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ksymph • today at 4:57 PM • 0 replies • view on HN

One of those articles that's entirely reasonable, and I find myself nodding along, but there's something that feels vaguely off about it I can't quite put my finger on. I think it comes from the inciting observation from the author's friend:

> I feel you’re on stronger ground, Duncan, when you say that the status quo is unfairly blocking some people from activities they spontaneously want to do and (you argue) safely could in a different society.

> I feel less comfortable when you dig for reasons that other people’s aversions to touch or sexual activity or whatever might be “unhealthy” (against some standard I’m not sure you’ve made a case for the universal healthiness of).

It's easy to work backwards from harmful, biased, or just plain wrong conclusions to a strong and reasonable core principle (and vise versa, for that matter). Without knowing the details of what led the friend to say that, it feels a bit, I don't know, manipulative? for the author to present only their strong core principle as a defense of a position they only allude to, when from that quote it sounds somewhat tangentially related and perhaps a little less universally reasonable.