"Potential" Humans and my gut feelings on criminal cases

If an unborn child is a human, than the position that abortion is morally reprehensible is natural, logical, necessary, just, and is the only position a reasonable person should have (speaking of abortions under normal circumstances and in a general sense). So, those who generally oppose abortion must necessarily argue that unborn children are not, in fact, humans. All arguments about abortion, therefore, eventually devolve into the question of whether a fetus is a human or not.

The most coherent way of doing this for pro-choice activists is to say that fetuses are “potential humans,” rather than “actual humans.” Bupkiss. In fact, this argument creates a logical fallacy. It is not easy to identify at first, but I will try my best to illustrate it.

Start with the words “potential human.” Potentiality connotates mere possibility, it does not connotate inevitability. Potentiality expresses the idea that the outcome is yet undetermined: that something can succeed or fail. Additionally, it entails the concept that an additional element or function is required in order to arrive at the particular (potential) result.

One can no more call the unborn a potential human than can children be called potential adults. There exists no option for a child but to eventually become an adult: there exists no special ingredient or event required to be added to a child’s life to turn them into an adult. It just happens with time. Likewise, the natural, inevitable course of pregnancy ends in the birth of a human. It just happens with time, requiring no additional element or function.

The irony (and logical fallacy) is that the only way a fetus can be reasonably labeled a “potential” human, is if the possibility to abort exists! And even then it is a dubious appropriation. But to see the irony and logical fallacy involved, you must do a thought experiment. Consider a place in which abortions are either impossible, inconceivable, or otherwise unable to be rendered. In such a place no one who lived there would possibly conceive of the term “potential human,” as no one would think of the possibility that the unborn would not be born as another member of humanity. As soon as abortion is invented, the possibility of considering the unborn a “potential” human emerges - by introducing the possibility of forcing death upon that unborn child and providing a different potential result to pregnancy. Thus, in the real world, basing the argument that abortions are morally acceptable upon the premise that the fetus is a “potential” rather than “actual” human is circular logic: if abortions are immoral, then there is no reason at all to label unborn people “potential” humans, and if abortions happen to be moral, then the argument that they are merely “potential” humans is unnecessary – fatuously so.

The bottom line is that a fetus must necessarily be a “real” human, simply unborn, and not some theoretical “potential” human. Everyone knows this, it is not some secret. It is quite sad that so many people seem to be fooled by clever words with such spurious meaning.

Here’s a contradiction in my own thoughts:
When a man indicted of criminal charges is put on trial, there are two outcomes: guilty and not guilty. But this doesn’t mean that the average correct verdict of those on trial is 50/50. It would be a logical fallacy to think so. And since it is not 50/50, then which is the more likely correct outcome of any given trial? Not which is the most common verdict, which should be the most common correct verdict?

I believe it is guilty (though how can anyone know this?) The reason is simple: district attorneys and law enforcement officers do not lightly indict people; they do so after investigation. Though they can make mistakes, it would be foolish to consider the vast majority of them so incompetent that more than half of the people who end up even getting to trial based on their investigations are innocent a majority of the time (this would be especially curious considering that only a fraction of the total suspects in any criminal investigation actually go to trial). Essentially, it seems quite statistically unlikely that the majority of them are innocent.

So, we have a strange situation here: as a juror under the US constitution, I would have to presume innocence of any person on trial until proven guilty. Yet, my gut feeling would be that the person on trial is more than 50% likely to be guilty, before I even hear the case! Now, district attorneys and cops certainly make mistakes (as do judges and jurors), but that would still be my gut feeling going into the trial. I guess I would make a terrible juror. Of course, the correct thing to do is just to try to determine the truth of that particular case, without any bias based upon any statistics at all. After all, I would be under a mandate to presume innocence until the defendant is proven guilty. And I would like to think I could do that. But statistics have a funny way of shaping peoples’ biases.

New Cold War?

I know I just recently posted a big blob of a blog after a long dearth of posts, I have a few quick things inspired by recent news.

The first is that I am of the opinion that we will not enter a new Cold War with China in the foreseeable future. China will simply not become as mighty vis-a-vis the US as the Soviets were. To put this in perspective, look at one giant indicator: GDP. Using 2010 numbers and a compound interest calculator, you can see that if China sustains a growth rate of 10 percent for 15 years (which is absurdly high for such a time) and the US only sustains a growth rate of a mere 2 percent, then at that time China and the US will have parity with GDP (actually it will take about 14.5 years). Both countries will have about 18.6 trillion in GDP (in 2010 dollars). The point is that the US is far mightier economically than people think. China won't have that kind of growth consistently (if ever), the US might easily not have such low growth (considering our population - largely due to immigration - rapidly increases even as our GDP per capita does not drastically go down (in other words, our economy generally grows with the growth in people). The current fiscal troubles we seem to have will disappear soon and level headed observation will hopefully resume.

Of course, while it is true that the Soviets never had a GDP of more than around 60 percent of the US economy, the Soviets also had the Warsaw Pact. China basically has North Korea. The big countries around it, Russia, S. Korea, Japan, India are not about to be as cozy in their relationship with China (let alone under the thumb of China) as the Warsaw Pact states.

Whether China becomes more hostile to the US, less hostile or remains in this pseudo-friendship of opportunity we find ourselves in, an actual Cold War won't easily emerge. The bottom line is that the US is far too powerful, and thus, far too important for the rest of the world, for China to somehow present itself as a complete alternate for a minor power to rally with.

In the war on terror:
The news that suddenly Al Qaeda is on the brink of defeat is not really news. Bin Laden had been marginalized for at least 2 years, as I recently posted. Both the ideological and tactical battlefield between the US and Islamism is far vaster in dozens of other places beyond Afghanistan and even Pakistan. Bin Laden's death, while satisfying to see justice served, does not represent an actual major shift in the war against radical terrorists and Islamists. The shift already happened following the devolution of Al Qaeda which began around 2007.