Douglas_Knight comments on Fascists and Rakes - Less Wrong

39 Post author: philh 05 January 2014 12:41AM

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Comment author: Douglas_Knight 05 January 2014 10:56:51PM 0 points [-]

I need to stop treating you like a fascist, and start trying to convince you that tic-tacs are not sentient.

But that doesn't apply in the case of either abortion or animal rights. Everyone already knows that these are central aspects of those issues. All arguments about them acknowledges that (but not all vilification of the opponent, intended for internal consumption).

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 06 January 2014 01:41:10AM 0 points [-]

All arguments about them acknowledges that

Really? That isn't true of nearly all arguments on the issue that I've seen.

Comment author: philh 06 January 2014 02:40:11PM 1 point [-]

I think that one thing I was doing without realising it , when I wrote this post, was thinking about the sort of arguments you see on reddit. (As opposed to debates in congress, for example, which I don't get much exposure to.)

I don't think it's uncommon to see redditors accuse a pro-lifer of just wanting to punish people for having sex, or to exert control over women's bodies.

I do think this is less of an issue with vegetarianism, but the vegetarianism debate seems to be less heated. I've seen people on facebook say that it's okay to be vegetarian/vegan but you shouldn't force that choice on your cats and dogs; but it came with the argument that cats and dogs can't be healthy without meat, which makes it not a great example. (It might be wrong for humans to eat meat, but not wrong for humans to feed meat to cats and dogs.)

I did a search for PETA, expecting to find people calling them fascists in some sense, but didn't find much. Vegetarians accusing non-vegetarians of being rakes seemed more common.