Oh, and also, our PM, Scott Morrison, is a shitbag enabler who is most certainly culpable - though not alone - for fostering the kind of environment in which the shooter became who he is — StreetlightX

Explain this comment.

And of course Australia is riven with all kind of systemic and cultural issues - rape, domestic violence, murderous treatment of minorities and immigrants and all the rest of it. — StreetlightX

So your position is that rape and domestic violence are cultural issues for all the cultures in which these things take place? Rather than just admitting that even if a culture condemns those things, they happen anyway because the cause isn't cultural? Which would be logical considering it's obvious to anyone with any sense that most of the said cultures (or at least people living in them) explicitly condemn those things? If not that, then at least in Australia.


I think we have a different understanding of what "judged" means. I was not saying Muslims don't follow Islam lol.

It's not a question of truth, it's a question of interpretation. I don't blame you for terrorist attacks on the West by Muslims because you are publicly talking about how badly the West has ruined things for them. People who dislike and express concerns about Islam (for whatever reason) aren't culpable for mass murder in any sense.

What I think is that you don't care whether you can actually demonstrate that the culture is the problem or not. Do you actually think you could win an argument about whether Australia has a bigger rape/domestic violence problem than the majority of countries in the world? Oh right, by the way, those things happen across the world, that's why your list of problems for Australian culture is garbage, the cause of these problems can't be found in the flaws of a single culture.

Between your response to OP and your response to me, it is clear that you are making very specific interpretative choices. Your way of thinking is not balanced, I don't know exactly why you choose to interpret what you do and the way in which you do but it is clearly pathological.

Continuing with your immaturity with the "yawn", I enjoy the consistency. Australian citizens commit rape, murder, steal, commit incest, betray people, believe the Earth is flat and the list the goes on. So either it's fair to say Australia has a rape culture, doesn't value loyalty or other peoples' property and is anti-science or Australia is filled with individuals who each make their own choices and some of those don't jive well with the rest of the population or the culture. Let's actually look at his comments

That's the PM's excuse for Australia producing a nationalistic terrorist.

And so he does not have to admit his culpability in the crime, despite years of presenting the sort of thing found in the OP here. — Banno

He explicitly states that the PM has cuplability in the mass murder of dozens of innocent people because he makes negative comments (not exactly sure what) about Islam. Instead of "othering" a mass murderer, he wants us to what? Take a good look in the mirror at how we're part of the problem?

I agree with that your comment is not factually untrue, the problem is that the West refers to over a dozen countries with distinct cultures and your only approach to the situation is to talk about the undemocratic, covert operations carried out by a handful of people, relatively speaking. You aren't correct just because you said something true, I wonder if that will fly over your head or not.


You think that Muslims should be judged for being Muslim rather than as individuals? You can't blame an individual for your problems with the group they belong to especially when the reasons you dislike the group aren't even applicable for a specific member, surely you agree?


I do agree with both though those examples are not similar. A more reasonable comparison might be school shootings in the US because here we've got the same thing happening many times over by different people all across the country.

I'm not sure I understand or agree with how you've characterised my problem with Banno's post. I have further explained to StreetlightX.

The general underlying point seems to me to be that we’re incredibly quick to distance ourselves from another’s crime so as not to face up to the fact that we’re capable of the same kind of acts (being human) and that the societal norms we’re born into may just have played a part in the crimes. The veery fact that we can consider these crimes is a good thing - in and of itself it’s little more than misdirected “action” given the form of outrage without consideration of what leading human beings to commit such extraordinary acts. — I like sushi

I don't disagree at all with this but you're just being generous to Banno, this isn't even close to what he's talking about and I feel like that's farily obvious based on his insinuations and earlier comments in this thread.

I think you're taking a needed philosophical approach to the topic which is sadly lacking in most of the posts here. We need to take a specific problem to have meaningful dialogue about it, OP kind of set us up for a bad time I think.

The post that Banno made on this thread is the most repugnant and absurd comment I've ever read. The logic used is nonsensical, the insinuation is offensive and he's leveraging a tragedy for political purposes. Clearly, we've interpreted it very differently and so let's not argue about that. I still don't understand why "othering" is important here. What accountability should non-Muslims be taking for Muslims and what is being denied by "othering"?

As for my thoughts about OP, It's not interesting. Most of the posters on this thread are just really immature. @StreetlightX @Banno @christian2017 @Maw and maybe I missed a few are guilty of the same thing as OP which is taking an extremely complicated and large thing like a religion being followed by a billion people or the West and taking a sliver of truth as using that to create venomous generalisations. I call this problem an issue of interpretative relevance and the named people don't even attempt to be balanced or nuanced, it's shameful.

Any kind of Islam vs the West is answered by interpretative relevance and I don't enjoy it. It's also the same with Islam, we all know there are millions of honest, kind and generous Muslims and we all know that some Muslims do terrible things in the name of their religion. We all know Islam has some vile interpretations (at least from a Non-Muslim perspective) but we also know that there are many interpretations of Islam which are much like reformed Christianity. I would argue that some people downplay how bad it is and many people who ignore every other factor in order to throw salt.

I believe that Muslims should be judged for what they believe and do and not the religion they follow, even if the two can be linked.

As for specifically what OP says, I am a complete moral relativist, he says the West is objectively more moral than Islamic countries and so obviously, I disagree.


It's a matter of interpretative relevance, I don't agree with his analysis but I don't agree with any of the other posters in this thread either. The issue is that there is no "Islam", it's a religion based off a convoluted book written over a thousand years ago, seemingly mostly in poetry and to this day many people make a living studying and interpreting what the Quran and the other relevant materials mean. Islamic scholars don't even agree with each other and when you break things down into further nuance, every single practitioner of Islam integrates their beliefs differently into the various aspects of their thinking and the way they live.

So I think there's no way to say what is and is not the "real" Islam and people should just give up even trying to declare there is one.

Banno's post was the most nonsensical post I've read on this forum and so I feel biased towards this "othering" concept mainly because of how he brought it up. Can you explain what "othering" is and why you feel it's important to bring up here?

I agree with your characterisation of hedonism as lacking meaning and not being an appropriate response to nihilism. Obligation, responsibility, progress, belonging and the ego are examples of things that give meaning to life. The problem with hedonism is that it doesn't tell you why you're needed, why you're important and what you're good for. That doesn't mean you can't have pleasure or do pleasurable things and of course, a balance is necessary.

Othering.

They are not us. We don't do this shit.

That's the PM's excuse for Australia producing a nationalistic terrorist.

And so he does not have to admit his culpability in the crime, despite years of presenting the sort of thing found in the OP here.

The Christchurch terrorist was one of us. He was born in a town a few tens of kilometres away from my home town. He experiences the same sorts of things as we experienced. He chose to act based on those experiences. And what he did was appalling. — Banno

You are so out of line in every single post I see you make on this forum, it's unreal.

Do you think they're less of a problem outside of forums?

It depends on what you mean by God, whether or not I am prepared to claim he definitely doesn't exist or not. The Christian God is not just any old God, there are lots of specific claims surrounding his existence and what's he done and what he is. It is different to say I cannot say I know that there are no Gods.

Is God more than just his existence? What if I deny his character, his history, his nature as they are known by Christians? There are many things about the Christian God which either have been disproven or could be argued to be impossible, such as his moral objectivity. You could argue with interpretations of his nature like that he is benevolent and just as well. So "A" God could exist but I am happy to disagree that God could exist as he is described by Christians or Muslims.

It wouldn't. There is no good way to do it nor any good reason to try. It just means that in our universe of plausible and valid facts, interpretations and values, only some of them are used as premises in our arguments about meaning, characterisation, categorisation and so on. Sometimes the process of prioritising elements, including or excluding them and their role in the overall argument is calculated and sometimes it isn't.

The result either way is that even if there are no disagreements about what the facts are, each argument utilising exactly the same interpretations and utilising the same values without any difference to be found anywhere in any of these things, we can still reach different positions. Given that what determines what is interpretatively relevant is not necessarily decided by any of these things.

You're misconstruing my post again, and yours is so poorly written that I'm unclear what you're attempting to communicate — whollyrolling

Spare me.

You're not juvenile because of your beliefs, you are juvenile because instead of just ignoring a thread that you didn't like, you replied with an edgy rant.

"Morality" is a subjective extrapolation of base survival instinct, and it has been crafted throughout history in such a way as to categorize humans separately from other animals because humans don't understand the purpose of consciousness and because consciousness fears mindlessness as much as it fears death. — whollyrolling

So you're not positing falsehoods but you feel it's fair to say the primary objective for humans in "crafting their morality" is to provide evidence for categorical separation from animals because (all humans) don't understand the purpose of consciousness? First of all, that's an interpretation and it's clearly not the stated aim of the people living in any period of history. Secondly, it's an incredibly baseless interpretation, now you might not mind that but think back to your criticism of OP, it doesn't make sense.

As for free will, I don't like discussing it with people who think it doesn't exist. It's a silly view.

Actually discussing anything with people who confuse interpretations with facts is unappealing. Preaching for self-awareness from someone who denies free will might be pointless but you are literally talking here of an interpretation of the meaning or purpose, your choice, being for the human race to spread bacteria across space as something that can be true/false.

I don't want to go back and forth on this, I don't need any justification to stop talking to you, there's no face to save here and even if there was, I wouldn't be worried. You want to debate free will and morality then go make a thread, such threads are always popular.

Ranting or not ranting, OP actually has better grammar than you so it makes you look stupid to insult him for his. I don't actually disagree that OP has made dubious and unsubstantiated claims but take a look in the mirror. Even if we granted a disregard for other species or the planet, that isn't even close to what you initially said and how you interpret the past is just a result of your own choices. Your perspective of humans as seeing them as no different than the mindless, unthinking organisms they evolved from is also just one option and not a particularly pragmatic or interesting one.

You're arguing morality is entirely nurtured? Do you think it's just something we made up and has no biological or evolutionary basis? That in of itself is a controversial claim and if it isn't just nurtured, people don't just "choose" to follow it, they can really only try to choose not to and I don't think they'd see that much success. Are you also arguing against free will? More controversial claims and in my estimation, this one is even more ludicrous than the first but some very intelligent people don't agree with me so let's say that has yet to be demonstrated to be a falsehood for argument's sake.

You agree there's no objective meaning and so you agree you've only interpreted the meaning of the human race as being to spread bacteria across space. That's potentially valid but there's no reason for me to care about such a shallow way of thinking. The falsehoods you posited were that your interpretations of humans are facts and that's something you're still doing. I don't actually care to debate the basis of morality, free will or the subjective meaning of human existence. I only commented on your post because someone actually praised it and I thought OP deserved for someone to show how juvenile you were actually being and are.

Humans are derived from basic organisms who think nothing of murder, nothing of morality, nothing of rape, nothing of inclusivity, nothing of religion. What drives human beings is incomprehensibly simplistic, feral, vacuous. — whollyrolling

Simplistic, feral, vacuous? That's a more apt description of your post than of the human race. I've always found it interesting, how difficult it can be to really crushingly respond to someone without fault. It's rare to see. Your post has poor grammar throughout, you misuse words, you posit a lot of falsehood. The whole post is nothing but self-indulgent rambling.

I don't disagree that life has no objective meaning but have a little class, OP has been respectful and willing to engage in meaningful conversation.

Well, that would require consistent ratios of relevance and importance of each individual piece of information, interpretation and value in each potential context, with all being included. That could create a proportional representation in a single entity but someone/something else with different ratios (assuming same inputs) would still consider different things to be interpretatively relevant and of course, for humans, there would be different inputs and by inputs I mean information, interpretation and values.

Sure, interpretative relevance is a bias, I think that's fair to say. Simply put, interpretative relevance refers to whether a piece of information is being used to understand what something means or not. Essentially anything that has many truths about it will not have those truths proportionally represented interpretatively but quite the opposite. Interpretations are arguments and only a handful of them can be used in creating our overall sentiment if it's to be coherent.

I could give any number of examples, I'll talk about general sentiment towards overweight people. What I notice is that talking about plumpness in people is that I have no idea what it's going to focus on. Lack of self-control, lack of activity, lack of knowledge, lack of time, laziness, fat acceptance, body positivity. All kinds of directions. Where we started tells me a lot about how the individual probably feels about overweight people. Interpretative relevance isn't always a choice, why did people focus on what they did? I don't know.

The ego is another big one, how to feel about yourself, loser or rockstar, what are you going to look at? Are you trying to construct an argument for or against yourself? Surely, there are good things you could focus on and bad things, there's no way we can know whether someone will feel good about themselves just based on looking at what they've got. Many more examples, I'll probably discuss a few more of them in other threads later on.


Ah of course, my writing makes it seem like I'm arguing against all philosophers or something, I just meant in general. As a side note, I consider any poster on a philosophy forum a philosopher.


Information, interpretation and values must be (and are) applied disproportionately to reach a position. What the truth is and its application in our understanding varies based on components we chose to employ. Application of this understanding allows for a new way of interpreting our views, the views of others and what the truth really is.

I guess my time's up, you can discuss whatever you want, I welcome any direction on the topic.

The difference between atheists and agnostics isn't in a lack of belief in God, both can have that. The difference is that the atheist interprets the lack of belief as meaning there's no reason to believe in any real possibility and the agnostic interprets the lack of belief as a result of being unable to determine either way.


The problem is that people don't always realise that they disagree with each other because they don't explore deeply enough their positions. When they do that, they find that the fundamental disagreement lies not where they thought it was but prior that, in their words. So someone wants to talk about "how important is intelligence in a relationship?" for example but in order to talk about that, you need to break down what intelligence is. They could refrain from using the word and instead break down the various components of intelligence but that wouldn't necessarily help, you're still going to debate interpretations.

The real problem in my view is that when someone uses a word, they're not aware that word is being subjectively defined by them using arguments they are or are not aware of. When you list the components of intelligence, you're making an argument for what intelligence is and what constitutes it. When others have a different understanding/interpretation, each wrongly believes that the other person has got it wrong and is being unreasonable. Being unable to determine when someone has actually stepped outside the bounds of the general definition of a word and when they're challenging your argument.

You can clearly see that with @Frank Apisa in his example, the problem here isn't that agnosticism or atheism are vague, there's a fundamental disagreement here about the meaning of the terms. Agnosticism is actually pretty clearly defined but that doesn't mean we have the same understanding of what an agnostic is. It's the same for most words and realistically if you're going to try to talk about something controversial then you should prepare yourself to be mostly debating interpretations.

You're a piece of work lol.

Whenever people start talking about "the good old days" I have to ask, would this have been taken as a funny joke if it was a letter mailed to some 51-year-old woman in the 19th or 20th century? I would figure, probably not. Why do you think differently?

It's also obvious from this woman's claims that she's not a reasonable person to be taking her as representative of either old people or 51-year-old women. One of her posts in the thread reads "I said online radicalisation of angry white men had to stop". Based on that and the fact that she's taking a copypasta so seriously, I think it's fair to say she fits the extreme leftist stereotype and for them, getting offended over nothing is basically a political position.

I'm not sure whether sending copypasta death threats to political speakers should really be taken as a joke or not but the overreaction is more typical of leftists than old people and I think that's what's going on here.

Fair point but objectively speaking, those things are interpretatively relevant to people in ways which are going to affect hiring decisions regardless. I did suggest that we do something which is illegal and probably unethical and it didn't really cross my mind so fair call out. I often focus on things like gender and age to add to my understanding about people, I suppose I mightn't fare well as an ethical or I suppose law-abiding employer.

I'd destroy countries, I think anything else is pretty cruel, the human race will continue and it would be better trying to reduce those left mourning and filled with hate. I don't know if we're factoring in methodology but other methods will involve millions of people trying to kill the billion, I'd rather just shoulder the responsibility alone and do something that doesn't require people seeing and causing so much death. As for which countries, start from the one I'd least like to live in and go up. Maybe I could think of a better way to decide which countries but there's no good way really.

I think the whole "what if it was you" attitude is stupid, nothing works that way well. Very few contexts where groups could function that way.

Wanting to kill humans for the sake of the planet is such an unpragmatic, foolish way of thinking. Impractical, nonsensical nature-orientated altruism and you found someone who's so unpragmatic in his thinking that while he wants to cull humanity down or get rid of humanity completely, he's defending his own existence with the same kind of reasoning that most other people would use. Great.

Philosophy without changing how you interpret things and in this case particularly yourself is superficial and meaningless. Your OP is filled with self-deprecation and destructive interpretations of mostly yourself. Philosophers tend to try to over rationalise things, most of your thinking is probably the result of a genetic proclivity for depression and anxiety rather than any influence from any philosophy. The interpretations must be changed, anything else is like the disposing of the weed but not the roots.

Your goal should be to develop a strong ego, I suggest rather than trying to be positive about things, interpret your negativity positively, give yourself a story of your value. Such as having a realistic view of the world or how you're not blind to unpleasant truths and perhaps, condescend a little towards those who you perceive as not having such a realistic view. You must do something similar for many aspects of your life. Regardless of what you do or don't do, real change includes interpretative change. You cannot be a real stoic or Buddhist while maintaining your current perspective which can only be changed at an interpretative level.

I don't think it's hubris, there are two aspects, the first is about taking responsibility for a connection you feel is relevant such as an ethnic or racial or cultural connection. That's how responsibility works, if you used the wrongdoing of others to contextualise your actions, you downplay their severity. Crimes aren't more or less wrong based on how common they are. The question is whether or not guilt is an appropriate response to crimes you neither committed nor could have stopped.

I think anything before the 16/17th century is commonly contextualised as "part of the era". We need to ask what the Western nations were really like in the 16th/17th/18th/19th/20th centuries and how appropriate it is to judge them as though they thought like we did. I think a large factor in how likely someone is to feel Western guilt is their understanding of that. I feel like 20th-century GB vs 21st-century version of the UK are worlds apart, it is a bit odd to talk like a citizen of the 21st-century should feel guilty for what happened in the middle east after WW1 for example.

I don't think the problem is Christianity but rather nihilism and moral relativism are mostly to blame for why people in the West feel this way. That's the second aspect, this idea of "being lucky to be born in the West", being unable to reconcile their fortune with the absolute poverty across the world. I think there's a real rejection to add insult to injury by talking about how superior the West is to the other nations and cultures around the world. I think nationalism, ethnic pride, racial pride and Christianity serve as antitheses to Western guilt, as a way to understand your fortune and own it. An appreciation and gratitude for how blessed we are or a focus on the negative aspects to the rest of the world rather than focusing on the few good things. Claiming your birthright as a proud Christian or proud citizen of your nation.

It's the same with gender, race, class and many other things which many people seem unable to reconcile the advantage and the meaninglessness and arbitrary nature in which they got those advantages. If you are just a person who happened to be born in the West, or a white man and none of that means anything to you and it was all just luck, how do you then feel good about those things? It's understandable that one might see things in a way where guilt arises, you've got all these nice things and you're doing well but a lot of complex feelings about it arise when talking about people who weren't "lucky".

I think things like intelligence and attractiveness aren't targetted because these are "owned" even by nihilists and moral relativists. I foresee this changing for attractiveness, there's already a lot of people pushing for that kind of interpretation.

I am an atheist, nihilist and moral relativist and personally, I don't feel any guilt because I think guilt is inappropriate and I feel that I wouldn't be born if my parents didn't have me, I can't just be "anyone". That's my answer.

No, I disagree that nihilism is in contradiction with pragmatism or secular humanism, though dark nihilism is. Nihilism mostly has implications for things besides objective meaning such as objective morality, religions such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and more, the validity of obligation and responsibility and other such things, which some might argue hold greater authority than a nihilist can accept due to the rejection of objective meaning.

Of course, nihilists can interpret all kinds of things from nihilism and even what I've listed, you might find nihilists who don't agree.

I agree but I mostly think miscommunication occurs due to poor reading skills. Also assumptions and having an understanding of what someone means that goes beyond what they've written, which happens for a variety of reasons. I often re-read posts a week later and notice a word or two that I skipped over which pretty much completely changes what someone wrote and I'm sure they read my response and not understanding why I wrote it. Again, all deceptively difficult and I'd be immediately sceptical of anyone who thinks they're innocent of it.

You take anything and express all the things you think it means or produces and explain whether those things are good or bad. Your reasoning for why you thought that either explained your values or more things you value because of your values. Such as valuing a towel because it allows you to dry yourself and valuing the ability to dry yourself because being wet for too long is uncomfortable, meaning you value comfort.

It's important to understand though that your values will be contradictory, whimsical, variable by a lot of factors and generally hard to understand. Many are not based on your rational thought but are things you value due to nature/nurture factors and so you may not be able to be honest (or honestly know) about why you value things. Values aren't just based on preference and personality but a whole list of things and not all of them are just "true for me" but you can be wrong in your valuing of something due to a false understanding.

I didn't say this forum was low quality, Brett did. I've posted on about four different forums thus far and this one is by far the most active. Each one has their own weird posters that you really want nothing to do with as well as people who are interesting and have good ideas. For me, I can tell when a post has been thought out, researched and really understood the topic and I can tell when people are just replying for the sake of it. A lot of BC's posts are great because they bring information into it that nobody else will, there are quite a few other good posters here too, even ones that I've yet to agree with.

I'm not against discussing women or men either, even women vs men, it's something which everyone has a lot of opinions about and I'm no different. As S said though, this was a clickbait thread which is just trolling people. It was never going to and hasn't created any kind of interesting debate because what is there to even talk about with this kind of OP and title? I'm not going to seriously debate that topic with anyone.

I post in philosophy forums for three reasons:
1. Improve my writing/Expression of ideas
2. See what kind of criticism people have for my ideas/How well I can respond to that criticism
3. Learning to listen to others and respond appropriately (in a way they accept).

1 and 3 are deceptively difficult, especially when you want to post without proofreading and spending too much time writing comments. 2 is hard, miscommunication occurs all the time and people are dealing with very different perspectives than me. I have to be the judge for whether the criticism was valid and whether I responded well, which requires me to be as impartial as I can be. It's all worth my time though and I'm glad forums like these exist.

Just making the problem worse by purposefully misunderstanding it imo but whatever.

So what's obvious to me is that a prejudice is a type of interpretation, people you think are being particularly malicious and narrow-minded are possibly neither of those things. If you treated your interpretation of people like you did everything else, what does that look like?

People very much care about the appearance of things, most items lose almost all of their value with the slightest flaw or damage. It's an attitude widespread enough to have wide-scale value implications for items, there's likely something necessarily human in thinking that way. What if we extend that kind of attitude to people though? Suddenly that's supposed to be all out the window? People prejudice against all kinds of things ALL the time, not just people.

The word prejudice is fine but not when you start insisting that it can't be compared to any kind of interpretative distinction based on appearance or trait, positive or negative. It's a word but that doesn't change the properties of what is going on here. I thought you understood this based on our discussions in the consistency of the criticism against the alt-right thread, people think in these kinds of ways and it's unavoidable.

My main problem with racism is that race barely tell us anything about a person but people use race as though it does. It's the same with biases against gender, you really don't know enough about a person based on that alone to say anything about them, so you shouldn't try to.

So clearly with racism, things are blown out of proportion but what about a choice to have a rat tail? There are certain types of people who simply won't or can't have a rat tail and that means if you have one, you're not one of those people. Office jobs mostly won't allow a rat tail, it's unlikely you are running a business seriously if you haven't changed to a reasonable hairstyle and so far, all my prejudice is fairly well backed-up.

Fear can lead to prejudice or be a product of prejudice but not usually and your examples make me think you are probably more in-line with what I think which is that people shouldn't make conclusions about people without sufficient information. You especially shouldn't blame an individual for your problems with a group. These are the kinds of prejudices which bother me.

Hate speech does lead to hate, it's perhaps a pre-requisite to hate on a wider scale.

For the Christchurch massacre, there were a few interpretations that were necessary the big one I suppose was that Muslims are a threat.

This is important because it's not that they just dislike Muslims or disagree strongly with them, they consider them a risk to the culture of the West and western culture. Obviously, they think that's a terrifying prospect and someone needs to do something about it. Create a massacre to ward off Muslim immigrants who think they will be safe in the West. Who can fall prey to this kind of thinking? Is it only hateful people?

Many respectable and noble people do feel they would die or kill to protect their countries and ideals and from any kind of threat. The hatred of Muslims may be a product of this interpretation of Muslims as a threat, wouldn't going around telling people that Muslims are a threat to Western culture, that they will destroy what you call home, going to increase the likelihood that some people feel that way? If they do, that may cause the hate of the Muslims or even then, they may not hate Muslims but still feel that something needs to be done to stop them.

In Australia, the media often reinforces the interpretations that violence is done by cowards. King hits, shootings and domestic violence, you'll constantly see the media attacking the manhood of the perpetrators. Clearly, the Christchurch shooters did not see things that way, they saw themselves as heroes defending Western culture.

People who may dislike Muslims but want to do things democratically or don't see violence as a viable solution could potentially be persuaded to change their perspective. I think that hate can be created out of many good things, good motivations or a desire to protect something. Twisting those good motivations and creating hate is not hard, only one or two interpretations need to change.

Even if we know hate speech leads to hate, that doesn't necessarily mean we can just ban it. I do not trust others to ban it, I think they will misuse the power, I know they will and I would fight against any attempt to ban "hate speech" out of fear that one day it will be not hateful people who are being censored but anyone who has an unpopular or "undesirable" opinion.

I'll start off by saying that I take the word "phobia" is a loaded gun, used as a political tool and popular because of its insidious claim but perhaps not a word a serious philosopher should be using. Phobia is a philosophical/political interpretation of a lot of things but prejudice is a big one, I think in examples like transphobia and Islamophobia prejudice against these groups would for many be sufficient to make a claim of transphobia or Islamophobia by itself. Using that interpretation it's self-evident that prejudice is a phobia but if you actually think there's some real truth to this, I don't know what to say, that's a bad sign.

There are all kinds of prejudices, thinking they're all irrational fear lacks any kind of nuance and I don't think it's even a truth claim, I assume there's some other kind of motivation at play (like a political or interpretative one).

So, I would prejudice against someone with a rat tail, mohawk or goth attire without any negative feelings towards them, it just seems obvious to me that a person with that kind of attire lives a certain kind of way. I would assume they don't have a great job, that they aren't that articulate, that they don't go to fancy restaurants and a whole plethora of other things. Most of those things, there's not that many possibilities for someone who looks like that to have a successful job, as either a business owner or employee, only a few kinds of jobs would allow for it and they're not that well paying. If they are, they're not necessarily good jobs that put them high on any social hierarchy. Now I'll give the individual chances to prove me wrong but my assumptions aren't positive but there's certainly no irrational fear lol.

People also make positive assumptions, one that I see a lot is assuming good looking people are above average intelligence, have good paying jobs, they're popular and they get high-quality girls/guys very easily. The opposite is true for unattractive people, it's clearly got nothing to with fear.

In fact, I prejudice against people on this forum, I don't need much, I see a really stupid name and it's already a bad first impression. What about Wallows, thread names? As soon as I saw them, I'm not scared of wallows, let me assure you of that but of course, I start making all kinds of assumptions about who in their right mind could make those threads - if we even generously assume he's in his right mind at all.

Do you actually have some kind of argument? Or do you just more so wish it were the case that it was so?

It is less reasonable but they're nonetheless more or less culturally accepted examples where causing harm has justifications that many people are sympathetic to. You have decided that the victim also needs to agree and realistically, in some of the cases I provided, they might. If you insult someone too viciously, you may be expecting violence and feeling you yourself might respond violently, it is possible.

It is just you who decided that the victim needs to agree though, I don't accept that as a pre-requisite to a fair justification. I think we also have different estimations of how much violence morality prevents, I lean more towards people being scared, logical, lacking motive and desire, empathy and many other things before moral obligation or rules.

I am a pragmatist, violence is generally not helpful because it has many negative consequences. Your argument relies on some lofty premises, why should I play by the victim's rules? I'm the one who has to justify my actions to myself, the law is already set against violence, convincing myself and my friends, that's all that's within my power to attempt to do.

Thanks but I am saying Wallows is a provocateur who is just as in, only, interested in causing a commotion with his threads. I'm not against sharing controversial opinions but this thread is a rudderless, free-for-all filled with people provoked by his outrageous title and comments. I think everyone will leave worse for it. I've said my piece and continuing past this point wouldn't benefit anyone.

I think philosophy is really something best done alone, I just use forums to see my own ideas in a different light.

You should see what the forum is truthfully, determine your feelings about posting here and then accept what happens within the parameters of that. My understanding of philosophy forums is that most of the people here are not here to learn, they're here mainly because they want to either share their ideas or teach.

If you want to learn without being taught, discuss things with humility, you really need to identify who's going to do that with you. The only thing you can always expect is that people will disagree with you, that's why I like to come here and look for valid critique on my ideas, I know people will try their best to show me I'm wrong most of the time.

I think that's just how philosophy forums are, I've visited many and usually what you can hope for is that there will be a handful of posters you enjoy talking to.

Making threads like this, which just poke the hives nest, warn first then revoke the privilege to make threads or ban.

The facts presented in OP?

I disagree with @VagabondSpectre, I think he's just being kind. Nothing in your OP suggests that you were trying to have a discussion about "why" you "wanted" to discuss what it meant. You specifically wanted to debate whether women are better/better socially than men because more men are in prison than women.

You've framed a ridiculous and shallow interpretation as your OP, the fact you presented is irrelevant. Here's yet another poster who thinks the ways they interpret facts are just part and parcel with the fact. You presented absolutely no evidence for why your assertion that this fact is even relevant to your argument, you presented no evidence or argument as to why this fact alone would demonstrate anything or to what degree.

This isn't your first thread which does this, most of your threads do. They get attention because of the titles in the same way people crowd around a fist fight. I can't even see any discussion of the OP in this thread, just people fighting about whether one gender is superior or how genders have been mistreated and other similar crap. You should be stopped from doing this, that's what I think and I hope some mod agrees.

There's a huge difference between wealth inequality in a country and differences in wealth between countries. Wealth inequality is a social issue, it's known to increase crime, it's a moral issue, it's an issue of responsibility, it's an issue of looking after your own and explaining the inequality in a way which makes sense within the system. There are many examples where governments assist their own citizens and it's not undermined by the fact they don't extend that same level of assistance to citizens of other countries. — Judaka

I meant the possibility that referring to some “race” is not unlike referring to some “nationality”. Neither are focused on the broader picture of “humanity”.

I’m well aware of the effect of inequality on crime rates (It is a phenomenon observed on every scale; from global to city district). The issue being the proximity of poorest to wealthiest. — I like sushi

It's just technically true that wealth redistribution within a country and charity towards other countries are different things. A discussion on what to do about poverty in the world beyond the West is just an entirely different topic, it doesn't undermine a desire for wealth redistribution within a country, something which would be performed by a government. The responsibility of a government is to their people, not all people.

You want to discuss an entirely different topic then make a new thread for it but I don't get what it's got to do with what is being discussed here. — Judaka

Just curious to see if you can spot the possible irony of this statemenr alongside what you’ve been saying in this thread? — I like sushi

I was just pointing out a possible disparity in how you view “race” and “nationality”. I say this because they are both essentially part of cultural identity with little clear distinction. One can carry one’s sense of “nationality” to another country and throughout their lives - they hae to due to basica history. Race is just an outward appearence, yet it carries with it a sense of identity - hence a woman who was adopted feels “black” easily enough.

If people are only concerned with what’s going on in their backyard more fool them. They are going to realise one-day that the world is actually quite small and what happens on the other side of the globe can, and does, affect their lives. — I like sushi

To highlight: "If people are only concerned with what’s going on in their backyard more fool them"

I don't know when for you we stopped talking about wealth inequality and started talking about identity but I viewed that as a point you were trying to emphasis within that argument. Also, I have been talking about global wealth inequality the whole time and discussing "identity" without a context is clearly pointless. My "Australian" identity means different things for me based on where I am and who I'm dealing with.

You want to pretend you aren't swapping around topics without making it clear then fine but if you want to change the topic then perhaps make it clearer next time, especially when I continue to bring up points that could only be relevant in a wealth inequality debate.

You're all over the place so I wouldn't be surprised if I got no idea what you're talking about. You like making me guess, that's basically what this conversation has been about. You were talking about relative wealth in the US compared to other nations, now you're claiming to be talking about global inequality but now I'm thinking maybe you're just talking about inequality across the globe? Quote me where you actually succinctly expressed your position, I'm keen.