Comments

  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    There's genocide everywhere. There's racism everywhere. — BitconnectCarlos

    Hardline Zionists singing "Shu'Fat is on fire!" Happily praising the actions of sectarian murderer Yosef Haim Ben David.

    How long until we see the seal of Islam painted on Palestinians' doors?
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Oooh, you edited it from "Jewish murderers" to "Israeli murderers" -- why did you do that?? Why revert back, I'm interested. — BitconnectCarlos

    I'd do the same, black belt nuance is required not to slip into anti-semitic adjacent language. Considering "anti-zionism is anti-semitism" and "if you're against the state of Israel you're against the Jewish people" are a common trope here, it makes it very easy for someone who's criticising the state of Israel's actions to say something which sounds very anti-semitic.

    But that's also part of the discourse here - there really are anti-semites, and there really is a political discourse around the idea that Zionist=Jewish=approve of Israel's expansion.

    It's an interesting motte and bailey + trojan horse combo really, not of your invention, that the propaganda surrounding the state of Israel equates Jewish national identity with Zionism with Israel's military expansion, so that it becomes harder to persuasively criticise Israel's military expansion without sounding like an anti-semite... The state of Israel's policies invite ethno-nationalist+military expansion flavour Zionism to be equated with Judaism, but when someone else flubs and makes the mistake of equating the three they sound like an anti-semite.

    I swear, whatever PR group came up with that nightmarish tangle are geniuses.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    And now I'm doing it too. Hey, look at this thread, this is so bad!!! :-) — Foghorn

    It's not surprising really, much of the debate comes down to convincing people there's a problem...
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    @BitconnectCarlos

    https://twitter.com/activestills/status/1405199195028561922?s=20

    -June 15, in a Palestinian neighbourhood in Jerusalem.

    For right-wing and many centrist members of the alliance, including Mr. Bennett, the flags march is a matter of national pride: a celebration of their democratic right to walk through areas of Jerusalem captured by Israel during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, which Israel now considers part of its undivided capital. Each year, it features thousands of marchers waving Israeli flags as they proceed toward the Western Wall, a sacred site in Judaism. But it was aborted in May because of the rocket fire from Gaza.

    One of the last acts of Mr. Netanyahu’s government was to reschedule this year’s aborted march for Tuesday, its path rerouted from some of the most sensitive parts of the Old City of Jerusalem. The decision was upheld by Omer Bar-Lev, the new center-left minister for public security — to the praise of his new right-wing allies.

    “I congratulate Public Security Minister Omer Bar-Lev for his decision to hold the flag dance,” tweeted Nir Orbach, a hard-right member of the coalition who almost dropped out of the alliance before the confidence vote. “The flag dance is part of the culture of religious Zionism and is held regularly. It does not need to be a political dance or proof of governance, it needs to be a display of joy.”

    Compare this to Dave Hann's description of outright fascist+racist organisation the National Front in the UK:

    Almost as soon as the date for the second Carnival had been advertised, the NF countered it by declaring that they intended to march through the heart of the East End’s Bangladeshi community in Brick Lane on the very same day. Their move, which was an acknowledgment of the opposition generated by RAR events, sought to disrupt the Carnival and divide the anti-fascist movement. Prevarication followed by political expediency on the part of leading SWP members almost allowed them to achieve their goal.

    It was announced from the Carnival stage that the situation in the East End was under control so people should stay and enjoy themselves. In fact, local ANL activists had telephoned their ANL national steering committee and begged them to send more “people down to help the anti-fascists at Brick Lane. Alongside the local ANL, members of various Trotskyist groups, anarchists and local anti-racists from the Hackney and Tower Hamlets Defence Committee tried to harass a 700 strong NF march but their numbers were too small to create any more effective action against the marchers and their police escorts. Local Bengali youth were kept away from the Front invaders by large numbers of antagonistic police. A rally at Church Road concluded the march and opened another fascist offensive. Groups broke away to threaten and cause damage to the area and its people. One gang of 50 to 60 skinheads smashed up shops on Brick Lane before being driven off by locals.     — David Hann

    The mode of operation is the same; only the march is also through conquered ground-turned-racially segregated neighbourhood. Note that such practices are explicitly called part of the culture of Zionism, according to one of the march's political advocates in the state of Israel, as the New York Times documents.

    Yes. Zionists shouting racialised death threates while marching through a Palestinian dominant neighbourhood. Accompanied by the marching drums of incendiary bombs dropped on civilians in Gaza.

    Perhaps it is Palestine who faces an existential threat instead?

    I ask you to turn this post about - imagine it was a Jewish community standing on this precipice, what would you recommend? I think we already know - get the rifle, never again.
  • Bannings
    ↪DingoJones


    Yes. Look at the post history. 145 posts of mostly insults and shitposts in one day. We even warned him, he insulted someone afterwards.
  • Euclidean Geometry
    "Given a point in a plane, how many lines exist such that they do not pass through the point?" — anon123

    What's a line in a 2 dimensional plane?

    A line is a set of pairs of points (x,y) such that y=mx+c, c is its intercept with the y axis and m is its gradient.

    So let's pick some point in the plane, (u,v) - what defines a line that does not go through the point (u,v)? Well, it's a set of pairs that satisfies a line equation above such that (u,v) is not an element of the set.

    That can be translated into an equation, a line does not intersect the point (u,v) if (u,v) is not a solution to its line equation. IE if (y-v) != m(x-u) for all y and x in the line equation. How many ways could that happen?

    To get at that, let's consider an example, the point (u,v)=(1,1) isn't on the line y=2x+3, what would happen if we subbed it in? We'd get 1 on the left and 5 on the right, so the discrepancy between the left and the right would be 4. With that we could write that 1=2*1+3-4, subbing the point into y=mx+c and noting the discrepancy -4 on the right hand side.

    What that reveals is that there's another way of thinking about the problem, we could make the following construction:

    (1) A point (u,v)
    (2) A line equation y=mx+c
    (3) A discrepancy d such that v=mu+c+d

    Notice that (u,v) will lay on the line y=mx+c if and only if d=0.

    For a given point (u,v), can you find a discrepancy such that v=mu+c+d where d>0? Yes, the line equation y=mx+(c+d) generates such a point. Consider the point (1,1) and the discrepancy 3, That means we'd need to have an m and a c such that 1=m*1+c+3, which is one equation with two unknowns, so you can an infinite family of solutions m+c=-2.

    And that was for a single discrepancy value.

    Put all that together, then to have a a recipe for a line which doesn't contain a point, you pick a point, then you pick a discrepancy (say there are n discrepancies), then you have an infinite family of solutions for that discrepancy.

    How many is that exactly? There's a discrepancy for every nonzero real number, and there's a line of solutions for every discrepancy, so that's the cardinality of the continuum squared. Which is the cardinality of the continuum again by the rules of transfinite arithmetic.

    So there are as many lines satisfying your question as there are points in the plane, or points in your original line. Just infinity things.
  • Philosophical Plumbing — Mary Midgley
    It follows that Midgley does not offer a solution, although she indicates a few alternatives. She instead admonishes us to engage in sorting out the conceptual confusions that we otherwise take for granted. — Banno

    Since I wholeheartedly agree with the spirit, if not also the letter, of Midgley's paper, I've nothing to add until others come along and earnestly clog-up the pipes with their (youtubed) "doctrines". — 180 Proof


    :up:

    I mostly agreed with the essay too. Here's an attempt to unclog one of its pipes.

    Near the conclusion you see:

    I think it might well pay us to be less impressed with what philosophy can do for our dignity, and more aware of the shocking malfunctions for which it is an essential remedy.

    Perhaps I'm reading into it more than reading it, but there's a hint of uniqueness there - a suggestion that philosophy alone is a remedy for "shocking malfunctions", despite that the essay highlights a broad spectrum approach:

    Granted, then, that the confusions are there, is abstract philosophical speculation really a helpful remedy? Are the plumbers any use? Obviously this kind of speculation cannot work alone; all sorts of other human functions and faculties are needed too. But once you have got an articulate culture, the explicit, verbal statement of the problems does seem to be needed. — Midgely

    I appreciate that the author aligns philosophy with wrestling with problems in general; a "handmaiden of thought and practice" as it were, but that doesn't really get into why philosophy is necessary. It seems to be necessary by fiat - characterised as that discipline which deals with the rough edges and deep structure (ambiguity, plumbing) of thought.

    So while the essay makes a good case for the necessity of "wrestling with questions", especially in interesting times as Banno put, one hole in the argument is that it doesn't sufficiently distinguish philosophy as a discursive practice from the rough edges and social/political/conceptual/discursive plumbing systems which are its fuel:

    That is the way people often do interpret this kind of claim, and it is particularly often brought forward as a reason for doing science. But Socrates was surely saying something much stronger. He was saying that there are limits to living in a mess. He was pointing out that we do live in a constant, and constantly increasing, conceptual mess, and that we need to do something about it. He knew that the presence of this mess, this chronic confusion, is something we do not much want to think about because it indicates the thoroughly undignified fact that we are inherently confused beings. We exist in continual conflict because our natural impulses do not form a clear, coherent system. And the cultures by which we try to make sense of those impulses often work very badly. — Midgely

    Which seems to me to present an unpleasant fork for the paper; either philosophy is commonplace enough to arise (more or less well) to fix breakdowns in plumbing and is done autonomously using domain understandings and general processes of reasoning, or alternatively it forms a necessary constituent of those disciplines (spurred on by their rough edges) from the get go. Either way, the unique vantage point and skillset of philosophy gets dissolved into (abstractions from) domain understandings.

    Which I'm fine with - but it does rather go against the unique position of philosophy as a problem solver for conceptual plumbing systems, as it's almost definitionally the practice of this problem solving. Like I'm 30cm tall if I redefine 30cm to be my height.
  • Transhumanism with Guest Speaker David Pearce
    Apologies if I've left any loose ends. — David Pearce

    You've been talking with us for two months! Time flies. Very many thanks for all you've done.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    It all depends on the way the conflict is being framed. With most people it'll be civil and I'll try to distance myself from my identity as much as possible, but the minute one side appears more intent on simply demonizing the other rather than finding a solution I'm done. — BitconnectCarlos

    What specifically from the posts you saw with others made you feel like Israel was being demonised rather than being criticised strongly for human rights violations? Is there a line you draw or is it vibes based?

    I approach the issue asking "what's the best way to help the Palestinians improve their position today" but others are simply more interested in demonizing one side. Israel is much more amenable to working with a Palestinian government that doesn't demand its immediate dissolution and refuses to recognize it. — BitconnectCarlos

    I mean that's pretty clear, no? Lobbying the state of Israel and it accepting one of the documented compromises Palestine has proposed on territory and were refused or blocked by the state of Israel. Internal demonstration within the state of Israel, proportional violent resistance to military over-reach, supply chain disruptions, trade sanctions on the state etc.

    As it stands the Palestinians are using whatever political means available to help themselves; yes, including terrible violence; it's up to Israel to increase the space of acceptable means. It has been for some time, but it doesn't happen.

    If we're going to frame the conflict as a zero-sum game, as other posters have, then I can play that game too. No, history does not begin in 1948 like the Europeans seem to believe. We're not going to solve much by looking back where each side can bring up endless grievances, we're going to do much better by looking forward. — BitconnectCarlos

    I didn't read that into their framing at all! I've never gotten "gains for one are losses for the other" framing from @Benkei or @StreetlightX's discussion of it - except in the extremely literal sense that gains in Israel's territory are losses in Palestine's. I think Benkei and Street know more than well enough that collaborative games like politics don't need to be framed as zero sum and typically are not in reality.

    From my perspective, your posts were actually the ones which had this framing - though presumably because you detected it (in my eyes a mis-detection) and responded in kind, though I can understand that you felt victimised through identifying with a group you felt were being demonised and have lots of tropes on your side for inferring that demonisation. Again, from my perspective, Israel was being harshly criticised for its numerous human rights violations and this is an emotive issue + being on the "receiving end" of someone's anger (regardless of its motivation) often feels like being stereotyped/demonised/victimised.

    So I get it (I think), but I think you misclassified the intent.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    But yeah, this line is not something I'd ever argue with you or ssu because it's totally unproductive. I just had to get it off my chest with Benkei after his tirades. — BitconnectCarlos

    What people don't understand about these discussions is that there's two Carlos'. — BitconnectCarlos

    I did suspect you were posting disingenuously with @Benkei and @StreetlightX, as it seems did they:

    Ah, I see you're not done role-playing. When you are, hit me up. — StreetlightX

    But in any case, nothing, absolutely nothing, that you have mentioned justifies Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. — Benkei

    Though I believe @Benkei is actually attempting to engage you rationally here. I believe if you asked him principled questions like: "What is a war crime?" and "Why do you believe Israel is an apartheid state?" and other such things they would be able (but perhaps not willing at this point) to give you either detailed answers or resources.

    What I didn't understand was which Carlos was displaying your actual intent. From personal experience, if I adopt a troll persona I'm way more serious about the contested claims than I let on - if I'm at the stage of discussion where I start thinking rhetorically and strategically, like you seemed to, it's ceased to be a game because I'm treating it like a strategy. So yeah, I made the assumption that you were like me and the knowingly absurd comments were actually closer to your true position on the issue than the more even handed ones you made - the passion which moves the reason as it were.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    I couldn't help myself, Benkei started playing the victim game and I had jump right on in there. — BitconnectCarlos

    Well if you're willing to disavow all of your dialogue with @Benkei...
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Nothing you've said justifies the Assyrians destroying the Kingdom of Judea in 750 BCE. — BitconnectCarlos

    67i0028lvcjo9zl0.png
  • Help with a Physics-related Calculus Problem
    ↪Enrique


    The matplotlib library in Python and the ggplot2 library in R, both open source, are useful for custom plotting. For extreme customisation (and corresponding workload per plot) you can't beat the tikz library in LaTeX though. The latter's more of a high powered doodling tool, the former two are data visualisation libraries.
  • Is the Philosophy Forum "Woke" and Politically correct?
    ↪Baden


    The test tells me I qualify as woke, but apparently we're so inclusive a group that includes people who answered that "it's okay to wear blackface on casual Fridays" on the appropriate question.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    What would you like to talk about in particular: The original birth of Israel (which the Arabs consider annexation)? The expansion of '48? '67? A current proposal to annex area C of the West Bank? These are all different issues and deserve their own treatment. — BitconnectCarlos

    You can literally see the expansion of Israel's territory here. Did the people displaced go willingly, or were they removed and subjugated by military force?
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Security procedures are always unpleasant, but so is the cost of not implementing them. — BitconnectCarlos

    What security procedure requires annexing more and more of Palestine?
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    I agree that the Palestinians are oppressed and that certain Israeli policies and actions make life worse for the Palestinian people. — BitconnectCarlos

    What concessions/restoration do you feel Israel owes the people it oppresses, then? Should it at least stop expanding its territory?
  • Is this language acceptable
    It reads like a broad spectrum stereotype shotgun to me, not specific to whites. There's definitely some hillbilly white trash in it, but it has a full body of offence with hints of sex worker stereotypes, fat shaming, religious stereotypes which provide it a complicated non-racializing body of offence. There are notes of systemic critique throughout the flavour profile, and the aftertaste is rooted in class analysis.

    Overall on the fdrake prejudice against whites scale, it gets somewhere between a phantom and a fart.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Is Israel the worst human rights abuser on the planet? — BitconnectCarlos

    I feel like the very idea of giving a nation credit for not being the worst human rights abuser on the planet is beyond the point of parody. But if you're willing to say that it really is an abuser of Palestinian human rights and that ought to stop...
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    I'm serious on this one: UN resolutions against Israel far exceed the number given to any other country. — BitconnectCarlos

    I am amazed that you can frame it this way with a straight face! It's discrimination against Israel in the international theatre that's causing the UN to issue resolutions against Israel's continued history of human rights violations?
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Their tactics are more extreme and violent — BitconnectCarlos

    Opening the session, UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet voiced particular concern about the "high level of civilian fatalities and injuries" from the attacks on Gaza, and warned the Israeli attacks on the enclave "may constitute war crimes".

    She also said Hamas's "indiscriminate" firing of rockets at Israel was "a clear violation of international humanitarian law".     — UN

    The UN doesn't see it as that clear cut. Nor does Amnesty International - the UN is the UN, Amnesty International is a renowned human rights watchdog.

    Would you condemn Israel's expansion into Palestine, torture, forced evictions, and discriminatory laws?
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Thus, even if your argument is sound — BitconnectCarlos

    :up:

    Morality may be one factor in decision-making, but it should not be the whole picture. — BitconnectCarlos

    Same for the people of Palestine, since:

    The central function of a state is security - the protection of its own citizens. — BitconnectCarlos

    gives mandate for Hamas to force match Israel. To put it bluntly, Palestine isn't doing very well in this regard. And it can't, it doesn't have the military force. So it resorts to the guerrilla and terrorist tactics of an occupied power.

    So long as morality can partially factored out for Israel, it can be factored out to at least the same extent for Palestine. Let everyone eat terror.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    And that basically covers everything. Nothing else needed. — ssu

    I mean there are plenty of thought terminating cliches that would do it.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    ↪BitconnectCarlos


    Please try and stay on point. Look at the argument:

    (1) A people displaced from their historic home ought to be able to return there.
    (2) The people of Israel were displaced from their historic home.
    (3) The people of Israel have ought to be able to return there.

    Valid argument. One you've made.

    (1) A people displaced from their historic home ought to be able to return there.
    (2) The people of Palestine were displaced from their historic home.
    (3) The people of Palestine have a ought to be able to return there.

    Just a substitution.

    It can be strengthened:

    (1) A people ought not do that which deprives others of their historic home.
    (2) The people of Israel were deprived of their historic home.
    (3) People ought not have deprived them.

    A valid argument, same substitution works:

    (1) A people ought not do that which deprives others of their historic home.
    (2) The people of Palestine were deprived of their historic home.
    (3) People ought not have deprived them.

    Who deprived the Palestinians there? The state of Israel, so they ought not have...What about the sense of historic?

    What I was trying to demonstrate with my example was that you can't really draw a proper cut off year for when a claim stops being valid. — BitconnectCarlos

    You are also relying on it being vague and expansive. The people who lived in historic Palestine who have been ousted by Israel's actions would be covered by the time thresh-hold.

    Shaky, shaky ground.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    What I was trying to demonstrate with my example was that you can't really draw a proper cut off year for when a claim stops being valid. — BitconnectCarlos

    Yes, it just also has the unintended consequence of justifying Palestinian right to return. If deprivation of your people's historic home is the benchmark for being justified to return there, it applies equally as well to the Palestinians ousted or displaced by the policies of the state of Israel.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    What would you say if I told you the cut off was 150 years and anything before that was too far back and doesn't matter. I don't know much about Dutch culture, does the land you're on mean anything to you? — BitconnectCarlos

    What about 1948 for the people of Palestine ? Completely asymmetrical application of principles.
  • Help with a Physics-related Calculus Problem
    I hope this thread isn't too banal for the forum, but I've got a math problem related to some physics concepts that requires calculus and I'm not sure how to solve it. How do you find the limit of the equation -2x-13.3y+19.3z=0, with x, y and z greater than zero? I'm not even sure where to begin with a three variable equation, so any help you guys can provide will be great! The math savvy can probably teach me and additional posters something about calculus. — Enrique

    If you can state the math problem verbatim, I'll help you with it if I can. As it stands you've not stated a calculus problem. Try writing using Mathjax if you have very long expressions, it also helps display limits clearly, eg:

    [math]\displaystyle \lim\limits_{x\to \infty} \frac{1}{x} = 0[/math]
    .
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Source? According to this (quoting the Israeli ministry for foreign affairs) it's roughly 1,000 since 2021. The IRA have killed a similarly large number, approximately 600. — Baden

    I don't know, a discrepancy of 400 civilian deaths is really the tipping point for me. Those 400 civilian deaths would mandate forced eviction of some people south of the currently established border and an air stike on the HQ of An Phoblacht in Dublin. (sarcasm)
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Israelis are POC — BitconnectCarlos

    I think the essence of @Baden's point is intact: what is the distinction between Palestinians and Southern Irish that would've made the UK bombing civilians to get at the IRA not ok but the IDF bombing Palestinians to get at Hamas okay?
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    We know for sure they don’t. Israel has all the contact information of all the residents in Gazas, they can make them evacuate before bombing them if they really wanted to. — Saphsin

    Yes, like the notification they gave to Aljazeera's headquarters in Gaza city before airstriking it!
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    If it can be demonstrated that Israel's response is considerably worse or out of line then I would reconsider my position — BitconnectCarlos

    What metrics would you accept for the comparison?

    Here are mine, Israel's policy towards Palestine is colonial expansion, an unjust war, not fought in self defence, because:

    (1) Colonial expansion: Israel is expanding constantly through military means. No one gets to take something by force then "defend themselves" from the victim trying to take it back.
    (2) Palestine is not a credible military threat to Israel. Israel has more ground forces, an airforce, nuclear weapons, spies and military intelligence and soft power internationally. Hamas and other groups are largely untrained volunteers using old weaponry, have no airforce, and little soft power internationally. Palestine is not a threat to the nationhood of Israel.
    (3) Areas of Palestine which were conquered by Israel have two tiered access to roads, enforced by military checkpoints and patrols. This affects al those people who do not flee. The military expansion of Israel has caused an ongoing diaspora.

    The adherents among those refugees of a right to return to their historic homeland is precisely the logic of Zionism - return to the ancestral home and build it anew. It can't be denied from one and applied to the other.

    So - a state engaged in an asymmetrical conflict, conquering territories, as referenced before killing children and bombing hospitals, making the population that doesn't flee live in squalor, air striking media outlets...

    Again, were it another country, it would've been put in Dubya's Axis of Evil.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Israel actually takes extensive precautions to limit casualties — BitconnectCarlos

    Factored in..

    Of the 219 people who have been killed in Gaza, at least 63 are children, according to its health ministry. Of the 10 people killed in Israel, two children are among the dead, the country's medical service says.

    Killing children receiving trauma treatment? Caused by Israeli policy and military action? Factored in..

    If I agree with you in the precision of the IDF, I must conclude these actions were intentional.

    Truly, a more ethically fought war has never been waged. IDF precision and harm minimisation at its best:

    In Gaza, an air strike that struck close to the Remal medical clinic, school and orphanage has caused further strain on health facilities in the area.
  • Is Caitlyn Jenner An Authority On Trans Sports?
    Your views are the ones that matter to my inquiry because you are the one who will decide which such distinctions will result in being banned. — DingoJones

    If someone won't show the due nuance-fu to say something like: "Going through the puberty associated with male natal sex might render an unfair advantage to trans women in elite competitive sports" vs "trans women shouldn't be allowed in women's divisions because they're not real women", then I don't see why I should interpret something which is indistinguishable from transphobia as if it had good intent.

    I can't chart out necessary and sufficient conditions, or contexts, for phrases to be prejudicial for you. A rule of thumb might be - does the post deny that trans women are women or rely upon that in the argument?

    I will be much more suspicious of claims that don't articulate the issue precisely, if you're going to make a hot take which I can't easily distinguish from transphobia - and that's a low bar - expect it to be deleted. If you want to have this kind of discussion, get your nuance on.
  • Is Caitlyn Jenner An Authority On Trans Sports?
    Calling the biological woman a “real” woman is one way of doing that. I understand that a transphobic person would use that term in a derogatory sense but surely intention matters here? — DingoJones

    Why are you asking me to clarify the distinction, which you seem to understand, rather than those present whose intentions matter more?

    I'm gonna step out, now.
  • Is Caitlyn Jenner An Authority On Trans Sports?
    Are we allowed to talk about what it means to say “trans women are not real women”? — DingoJones

    Yes, in the same manner you're allowed to talk about and reference sexism or racism. :D
  • Is Caitlyn Jenner An Authority On Trans Sports?
    Careful you lot.

    If you're arguing about whether, eg, testosterone level and natal sex are in any way determinative of sports performance and the relationship of that to whether trans women should be in the women's division in elite sports... That's one thing.

    If you're arguing that, say, trans women shouldn't be in the women's division in elite sport because "trans women aren't real women", that's transphobia.

    The problem isn't the inference or the conclusion of segregation by natal sex
    *
    (to a first approximation, it might better be a contrast of which puberty you went through? I don't really know)
    , the problem is... "trans women aren't real women", level up your nuance people, or be moderated accordingly.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Completely ignoring the power imbalance, and hence reality. — Xtrix

    If these scenes - eg the air striking of an Al Jazeera office, the bombing of a hospital, blacking out internet and social media sites - came from another middle eastern country, that country would be seen as part of the Axis of Evil.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    I am not claiming Israel has done nothing wrong but they are clearly in an existential fight for survival. — Andrew4Handel

    What argument for securing the future of the people of Israel would not also apply to the people of Palestine? The latter are also a people of diaspora - created by the actions of the former. They need a homeland too.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Andrew is the best thing to happen to this thread. — StreetlightX

    Add this to the list of things which totally aren't expansion by conquest.
  • Scientific Studies, Markets
    The emotional tone is high, and you can see the defenses against change play out — csalisbury

    :up:

    That blog is a goldmine, it gives me the impression that internal squabbles in academia play out very much like they do on the forum. Posturing, misdirection, playing out the emotions rather than the facts, motivated reasoning. Easy to be reasonable when you're used to defining yourself as reason's voice etc.
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