No wonder young girls don't get into science.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Well, I think back in the day they DID dress all infants in dresses.  Largish dresses.  You can see the logic in that.

I'm pretty sure there are plenty of cultures still out there that dress their kids more for comfort and health and ease than gender indentification.

I remember seeing pictures of either my dad or grandfather as a toddler wearing a dress. It used to be really common, apparently.

Here's a good blog entry about it: http://victoriantruth.blogspot.com/2008/07/from-commonly-held-misconceptions-about.html

[Bruno]

Everyone who didn't know me always assumed EFO was a boy and MO was a girl, no matter what they were dressed in.

They were babies, it didn't matter. I'm fine with people calling babies "it", too, I don't know why people get all worked up over calling small children "it". They don't naturally start to differentiate until around four, anyway. We should just stick them all in dresses (pants on babies are FUCKING STUPID, who came up with that? Makes diaper-changing a huge PITA) until they're old enough to care.

As far as I'm concerned, they're barely human. I don't think of babies as people until they start speaking. Until then, they're well loved pets that have to be fed, cleaned, and walked every 2-4 hours.

I used to have something like this in my head. It wasn't so much a belief that I accepted as some kind of well thought out logical conclusion, it was just a feeling.

Then my brother and his wife had a baby, and the baby needed open heart surgery. My brain tried to hang on to this feeling, because, you know, it might die anyway. No point in getting attached. I don't think it helped, but maybe it did. I went about by business with a dull sick feeling, and a gravelly feeling in my brain rather than constant, incapacitating terror, so that was something I guess.

He's 2 1/2 now, and really into Thomas the Train. He has a sister who is 8 months old.

I still don't fucking touch babies until they can hold their heads up by themselves, though. That's just weird.

[Kai]

that's kinda fucked up, Kai.

No, fucked up is treating them poorly. Fucked up is killing people for their skin color. Fucked up is making women second class citizens. Fucked up is corpse fucking.

My thoughts of babies as potential humans, which does not change my moral requirement to treat them right, is merely quirky.

It's also immature, stupid, and wrong.

I honestly can't think of a response to this that wouldn't be immature, stupid, and wrong.

You are supposed to be a scientist. How can you be a scientist and express an opinion such as that one for any other reason than thinking that it
somehow "cute"?

Perhaps you can explain why it's wrong and what the correct opinion (and why that opinion is correct) is rather than descending into character attacks.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

that's kinda fucked up, Kai.

No, fucked up is treating them poorly. Fucked up is killing people for their skin color. Fucked up is making women second class citizens. Fucked up is corpse fucking.

My thoughts of babies as potential humans, which does not change my moral requirement to treat them right, is merely quirky.

It's also immature, stupid, and wrong.

I honestly can't think of a response to this that wouldn't be immature, stupid, and wrong.

You are supposed to be a scientist. How can you be a scientist and express an opinion such as that one for any other reason than thinking that it
somehow "cute"?

Perhaps you can explain why it's wrong and what the correct opinion (and why that opinion is correct) is rather than descending into character attacks.

That was not a character attack, that was an attack on your opinion, followed by a question. I'm sorry, but I feel about explaining to you why babies are really people pretty much the same way I feel about explaining to someone why old people, black people, retarded people, or female people are still really people.

If you were an uneducated backwoods hick who actually had a valid reason for not understanding that babies are born with a full complement of brain cells and emotional/cognitive reactions, I might feel the obligation to explain it to you. But you're not. You have essentially said that because they can't communicate with you, they are less than human.

I would like to challenge you to figure out why that's wrong for yourself.

[Elder Iptuous]

 
you're seriously going to dig in on this one, Kai?

[Cain]

Poor people still aren't legally people though, right?

[Kai]

that's kinda fucked up, Kai.

No, fucked up is treating them poorly. Fucked up is killing people for their skin color. Fucked up is making women second class citizens. Fucked up is corpse fucking.

My thoughts of babies as potential humans, which does not change my moral requirement to treat them right, is merely quirky.

It's also immature, stupid, and wrong.

I honestly can't think of a response to this that wouldn't be immature, stupid, and wrong.

You are supposed to be a scientist. How can you be a scientist and express an opinion such as that one for any other reason than thinking that it
somehow "cute"?

Perhaps you can explain why it's wrong and what the correct opinion (and why that opinion is correct) is rather than descending into character attacks.

That was not a character attack, that was an attack on your opinion, followed by a question. I'm sorry, but I feel about explaining to you why babies are really people pretty much the same way I feel about explaining to someone why old people, black people, retarded people, or female people are still really people.

If you were an uneducated backwoods hick who actually had a valid reason for not understanding that babies are born with a full complement of brain cells and emotional/cognitive reactions, I might feel the obligation to explain it to you. But you're not. You have essentially said that because they can't communicate with you, they are less than human.

I would like to challenge you to figure out why that's wrong for yourself.

I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said something stupid like that. It was wrong. Please forgive me.

[Triple Zero]

Poor people still aren't legally people though, right?

Only if they can't keep their heads up high!

[Reginald Ret]

I hold children to be less responsible for their actions so in effect i consider them less than adults.
I also do not expect a 12year old kid to be capable of the level of empathy and risk assesment that an adults is capable of.
So i guess that makes me immature, stupid and wrong?

Consider the following situation:
You have to chose between saving a mother or her child.
The mother wants you to save the child.
Who do you save?

According to the 'children are equally human' position the choice is easy: both are of equal value and one wants to save the other. save the child.
According to the 'children are highly intelligent animals that will turn into humans later' position the choice is also easy: the mother has priority and the mothers says save the child. If you have any respect for the mother as a human you respect her decision and save the child.

Maybe the difference between the 'kids are like* pets' position and sociopathy is that the sociopath has no respect for a humans' agency.


*This means they are similar but not the same.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Wow, you equate "less responsible" with "less human"?

So to you, a child is less of a person than an adult?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Shall I extrapolate from that, that you also consider retarded people, people with brain damage, and elderlies with dementia a bit less than people as well?

Is this a sliding scale of personhood, in which the more intelligent someone is, the more human they are?

Where do you place people in comas on this scale, on a 1 to 10 of non-human to human?

Which human rights do you think these less-than-people are entitled to, and which are they not?

[Pæs]

Consider the following situation:
You have to chose between saving a mother or her child.
The mother wants you to save the child.
Who do you save?

According to the 'children are equally human' position the choice is easy: both are of equal value and one wants to save the other. save the child.
According to the 'children are highly intelligent animals that will turn into humans later' position the choice is also easy: the mother has priority and the mothers says save the child. If you have any respect for the mother as a human you respect her decision and save the child.

I don't understand how this example supports your argument. Could you give another?

[Triple Zero]

Wow, you equate "less responsible" with "less human"?

So to you, a child is less of a person than an adult?

You use quotes but Regret never said "less human".

> I hold children to be less responsible for their actions so in effect i consider them less than adults.

doesn't mean

> I hold children to be less responsible for their actions so in effect i consider them less human than adults.

It's probably a language thing, because I can see how that would look that way in English, but makes complete sense in Dutch (and I like children and see them as persons ). Dunno how to say it in English actually, "less important than adults" is also not quite right. I'm gonna leave it to Regret to clarify what adjective should go there, he knows best what he wanted to communicate.



But Regret, I do think this example is crazyweirdconfusing:

According to the 'children are highly intelligent animals that will turn into humans later' position the choice is also easy: the mother has priority and the mothers says save the child. If you have any respect for the mother as a human you respect her decision and save the child.

Because this isn't at all a clear-cut decision.

For example, in the case where you have to choose between a dog-owner and her highly intelligent dog. Or even better, make it a pig because they're smarter than dogs.

Or is it the "will turn into a human later" element?

I still think it's a stupid point of view, because even if "children are hightly intelligent animals that will turn into humans later" IN SOME SENSE, that doesn't make them any less of a person.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Wow, you equate "less responsible" with "less human"?

So to you, a child is less of a person than an adult?

You use quotes but Regret never said "less human".

> I hold children to be less responsible for their actions so in effect i consider them less than adults.

doesn't mean

> I hold children to be less responsible for their actions so in effect i consider them less human than adults.

It's probably a language thing, because I can see how that would look that way in English, but makes complete sense in Dutch (and I like children and see them as persons ). Dunno how to say it in English actually, "less important than adults" is also not quite right. I'm gonna leave it to Regret to clarify what adjective should go there, he knows best what he wanted to communicate.



But Regret, I do think this example is crazyweirdconfusing:

According to the 'children are highly intelligent animals that will turn into humans later' position the choice is also easy: the mother has priority and the mothers says save the child. If you have any respect for the mother as a human you respect her decision and save the child.

Because this isn't at all a clear-cut decision.

For example, in the case where you have to choose between a dog-owner and her highly intelligent dog. Or even better, make it a pig because they're smarter than dogs.

Or is it the "will turn into a human later" element?

I still think it's a stupid point of view, because even if "children are hightly intelligent animals that will turn into humans later" IN SOME SENSE, that doesn't make them any less of a person.

Since the topic was whether children were fully human, or are merely potential humans, and he seems to be arguing on  the "potential humans" side, he needs to clarify if that was not what he meant.

[Triple Zero]

True, and I'm gonna let Regret explain that bit for himself, I'm interested too.

I think he was sort of arguing both sides though, another Dutch trait called "poldermodel"