Of course you would have an effect on the diversity of traits. Down's syndrome IS a trait. A trait is the expression of a genotype, not the genotype.

So in your last post you don't know what "chromosome" or "chromosomal" means, and now you don't know what a trait is.

I mean, you are literally just taking named concepts you know nothing about and mixing them in with random insults. It's... interesting. But hey, at least you seem to be rooting for yourself.

Sounding like a greedy Randian capitalist...=)

Before you join the club though, I think I should warn you: despite appearances, we're few, and we're unanimously despised.

This is a pretty standard viewpoint actually, although not very Randian. She would not be happy with attempts to justify liberty on utilitarian grounds. I'll cop to the capitalism part though.

Yeah, I think I constructed my argument sloppily. It's interesting that the point I made about any other "wrong" act (killing, raping, assaulting), doesn't apply to the argument here, whereas it's very strong in those other cases (no one could argue that society doesn't really thinks that domestic abuse or 3 year old child killing is a great wrong, for example, if society actively allows it based on the flimsiest of whims and restrains those who try to stop it).

I think the way you've been able to twist this is that we have a basic belief that acts done voluntarily between consenting adults are not immoral in the legal sense, and should not be interfered with, while the effects on third parties of those actions are outside the scope/a separate aspect of the immorality.

This just isn't true for anything where there's direct harm from one living being to another. If being A is allowed to harm being B, for the flimsiest of reasons with no repercussions, then the morality against the harming of B, and B's status as a being worthy of protection, can't be particularly strong.

Oh I completely agree, I'm libertarian but socially progressive.

Abortion is different though, in that it's a class of action in which one being is allowed to assault (in fact, kill) another. Generally the law comes down heavily on the protection of innocent parties from assault or killing. That it doesn't in abortion, and preferences a female whim over the protection of the innocent, is interesting and unusual and probably indefensible unless we say that the fetus isn't a human life yet. But if we do that, then it becomes not-evil to say that particular clumps of cells should morally be aborted* if they're heavily damaged.

*Note: not government mandated, but morally.
No, I haven't asserted that this viewpoint is inconsistent. I've asserted that the idea that the killing 1,000,000 healthy unborn babies/year, allowed on the flimsiest of whims and with no penalties, is somehow a lesser evil than the opinion that it's immoral not to abort the 6000 down syndrome babies that get born each year, is a pretty bizarre juxtaposition. That's all.

You're being deliberately obtuse. You know very well that "trait" has two meanings. You could take the argument in good faith, but you're choosing not to, which usually happens when people are getting owned. So let me make this simpler for you, so people can see how vacuous your position is and how badly you've been owned.

Klinefelter Syndrome (XXY), is not inherited. It's created by an error in chromosome copying. People with this are sterile.

You claim that eugenics should be argued against on the basis of it decreasing the genetic diversity in populations, which might have unwanted side effects. You claim that this is the "correct" argument against eugenics.

I claim that this argument is clownishly dumb, and that the argument only works in areas where ecology is not well known enough to understand all side effects (which is merely a matter of time), or where the "genetic diversity" argument actually works. And that eugenics is properly argued against on moral grounds, because the first has time limits and the second situation offers no protection to those covered by it.

XXY syndrome (and many others like it) are the perfect examples. XXYs are sterile, so their genes won't be passed on. They have no diversity of genes that isn't present in the population. Thus, what reason do we have for not killing them, under what you claim is the "correct" argument against eugenics (population genetic diversity)?

Do you see how your argument fails? How the only strong enduring argument to be made against eugenics is a moral one?

That was all I was trying to say. You obviously knew I was right, or you wouldn't have descended into trying to throw off red herrings.

I think we can pretty confidently say that those results are total BS. Down Syndrome causes a lot of suffering and loss of freedom - I haven't had to time to get hard data yet, but look at CDC's stats, for example:

A large list of medical and financial problems, a very very low IQ, constant requirements for care (meaning siblings miss out), a huge net burden on society. Down Syndrome makes up a full third of intellectual disability. When we have so many people who could use love and care and actually meaningfully experience and contribute to the wider world, knowingly having a Down Syndrome kid does seem immoral.

Still, it's an interesting point. I wonder what the real numbers are, as it's obvious this survey isn't representative. People learn to make the best of what they have and love regardless. Is this an argument for keeping very damaged fetuses around? I don't know.

Having any children causes a lot of suffering and loss of freedom. Therefore, you should abort all children.

The hard data you present doesn't mean what you think it means. If we look at these numbers and interpret them consistently, we should go into hospice facilities and kill everyone.

This is mostly ignorance. One of the big pushes of disability advocacy is making the point that people who are disabled can contribute to the wider world, and that they do in fact have a meaningful experience of reality. Until you provide evidence that they don't (beyond naive assertions), there's no reason to accept your claim. What we do have is self-reported data, which is difficult to dispute.

Isn't representative of what? Your preconceived opinion? Even if we waved our hands and changed the numbers by 15-20%, would your argument become significantly better?

I don't think you've demonstrated any ability to handle data, which is a terrible weakness in your argumentation.

There are a lot of unhappy functional people in the world who are doing little to contribute to the larger world. Why not just kill those people off?

While I don't know if I agree with you on the issue of adoption, I do agree with your post here. And this point in particular is excellent and bears repetition.

We aren't a world of boxes, whose only purpose is to be stacked as rationally as possible. We're a world of widely varied individuals and cultures. We often count our society in rational terms of "profit" (economical or otherwise). That can be useful as a tool, but it's just that. If those "numbers" become the goal in and of themselves, we have lost our way. At least I think so.

When I was younger, one of my mates was a guardian for a boy with Down's syndrome, so he used to hang out with us a fair bit. Anyone saying he or people who share his condition "can't contribute" (or some such nonsense) are sprouting drivel. He was a happy kid who made people happy, that's already better than many of us.

Yes, this is same as wanting to abort damaged fetuses, something we already do en masse with healthy ones.

A more correct analogy: We already kill millions of healthy old people each year if (and only if) the family decides for whatever trivial reason that they're not wanted. Then someone argues that it's immoral not to kill the very sick ones, so far gone as to be barely human, given that widespread killing of healthy ones already happens on a family member's whim.

If you want to do analogies, THAT my friend, is an accurate analogy. Have a think about it.
Most disabled people can. Most Down Syndrome people can't. They are unable to have meaningful conversations. Or to care for others in more meaningful way than say a smart Labrador. Less than 20% can work, and most of those need special attention.

Self reported data is notoriously unreliable, especially if obtained non-anonymously. Like I said, I'll look into it. You really can't get good data on what people think. Who's going to fill in a survey that says about their intellectually challenged sibling or kid "I'd rather have a different kid/brother" or "He makes my life unhappy" or "I wish he'd never been born"?

Most people would NEVER say that even if they believed it. Hell, women don't even say it most of the time about partners who abuse them. The data is nonsense and the numbers are useless. Not to mention, massively selection biased. Your common sense/life experience should tell you that. Is ANYONE going to put out data which say "Most people with down syndrome kids wish they'd never had them, and believe it makes their life miserable"? In this age? You'd be shouted down and abused by people exactly like yourself, as I am being. Come on, man. If you're science based, you have to see the massive flaws in this data or any data relating to this. It's meaningless.

I'm willing to concede however that some of the responses represent what people really feel. And I think that's sufficient to make the arguments that Original Position is making. How many is something that's unknowable, I think.

Anyway. I'll have a look when I have time and get back to you.
Again, the idea that it's immoral not to abort Down Syndrome kids is totally separate from whether they should be killed when they're alive. You know, like regular kids and abortion - who are actually more of a burden once they're out of the womb. You're just strawmanning, dude.

What we do is not an argument for what is moral.

Millions with such a restricted condition? Let's see your stats. (And even if you have such stats, it doesn't imply that this is a moral thing to do.)

Be careful of what you're actually arguing. The original statement under question is that "It's immoral not to abort Down's Syndrome babies." This is different from "It's not immoral to abort Down's Syndrome babies."

Only if the data holds and the logic holds. But I don't see it happening.

The bolded is plainly false. Again, your ability to handle real-life data is really questionable.

The irony here is that you're claiming that we can't get good data on what people think, and so you think that you can just ignore it. As I pointed out, even if we skew the numbers strongly negatively to account for bias in the self-reporting, it still doesn't support your case.

<SNIP> -- Misread the statement.

But they *DO* say it sometimes. It's one thing to say that one might "rarely" admit to something, and it's quite another to say it "NEVER" happens.

If you really believed this, you would never have said that you would look into the data because you would already know in advance it couldn't support anything. So in my analysis of your position, you're ignoring data that goes against your assumptions and are in search of data that supports them. This is the epitome of fallacious reasoning.

Nope. Just following your logic to its ends. Your analysis so far presents nothing that distinguishes against barely pre-born and barely post-born. All you're saying is that some people can't contribute to society, and so it's moral to kill them. I'm just saying that if I accept that premise, then there are lots of other people that we can morally kill. At least, until you present some other moral premise that you're using.

Quick check: You meant abortion here, right?

Just cleaning up a misread here on my part.

The assertion that you can't get truthful answers here once again shows that you're primarily disagreeing with the results because they disagree with your preconceived notion. Let's say for a moment that you found a survey that flipping things around, and an overwhelming majority of children didn't want their intellectually challenged sibling. Would you accept that data? Would I not be able to use your approach and say something like "Most people would NEVER say that they would want an intellectually disabled sibling."

You're being nothing more than ignorant.

Saw a preview for a reality show with people who have down syndrome. Going to be hard since the cant converse...

I want to make a rhetorical point here. You have focused on the most extremely frivolous of reasons why someone might choose to have an abortion, and have continued to refer to woman's motivations for having an abortion as a "whim," thereby minimizing its significance.

However, the reasons you list here for how having a Down's Syndrome baby entails "massive suffering" are very similar to the reasons why many women have abortions in general (linked in an earlier post). That is, 40% of women say that financial difficulty is one of the reasons why they have an abortion. 20% say that it will interfere will future opportunities. 29% say that it will interfere on their ability to raise their other children and so on.

So why is it then that you describe having a Down's children as entailing "massive suffering," but the decision of the woman to have an abortion as just a "whim"? The reasons in both cases are not that dissimilar. Your framing of this issue makes it harder for me to think that you are trying to be objective.

Two other points. First, I would be curious to know how these numbers from the CDC compare to the general population. That is, I imagine that having a baby regardless causes financial problems for many families, or causes a family member to stop working.

Second, to me your CDC numbers are actually strong reasons for the claim that you are not morally required to abort fetuses with Down's. After all, if the primary harms are financial problems or home healthcare or a family member not working, well, many families do not experience these problem (eg according to your numbers 60% of families with children with Down's do not experience financial problems as a result).

Thus, if your reason for thinking it immoral to not abort a fetus with Down's is because of the suffering it will cause, then in cases where it doesn't cause that suffering presumably it wouldn't then be immoral. And it seems like it often doesn't. And here is one of the reasons why people get annoyed by blanket claims like Dawkins is making. I think a lot of pro-choice people would think that the best decision in some cases would be to have an abortion if your fetus has Down's. However, I think they will generally also think that this is a complicated decision based on the particularities of your own situation: how much money you make, your ability to care for a child with special needs, and so on. For some people, these would not be such hardships, and so if they choose to undertake them they are morally free to do so. Claims that it is always immoral just seem to ignore these issues.

Yes, that was a mistype.

I'm doubtful you're going to come back and provide this, so here's what I've got:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/26/us/phy...de-fast-facts/

The honest thing to do is admit you've overreached by several orders of magnitude.

This captures a good part of my objection to Dawkins claims. I do think that Dawkins is pretty bad at philosophy so I am not surprised by his overly simplistic view when there are credible philosophers defining his line. What gets me about the discussion between Peter Singer and Harriet McBryde Johnson recounted in the New York Times is that he fails to account for the authors claim her life has been worth living. I'm prepared to accept that for many women aborting a foetus with Down Syndrome or some other condition is the best decision. I am also prepared to accept that post birth abortion should be an available option once the extent of a condition is known.

What I do not think correct is the view that it would have been best to abort when evaluating the decision not to after the event when a parent claims the child has been a net positive and the child claims to have a life worth living.

Have a read again of what I wrote:

A 5 year old knows we don't kill millions of old people if the family wants it. Obviously. I was describing a world in which your hospice claim would be comparable (i.e. if we already lived in a world where we kill millions of *healthy* old people to satisfy the whims of the family, it would be weird to get up in arms if someone said it's immoral not to kill a few thousand really sick ones, since we already kill millions of healthy ones to satisfy a family's whims).

I think I'll have to spell everything out in excruciating detail this in forum; I'm used to intelligent people, and thinking and debating skills here are really bad.

Again, it isn't hard to understand what I'm saying. I could make this argument to any lawyer and they'd instantly understand what I mean.

IF the most trivial of whims is sufficient to kill an unborn child, and there is no penalty for the decider, then an unborn child's life is considered so trivially unimportant as to be near worthless.

I'm not diminishing the seriousness of abortion for many women.

Let me give you an analogy to make this clearer.

IF the most trivial of whims of a husband is sufficient to kill his wife and have no legal consequences, then the life/bodily integrity/worth of a woman isn't held very highly by society. In fact, you could argue that it's near worthless.

That's not diminishing the fact that most men who would kill women would do so for very serious reasons. It is not trivializing the decision of a man to kill his wife. But the minimum reason required does indicate the value that pro-wife-killing advocates put on a woman's life.

Does that make it clearer? I'm not trivializing (most) women's difficult abortions choice, I'm saying that the fact that the most trivial of reasons are sufficient to have an unborn child killed with zero consequences means that we don't value unborn children very highly.

So to get all up in arms about saying that a tiny percentage of the highly damaged ones *should* be killed, when we kill millions of healthy ones with full lives ahead of them, is a kind of weird juxtaposition, no?
I don't think you are being genuine in acknowledging just how much time and resources and freedom Down Syndrome takes away from families and societies. That many are happy with it doesn't make it good. Many women end up happy with men who beat and rape them and who they are forcibly married to as teenagers. People make the best of bad situations and come to love that which is close to them. Does that mean that forced child marriage to old men isn't bad?

I think the argument that Dawkins is putting forward is pretty compelling.

1. Down Syndrome people have a very limited experience of the world, not that far above an intelligent pet.
2. They take up truly extraordinary amounts of resources in a world where 1/2 a billion people go to bed hungry and over a billion live on less than a dollar day.
3. They have no possibility of contributing anything to intellectual or cultural life, or to the productivity of society
4. They displace healthy, functioning people, who could truly experience life and have meaningful, non-****** relationships with others.

I am happy to concede that they cause a lot less *direct* suffering that I thought they did, and perhaps even cause some happiness. I have finally had some time to do some reading, and it's hard to find good resources on what families think about members with Downs Syndrome. Advocate websites and groups just aren't reliable sources of information; no one is going to post research that says "Down Syndrome people are a horrible burden and make their families miserable".

I'm not having difficulty understanding your argument (or at least, I don't think so); I was here making a purely rhetorical comment on your argument. However, I generally try to avoid focus on the style of an argument rather than its content though, so I'll just move on from that point.

I still think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the viewpoint of those like me who are disagreeing with you here. Your posting here has mostly been an attempt to get others to agree with you that there is something strange about both believing that abortion should be legal for any reason and those who don't think it is immoral to have a Down's Syndrome child.

You have never phrased this weirdness as an explicit contradiction (probably because you can't.), so it is a little difficult to know how to respond for those of us who don'tfind this a strange juxtaposition. Mostly all I can do is state what I've already stated, that the rule about the government allowing abortion, even when the mother is acting immorally by having an abortion, is based on widely accepted (even by pro-life people) political principles of the value of freedom, autonomy, and privacy, all of which would be threatened if the government attempted to regulate people's reasons for having an abortion. On the other hand, the case that it is always immoral to have a Down's Syndrome child seems to be based on a kind of utilitarianism that most people find strongly counter-intuitive.* You can agree or disagree with that conclusion, but I don't see how accepting Dawkins' claim should cause you to re-examine your views about the value of autonomy.

*Which is not to say it is wrong. I disagree with Singer's arguments about DS children, but I do think he is worth engaging with on this issue.

This is an odd comparison. The reason why I don't think it immoral is because I believe that when faced with major life decisions such as: what kind of career should I have, should I marry this person, should I have children, that often many options are morally permissible, even if some of them are preferable over other (in terms of maximizing personal or aggregate happiness). This has to do with the moral value of autonomy, of making your own decisions about how to live your life, what to value, and so on. It is in part exactly because rape denies this autonomy to other people that it is so evil. Sex, in itself, is a good thing. But forcing people against their will to have sex is a deep violation of their sense of self.

I would say that similar considerations apply to my rejection of Dawkins' view. Many women would find having an abortion when they don't want to psychologically damaging as well. But yet, that would seem to be the implication of Dawkins' view, that too bad, they should have an abortion anyway for the good of the poor people.

Good, always more useful to respond to a more explicitly laid out argument. Except note that this is not actually an argument. This is just a serious of premises with no conclusion, nor any viable way of getting to the conclusion you presumably want (that it is immoral not to abort Down's Syndrome babies) without the addition of moral premises that would be very controversial.

That being said, some of these premises are also false. For instance, (1) is outrageously false. A person with Down's Syndrome experiences the world in a vastly different way from an "intelligent pet." Most importantly, a person with Down's has a sense of personal identity, of who they are apart from just their immediate sensory experiences. This is the crucial thing that "intelligent pets" don't have, and what separates having a pet from slavery.

Regarding (2), this doesn't get us very far and also has startling moral implications that I think you would probably reject (eg we should just kill people once they incur expensive-to-treat diseases and instead give that money to Against Malaria Foundation).

Most importantly, until there is a mechanism in place to actually distribute the money that would otherwise be spent on people with Down Syndrome to the poor and starving, I don't take this as a serious point. You can make almost literally the exact same argument against almost all personal spending in developed countries (as Peter Singer did in "Famine, Affluence, and Morality"). Thus, I don't really regard this as a point about Down's Syndrome, but about spending any money at all.

Good, updating beliefs in the light of evidence is important. I would just say that until we have good evidence for this claim that we shouldn't use it as a premise in sweepingly broad moral arguments.

Which I believe renders your entire point to be completely useless. But I don't mind that at all. Feel free to make your points utterly meaningless at any time. It saves me time and effort.

Please do. It's far more entertaining.

Uh, no. You offered an analogy which was intellectually bankrupt; I countered with a more accurate one.

You said: if we use should kill down syndrome fetuses, then by the same logic we should kill all seniors
I said: The more accurate analogy here is a situation where we already kill a million healthy seniors for trivial reasons, and someone is recommending that we kill <1% of those who are very sick.

That's all. And it's correct.

.

Dawkins comes out with another doozy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6H9XirkhZY

"You can dispute exactly whatever is meant by 'nothing' but whatever it is,
it's very, very simple"

Wheeee!!!!

I absolutely love Dawkins. He is so well spoken and intelligent.