Broccolli? Weirdo.

Naturally enough, a minority group, particularly a very misunderstood one will seek to push things as far as they can in order to get a foothold in society and reinforce their sense of security. Liberals will tend to take their side pretty much in proportion to their vulnerability and as there are fewer groups more vulnerable and abused than transgenders (it's not just "fag" or "dyke", it's "freak" on top of that) that can amount to a fairly powerful movement once it takes off. Helping it along is the fact that university professors tend to be liberals and are a major mover in politically correct campaigns so you can get a trickle turning into a flood pretty quickly and then existing cultural norms start to look like the vulnerable parties (particularly to conservatives).

This is about where we are at now I think (trickle to flood territory) and where it takes some stepping back and weighing up to achieve balance. Where I think we can't go too far is in understanding what transgenderism is and understanding the discrimination, abuse and ridicule trans people face often on a daily basis. Put yourself in those shoes and some radical shifts in perspective will probably seem justified. Where I think we can go too far though is in giving any group a disproportionate influence over aspects of culture that are shared and fairly fixed, such as, with regard to language, closed word classes like pronouns. I mean it's fine to come up with new vocabulary in open word classes like nouns to describe transgender people and as far as I'm concerned you can have as many words for in-betweens as fit. But you don't artificially mess with things like pronouns, which despite their lack of utility in certain situations, are naturally resistant to change for good reasons, and you certainly don't legislate to enforce the use of new language as has happened in Canada.

So, my general view on the transgender movement is that I support it but recognize that not all of its interests are going to correspond with the public interest, and it's not unfair to sensitively put on the breaks in certain areas. That should be done with reasonable argument though not shouting about the evils of "political correctness" which is so encompassing a concept, it's hardly worth saying anything at all about.

My original comment was "That's hardly news" = I don't think it's a big deal.



She's either a laughing stock or not worth thinking about. Both amount to her having zero influence.

Ah OK, missed that.

The whole movement actually encourages struggling people to not accept themselves. For those truly struggling with identity, changing gender is not going to help the real problem of not accepting themselves. They "feel" like they should be something else, but next week those emotions could change. If they allow their feelings to rage unchecked, then how does this benefit them? How is society helping them to accept themselves if it encourages them to change based on feelings? For instance, a young girl may "feel" fat, so should society encourage her to starve herself and inflict potentially fatal results so that she may "feel" beautiful? Or should society encourage her to live a healthy lifestyle and accept her body the way it is? It is the same thing with the transgender movement, except more of mental damage being done than physical. Encourage those people to accept and love themselves just the way they are, no matter what their feelings do. — Lone Wolf

Is this based on some kind of evidence or is it just what sounds plausible to you?

I know you are, but what am I? — T Clark

My comment actually was meant as a joke.

But I won't flood this place with my own limericks as T Clark has set down strict guidelines on what can be considered a joke here and I think we should all respect that. (Not being sarcastic by the way (much). It's his discussion. So, let's stick to standard jokes.)

There once was a forum for the philosophical

Where members would troll things fantastical

It happened one day

In a gruesome display

That Sir2u was marked ungrammatical — praxis

Not bad at all but the rhythm is off. Maybe:

"There once was a forum phil'sophical
Where member would troll things fantastical
It happened one day
In a gruesome display
That Sir'u was marked ungrammat'cal"

The jokes I am posting mean something to me. — T Clark

That was your first funny one. (Y)

I lived under a dumpster where grey dumpster stew would pour into my mouth — Hanover

Whereas now it goes in the opposite direction.

My point: If fate should have it that you will be the chosen soul to have the last word, don't strive for profound or even loving, but instead for the most divine of all traits. Creativity. The first thing God did was create, after all. Make it your last. — Hanover

Amen.

(By the way, you're allowed to trash talk Trump here. Go on, be creative. ;) )

You sure about Elon Musk? That surprises me a bit. Got a source?

And Sam Harris. Although to a lesser extent.

@Agustino There's a grain of sense in what you're saying but you're not going to be able to make a loaf out of it. Rand's more or less unanimous rejection by the philosophical community does not reflect well on her philosophical abilities any more than homeopathy's unanimous rejection by the scientific community (as anything other than a placebo) reflects well on its efficacy as a medical treatment. Or just consider a common sense example: Everyone at work agrees Joe is a lazy waster who is dragging the company down. Which is more likely, that Joe is a lazy waster who is dragging the company down? Or the opposite? And, no, it doesn't sound inherently suspect. It sounds like Joe should be fired.

Of course, murderers will always see their victim as obviously guilty. You're just illustrating the very phenomenology of it. — Agustino

What the fuzzball?

What the fuzzball? — TimeLine

A common reaction to an @Agustino post. Fortunately, the verdict is not unanimous so it's much more likely to be justified. (Y)

I'm a social liberal who is appalled and horrified by the tactics and rhetoric and anti-intellectualism and flat out hate and anger of what passes for the left these days. — fishfry

The poisonous politics of the left outweighs their good intentions — fishfry

Who is this left? I mean I consider myself to be on the left (on most issues). So do most university professors traditionally. Why are the anti-intellectual extremists the left and others not?

“[The Native Americans] didn’t have any rights to the land and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using… [W]hat was it that they were fighting for, if they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence. Their right to keep part of the earth untouched, unused, and not even as property, but just keep everybody out, so that you can live practically like an animal, or maybe a few caves above it…. Any white person who could bring the element of civilization had the right to take over this country.” — WISDOMfromPO-MO

This doesn't seem a very good example of something that needs interpretation by the way. There doesn't seem to be any ambiguity here.

Perhaps you should implement this as a rule for the mods in decision making — Agustino

Request denied. :D

I have no problem with that. It's just up to the mod, the situation and how much time they think they should put into it. I don't want to see @Jeremiah leave either but it just seems a trivial reason as, given @StreetlightX's description, the OP was obviously lacking. Maybe he'll change his mind.

Atlas Shrugged and the like are common as favorite books amongst American billionaires I think — Agustino

There are hundreds (thousands?) of billionaires out there. You've given one example. Give me ten more and the comment might be justified. But yes, being selfish and uncaring can be an advantage in terms of making money. That's hardly news.

The academia largely rejects Rand because she makes them feel bad about themselves. — Agustino

Not that I think she's a great philosopher, but just that belief systems that are rejected with such unanimity tend to speak more about those who reject it than about the rejected belief system. — Agustino

Academia would also unanimously reject Carrot Top as a great philosopher, so I guess he must be a genius.

In Jewish law, if there is unanimity against someone in a court of law, they are let free by default, because unanimity is always suspicious. — Agustino

Sounds like a recipe for bloody disaster. The more obvious you make your crime, the more likely you are to get away with it. :s

Mark Cuban? Don't know much about him to be honest. Well done on the billionaire thing but reading list needs work.

I know, but it's a volunteer job and mods have lives outside TPF, so the onus is on posters to be responsible for that.

There's no way to know for certain who has read the guidelines, but they are pinned and don't take long to read, so it's not unreasonable to expect posters have done that. Whether an OP is prodded or not is up to the individual mod.

(Y)


(Y)

It's "philosophy" for stupid selfish people who wish to justify their character failings and usually don't know anything about actual philosophy. She's basically irrelevant in academia.

From the guidelines:

Starting new discussions:

Don't start a new discussion unless you are:

a) Genuinely interested in the topic you've begun and are willing to engage those who engage you.

b) Able to write a thoughtful OP of reasonable length that illustrates this interest, and to provide arguments for any position you intend to advocate.

c) Capable of writing a decent title that accurately and concisely describes the content of your OP.

d) Starting an original topic, i.e. a similar discussion is not already active.

---------

Then it's up to the moderator to try to determine what a reasonable length is and @StreetlightX has given an explanation for his reasoning. (Some of these slip through the net but it's often because the discussion has progressed too far and deleting it would unfairly punish other posters).

Well I think this proves that this place is a waste of my time. Goodbye. — Jeremiah

Seems like an overreaction to me. Nobody likes their OPs being deleted but this is not a problem that should be difficult to fix, I would have thought. In any case, best of luck.

@StreetlightX
I certainly think there is an important distinction: one type of hurt involves being a victim of a third party and the other being a victim of yourself with the third party being a kind of proxy. If you don't have an enemy, you invent one; if you don't have an oppressor, you find one. It's the virtual play of the spoilt modern and should be recognized and identified as such because it obscures very real problems. And yes, the gun debate is a clear example. You identify a problem which involves very real victims and you end up being accused of victimizing those who disagree with you. The nature and degree of the victimhood and hurt, potential or realized, gets lost, and as a result the moral landscape becomes muddied and the problem never gets solved.

I agree with @jamalrob that all these forms of hurt are real and need to be taken seriously, so I'm not sure that the term "hypothetical hurt" is helpful but we should always make recourse to the concept of victimhood and recognize the difference between a true victim, one who suffers as the result of a clear and demonstrable injustice (like Amy or victims of gun crime) and a self-proclaimed victim, one who suffers as a result of a perceived injustice (like Scott and opponents of gun regulation). The hurt is real but the victimhood may be invented or relatively trivial.

Yes, I'd rather keep a hold of the knife just in case you change your mind. :D

The religious prohibition against homosexuality is in truth the prohibition of rivalry because homosexuality is itself a fascination with the rival. — Agustino

Sounds vaguely Lacanian. I'd also ask for an explanation but we're veering off-topic. Might be worth a new discussion.

Knock Knock
Who's there?
No
No who?
No not no who know how

Only your manly parts. :)

I get it but I actually don't want unfair treatment and it's difficult to be objective when involved in a discussion. As I've said before I believe all of these debates should end with a smile and a handshake if possible.

By the way, I knew it wasn't an attempted insult. — Thorongil

Thank goodness.

The bitter sarcasm and hyperbolic reactions...[continues with bitterness and hyperbole] — Thorongil

I can only again suggest you cheer up and stop taking things personally. You did become the butt of some jokes and harsh criticism because of some things you said. If you really feel you are being picked on, you can raise it in Feedback. Anyway, on with the discussion hopefully.

I have never understood the obsession that the culture that I am part of has with the sun and warm weather. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

They don't get enough of it. In the tropics they obsess about the cold and snow and other such exoticisms.

Nice idea. Didn't work out for you in practice though.

*Sigh* — Thorongil

The difference between you and a person with a sense of humour in a nutshell. Cheer up, please. Lighthearted comments like that are an attempt to steer things back on a more productive path not a serious attempt at insult.

Quite. But I've been responding to several people in this thread, all of whom disagree with me (and more than that, think that I'm an evil maniac) — Thorongil

Correction: "rightist evil maniac". ;)

The leftist mod brigade has tried very hard, sometimes with sarcasm and sometimes with apparent seriousness, to paint me as a gun-loving and toting nutjob. — Thorongil

Nope. It's your demonstrable paranoia and logical leaps that were objected too. I know you're not a gun lover but you do hate the left in a way that makes you sound irrational at times.

Nice dodge. — Thorongil

You should be able to work out the answer from what I've written. But anyway.

Why do you assume that it's the second amendment that causes gun deaths? Take a look here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/27/new-evidence-confirms-what-gun-rights-advocates-have-been-saying-for-a-long-time-about-crime/?utm_term=.085b6df2f17f — Thorongil

I'm not calling for a repeal of the second amendment (that would be futile) and I don't know that the second amendment in and of itself is the cause of the problem I'd like us to address (the disparity between the US and other developed countries in terms of violent crime and gun violence specifically), which is why I made a conditional statement about it rather than a categorical one and then clarified that. But we're never going to be able to have a normal conversation until you get over your paranoia about my (and others' here) motives. Isn't it possible that like most people, I don't want to see needless loss of lives and would be happy to see any measures taken that would solve the problem? That whether or not you keep your second amendment in this context is unimportant to me? That I'm not actually a tactically maneuvering leftist working (on a philosophy forum of all places) to try to ban all guns in America just to piss off the right?

You said one thing in the Shoutbox, which you then contradicted here. I'm just calling it like I see it. — Thorongil

My statements aren't inconsistent particularly seeing as I clarified the first one in the Shout box in a reply to Sapientia. But even if there were an inconsistency, your conclusion makes no sense. You think you've found an inconsistency, you admit that you know of no reason that I would lie.Your conclusion: I'm lying. As I said, you're an odd one.

You also ignored the first half of my post. So my point about leftist tactics still holds good. — Thorongil

I like that you presume I'm a leftist and I have tactics. It's kind of like being in a movie.

You are an odd one sometimes. Why would you presume something you can't even think of a reason for? But, fine. Your complaints about tactics ring a little hollow now though.

I understand that you lied and are now covering your tracks. — Thorongil

*Adjusts microscope* Hmm, bacillus paranoias... ;)

I have no reason to lie about my views on gun control. I can't even think one up. Feel free to enlighten me. Why am I lying about what I think about gun control and what do I really think?

Edit: Actually, you've done the second part. Just the first then.

Baden both does wish for the second amendment to be repealed as well as for guns to be banned. The reason he didn't state his opposition to the second amendment earlier, he now tells us, is because it's "not going anywhere." So he's pretending to be a pragmatist. — Thorongil

I don't believe the second amendment is a right worth having if it means it increases the chance of people being killed or injured as opposed to the average risk in other developed countries that don't offer such a right. If there were a way to keep the second amendment and not have such obviously adverse consequences then I would not consider it such (I'm not closed to the possibility). Apart from which, as I said, no proposal relying on its repeal is realistic. The fact that this seems even remotely unreasonable or difficult to understand for you is something I can't help you with.