB and board member of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, is pro-life and against the death penalty.

> The issue is that the debate is not about convincing the fundamentalists, they can not be convinced

I referred to "people who hold positions that are at least internally consistent", and then you started talking about fundamentalism? What does it mean to be "fundamentalist"? It sounds like it's one whose "belief trumps rational arguments". Those people are the worst. I don't think that they're the same people as who I was referring to, though.

Anyway, I think we both agree on the nit I was trying to pick initially which is that broad labels aren't generally helpful to anybody trying to reach the truth, but they sure do get used a lot in our modern discourse.

> I referred to "people who hold positions that are at least internally consistent", and then you started talking about fundamentalism? What does it mean to be "fundamentalist"? It sounds like it's one whose "belief trumps rational arguments". Those people are the worst. I don't think that they're the same people as who I was referring to, though.

Yes I agree with you, and I should have been more specific that by fundamentalist I don't necessarily mean religion either. Your characterisation of "someone whose belief trumps rational arguments" hits it quite well on the head.

> Anyway, I think we both agree on the nit I was trying to pick initially which is that broad labels aren't generally helpful to anybody trying to reach the truth, but they sure do get used a lot in our modern discourse.

I generally agree, but what I tried to say with referring to the book above, was that there are different types of debates.

That said, I accept the criticism, we should try to keep the debates here on HN more about exchanging views in an "honest" (for lack of a better word) discourse, and use less labels. I will try to do better in the future.

> Your characterisation of "someone whose belief trumps rational arguments" hits it quite well on the head.

Those words were a quotation from your post :)

It seems to me like a good definition of a certain kind of person who I don't like to argue with, but I don't like abdicating the term "fundamentalist" to them because I consider myself a fundamentalist / because it just doesn't seem to really fit.

I enjoyed this exchange, thanks and cheers to you.

Why do you even compare the two?

The death penalty is done to a tiny portion of criminals, is subject to very strict procedures and rules, has plenty of time to appeal, and is generally not "murder" by any description necessary. It can be misused of course, and there's plenty of arguments it is unnecessary, but we abort 800k alone per year in the USA and there's significant debate about the humanity of what the procedure is inflicted on. We have killed 1550 people this year for the death penalty.

They are two different things. You might as well say all prolife people should be anti-war and all prochoice people be pro-war for that rationale. I never see why people think this is a gotcha of hypocrisy.

> We have killed 1550 people this year for the death penalty.

You're considerably off with that. In America, 6 people have been executed so far in 2022 and 11 people were executed for the whole of 2021.

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