but honestly, if you can demonstrate a genuine interest in who I am as a thinking, feeling human being, then I’m not going to write you off based on your looks - that’s rare enough in the singles game. Unassuming charm, a quick intellect and courage will always get my attention, but it isn’t all that difficult to spot the guys who are only interested in ‘closing the deal’ if you’re paying attention. — Possibility

Do you care if the guy is successfully putting on caring and flirting as a performance? This is something I've never gotten my head around. The hetero male flirting for casual sex metagame seems to me all about adaptively signalling caring and interest as well as desire. Like - would you see it as a transgression if they're putting on a performance like that? Or is it an acceptable risk/otherwise fine for you as part of the social rituals that mediate casual sex?

It might seem like an obscure question, but I've had quite a few very candid discussions with guys on their casual sex flirting strategies, and they're all about trying to signal interest and generate connection regardless of whether they really give a damn or not. Perhaps I am strange in finding this extremely uncomfortable, it seems deeply transgressive to me.

Isn't solipsism saying something similar like "the world is generated by our mind and disappear when I die"??? — francis20520

I think the line is:

Solipsism says that worldly objects are existentially dependent upon the solipsist's mind. As in, if there wasn't that mind, there would be no objects.

Correlationisms says that worldly objects are not existentially dependent upon a correlationist's mind, but their forms of worldly manifestations are dependent in some sense upon the action of minds/subjects/humans in general.

They both share a certain "anthropocentrism" - putting the human at the centre of metaphysics -, which Meillassoux is also explicitly criticising in After Finitude.

Kant is the archetypal correlationist (of Meillassoux' weak form), you might find keeping his transcendental idealism + empirical realism in mind as the doctrine Meillassoux is reacting against.

How much do you believe in your democracy to be able to function without relying to violence or breaking the law? — ssu

Now we're on the same page. But from my perspective that brings us to the start of the discussion again, I don't really want to go around the loop once more. If you read what I write as an argument for the permissibility of violence against property and in self defense against police in this instance, due to a history of failure and concessions only being forced by direct action, you'll find my argument in its intended context.

But the question is, that was peaceful, wasn't it? And king promoted non-violence in the protests. So why say then: — ssu

I think for him it was a question of tactics? @boethius had original source stuff regarding MLK and nonviolence.

Keep in mind; the possibility of success of nonviolent actions in a political circumstance is not an argument for the necessity of nonviolent actions in any political circumstance. This is effectively an independent question of the utility of violent (against property!) protest right now.

"We are not poison, we are simply anti not poison"

Please elaborate, I'm not such an expert on American history. — ssu

Neither am I. It's not like I've got any formal training in it. So you're not speaking to someone who's actually a domain expert. My exposure to it mostly comes from Wiki walks and bits of post colonial theory I've read.

I think that there was a really big organised labour movement driving it. That famous picture of the March on Washington:



Wasn't some decentralised network flashmob, it was organised. When MLK gave "I Have A Dream", in some respects he was already preaching to the converted; the members and affiliates of the huge NGO and lobbying group the Leadership Conference On Civil and Human Rights; which was a gigantic coalition of unions and human rights organisations.

JFK's and LBJ's contribution I think was legislative judo and putting in concessions to make it pass.

Remember why it was necessary; blacks already had the formal legal right to vote long before the civil rights movement in the 1960's. But there were literacy tests, a poll tax and other filters that were put in place intentionally to keep the descendents of the slaves "in their place". As an aside: those people who think formal legal equality is sufficient for equal treatment either do not realize or intentionally occlude the historical fact that the American state institutionalised allegedly "race neutral" measures intentionally to disempower non-whites; they understand the issues of systemic discrimination less than the politicians they vote for - who know how to keep it going under a cover of plausible deniability.

After several days of discussion, banned @ernestm.

Reasons for decision: comments containing phrases like "black coon" (joke or racist double en tendre?), "SUPREME BLACK RACE", while all individually have extenuating circumstances, when taken in total it seems necessary to ban them.

So I can't help feeling that we'd just jump from Orwell to Kafka if we did involve the public more in national politics? — Isaac

I dunno how to envision what's likely and what's not from the space of all possible representative democracies. The only speculative principle I can come up with is the one I already said; if a state does not tend to change its behaviour based on expressions of the public will, then that's a defeater for it being a representative democracy. That's a very strong condition; as there's always questions of speed of change and amount of public will expression involved that would make it count. If you define state response to protest as part of representative democracy, that would count.

I'm inclined to think that the default state of a government in a representative democracy should be enacting policy to achieve public will (or public interest) in order for it to count as a representative democracy. It seems to me that when a state's populace isn't in uprising, the default state tends towards serving the interests of wealthy private interests; which is problematic for calling that state a representative democracy. It's more of a "We'll fuck you as hard and as long as we can get away with-ocracy"; mixed with economic and social conditions that strongly inhibit prolonged advocacy with tractable goals from the public, that's a recipe for formal representation but little functional representation.

There isn't too much functional difference between only land owners being politicians and having the vote and only the wealthy being able to vote with their dollars + influence and constrain the autonomous policy advocacy of a state's politicians. The wealth filter on social capital politically alienates racialised groups in that regard too.

So maybe in the spirit of "a state is as free as its least free person", the default state of a representative democracy should also be to increase the agency of those groups in it which are least free. Lifting the agency of all is essentially democracy through ameliorating subjugation. If it fails to do that I'd be convinced to stop considering it a democracy... Not that they're listening.

Because when you say that "elections don't matter" and representative democracy doesn't do anything at systemic racism, the fact is that you aren't looking at countries were that representative democracy works at least SO MUCH that the majority of the people actually are satisfied with it. — ssu

So with the above in mind, the US state is a failure of representative democracy - IE, it isn't one:

(1) Its default behaviour does not increase the agency of its most marginalised groups; at best it sustains their agency, at worst it diminishes their agency.
(2) It takes an uprising to change state behaviour marginally and slowly; even widespread violent expression of public will is not enough for the state to get its shit together and address the problems adequately.
(3) Its socio-economic conditions render the most marginalised least able to turn their concerns into actionable policy.

And we've got the nerve to be haughty at the rioters; if we live in violence, expect us to speak in it.

A little variation can matter a lot between species.

I was referring to a little within species; humans. The race categories we're familiar with have no genetic support for their biological relevance.

No, I'm not going to take 50 minutes out of my day before I'm allowed to respond. What then, do I need to address every point in the video? I have 3 books on the subject in mind that you can read in the meantime. — BitconnectCarlos

Why should anyone believe that there is a large effect on sports performance related to whether a body is black when there is so little genetic variation between black bodies and non-black ones?

From @ernestm

So business owners are NOT advised to call the police at all, if there is someone asleep in a car in their parking lot at the end of the business day. Interfering with those who coose to sleep while black on your property could now result in having your business burned to the ground, without any call for justice whatseover for such an act from any of the mainstream media at all now. Presumably, if a black person chooses to sleep on your property, this means they are to be left entirely to do as they wish? — ernestm

Replies to him, not me.

Did you watch the videos?

Watch both parts, part 1 is mostly an intro.

That makes sense, so you're not really comparing methods of moving public opinion so much as saying that simply having a representative democracy hasn't historically been enough? — Isaac

I'm unsure whether representative democracy as a social model is itself to blame. I think that our current forms of it in the political north are prone to co-option by wealthy private interests. It also looks to me that states are on a much more level playing field with corporations in terms of political power now, and we often forget this. Corps are beholden to their shareholders, corps are at least as influential between states as states, and more influential within states than their populace.

Why do you think that is? Is it entirely down to political gamesmanship (gerrymandering, vote rigging, electoral colleges...) or do you accept a certain extent to which reflecting public opinion isn't enough, that sometimes public opinion as it stands would not deliver satisfactory results either, there's a need to shift it? — Isaac

I don't think representing public opinion is sufficient, but something necessary for a representative democracy to function. There should be vents for public opinion that are more easily leveraged into policy than the current blockade between public opinion and policy execution most of us live in.

Our political classes only consult public opinion to the extent it allows them to manage it. And let's be under no illusions here; the corpus of political influence that drives our states' policy advocacy does not come from anything to do with the majority of its people, if it involves public will at all, it arrives from on high as small concessions to the public will while being as accommodating as possible to wealthy private interests. Whenever those small concessions can be scapegoats, so much the easier; "clap for the NHS" - fund them better, etc.

I still think large civilizations require a professional educated class for their management. Our current system is a perverse form of this: to the extent that education is a filter for social capital, and wealth is a strong predictor for social capital, there will be an alignment of the interests of that professional educated class to the interests of the wealthy. To the extent that wealth is allowed to constrain and enforce advocacy, that alignment will be stronger. To the extent that failsafes and checks on such influence are eroded, that alignment will be stronger. It is therefore strongly in the interest of the wealthy to have their interests met as well as possible; it is in their interest to erode failsafes and checks, and it is in their interest to constrain and enforce advocacy.

I don't believe a representative democracy will represent any populace adequately when the interests of wealthy international actors are given much more weight by a state than their populace's own interest, or of the interests of humanity as a collective. The rest of humanity is always an externality to an economic equation. A state's representative democracy, when the populace are doing other things, should still work for them, its hand should not have to be forced by those whose lives must be spent doing other things.

I don't think it's skin color strictly speaking, but why do blacks dominate on the track? The most straight-forward, common reason relates to the quantity of fast-twitch muscle fibers and bigger bone structure we see in black athletes. — BitconnectCarlos

Nah man. Even if there were genetic propensities, they don't explain variation like that. Reasons are cultural.

How do Jamaicans do it? It’s not because of genetics, as some claim. A vast majority of Jamaicans’ ancestors are from West Africa, which has relatively few outstanding sprinters. Nor can genetics explain why Jamaicans outperform other blacks in the Americas, especially in Brazil, which has 36 times as many of them.

Ask a Jamaican like me (I was born and raised there), and we’ll give you a very different answer: Champs. Officially called the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association Boys and Girls Athletics Championship, Champs is an annual competition attended by 30,000 wildly enthusiastic fans. Jamaica is perhaps the only country in the world where a track and field meet is the premier sporting event.

But it’s not just Champs. The competition is one part of a broader framework — track and field is huge at every educational level, with periodic regional meets drawing athletes of all ages from the most remote rural areas. So the real question is, why is Jamaica nuts for track?

Part of the answer is institutional. The British first introduced organized and informal athletics, and interscholastic competition, to Jamaica and other colonies in the late 19th century. One of Jamaica’s founding fathers, N. W. Manley, was the greatest student athlete of his generation; later, as the revered head of state, he tirelessly promoted track and field.

We clearly live in a world where Indians have a cricket gene, Americans have a lacrosse gene...

I'm pretty amazed that it's learned devices and tropes.

Enjambment
Thence down the mountain-sides the bright gold sun
Dapples all the valley below

Simile, assonance
Like dew-beads on the feathery grass,

Repetition, consonance, that thing where the narrator addresses an inanimate object - it also uses "hark" for it because that's what poems do.

One old tree, old as the dawn,
Old as the story of the sea
Old as the dawn of days,
That through the twilight with its weight
Was calling to the dawn,
That through the summer with its gifts
Was calling to the fall,
And saying to the land, "Hark!
There is a joy in heaven above!"

It's learned patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables:

The hour, the hour of golden sunshine,
- + - + - + - + - = -+-+-+-+-
The hour of sharper freezing weather,
- + - +- +- + - = -+-+-+-+-
The hour of yonder dark and dreary cloud
- + - +- + - +-? + = -+-+-+-+-+

(that extra stressed bit also breaks the repeated pattern onto the next line)

It can elaborate an image over multiple lines:

Of light unfading, bright and deep;
A golden river flecking the verdant floor.

What do you think I'm missing by focussing too much on the US when talking about over 100 years of failure of US "democracy" to represent a good chunk of the US populace, except when the state's hand is forced?

I wrote a broader perspective here a few days ago.

:strong:

The thing that makes it very convincing to me is "where" that "limit" is located; within a presupposition of the correlationist circle. I go into why I find it persuasive here.

Gave an "arche-fossil for dummies" here. Dunno if that's the argument you mean.

Either way, the actual mechanism by which politicians are given the authority to carry out their policies is not the same as the mechanism they use to determine which policies might attract such mandate. Effecting change on some issue requires action on the latter. So I think when discussing methods for addressing racism its just a false dichotomy from the outset to frame it as elections vs protests, they're not the same kind of thing. — Isaac

:up:

Elections are not a means by which the public expresses their views on specific political issues. They're fully consistent with a representative democracy which does not actually represent the aggregate opinions of the public very well at all (and usually they do not reflect them very well at all).

The argument I'm having with ssu (on my end at least) is regarding the historical failure of representative politics - the changing whims of the state - to make US POCs equal, except when their hands are forced or leveraged by popular movement.

So no, I don't believe that representative politics has a terrible track record. — ssu

Do you believe that representative politics has a terrible track record on race issues in the US? I don't really wanna get into an argument where we're weighing the effectiveness of the Finnish government against the concerns of current uprisings in the US, it seems like a shell game to me.

The question I'm interested in is: does representative democracy in the US actually represent the interests of its populace on issues related to systemic racism? At least 100 years of silence except when hands are forced through popular movement indicates that it does not.

Quite incredible what you are saying. As if elections don't matter. Who needs them when there's the street — ssu

Let's keep two flavours of claims distinct;

Elections are totally irrelevant.

Elections and representative politics has a terrible track record on addressing systemic racism. To such an extent that direct action (protest, uprising) has been required for every gain on that front.

I'm prepared to argue the latter. I think you even agree with it. I'm not prepared to argue the former; as it's nonsense.

There's our champion of the Republic. — ssu

It's true though. Elections do hee haw for the people in the streets. Historically too; you'd think if there was a big chance of an election changing something fundamental about institutional racism in the US it would've happened by now, no? Rather than being resisted at every step despite over 100 years of uprisings.

In a representative democracy it's the elections that count. Demonstrations can influence elections. Demonstrations can make someone resign, but who is elected or appointed afterwards is the real change. — ssu

Let's keep in mind that there've been protests like this for over 100 years; the elections haven't done much at all. What related gains there have been were all put on the table by grassroots organising and protest.

Democracy works. If there is a will, there is a way. The real thing is about the will. — ssu

Seriously though. Really? You're willing to brand huge protests as blunted because they're part of a "culture war", that they're ultimately symbolic, and you're not wondering why their state isn't listening to them? Huge registration of intent for change is what protests are for; it's a vital democratic function. Are we in a democracy if "merely symbolic" huge protest doesn't do anything? If it isn't already enough?

I think there is a great opportunity to reform the police and it can have positive long term effects. — ssu

Good, agreed.

Like starting from a bit of realism and humility and have reachable goals: "systemic colonialism-racism" or "tthe global economy" won't change in a heartbeat, but what you can do is to demand and have better policing and end the militarization of the police. — ssu

Just what the protests want.

Capitalize (sorry, bad wording), utilize moments of consensus. — ssu

Too early to tell what they can be leveraged into yet. The decentralised networks that lead to these protests sparking up everywhere will likely stick around. I'm hopeful.

But one ought to focus on that. Not to get distracted into the ruinous "culture wars". — ssu

So I don't understand if you're criticising me or not, we agree on pretty much everything substantive. What part of our agreement is in the culture war again?

If you want to move the Overton window any way or to do something to correct social injustices or problems, I think the way isn't to go full forward to a situation where idiotic culture wars discourse prevails. — ssu

Tell me whether police reform is more likely now or before the uprising. The problems aren't just discursive. To the extent you believe the countries these huge protests are in are democratic, you should believe that sufficiently large merely "symbolic protest"s will have some effect.

What cynicism about the effectiveness of these protests shows, in the background, is that these people are taking to the streets because they know, like you know, they have no other voice; what political issues they care about cannot and will not be brought to the table.

If we know that public political opinion is almost entirely decoupled from state policy and we criticise protesters (rather than governments!) on that basis... I mean, should we be suggesting they arm themselves? If we're calling them deluded and ineffective for peaceful protest and discursive interventions, in a context where we know their opinions will in all likelihood not translate into any policy changes, what are we saying?

If they're totally ineffective; if Occupy was the death rattle of protest as public registration of desire being effective, this is the purge frothing out the mouth.

So best way is to attack and vandalize a statue of Churchill in the UK? The talk shows will get the usual annoying people to bicker about the issue without any agreement: — ssu

Personally? I don't give a damn if the statues stay up or not, it's not like anyone in the protest had a choice in the creation of the historico-political symbolism of "their own" nation.

Is it the "best way"? I have no idea. How do you expect the start of a mostly peaceful anti-racist protest movement to make a targeted change regarding the systemic colonialism-racism of the global economy. At least when they fuck up a statue of Churchhill they've got a tiny bit of a voice. The institutions they need to frustrate and attack to start combating these issues comprehensively and at scale do not even have to pretend to care about anything but shareholder interest unless it's good marketing; maybe they need to be less civil.

Think what we're saying about a country if huge peaceful protests are "merely symbolic" and are thus likely to have no effect.

:up:

You've already received another response post merge.

This discussion was merged into Does systemic racism exist in the US?

I'm arguing about ideas on a philosophy forum, your impact on the world is a complete irrelevance. — Judaka

A narrative on race differences that assigns attributes, intentions and actions to races. Which elicits, promotes and validates opinions on races - and racism. — Judaka

I don't understand at all. You say that my narrative is harmful, but when asked to give examples of harm it's causing, you say that how I articulate myself is irrelevant. Can't have it both ways.

MERGE STARTS HERE:

There's been a LOT of discussion of race relations in recent weeks, and as usual the vast majority of the discussion focuses on emotion and vague calls for various kinds of largely unspecified change. We are told we are supposed to take race relations very very seriously, which is good, but apparently not seriously enough to actually do anything big and specific about race relations problems.

So, this thread will attempt to replace a pattern of vague emotional statements with a policy proposal which is both ambitious and specific.

In the spirit of getting serious, let's try to do more than just fire off some opinions and on the spot analysis provided as fast as we can type. Read that sentence again please.

Instead, I'm hoping you can help me nail down the price tag for the following proposal.

PROPOSAL: Every black American and American Indian should be provided totally free education (tuition, books, living expenses, everything) for any educational experience which can boost their income earning potential. This plan should continue until such time as the vast wealth gap between these groups and whites is erased. The plan should be funded by the richest 1%, that is, those who have most of the money and who have benefited most from America's rigged system.

Here are the kind of questions I hope we will address:

1) How much would such a plan cost? How many people are we trying to serve and approximately how much money is required to serve them as defined above?

2) What would the impact of such a plan be on the 1%? Would they barely notice? Would their economic position be crushed? How much money do they have, and how much of that would such a plan take from them?

If you don't like this plan and would prefer another one, ok, no problem. In that case, please start your own thread outlining your own plan. Thank you. — Nuke

RESPOND TO THAT QUOTE WITH

Stahp.

That's completely absurd. You think a social shut in who spends his time arguing on the internet is making race important to the extent you're criticising me for speaking about it rather than criticising the racist state of affairs. Like all this shit that's been going on would be so much better if I just shut up about it.

I'm sure you do that but I meant that you highlight race in a way that makes it matter and not that you highlight that race matters. You deny this? Calling a spade a spade, isn't that what you call it? — Judaka

I don't really know what you're talking about. Give me an example of something I've said that has done more harm than silence and ignorance on the issues.

It's pleasing to hear you say this. However, in the past and now, I have felt that a major issue with you is that you highlight race in a way that makes it matter. How am I to react to someone who favours language that highlights race and then also says that this is an injustice. Is it a necessary evil for you then? — Judaka

Highlighting that race matters when it shouldn't is much different from making race matter when it shouldn't. It's not my rhetoric that's causing systemic discrimination, is it?

You've used a lot of words to say "he who smelt it dealt it". How would you prefer the issues to be talked about?

In the past I don't think there would have been enough of a temptation to re-write the narrative in real time (it's all very well denying history, but denying the present is a lot harder). But in the modern age, dictating reality through filtered social media images has become not only easy but the standard. I think this changes the way these symbolic actions are used, hence the hypocrisy we see. — Isaac

We both know it's also "just a statue"; toppling it doesn't change any policies by itself. How I'm seeing those acts of symbolic destruction in the UK is:

(1) There's hardly any public discourse regarding systemic discrimination in the UK.
(2) Only really the Guardian regularly reports on it. The majority of the UK "news"papers are racist-xenophobic ideological state apparatuses regarding issues like this.
(3) School teaching of British colonial history either doesn't happen, or is extremely favourable to empire.
(4) A symbolic act against the UK's central role in colonialism and its perpetual whitewashing of history maybe prefigures discourse to be more amenable to reasserting the "lost history of the colonised" and challenging the glorification of empire.
(5) I realize by this point it's a slippery slope - but (4) at least acknowledges the problem and makes space for seeing current colonialism and acting against it.

If we care about the rightward shift of the Overton window, we should care about things that shift it left too.

Distracted by low hanging rotted fruit.

I could spend time educating you on R^2 and forecasting, but I won't. Suffice to say; a high R^2 in an strictly linear OLS model doesn't tell you anything about whether you've correctly modeled the data generating process even in most lab settings, nevermind when you've already got good information that the process is strongly nonlinear in time.

You'll notice that within the 3 years of the crime graph you've posted, the nonlinear components of the data generating process dominate the observed trend. You then assumed a strictly linear data generating process for 4 years in a similar setting for the purposes of forecasting; which is even more problematic.

You do not know what you are talking about.

which extrapolates using least-squares approximation — ernestm

...

That tells no one anything about what you (allegedly) did. What whoever modeled this actually did in the forecasted years is exactly as @StreetlightX accused you of.

Even though you've previously posted a graph that shows crime trends nonlinearly with time.

Enough, man.

The reason why the snake bites its tail in symbols of infinity is to eat its own poop.

Every "proximally and for the most part" is also a "maybe not".