One tip I heard was asking “how” questions as follow-ups, rather than “what” questions? It tends to encourage people to think through how the conspiracies might actually work, rather than just jumping from point A to point B.

Look, I’m not going to get into a back-and-forth with you about this because it’s not my area of expertise, but a cursory glance at the Wikipedia article, which was “supplemental reading” for the question of what people thought about the idea, suggests that the underlying legal mechanisms (admittedly, I’m analyzing this from jurisprudence of the United States so terminology and precedents may differ) have to do with granting standing to individuals and communities that otherwise might not have a direct enough connection to assert an injury. Some references, like to the Ponca, suggest that the goal is accomplished by enacting new criminal statutes; others by granting private citizens the right to sue those that harm nature.

The legal mechanisms are not rooted in granting “personhood,” but rather providing means of protecting nature, which is a completely different legal approach. Nevertheless, the “personhood” approach was an interesting one, and because this is Beehaw, I thought entering the conversation could be productive and thought-provoking exercise.

Again, I’m not going to spend anymore time researching source materials, but you have conflated “personhood” with environmental protection laws, which I was not addressing, and you have come off as rather condescending. If we had been talking about conventional environmental protection laws, I would have agreed with you that the law doesn’t associate legal liabilities with nature, but instead, you hijacked the conversation and changed the discussion. You suggested that the statement I made before you changed it was addressed to your new conversation, and suddenly what I said was “absurd.”

If we are actually talking about the premise of legal personhood rather than just ways to protect the environment, then the parallels to considering that a concept, like a corporation, could have legal rights and liabilities associated with agency are actually really analogous, and in the litigious society we live in, would become a matter for a court to decide.

Woah, you’re coming in a little bit hot, there. The post asked for community thoughts on granting “personhood” to natural entities, and that’s all I did.

Also, the parallel I was making wasn’t to say that natural disasters would gain personhood, but rather natural disasters could be considered tortious conduct by a natural entity, which this post contemplated as gaining personhood. The point I was making was simply to suggest there are some thought exercises about tort law that are worth considering before moving forward. It isn’t absurd to suggest the possible parallels between a legal entity (I.e., corporation) being proximally related to tortious conduct and a natural entity, like a mountain, being between proximally related to what might be considered tortious conduct (e.g., a mudslide) under the proposed legal regime.

I admit this analysis is off the cuff.

I think it could be helpful as a form of defense and protecting nature, but there’s the other side to the coin, which is, how do you then “hold nature accountable” for its “actions?” By that I mean natural disasters. For instance, if a mudslide occurs, how do you hold that mountain accountable? Do the victims of the mudslide then have the right to seek damages from that mountain? Could compensation come in the form of granting the victims the right to cut down all the trees on the other side of the mountain so that the timber can be harvested to compensate the victims for that natural disaster?

I think granting personhood is going to create issues from a legal standpoint and coming up with consistent precedents around agency and action. I’m not sure that this avenue of approach necessarily solves the problem at hand, which seems to be that we’re trying to prevent human beings from destroying the Earth. In that sense, it seems like the most effective and more direct response is to restrict the actions of humans rather than granting personhood to something else.

As well-intended as this article might have ascribed, it felt like it was all over the place.

This is a facially stupid law. (And by “facially stupid,” I’m not even addressing the morally bankrupt policy implications, but rather critiquing the framework that is wholly untethered from how the law and a system of justice works.)

That’s why they’re choosing to pick on them.

… the cruelty is the point.

Look, this is politics and all, but blatant false equivalencies in a world of disinformation is dangerous, unenlightening, and unproductive. I’ll leave it for now, but try to be more thoughtful in the future.

This sounds a lot like Hitler in the late 1930s (in the lead-up to World War 2).

To be fair, “liberal” was in the title when I posted the article, but I, like you, thought that was misleading, so I left it off.

Based on the Wayback Machine, it looks like the site was changed even before that: sometime between August 3rd and August 15th.

Thank you! The surfacing part was actually done mostly by hand because if a chicken and egg situation of making the inside components and adding the hinge, without throwing things off balance on the lathe. But after four prototypes, I definitely learned a lot!

Thank you!

I turned a ring “box” on a lathe and my fiancée said “yes!”

Depending on the timeline, it isn’t unreasonable to expect an amended complaint based on allegations in the indictment that was released by Jack Smith yesterday.

That was shortly before we had a Civil War, so I don't think that's an era we should hope to recreate nowadays.

Look, my take is that you are trying to combat fascism on philosophical terms, while I’m saying there is an even more pressing violence threatening people on a real level by taking steps that we know — at this moment in time — make it more likely to ending up with Republicans having power.

We don’t seem to be seeing things eye-to-eye, and you don’t seem to be able to hold this conversation without ad hominem attacks, so I’m going to check out.

Final note: I’m going to go back to my day, and forget about your condescension and nastiness because… well, I can. But if I see you talking this way to anyone else here (and I don’t just mean heated discussion), there will be consequences.

Have a nice day, and please be(e) respectful of everyone here.

Don't give a shit if this is what you call it, or how you've been told to think. The only wasted vote is one more voice for the continued monopoly of capital, and that's obviously exactly what you do every single election.

You’re prioritizing economic systems over people. That’s my problem with voting for third parties in light of fascism echoing the 1920s and 30s.

HIPAA only applies to a small subset of people/entities. It requires that subset to be careful with healthcare data. So if a doctor gives you a diagnosis, HIPAA requires the doctor treat that information carefully. If you share that same exact information with your electrician, and then the electrician shares that same exact information with her seamstress, your electrician has not violated HIPAA because you disclosed it to someone that isn’t considered a “covered entity.” HIPAA is far more about regulating who or where the disclosure comes from, than it is about the substance of the information.