[plainnoodles]

I'll throw out another "class" of person - someone who believes something, and at least grasps the concept of philosophical reasoning enough that they'll attempt to build one of the basic forms of argument - usually an argument by analogy - and having done so, they'll trumpet their conclusion. Then, commenters will pile in, either being part of the class of people you mention (who will skip reading the argument and just check to make sure the conclusion is what they want) or being part of the same class who will review the argument, stamp a "lgtm!" on it, and upvote/concur. We're right! And look, it's got proof attached, too!

But then even the most amateur student of philosophy, perhaps about 60% of the way through their freshman (mandatory) Philosophy 101 course, would be able to examine the argument and identify mistakes so appallingly obvious that they might be provided as practice problems in their homework. The analogy isn't appropriate; or it begs the question; or it assumes some predicate where their proof may hold if the predicate is true, but the predicate itself must be proven for the conclusion to be substantive.

I see this a lot on reddit. Especially recently due to the abortion debates re-heating. Arguers - regardless of side - are so poorly equipped by our education system, and so poorly incentivized by the highly polarized/tribalistic nature of modern political discourse, that even when people try they're still not making any progress in reasoning about their positions.

[plainnoodles]

Adding on: and sometimes, even when they manage to make an interesting point, they've gotten so lost in their appraisal of their argument that the philosophical question ends up not even being the one they actually care about.

To that last point, I've lately seen a lot of arguments for abortion being ethical/unethical that end up just being modified Trolley problems. One I saw that stuck with me was: "Suppose there is a fire in a building. You have a test tube of 1000 human embryos in one hand, and a 4 year old girl in the other. The only possible outcomes are you saving the vial or the girl, or neither. Which do you choose?"

I thought this was an interesting take, since it reads as a very different situation depending on your view of the embryos!

A "pro-life" person would clearly interpret this as a modified trolley problem. You have 1000 embryos who could become people but cannot feel pain or terror or [etc] right now (or at least not in the same way as the 4-year-old). Or you have a 4-year-old who can, and will suffer greatly. This is quite trolley-esque and while this one seems to have somewhat of a likely-correct answer, it's certainly not without some complication.

Someone who thinks the embryos aren't yet people or persons will see this as a much less interesting thought exercise - of course you save the 4-year-old, the vial is just some cells that clearly don't even have consciousness yet.

And there's even a whole swathe of positions in between who will assign some amount of humanity to the embryos and attempt to resolve the quandary between the embryos vs the 4-year-old.

But, as interesting as this is, it completely misses the point of the original question-poser. Regardless of which option you pick as correct, it doesn't really inform us much as to whether abortion is ethical. Going back to my main point of bemoaning the dreadful state of the average internet argument.

[klipt]

Assuming those 1000 embryos belonged to e.g. 100 cancer patients who were subsequently rendered infertile by chemo, the choice really comes down to, kill one child, or effectively sterilize 100 cancer patients by removing their option to have biological children.

You could rephrase the problem as this: you have a sterility gun that will fire 100 times. You can direct it into a crowd where it will permanently sterilize 100 random people. Or point it at one 4 year old, who will be killed by the accumulated 100 shots. Which is more harmful?

[im3w1l]

Politics on reddit? Isn't that shills arguing with shills moderated by shills ranked by a biased algorithm that other shills try to game with vote bots.