Medical marijuana is predominantly a scam used as an excuse to have non-medical marijuana and call it “medical”. The cases of people who actually need it for medical purposes are very non-central examples of how medical marijuana gets used in reality.
Try mentally tabooing the word “medical” and review your positions on medical marijuana. My impression here is that you have strong cached thoughts about what does and does not qualify as “medical”, and the difference between medical and non-medical reasons isn’t as large as you think.
For one hypothetical example, if there was a drug that made average people into geniuses, would its use qualify as “medical”, or “performance enhancing”? What about a drug that made below-average people average? What’s the difference, except expectations about what constitutes normality?
“Medical” here means “matching what the average person would think of when told it is medical”. That is, the word is intended to communicate, and what it communicates is misleading to a large portion of the intended audience.
Tabooing Your Words has the purpose of removing a disagreement about word definitions from these discussions. The substitution you made does not help, since now the discussion could continue in the direction of arguing about what the average person thinks of the word (which is pretty close to the definition of definition). (This feels close to Fighting the Hypothetical.)
(Am I intuiting this right that you’re not sure you could find a proper substitution that the others could not prove bad at capturing what you wanted to say by using it to prove your point wrong?)
(At this point I’m half expecting a reply from someone along the lines of “This kind of psychological analysis isn’t going to make you many friends.”)
Tabooing Your Words has the purpose of removing a disagreement about word definitions from these discussions.
Tabooing your words is used when you personally are disagreeing with someone and you and them may not mean the same thing by the word. Tabooing your words is not used when discussing whether the word they use is misleading an audience. It doesn’t actually matter that the proponents may think that “medical” means “relieves anxiety” thus qualifying recreational marijuana (as well as tobacco and alcohol) as medical; they know very well that the audience won’t interpret it that way.
I downvoted you because Viliam claimed medical marijuana prevents a great deal of pain, and you responded with—an argument that fails to even assert it causes pain elsewhere. Perhaps you could start by showing that what you call the “central” use of medical marijuana does not displace other recreational drugs.
He didn’t just claim that medical marijuana reduces pain, he claimed that it reduces pain, and therefore people who oppose euthanasia should support it. This argument implicitly assumes, not just that medical marijuana prevents pain, but also that there are no other reasons (including non-pain related reasons) which outweigh the benefit from preventing pain.
In other words, given his argument, any argument that medical marijuana is in general bad—including claims that it is misused for non-medical purposes—is responsive. So is any argument that asserts that pain relief is relatively infrequent, because he is (implicltly) balancing pain relief against other reasons, and the other reasons affect the result more if pain relief is infrequent. Just because his claim is that it reduces pain doesn’t mean that counter-arguments must be limited to asserting that it causes more pain elsewhere.
I got the impression that the anti-euthanasia guy is mostly repeating one argument—that you can always remove pain, therefore the argument of killing people to prevent them from feeling unnecessary pain is always false.
...From what I have seen, hospitals for terminally ill patients are more or less torture chambers.
But sure, if you had argued that we should view marijuana use as approaching torture in badness, or even that the opposition takes this view, that would be responsive.
Now the Catholic Church does in fact seem to oppose marijuana across the board. As an outsider I find this ludicrous (will they treat it more like wine once someone claims it can become the breath of Christ?) but certainly I would not have downvoted you had you presented your claim as an explanation of the (specifically Catholic) opposition and not implied that I should share your objection.
I’m not Catholic and not specifically trying to explain a Catholic position. I am trying to justify it, however (without claiming that the justification is the one used by Catholics).
But sure, if you had argued that we should view marijuana use as approaching torture in badness, or even that the opposition takes this view, that would be responsive.
I find it difficult to imagine what pieces of evidence one could give for hospitals being like or not like a torture chamber. I also find it difficult to imagine that he’s seen or measured pain levels in many actual torture chambers in order to be able to meaningfully compare hospitals to them. In other words, calling it a torture chamber is an applause light, and doesn’t actually say anything more than just “there is unnecessary pain”, which as I’ve pointed out, I did respond to.
That is evidence for there being unnecessary pain, which I don’t deny.
Edit: I suppose that’s too strong. If the pain is part of a tradeoff against worse consequences it might be necessary. So change that to “that is evidence for there being pain that produces negative utility to the patients, which I don’t deny”.
The usual painkillers are more addictive, have worse side effects (which is why they cannot be used as frequently as the patients would need), and they also get stolen by people working in medicine for recreational purposes.
One possibility is medical marijuana, with sufficient precautions that it stays medical. I don’t know exactly what level of precautions would be optimal, but you could do a lot better than we have now.
Always try to keep in mind that precautions are not free. Precautions stop a lot of people now from getting enough pain killing medication. I have experienced this myself, for 6 hellish weeks.
Medical marijuana is predominantly a scam used as an excuse to have non-medical marijuana and call it “medical”. The cases of people who actually need it for medical purposes are very non-central examples of how medical marijuana gets used in reality.
Try mentally tabooing the word “medical” and review your positions on medical marijuana. My impression here is that you have strong cached thoughts about what does and does not qualify as “medical”, and the difference between medical and non-medical reasons isn’t as large as you think.
For one hypothetical example, if there was a drug that made average people into geniuses, would its use qualify as “medical”, or “performance enhancing”? What about a drug that made below-average people average? What’s the difference, except expectations about what constitutes normality?
“Medical” here means “matching what the average person would think of when told it is medical”. That is, the word is intended to communicate, and what it communicates is misleading to a large portion of the intended audience.
Tabooing Your Words has the purpose of removing a disagreement about word definitions from these discussions. The substitution you made does not help, since now the discussion could continue in the direction of arguing about what the average person thinks of the word (which is pretty close to the definition of definition). (This feels close to Fighting the Hypothetical.)
(Am I intuiting this right that you’re not sure you could find a proper substitution that the others could not prove bad at capturing what you wanted to say by using it to prove your point wrong?)
(At this point I’m half expecting a reply from someone along the lines of “This kind of psychological analysis isn’t going to make you many friends.”)
Tabooing your words is used when you personally are disagreeing with someone and you and them may not mean the same thing by the word. Tabooing your words is not used when discussing whether the word they use is misleading an audience. It doesn’t actually matter that the proponents may think that “medical” means “relieves anxiety” thus qualifying recreational marijuana (as well as tobacco and alcohol) as medical; they know very well that the audience won’t interpret it that way.
No.
Is there a reason why I keep getting moderated down here?
I downvoted you because Viliam claimed medical marijuana prevents a great deal of pain, and you responded with—an argument that fails to even assert it causes pain elsewhere. Perhaps you could start by showing that what you call the “central” use of medical marijuana does not displace other recreational drugs.
He didn’t just claim that medical marijuana reduces pain, he claimed that it reduces pain, and therefore people who oppose euthanasia should support it. This argument implicitly assumes, not just that medical marijuana prevents pain, but also that there are no other reasons (including non-pain related reasons) which outweigh the benefit from preventing pain.
In other words, given his argument, any argument that medical marijuana is in general bad—including claims that it is misused for non-medical purposes—is responsive. So is any argument that asserts that pain relief is relatively infrequent, because he is (implicltly) balancing pain relief against other reasons, and the other reasons affect the result more if pain relief is infrequent. Just because his claim is that it reduces pain doesn’t mean that counter-arguments must be limited to asserting that it causes more pain elsewhere.
Viliam:
But sure, if you had argued that we should view marijuana use as approaching torture in badness, or even that the opposition takes this view, that would be responsive.
Now the Catholic Church does in fact seem to oppose marijuana across the board. As an outsider I find this ludicrous (will they treat it more like wine once someone claims it can become the breath of Christ?) but certainly I would not have downvoted you had you presented your claim as an explanation of the (specifically Catholic) opposition and not implied that I should share your objection.
I’m not Catholic and not specifically trying to explain a Catholic position. I am trying to justify it, however (without claiming that the justification is the one used by Catholics).
I find it difficult to imagine what pieces of evidence one could give for hospitals being like or not like a torture chamber. I also find it difficult to imagine that he’s seen or measured pain levels in many actual torture chambers in order to be able to meaningfully compare hospitals to them. In other words, calling it a torture chamber is an applause light, and doesn’t actually say anything more than just “there is unnecessary pain”, which as I’ve pointed out, I did respond to.
Will you now retract the downvote?
Have some evidence—medical professionals refuse end of life care
That is evidence for there being unnecessary pain, which I don’t deny.
Edit: I suppose that’s too strong. If the pain is part of a tradeoff against worse consequences it might be necessary. So change that to “that is evidence for there being pain that produces negative utility to the patients, which I don’t deny”.
Maybe, but what would you recommend instead?
The usual painkillers are more addictive, have worse side effects (which is why they cannot be used as frequently as the patients would need), and they also get stolen by people working in medicine for recreational purposes.
One possibility is medical marijuana, with sufficient precautions that it stays medical. I don’t know exactly what level of precautions would be optimal, but you could do a lot better than we have now.
Always try to keep in mind that precautions are not free. Precautions stop a lot of people now from getting enough pain killing medication. I have experienced this myself, for 6 hellish weeks.
Why do you say that? I keep seeing things by people with serious medical problems who say that marijuana helps a lot with their symptoms.
“I see lots of X” and “it is predominantly not X” are not contradictory.