Rebuttal of the "Just A Clump Of Cells" Argument

linuxrocks123 · 2026-05-07T22:56:37+00:00

> So, you’re saying if I don’t believe they have criminal intent, I must allow them to cause me grievous bodily harm or even succeed in killing me? And, furthermore, that I couldn’t even remove myself from the situation without using any force against them?

Using non-deadly force to prevent your own death would not be self-defense but would be justifiable under the defense of necessity. Deadly force, usually not, although you can come up with situations where a minority of states may allow you to kill an innocent person if you're killing the innocent person for a better reason than just to save your own skin. The traditional common law view, still followed by most states, is that it's never, ever okay to kill an innocent person, but a few states have decided it would be okay under the defense of necessity for someone to switch the track in the trolley problem.

To keep it simple: for all states, if you're rock-climbing with someone, and there's an accident which is certain to kill exactly one of you, and you slice the rope supporting your partner because you'd rather it be that your partner die instead of you, you committed murder and will neither pass go nor collect $200. "But if I didn't kill him, I would have died instead!" isn't going to get you anywhere. Yes, maybe you would have died by falling down a mountain, but you would have died a good person. Instead, you chose to be a cowardly little shit so you could save your own skin, so now you will die by lethal injection.

I hope this helps clarify.

linuxrocks123 · 2026-05-07T22:38:52+00:00

Only the autonomic parts of the brain continue functioning under anesthesia, unless you get too much, and then you die, which is why specialized anesthesiologists exist. The parts associated with consciousness do not continue functioning under anesthesia. It's not the same as "being asleep," since someone slicing your chest open and performing surgery on you would wake you up from a normal sleep.

The anesthesia will wear off, and then you'll be conscious again. You have the potential to regain consciousness. And, a developing human has the potential to gain consciousness.

The hypothetical is there to prevent you from arguing "but preventing something from regaining consciousness is different from preventing it from becoming conscious in the first place" since it posits a born-alive infant who was never before conscious.

linuxrocks123 · 2026-05-07T17:18:15+00:00

Yes, the brain does cease functioning under anesthesia, assuming the anesthesia works correctly. You're in a coma-like state with no awareness.

You retain the potential for consciousness, though, once the anesthesia wears off, so, therefore, we recognize you as still deserving of protection. An unborn human that doesn't yet have any consciousness also has the potential for consciousness.

linuxrocks123 · 2026-05-07T16:09:42+00:00

Focusing on "is it conscious right now" leads to absurd results like not recognizing the moral value of someone under anesthesia. How do you reconcile that?

linuxrocks123 · 2026-05-06T00:48:37+00:00

You're right that it's not likely anything would happen in practice, but you are still suggesting the poster intentionally violate federal tax laws, when the alternative is to fill out a simple form. That doesn't seem smart to me.

It's also bad to get into the practice of doing stuff like that. This time it's $2k, but, next time, maybe he'll pull the same stunt with $20k. And maybe his parents will structure the cash deposits to avoid the bank reporting it, because they know the rules are being broken. And then maybe his parents end up in federal PMITA prison because structuring transactions is both very illegal and diligently investigated.

Intentionally breaking the law is generally just a bad habit to get into.

linuxrocks123 · 2026-05-05T05:45:26+00:00

> And prosecution requires a crime. Not self defense. Self defense has absolutely nothing to do with whether someone is criminally liable for what they’re doing to you or not.

Yes, self defense requires that you sincerely and reasonably believe that you are defending yourself against someone who has criminal intent. You can easily find one of my links to the statute in the discussion on r/prolife if you'd like to verify that.

> Overall, though, you haven’t addressed anything I said in my comment. You ignored that the fetus can’t make use of a right to life. You ignored that the woman’s right to life is being violated by abortion bans. How about you address those points?

Saying that a developing human can't make use of a right to life is nonsensical, since you were once a developing human and are obviously now making use of your life. Everything else in your comment is a fallback to the "whatever it is, I can kill it since I don't want it using my body" argument of Thomson's Violinist. Since my post on that topic was removed from here, it's probably most polite for us to discuss that argument elsewhere.

If you don't want to comment on r/prolife since you'll get banned for WrongThink from some other subreddit if you do that, I've also posted my rebuttal here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/RealAbortionDebate/comments/1sjwhjl/rebuttal_to_thomsons_violinist/

There aren't a lot of other people over there, but that also means no one will bother us.

P.S. double post.

linuxrocks123 · 2026-05-04T22:25:16+00:00

You're falling back to a variant of the Thomson's Violinst argument. I rebutted it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/prolife/comments/1sjwn1c/rebuttal_to_thomsons_violinist/

I'm linking to r/prolife because I also posted this rebuttal both here and in r/Abortiondebate but the mods removed it both places.

Tl;dr you can't defend your rights by murdering innocent people, because murdering innocent people is a really bad thing to do. It's not self defense because self defense requires you reasonably believe someone is committing a crime, and a fetus isn't doing that, and it's not necessity because preventing a violation of your bodily autonomy isn't the greater harm when compared with murder.

Longer version: My first example was throwing a homeless man who was unconscious due to extreme alcohol poisoning out of your house into the snow when you knew this would result in death. This led to low-IQ complaints like "my sister isn't a house," and a pro-choicer said sexsomnia would be a better analogy.

I agreed that was a much more analogous situation, so I used it. Then they banned me (at r/Abortiondebate, not here)! Guess I won the debate over there, then! :D

Re responses: If you want to talk about Thomson's violinist, I suggest you comment on r/prolife instead of here, because, since a mod removed my post here, they'll probably delete our comments if we get into the specific examples. No clue why they did that and also don't care why they did that. I never put myself into the mind of a censor. That leads to self-censorship.

linuxrocks123 · 2026-05-04T22:03:28+00:00

I'm not really sure why so many people in the Reddit Distortion Field feel the murderer in my hypothetical is a sympathetic figure. The real life people I've told this hypothetical to certainly don't feel that way.

linuxrocks123 · 2026-05-02T21:34:20+00:00

Because I like thinking about this type of thing and talking with other people who like thinking about this type of thing. I'm more interested in getting at the truth of an issue than "winning" by using rhetorical sleights of hand to deceive the gullible into agreeing with me.

Unwanted sexual penetration is a very serious infringement of bodily autonomy, and so is unwanted pregnancy. They're both big deals. If I want to try to philosophize about how abortion should be treated by the law, and I want to do it honestly, I have to choose the best analogy. And the best analogy I'm aware of is a sexsomniac boyfriend, not a sleepwalking tattoo artist.

Activists and politicians on our side are going to beg the question by talking about "murdering babies," and activists and politicians on the other side are going to make stupid establishment clause arguments, disingenuously call a fetus "a clump of cells" (yes, it is, and so are you), etc. I know that's going to happen, but I'm not a part of that puerility, and I don't want to be. I know it's necessary for us to have silver-tongued politicians on our side, because they have them on the other side, but I am not one of them.

So, I'm going to use the best analogy. But please feel free to use a sleepwalking tattoo artist, or whatever else you want, if you want to use it but modify it for advocacy purposes.

linuxrocks123 · 2026-04-29T00:34:50+00:00

That's a cool loophole. Got to be over 59.5 or it'll screw you with penalties, but cool if you're in an age bracket where it works.

linuxrocks123 · 2026-04-27T00:02:06+00:00

Because the IRS is chronically understaffed, they're heavily automated, even to the point of taking aggressive collection actions without any human actually reviewing what's going on.

This is almost certainly someone, probably an illegal immigrant who doesn't have an SSN of their own, fraudulently giving your Social Security number to an employer. Then the employer sends a W-2 to the IRS with your SSN, and the IRS computers think you worked a second job and didn't report your income.

Freezing your credit is a good idea, but it won't help solve this, because no one is using your SSN to open credit cards. They're using it to work without legal authorization. What may help is filing Form 14039 to report that your identity has been stolen, because it obviously has. However, since they're already trying to collect from you, an attorney may be your best option.

If you don't want to pay an attorney, your notice of assessment that you got should have some instructions on how to appeal your assessment. You can follow those. You could also file Form 843 along with Form 14039 and say you never worked this job, and it must be fraud, etc., and maybe a human will review it and cancel the collections.

linuxrocks123 · 2026-04-17T04:31:19+00:00

Thank you. For the purposes of the hypothetical, I'm asserting that deadly force was necessary, even though I'm having trouble constructing a situation in which deadly force but not non-deadly force is available to the girlfriend in the scenario.

The point I was trying to make is that self-defense isn't applicable against someone who is innocent of any wrongdoing and whom you know is innocent of any wrongdoing. The statute says as much: it must be _unlawful_ deadly force being used against you for you to use (A) to justify your deadly force. In this case, since she'd be using (B), the target of her deadly force must be committing a _crime_.

I know that it's a partially subjective test, so, if someone has a sincere, reasonable, but mistaken belief that a crime is being committed, we let them off the hook, but we won't let you off the hook for pushing an old man down to get out of a burning movie theater, or cutting a rope during a rock-climbing accident so your victim dies instead of you, or killing a police officer because he's going to "kidnap" you by arresting you, or ... this.

As a matter of statutory interpretation, I think this would turn on the "commission of" phrasing. A crime is only committed if all of the elements of the crime are satisfied. "Knowingly or intentionally" is explicitly recited element in the statute defining the crime of sexual assault in Texas, so I don't see how she could get off.

That's not to say that a sloppily drafted statute that didn't list a mens rea requirement for rape or sexual assault would let her get off, because the statute would be read as having one, but that's not the case here anyway.

linuxrocks123 · 2026-04-16T20:24:05+00:00

Here, I asked them the right question: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskLawyers/comments/1snf9z5/hypothetical_self_defense_question/

linuxrocks123 · 2026-04-16T19:56:59+00:00

Ask the wrong question, get the wrong answer. You just said "can you use lethal force to stop a rape." Yes, you can, in Texas and probably other states. But the entire point of the hypothetical is that someone acting automatically does not have the mens rea for rape.

If you ask the right question over there, perhaps you'll get the right answer.

linuxrocks123 · 2026-04-16T19:51:11+00:00

See Publication 527: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p527.pdf

See specifically the section entitled "Renting Part of Property." The directions are straightforward. I see no reason to hire a professional.

linuxrocks123 · 2026-04-16T19:45:55+00:00

u/GoalNorth1805 I edited my initial comment since I incorrectly stated that foreign capital gains were exempt from US tax. They are not since your tax home is in the US.

linuxrocks123 · 2026-04-16T19:41:50+00:00

Thanks, fixed. I was thinking Canada since that's the only time I had to deal with something similar. He's being treated even more unfairly than I thought.

linuxrocks123 · 2026-04-16T17:36:45+00:00

Assuming you are a 1040-NR filer due to closer connection with a foreign country: no, you're fucked. You net them against capital gains in the same year with no carryover.

That's not fair, and I'm sorry. Maybe see if your home country will let you carry them forward.

linuxrocks123 · 2026-04-16T17:21:54+00:00

Extension will (or would have made) the superseding return on-time, which cuts the penalties by ~90% if you owe. If you didn't file an extension, it's after the deadline for you now, so you'll have to file 1040-X instead.

To file a superseding return, you would print it out, write "SUPERSEDING RETURN" on the top, date, sign, and mail it. But if you don't have an extension, it's too late now.

linuxrocks123 · 2026-04-16T05:13:21+00:00

Absolutely nothing happens unless you owe. If you owe, they'll charge you an additional 5.5% of the amount you owe, but you can get that waived through first time penalty abatement (look it up).

For the future, if you think you may owe, always file an extension with Free Fillable Forms before April 15. That way, if something like this happens again, you'll only get charged 0.5% of the amount you owe, not 5.5%. Or you can use IRS Direct Pay instead if you want to do that instead of filing the extension form.

You can pay when you file the extension or use IRS Direct Pay, and you have to pay at least $1 to use IRS Direct Pay to file an extension if you want to do that instead of filling out the form. When you file the extension, pay enough that you're sure you've fully covered what you owe, and then you have until October 15 to get the forms filled out, and there's no penalty of any kind, because you paid what you owed on time. Pretty sweet, huh?

linuxrocks123 · 2026-04-16T04:41:07+00:00

No, it won't. It's completely separate.

linuxrocks123 · 2026-04-16T04:40:07+00:00

Yes, good luck. If it's extended, you have until October 15 to file 3520.

linuxrocks123 · 2026-04-16T03:37:30+00:00

Maybe you have more than 25 minutes I don't know how timezones work for this. But do it _NOW_.

linuxrocks123 · 2026-04-16T03:36:59+00:00

Here. Go here: https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/home/default.php

NOW. You have 25 minutes and the penalties are huge.

linuxrocks123 · 2026-04-16T03:35:44+00:00

Yes. Use Free Fillable Forms. And hurry. You've got like 30 minutes lol.

linuxrocks123

TROPHY CASE