[ExI] playing psychologist

[Henry Rivera]

Great points Dave. 
And can we stop pretending that crack is worse than cocaine or that meth is worse than Adderal? They are chemically the same. 

> On Aug 27, 2018, at 8:58 AM, David Lubkin <lubkin at unreasonable.com> wrote:
> 
> I wrote:
> 
>> What is the difference between those drugs and alcohol? Too many irresponsible people ruin their own lives, and the lives of their spouses and children.
> 
> Will Steinberg replied:
> 
>> Sorry, but you don't understand.
>> 
>> Should we make it legal to own nuclear bombs?  How about .50 caliber machine guns?  Or, what about sarin?  Sell it at 7/11?
>> 
>> The issue of legalization is a complicated one, and I used to lean towards the 'legalize everything' viewpoint, but it is a silly, pie-in-the-sky teenage anarchist dream.  Murder isn't legal.  Some things--like murder--SHOULD be illegal; I think most of us would agree on that.
> 
> You're changing the subject to a strawman. I made a direct comparison between two different categories of ingested substances. One that is legal and ruins or ends far more lives than the ones that are illegal.
> 
>> Heroin, meth, and crack are very dangerous to have around a normal population, sorry to say.
> 
> So are cars. So is alcohol. Especially the combination. And we make it legal for people to manufacture, sell, possess, and use both products. We constrain who can, based primarily on age. We recognize that the combination is a danger point, and are tough on people who use them both at the same time.
> 
> Heroin per se—i.e., sans adulterants—is, AFIAK, safer and less addictive than tobacco. I've heard for at least forty years the accounts of people who were addicted to both, who said smoking was much harder to quit.
> 
> Meth is prescribed in the US as a Class II pharmaceutical. Heroin is prescribed in the UK as a Class A drug.  It is particularly used for palliative care of terminal patients there, and certainly should be permitted for that use in the US.
> 
> Now, you haven't mentioned cocaine (also Class II). Are you okay with its joining marijuana or do you see it as an implicit precursor to crack?
> 
>> I don't believe they should be legal, and I also believe I have more experience with the matter than you do.
> 
> Appeal to authority is also a fallacious argument. And "trust me, I know more" makes it even more fallacious.
> 
> If you know more, then stick to the subject and argue with evidence and rigor. Everyone here is smart, numeric, and capable of rigor.
> 
> In *my* experience—discussing the merits of SDI with the inventor of the hydrogen bomb, the merits of bridge vs. chess with a world champion, the mass production of observational spacecraft with an eminent space scientist, etc.—actual experts can make their case. And don't mind doing so with someone who is civil, intelligent, and genuinely interested.
> 
>>  Not to be overly critical, but legalizing everything ever is a nebulous and dangerous viewpoint.
> 
> And it's not one I advanced. You did.
> 
> 
> -- David.
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat