[Layke1123]

Actually, yes, we should all stop what we are doing and fight child trafficking immediately. To argue anything else is a morally indefensible position.

Now, you might say you fight child trafficking currently because you vote for people who make the laws that say it's illegal and "dust your hands", but yet it's not enough because child trafficking still happens. At the end of the day, you are ok with child trafficking happening because, "Well, at least I choose not to traffick children, so that's enough."

[pdonis]

> we should all stop what we are doing and fight child trafficking immediately.

Are you doing that? If so, how are you posting here?

[Layke1123]

Well, I am debating against someone who claims free will is what will stop child trafficking. If I can convince you to move your position to mine, I can't influence others to also move to my position, and if all people end up viewing it similarly to me, I believe we will solve child trafficking.

[pdonis]

> I am debating against someone who claims free will is what will stop child trafficking.

I have made no such claim. I have said that, on net, a society where people's right to make free choices is respected will have less suffering and more good things than a society where it isn't. But that doesn't mean no bad things will ever happen in the former type of society. Nor is respecting others' right to make free choices the same as "free will" by itself.

If you can't see why respecting other people's right to make free choices is inconsistent with child trafficking, isn't it obvious? Child traffickers don't respect the right to make free choices of the children they traffic in. So getting more people to respect other people's right to make free choices would obviously reduce the prevalence of child trafficking.

[Layke1123]

Not it wouldn't and our society is largely a result of your way of thinking. We have yet to see how a society that advocates determinism would turn out.

[pdonis]

> our society is largely a result of your way of thinking

It most certainly is not. Our society refuses to respect people's right to freedom of choice in all kinds of ways. And most of those ways can't even be justified on the grounds of harm to others, which is where your big sticking point seems to be. Our society throws people in jail just for having drugs in their possession, even if they haven't harmed anyone and are not threatening anyone. The poster I originally responded to in this thread had therapy they didn't want forced on them by their family, for something they didn't even think was a problem and which certainly didn't make them a threat of harm to anyone, and our society was just fine with that. From what I can see, in your vision of the ideal society, that would be happening all over the place.

> We have yet to see how a society that advocates determinism would turn out.

Sure we have. The Soviet Union was based on ideas like the ones you are advocating. So is Communist China today. Perhaps you want to live in Communist China; if so, you're welcome to move there (unless of course you already live there). I don't.

[Layke1123]

No, in your society, the one we live in right now, it is already happening. People have others choices imposed on them. A parent thrusts their choices onto their children often to much detriment as the aforementioned person.

In a society I'm proposing, those kind of choices aren't able to be thrusted on a person because the idea that you can choose for someone is removed. It simply is behavior that is exhibited, and we understand that behavior enough to change it or we need to learn more to understand the behavior. Your reality, the current one we live in, is the nightmare for some people.

The Soviet Union and Communist China, terms you want to use to describe them, do not sound like what I am advocating in the slightest. I'm advocating that we acknowledge the underlying reality that we are not free to make choices. There is only the illusion our brains create. How you interpret that is on you. It has nothing to do with other countries or systems of government. Stop trying to drag in straw mans because your ideas lack substance.

[pdonis]

> I am debating...

And to you, this counts as stopping everything you are doing and fighting child trafficking immediately? Hm.

[Layke1123]

What would you rather me be doing to fight it? Be on TV everyday as single handedly bringing in the bad guys who are making their "choices" to traffick children? Are you ok with their "choices" to hurt children? Why aren't you on TV everyday bringing the bad guys into jail?

[pdonis]

> What would you rather me be doing to fight it?

Honest answer? You and I, as individuals, can't fight it unless we are right there when it happens. As I have said, more than once now, the fact that we can make choices does not make us omnipotent.

In any case, I'm not the one that is saying everyone should drop everything and go fight child trafficking. You are. I am simply pointing out that you are not actually doing what you claim everyone should be doing.

[Layke1123]

We can't fight it unless it happens right in front of us? We can donate to organizations that do have the stated purpose. We can vote for politicians who propose laws and policies that make it extremely difficult for it to happen. How are you powerless to do anything about it unless it happens "right in front of you"?

And I'm pointing out how in my capacity I am doing everything I can to fight it. Part of that is convincing your (or more likely others reading this), that your position is wrong.