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Re: [ProgSoc] Time for a letter to your local rep?
Nathan de Vries wrote:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/31/2129471.htm
What's the complaint?
That is, how can you describe why this is a highly undesirable course of
action?
The problem with policy like this that is held to "protect children"
can't be argued against on its own terms. If you accept the premise
(i.e. that this "protects" "children") then any argument you make
against it will logically lead to the outcome that "children" will not
be "protected". I can't imagine getting very far with such an argument.
You might say it's "bullshit", which it is, for a number of reasons, but
that's not likely to get you very far either. You'll be arguing blind
against parties who feel they are "informed" because they had a team of
analysts butcher some numbers in Excel. You could try to expose the
flaws in the assumptions and the methodology, but, apart from lacking
visibility of it in the first place, you'd quickly discover that the
requisite time and intelligence to comprehend such arguments would be
too long and too high. It's almost impossible to explain to people of
average intelligence why they are wrong, especially when they already
have it in mind that they are right and when the salient aspects of the
subject matter are intangible (how do you determine that you've
"protected" a child's mind, or that you haven't? How do you quantify
matters? How do you qualify them? What do you value?).
It's such a nuanced issue that I can't think of a satisfactory argument
that could be compressed without loss to a useful length. Maybe we
should just go and buy one hundred books on science, psychology,
history, philosophy, mathematics, etc. and have them delivered to our
*representatives* (note: not "bosses", not "leaders") instead.
Seems rather futile to me.
I thought Matt said this wasn't going to happen..?
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