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#71
09-30-2005, 11:05 PM
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Re: Abortion = less crime?
[ QUOTE ]
To me there is only one meaningful reason to magically draw the line at conception. It is because you have bought into some relgious story that a soul somehow enters a zygote on the moment of the zygote's creation. [/ QUOTE ] Another meaningful reason is that conception is a safe point. Prior to conception you have an egg and sperm neither of which have a full set of chromosomes and on thier own do not constitutes a human being. At some point during or after conception a human being is created. If you want choose a point that is absolutely safe, conception is it. [ QUOTE ] You claim that we should all get on board with playing it safe morally and going by the conception line in the sand just in case that is the gold standard for what constitutes a life. I don't agree, but you believe that I should agree with your line even though you can't prove the line yourself. [/ QUOTE ] He doesn't have to prove anything. If you draw the line at conception because it is a known safe point, than in order to push that line further you have to prove a human being does not yet exist. The further you extend that line without proof, the higher the probability a human life is being destroyed. [ QUOTE ] Others would ask you to make the line at the husband's request for sex and you dismissed this idea as splitting hairs. [/ QUOTE ] Who are these others? I can tell you its not the Catholics. [ QUOTE ] Why can you disregard their calling for you to come onboard with their line in order to play it safe morally, but I'm not allowed to disregard your calling for me to come on board with your line? [/ QUOTE ] As a society we have to draw the line somewhere. Hes advocating drawing at conception. You're advocating at drawing the line at birth(at least as far as I can tell). He has given a reason for his line, your response has been in so many words "don't tell me what to do, I don't really care if we kill a human being" Stu 
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#72
10-01-2005, 01:35 AM
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Re: freakonomics
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] the book basically just looks at stats to come up with different answers. it is not political in anyway. basically it also trys to get people to think rationally about problems. for example car accidents are way more of a problem than terrorism or stuff the media hypes. basically that is what alot of econ professors do. try to come up with explanations for things different than common perception. [/ QUOTE ] i understand what you are trying to say. However, correlation does not prove causation. The correlation mentioned by the OP is probably real (in terms of the stats mentioned). It is by NO MEANS proof of causation. However, there are a lot of people on this board who will take that "analysis" offered and use it to denigrate poor people. I might have been a little bit hasty with my comments, but I feel that I merely headed the discussion off at the pass. [/ QUOTE ] The author is an economic professor at the University of Chicago and also has worked through Harvard. He knows how to condust a study using statistics. In the book, he even warned against correlation being interpreted as causation. He gave the example of cities with high crime rates having the most police. He knows what he is doing.
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#73
10-01-2005, 01:38 AM
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Re: freakonomics
i have not read the book but i would assume the author would not state that he is 100 percent certain this is the cause. he is more likely just trying to come up with a unique hypothesis for crime declining and seeing if the data fits the points. i would assume the book is meant more as a tool for thinking about problems in a different way. the abortion idea is more of a headline grabber than anything. econ professors generally are not interested in giving their opinion on abortion policy.
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#74
10-01-2005, 05:19 AM
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Re: Abortion = less crime?
Turning oneself into a godlike figure hardly makes one an atheist.
[ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] Atheist liberals are smart enough not to drink the KoolAid of religious dogma. The less people who have their lives dictated by the teachings of Jesus or Santa or the Easter Bunny the better off we are. [/ QUOTE ] I'm sure the millions slaughtered under Stalin and Mao would agree with you. Stu [/ QUOTE ]
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#75
10-01-2005, 10:03 AM
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Re: freakonomics
[ QUOTE ]
i have not read the book but i would assume the author would not state that he is 100 percent certain this is the cause. he is more likely just trying to come up with a unique hypothesis for crime declining and seeing if the data fits the points. i would assume the book is meant more as a tool for thinking about problems in a different way. the abortion idea is more of a headline grabber than anything. econ professors generally are not interested in giving their opinion on abortion policy. [/ QUOTE ] As I'm going through this book, I see that his whole abortion/crime link was actually a full blown study he did and released the paper on in 2001. But, no, he didn't develop any abortion policies from it.
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