Originally posted by blaze8492Of the NPT states Britain has the smallest arsenal with 180 warheads with forty in use at any one time for continuous at sea deterrence, with the others in reserve or on exercise. Since the British government consider forty 100 kiloton warheads sufficient deterrent against a pre-emptive strike from the Russians, who have a huge arsenal and a lot of land area as well as an ABM system protecting Moscow I really do not think there is any conceivable current or future nuclear weapons state who will not be deterred by either the UK's, or any of the other P5's arsenals, or at least if they are not then no amount of nuclear weapons are going to help. The only possible valid reason to would be to maintain parity with the Russians were they to increase their arsenal.
Point taken about the identification of the 2nd world. I was careless, although I didn't quite feel it was appropriate to label them all 3rd world, since Pakistan is technically 2nd world and India received it's independence after the formation of NATO, and has a nuclear arsenal. Knowing that Pakistan pursued it's weapons well into the 1980s, without act ...[text shortened]... before formation of NATO. achievement of the bomb was long after the formation of NATO though.
What I was trying to get at with the cases of both Libya and Iran is that verification by the IAEA, some intelligence work and a combination of diplomatic and economic pressure were successful in the case of Libya and apparently so in the case of Iran in getting them to abandon their nuclear weapons programs.
Given that the US increasing its arsenal could cause the other NPT nuclear weapons states to increase theirs, as well as undermining the non-proliferation treaty and so encouraging non-nuclear weapons states to withdraw from the treaty and produce warheads, and not necessarily in that order. So I feel that the risks with a policy of increasing the size of the US arsenal are all on the downside.
Improvements to the warheads such as safety, stealth and other anti-ABM systems, and tweaking yields in response to strategic reassessments and so forth are reasonable enough since they are unlikely to cause nuclear proliferation.
Originally posted by blaze8492Dude. It's a woman's body; she can do what she wants with it.
Ah, the "I can't differentiate between independent events and therefore I'll make the unintelligent decision and automatically discount/hurl ad hominems at whomever I disagree with" route. How unseemly.
Did you even read my edit? You're still 28 below the traditionally required N for invoking the CLT, and no rigorous analysis would EVER limit itself to just 2 data points.
An embryo is part if her body... end of bloody story.
I don't see what the problem is. If you want to have an abortion, fine. If you don't fine.
Just stop telling women what they can and cannot donwith their own bodies.
Jesus. It just goes around in circles or toppled off the planet!
Originally posted by blaze8492Oh for the love of Satan!
What I am asking for is actually quite reasonable, precisely because I am not asking for the most rigorous analysis. Instead, I am asking that you provide evidence of a correlative relationship. Furthermore, I am not asking you to run the analysis yourself. An academic, peer reviewed article would suffice, and Google Scholar makes those readily availabl ...[text shortened]... to support, and requesting further support of a position taken with 2 data points to support it.
According to the Lancet which researched abortion rates from 1995 to 2008:
Western Europe has the lowest:
12 per 1000
Then Southern African countries (15 per 1000), then Northern European countries, Australia, Northern Africa, Southern Europe and then the US with 19 per 1000.
Eastern European countries have the most: 43 per 1000.
Western Europe and Northern Europe have the most relaxed abortion laws in the world.
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Originally posted by no1marauderThanks for the correction - I had memorized a figure but it was probably outdated. Still, it's telling that even with the massive campaign to restrict abortion access in the U.S., the rate is still double that of where it is freely and easily available. Possibly I was confusing it with the teenage pregnancy rate, where the difference is about a factor of five.
I don't think so; it's lower but not by that degree:
By 2011, abortion rate in the United States dropped to its lowest point since the Supreme Court legalized the procedure. According to a study performed by Guttmacher Institute, long-acting contraceptive methods were having a significant impact in reducing unwanted pregnancies.[b] There were fewer th ...[text shortened]... ons per 1000 women aged 15–44 years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_Netherlands
Originally posted by KazetNagorraWho wouldn't want to bring a baby onto a flat planet, ruled by Trump and with a distinct lack of gravity?
Thanks for the correction - I had memorized a figure but it was probably outdated. Still, it's telling that even with the massive campaign to restrict abortion access in the U.S., the rate is still double that of where it is freely and easily available. Possibly I was confusing it with the teenage pregnancy rate, where the difference is about a factor of five.
Originally posted by shavixmirNow was that so hard? Did it kill you to do that? Are you in a hospital bed on life support thanks to that Google search? I doubt it.
Oh for the love of Satan!
According to the Lancet which researched abortion rates from 1995 to 2008:
Western Europe has the lowest:
12 per 1000
Then Southern African countries (15 per 1000), then Northern European countries, Australia, Northern Africa, Southern Europe and then the US with 19 per 1000.
Eastern European countries have the most: 4 ...[text shortened]... er 1000.
Western Europe and Northern Europe have the most relaxed abortion laws in the world.
Thank you. A source with a correlative relationship studying a particular period in time. Anyone can find a single paper to back up their ideas though.
I'm kidding. That part is true but I already stated that I wouldn't ask for more than that.
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Originally posted by shavixmirReally? Then killing anyone should be equivalent to clipping your toenails. When a skin cell or a liver cell leaves your body, it doesn't stop being a liver cell or skin cell, and it shares your genetic makeup entirely. Furthermore, when it leaves the body, those cells die. They don't continue growing, unlike a zygote. It also didn't require a separate set of DNA to come I to existence, but that's beside the point. You assert that a zygote, which is empirically genetically separate and behaves entirely different form any other cell in the mother's body, is in fact just another part of her body. Ok. Any child who has ever died than at the hands of their mother via infanticide was never a child. Our abhorrence of the killing of children is illogical. When you state that a biological human deserves to be considered a human for social purposes at a particular point in its development, you are placing an arbitrary and subjective limit on what it means to be human.
Dude. It's a woman's body; she can do what she wants with it.
An embryo is part if her body... end of bloody story.
I don't see what the problem is. If you want to have an abortion, fine. If you don't fine.
Just stop telling women what they can and cannot donwith their own bodies.
Jesus. It just goes around in circles or toppled off the planet!
Oh, and the human brain and body doesn't finish development until the age 26. Does that mean that until the age of 26, I'm just another part of my mother's body? Since we are dealing with artificial and subjective limits on the meaning of human life, I think everyone below the age of 26 doesn't deserve to be given any human rights and shouldn't be considered human. Their body is still developing after all. All those school shootings we mourn? Illogical. The crimes? Not crimes at all.
Originally posted by blaze8492Who is harmed when a zygote is killed?
Really? Then killing anyone should be equivalent to clipping your toenails. When a skin cell or a liver cell leaves your body, it doesn't stop being a liver cell or skin cell, and it shares your genetic makeup entirely. Furthermore, when it leaves the body, those cells die. They don't continue growing, unlike a zygote. It also didn't require a separat ...[text shortened]... ng after all. All those school shootings we mourn? Illogical. The crimes? Not crimes at all.
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Originally posted by blaze8492No it's not.
Really? Then killing anyone should be equivalent to clipping your toenails. When a skin cell or a liver cell leaves your body, it doesn't stop being a liver cell or skin cell, and it shares your genetic makeup entirely. Furthermore, when it leaves the body, those cells die. They don't continue growing, unlike a zygote. It also didn't require a separat ...[text shortened]... ng after all. All those school shootings we mourn? Illogical. The crimes? Not crimes at all.
The comparison is complete madness (but what else should we expect?).
Whatever happens to the mother, happens to the embryo.
Whstever happens to your mother, doesn't automatically happen to you.
Well, unless you're still bungling from the umbilical chord...
Originally posted by KazetNagorraProve it. Show me that because the zygote doesn't have a brain developed to the subjective level you place on it, it actually and empirically doesn't care or is incapable of caring about its death. I want scans showing me that cell growth ceases when the needle approaches, I want empirical behavioral proof that the zygote stops it's useless, non-human activities when its death becomes imminent and clear. And so what? I don't care if I die tomorrow. Does that make it OK for you to kill me tomorrow morning? I'm incapable of caring after all.
The zygote is incapable of caring about whether it's killed or not.
Originally posted by blaze8492Come on now, a lump of cells doesn't have the complicated machinery required for developing sufficient consciousness to feel pain, let alone care about its existence or possess self-awareness:
Prove it. Show me that because the zygote doesn't have a brain developed to the subjective level you place on it, it actually and empirically doesn't care or is incapable of caring about its death. I want scans showing me that cell growth ceases when the needle approaches, I want empirical behavioral proof that the zygote stops it's useless, non-human ac ...[text shortened]... . Does that make it OK for you to kill me tomorrow morning? I'm incapable of caring after all.
But when does the magical journey of consciousness begin? Consciousness requires a sophisticated network of highly interconnected components, nerve cells. Its physical substrate, the thalamo-cortical complex that provides consciousness with its highly elaborate content, begins to be in place between the 24th and 28th week of gestation.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-does-consciousness-arise/
And so what? I don't care if I die tomorrow. Does that make it OK for you to kill me tomorrow morning? I'm incapable of caring after all.
I think that if you wish to die you should be able to and assistance should be made available for you if you wish.
Originally posted by shavixmirEmpirically false. If the mother slices her hand, does the child magically get a cut on its hand too? If the mother eats healthy and is perfectly healthy, we should never see any deaths before childbirth, or disfigured children through flawed genetic development. And yet, we see that all the time with people who have done nothing to harm their child and followed all the rules. This is a reality that shouldn't hold if your assertions are correct.
No it's not.
The comparison is complete madness (but what else should we expect?).
Whatever happens to the mother, happens to the embryo.
Whstever happens to your mother, doesn't automatically happen to you.
Well, unless you're still bungling from the umbilical chord...
Originally posted by KazetNagorraCorrection, a lump of cells doesn't have the machinery you subjectively think is required to develop the kind of concern for one's life that you, a fully developed human, expect others to have. Your subjective opinion is all that's in play here.
Come on now, a lump of cells doesn't have the complicated machinery required for developing sufficient consciousness to feel pain, let alone care about its existence or possess self-awareness:
[quote]But when does the magical journey of consciousness begin? Consciousness requires a sophisticated network of highly interconnected components, nerve cell ...[text shortened]... u wish to die you should be able to and assistance should be made available for you if you wish.
Since when did consciousness become a pre-requisite for being human? By that logic, anyone who is rendered unconscious temporarily becomes non-human. And anyone who is in a coma is not a humanat all too. They exhibit zero tendencies of a conscious human. Should we kill off everyone who is knocked out? They're not human after all.
I never said I wished to die. I said I'm incapable of caring about whether or not I die, as that was your criteria. Do you get to kill me tomorrow at will now? Am I magically non human now?