616 karma · joined March 11, 2021
A lot of people prefer the comfort of ignorance to the discomfort of that knowledge and even more prefer the comfort of their self made moral high horse from which they chastise everyone they deem unfit.
Why?
> The consensus in this comment section is that that sort of ignorance is itself an ideal, and I think that's very wrong and has lead to obvious harms in the past.
You think that because you have biases, like all humans do. You say harms can arise. Let’s try to do an exercise. It’s the late 40s early 50s and research is finally starting to show there are, in fact, no real biological races of humans. We are one human race. The dutiful scientist at that time considers the society he is in, the notions of morality he has and decides it would be harmful to publish his research. Who knows what some crazy extremists will do with this fact. They might give the blacks rights, they might rile them up, they might they might even allow miscegenation! Bear in mind, all these were societal harms at that time!
Is this the future you wish? Or this scenario doesn’t count because it’s the wrong politics? Have we found the end all be all of morality and must now protect it at all costs, even from facts if need be?
> Research on any domain of human activity is a political act and produces a political product, the researchers need to be aware of that and actively participate in that part of the process as well
I disagree. The way I see it, there is no politics in science. Science is not a set of beliefs. It’s a process. It’s a method of observing empirical reality and producing methods to describe it.
> Wishing or pretending it were otherwise is dangerous.
For whom?
> Science has for too long been complicit in perpetuating structural inequalities and discrimination in society.
> Finally, authors should use inclusive, respectful, non-stigmatizing language in their submitted manuscripts.
> Race and ethnicity are sociopolitical constructs.
—-
To me, this sounds like a clergyman espousing articles of faith and commandments.
Researchers are asked to carefully consider the potential implications (including inadvertent consequences) of research on human groups defined by attributes of race, ethnicity, national or social origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, political or other beliefs, age, disease, (dis)ability or other status
—-
Say there’s an article coming out clearly disproving racial differences. Will the researchers be “carefully considering the potential implications” of this finding on people with national-socialist persuasions?
It is after a finding negativity affecting a group of people defined by, and I quote “political or other belief”.
Or is it only the correct political beliefs that one must be “carefully considering the potential implications” of?
If that’s the case, can I please know who decides the correct political beliefs?
Politics deals with how we use those facts.
If the fact brought about by science leads one group of people to kill another, we are faced with a political decision. Do we allow this or do we stand against it.
We need the separation of science and politics. Otherwise, important facts will be politically suppressed and falsehoods will be presented as truth for political gain.
It’s a story as old as the world, I don’t understand why so many people still want to mix those two.
Unironically this.
Science is here to present facts.
Politics is here to decide what we do with the facts.
Do not mix the two.
We are romans in the early 5th century. What’s coming won’t be pretty.
I wish I could answer you unfortunately censorship measures currently in place prevent open discussion.
It all depends how you view the world. For many people, preserving the historical character and demographic of their country is an important issue. It might not be to you, you might consider it stupid, but it is a concern many people have. So much so, they would see illegal arrivals of non historical descent as a more acute problem. One to be prioritised over what can be argued to be improvements to the existing system.
I myself am one of these people. It is more important to me immigrants be sent to Rwanda than offering additional funding or reforming the NHS.
If my interaction with other people sharing your beliefs ( or more accurate my assumptions about your beliefs ), you believe me to be evil. I do not believe I am and I do not believe you, who think the opposite of me to be evil. I believe you are misguided though and wrong in what your priorities are.
This is a lie. This is an absolute lie. It is simply not true. There were no “different racial and religious backgrounds”. For medieval Western Europe, it was europeans ( for the americans, read white ) of different ethnicities, entirely catholic. There no other “races” and certainly no other religions.
“But but the jews” - No. A few of them were occasionally tolerated in the middle ages, for short periods of time before being expelled. Again, I am talking about the medieval period and western europe. Renaissance and after, as well as eastern europe are somewhat different but for medieval western europe, there most certainly were not different races and different religions.
I am not american so maybe I am wrong but I believe it was Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 no?
The justification, weather correct or not, was in both cases exactly what you said. To “defend their own country”.
In Afghanistan to prevent further 9/11 style attacks from being committed against the USA and in Iraq to prevent WMDs from being used against the USA. The famous/infamous “do you want the proof to come in the form of a mushroom cloud?” bit.
Again, weather the justification was correct or not is not what I am pointing out. I am pointing out in both cases, the USA called soldiers to fight “to arms to defend their own country”
Twitter has done terrible harm to society and whatever and whoever does it harm, it’s doing a good job in my book.
Eh, I’ll give it a try on the off chance you are actually writing in good faith.
Assuming good faith on your part, I believe we have a different understanding of what the standard of discourse should be. While I understand the concern around scope creep, which is valid, I hope you can also see my concern about context.
When discussing a complex subject like slavery, I think it’s counter productive to focus on a niche. Let me give you an example. Would it make sense to talk about world war two focusing only on France for example? Could a meaningful discussion on world war two happen if the discussion was limited to France?
It feels to me the issue is like this. Continuing the analogy with world war two, I don’t think you need to mention absolutely all countries that participated in world war two in order to have a meaningful discussion on the subject. At the same time, I believe it is impossible to have a meaningful discussion on the subject by talking about literally one country.
You appear to be asking us to talk specifically about one country. This to me seems to be actively harmful. I cannot see what good ( unless you count painting european people in an unduly bad light to be good ) can come from ignoring critical context.
My purpose is not to stifle discussion by burdening it with unnecessary context, my purpose is to elevate the standard of discourse by including critical context.
But, to play a bit of devils advocate here. In the case of the USSR, it did paint it’s self as a liberator, claiming left right and centre how they’re freeing the prisoners. But, at the same time, they had their own camps where they were sending their own prisoners. I feel this by it’s self warrants some mention at least in a treatment of the holocaust. We’re not talking about a separate genocide in another time and place. We’re talking about a genocide perpetrated at the same time by a county that was beating it’s chest about stopping a genocide.
Just my two cents. But, yeah, I agree with you on the scope creep issue.
I am not OP but I take issue with this. I feel like this is the whole thing. Why did you feel the need to write “European”. That’s wrong and denigrates entire ethnic groups in a very ignorant way. The poles for example surely you would agree are european but did not participate in the slave trade. But, this is not my main point.
My main point is, the slave trade was a multicultural, multiethnic affair. In different periods of times, different peoples were enslaved by different other peoples.
Just so you don’t mistake my comment, this is not an apologia of slavery. It was a horrible institution worthy of condemnation and I am happy it was ended.
I just find it very annoying when I see this automatic assumption “europeans were slavers”. No, not all of them practiced slave trading, some of them were enslaved as well, the ones that did practice slavery collaborated with non europeans to create the supply chain and there were other non european peoples also actively engaged in the slave trade.
Slavery is not the sin of Europe, it’s the sin of all man kind.
I’m not making judgements weather this is necessarily good or bad but rather observing.
In the past, even as recent as the 50s but certainly before the 20th century, a persons course in life was mostly determined at birth.
You’re born, you play, you grow up, work the fields or a job, get married, have kids of your own and die. Society was more rigid and pretty much funnelled you through a “tried and tested path”, for good or for worse. And the lack of information made things “simpler” in a way in the sense you had a small number of people to get input from. Take child rearing for example. Many modern people worry so much and research ways to “optimise” their children for example ( I’m thinking of a lot of questions I saw on the parenting stack overflow ) whereas in the last, you’d just ask your own parents. And, since they were older, the assumption was they knew what they where talking about, even if it was not necessarily true. Same with health, same with sexuality, relationships, a lot of things.
Essentially lack of information and a rigid social structure meant fewer choices which meant less thinking. And less thinking meant less depression and anxiety.
Now when you have a world of information at your hands, you have way more things to think about, to worry about and to look for information on how to fix or improve.
I’m not sure medication, even “working” one is a sustainable solution to what appears to me to be an environmental problem rather than a biological one.
As for the fuel tax, why not make up for it with an increase in car tax once sufficient adoption is reached? Once 80% of cars are electric, the car tax increases by an amount required to make up for the average revenue from fuel. At that point, electric cars pay just a high car tax and fossil fuel cars pay both the high car tax and the fuel duty, further incentiveiseing the switch to electric.
Am I missing something? What would be the issues with this approach?
“Well sure, womens rights might be good, but you see, the feminists twisted a good message and now they use it to push women away from motherhood and into corporations so the corporations make more profit and sell them more things”
Is it also bad when feminists encourage womens participation in the workforce?
In the Simbari culture, it is considered important for young boys to be taken away from their families, be beaten and forced to fellate the older members of the tribe.
Does your personal rule of not disrespecting "people and parts of their culture" hold in their case?
> therefore we have little to learn from arguing with each other
In a way I agree but at the same time I can't help but think exploring the axioms underlying moral foundations is important. Either to come to a shared set as a society or to construct a societal machanism that will allow people with a contradictory sense of morality to co-exist. To be honest, reaching a shared set of moral axioms seems to be a lost cause to me. But, perhaps the co-existance mechanism is still possible.
I agree this is happening. Why is this an intrinsically bad thing? It seems to me to be just how cultural exchanges work. An idea comes, parts of it are kept, others removed, and others modified. Why is stripping an idea of it’s “original meaning” ( I don’t think that exists) and changing it, even beyond recognition an intrinsically bad this?
> I’m imagining how I would feel if my company hosted prayer sessions where you speak to your unconscious mind rather than God and the sign of the cross represents the intersection of personal and professional responsibilities
I’m going to assume the comment means “I imagine how I would feel experiencing a twisted version of christianity”. Under that assumption, the answer would be the same way a conservative christian feels when seeing a church displaying the gay flag. Just like you in the hypothetical scenario, they feel weird.
Are you as sympathetic to the conservative christian as you are to the traditional buddhist? After all, in both cases, “surface level of religious practice while tossing out all the parts that make it meaningful to the person” seems to apply.
I agree with that. I don’t see the problem though. Why is modifying an idea a bad thing?
> Carolyn Chen is arguing corporatized Buddhism is a new religion that celebrates 70+hour work weeks and the celebrity CEO.
I agree with this too. I am also left asking, why is this considered bad? To clarify, I don’t refer to the ethics of working 70 hours per week, I refer to the emergence of this new religion. Why is the emergence of a new religion bad?