To be clear, the quote implied the protestors weren’t being violent at all, right — at least in their view. Are we on the same page about that?
Edit: I guess I’m not understanding your point. To me the protester’s narrative is “This is a nonviolent protest of a faculty’s exclusionary viewpoint,” which doesn’t seem that abnormal to me. What do you think I’m not seeing?
Is there something particularly insidious about this protest? It stands to reason that any protest would find conflict with the person whose actions are being protested. In the political sphere, there's enough police protection that the people involved can still get to work, and this wasn't provided by the campus police. It strikes me that these protesters aren't that different than any others, but the security on campus is lacking so that they've had access to, for instance, deface the professor's office door.
Interesting. I'm not very knowledgeable about that. The people that got banned, were they scientists, or laypeople? And, regardless of whether they turned out to be right, would you characterize their beliefs as science, or speculation?
Regardless about whether or not the censorship was justified, my point is that there is an avenue for legitimate scientific discussion, via open forums, that the anti-vax community largely doesn’t participate with. That’s in part because it is so technical, and the barrier to entry is so high. Maybe there is a larger discussion to be had about how to keep these kinds of organizations accountable, given that their decisions are so complex.
Why I'm flummoxed by your argument is that the "infallible God" seems to be the scientific consensus. If anything, the analogy works in the opposite direction. There are many people who choose not to engage with the scientific conversation and instead choose an alternate way of understanding the world, one which is not based on population studies or pharmacology. If there's an example of a respected scientific work that has been censored, then you could change my mind.
I still don't understand your stance. Surely the public isn't barred from engaging in the scientific conversation if they have anything meaningful to say. It's just that that conversation is not very accessible because it is so technical. That was also the case in the Enlightenment: Science was practiced by those who had the time and resources to contribute substantiative knowledge. Speaking in broad strokes, the anti-vax movement strikes me as a counter-cultural movement, an "outsider art" to the mainstream scientific conversation. It's not that they can't engage with the science, it's that they reject that conversation altogether.
I don't think that's a complete characterization of the anti-vaccine "movement" or "meme." It's also rooted in distrust of the government science institutions. For instance, many people are taking ivermectin at some risk to themselves, since prolonged human consumption of ivermectin may have adverse effects.
For what it's worth, the studies are open. Science is a fairly transparent process. If someone is interested in educating themselves & understanding these discussions, there really is no barrier.
Here's an 8-hour press release by the FDA [1]. If you want to understand the logic behind the decision-making, it is absolutely available. It's just boring to watch, I suppose.
Given that causing violence onto other people is illegal, I suppose what you're talking about could be thought of as a change to the prison system so that it's designed to improve the (mental) health of people committed, rather than just being punitive.
It's not a genetic issue, it's an ecological issue. I imagine almost all humans can become addicted to something or develop mental health issues under the right (wrong) circumstances.
What are those penalties, and does this penal system actually work to change people's habits, or is it just part of a cycle, e.g. streets -> jail -> streets?
I’d go a step further and ask if our online interactions are really simulating ape tribes. The social and emotional dynamics online do not really substitute for real human relationships. Though they do serve some emotional needs, our social circuitry is hacked in a way by technology. We are set up to engage in an ideological discourse that leads to conflict. Not all human tribes engage in war; there is an ecological condition that triggers this impulse. Our digital ecology is not designed to be aligned with our well-being, but instead aligned with the interests of a capitalist system. In general, substances can be marketed which hack the human system and addict them to habits counter to their own well-being —- for instance, narcotics. Technology can be made to work harmoniously with human social orders, but doing so requires a strong model of human behavior in societies.
Yes, though once you factor in expenses like healthcare or contingency savings — both of which are also arguably necessary for a secure life — the line becomes more blurry.
Humans need food, water, and shelter to survive. One can define an absolute concept of "paid well" meaning that these needs are met within a 40-hour work week. It is sad to me that this goal is considered a utopia by many.
I still think racial profiling to flag suspicious cases is an example of discrimination. That's because the system more stringently checks people in one racial group for wrongdoing, which results in more of those people in the criminal justice pipeline.
As a concrete example of where this can go wrong, let's say that (hypothetically) 1% of people commit fraud, and that this prevalence is not correlated with race. But, due to past discriminatory practices, more people of one race than another are convicted of fraud. Then, this algorithm would perpetuate this discrimination, since, say, it would identify 80% of fraud in the discriminated group but only 50% of the non-discriminated group.
I see your example of a neutral stance, and it’s true, and racially neutral. It’s also not relevant to the conversation around BLM, which focuses on anti-black injustice. I take issue with that ALM is used to subvert BLM; why else would the phrase exist and popularize at this time and context? Therefore, ALM is not an assertion of the neutral stance you propose, but instead a rejection of the reality or importance of race-specific injustice.
What is neutrality in this scenario? BLM is about protesting anti-black racial injustice in the criminal justice system. Is neutral ground that there is no injustice? That it doesn't matter?
Yes, there was violence at a small fraction of protests, and it's fair to have pushback on that. That seems a separate issue than rejecting BLM on the face of it with an expression like ALM.
Siege mentality is real. I'm not sure I see the connection in this case to the racial issues. "All Lives Matter" is clearly a reaction to "Black Lives Matter."
Both of these viewpoints are true. While I wholeheartedly support the use of the word "based" in the sense that you put it, it is also slang in a certain online subculture and a nod to that subculture. OP was dead on about that in this case: the author's other works include "Why I don't use Cuck Licenses" and "Science vs. Soyence."
> Perhaps this accounts for the widely-reported sense of unreality that plagues so many of us.
The idea is that interpreting content on the Internet leads people to become more self-conscious about how they interpret reality, which causes it to be less "real."