We both realised our own personal arguments for the motion would be highly unpopular with the audience, and so we had to construct a more generally appealing set of arguments.
Did you dumb down your repugnant-but-sound arguments to make them more accessible? Or did you use the popular-but-inane arguments that stop people from seriously evaluating the issue?
It's worth reiterating that the debate wasn't for/against abortion, but for/against allowing women to decide to terminate at any stage of the pregnancy.
In a very tight nutshell, the argument I avoided was "infants aren't people by any rigorous criteria we (adults) would use to classify ourselves or each other as people. Our protective impulses towards them have a different basis, and aren't consistent throughout human history." We decided "infanticide is A-Okay" would not be a popular platform.
The argument I gave was "if you acc...
This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of September 17th. It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:
Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.
Thanks to everyone who contributes!
Previous diary; archive of prior diaries.
(Sorry for being late, I don't even have an excuse at all! Oh well.)