Since words can't harm others what refrains you from "deliberately go out of my way to say the most offensive thing possible"?
Because that'd make me a bit of an asshole, and because I actually do want to have a conversation.
Put another way, I could walk up to random people on the street, whisper "Remember when the narwhal bacons" in their ear, and walk away. Does that hurt anyone? Even if words could hurt them, no. At worst, it's mildly irritating. But I still wouldn't do it.
Seriously? How did you get from my claim that words can't hurt people to the assumption that I'm a hedonist?
Well, destroying my iPhone does no harm to anyone (assuming I didn't break it by hitting someone with it). That is because it is an object, and not a human. The damage done is only mechanics and by buying another phone I can replace it 100%. Slapping my wife will hurt her. Not physically (it might though), but emotionally....
So you'd say it's possible to hurt someone emotionally. Surely destroying my phone would hurt me emotionally?
And frankly, if you've got an iPhone and it has no data on it worth recovering, you're either doing it very wrong or very right. I wonder which it is...
So, your analogy is basically saying it's comparable to be locked in to a marriage with a violent husband and to be locked in an iPhone.
I'm saying it's analogous. This is not a hard concept.
You are basically trying to relate the relationship between two human beings with the relationship to your phone?
Quite successfully, apparently...
Dingdingdingding! For all the bullshit you've been spewing about "how dare I compare these things that are incomparable" without telling me why they're incomparable, you finally made a good point.
Yes, I do own my phone, and I can therefore treat it however I want. But does that mean that my phone manufacturer should be able to treat me however they want? If your answer is "yes, you bought the phone," then that takes us right back to "yes, you married the bastard."
you can part with it anytime you want with NO impact whatsoever to anyone but yourself...
Well, and anyone who actually wants to get in touch with me.
And don't talk to me about contacts list and such, it is a technicality
So, I made a valid point, and it's a "technicality"? How so?
there are numerous ways to back them up anyways.
If I have them backed up already, sure. And that battered wife, she could've developed better self-esteem and worked on some self-defense classes, and thrown some money in a savings fund.
If you're talking about after I've decided I need a new phone, then the point stands. There are a significant number of people who I communicate with mostly via text message. A new phone implies transferring the contact list over, and learning all the quirks of using the new phone. Imagine trying to talk on Novacaine, but for a month. It implies syncing calendars, and learning to use the new one, making sure my alarm clock is set up... Pretty much every aspect of my life is going to be interrupted with "Oh, how do I do that with this phone again?" until I learn it as well as I know my current phone.
Just like, with a divorcee, pretty much every aspect of my life would be "Oh, how do I do that without this person again?" Or, "How do I do that? This person always did it..."
Getting out of a marriage is not harder, it's completely different. It's not parting with property!! How can you not see that?
That's true, it's not parting with property. That's a difference. I wonder what the significance is, though? Because that's all you've said of substance...
The ramifications and implications are just ... there. It's not that there's more of them, it's just that trowing your phone away has no implications whatsoever...
Of course it does.
...to anyone else but yourself.
The implications are mostly to myself, sure, but anyone else who's actually close enough to me that they'd be affected by me divorcing, is also probably affected in some minor way if I were to switch to a new phone. And again, if I "threw it out" wholesale, that'd be a huge impact to myself and to everyone I know.
So, to sum up: My phone is property, while an abusive husband is not property. That's the one difference you've found. Everything else you've mentioned is, again, a matter of degree. I mean, read this again:
Getting out of a marriage is not harder, it's completely different.... How can you not see that?
It is completely different as an experience. But the reason that experience is different is all about degree.
I don't really see how this is not valid. I mean, feeling the pain of childbirth is a completely different experience than stubbing your toe. But it's still physical pain, and the difference is mostly a matter of degree -- in fact, while there are some qualitative differences, most of why the pain of childbirth is a thing at all is because it's such a higher degree of pain.
You also made a point that I can destroy my phone completely and replace it with an identical copy, while there's no identical copy of the wife (or abusive husband) -- and you seem to be suggesting that I'm comparing breaking a phone to hitting a wife, which isn't the case at all. But this point wasn't really relevant to anything. I wasn't comparing destroying an iphone with shooting a spouse, or hitting an iphone with hitting a spouse. I was comparing being in an abusive relationship with a spouse to being in an abusive contract with a phone.
This is why I keep wanting to give up on you. Even when you do try, half your ranting isn't actually about anything I said or implied.