Truth Discussion Time - Page 53

On October 27 2017 23:36 Baalim wrote: Show nested quote + On October 26 2017 08:44 Liquid`Drone wrote: Seems like a UK problem more than a 'the west' problem, tbh. I agree those two links on top should not be punished by law. In Norway there's no way they would be. (Could highly like to you losing your job though, but that I'm also fine with) The washington post link I read differently from you. 'Hate speech' is not sufficiently defined for the top poll to really be meaningful. Basically, I dunno if people want to censor 'fuck you, faggot' or 'kill all faggots', the former I vehemently disagree with, the second has some merit (although I'm inclined to think it should probably only be punished by law if you can link it to an actual act of violence and where such a connection can clearly be drawn. Like it shouldn't be possible to be jailed for posting random hate on twitter, but it should be possible to be jailed for convincing someone to beat up a muslim immigrant if it's actually possible to 'prove beyond a reasonable doubt' that it wouldn't have happened without the convincing.) Kinda funny to see that republicans are slightly more accepting of violence as a means of retaliating, though. I also think shouting over people, while I wouldn't do it myself, is 'acceptable'. Censorship by law is mostly in the UK, but by culture in many western countries, there is some pretty startling censorship when it comes to discussing immigration in sweden but I am not saying its a big problem now, but that it will be in a near future, when the younger generations who are pushing these ideologies get more positions of power. Watch that part of this video again: https://youtu.be/vj5JXrpwsZs?t=258 That is not a fringe crazy student, that is their leader, you think im making some kind of strawman argument, I am not, these are not rare ocurrences, these are the norm, and they dont share your values of free speech. Also no, shouting down is wrong, people go with megaphones in lectures in closed spaces and obviously nobody can hear shit, there is a differnce between public demonstration of being against an idea and actually not letting people hear it, that is blocking free speech 100%. and yes, republicans are retarded you dont need to convince me of that.

I largely just see this as college students being college students. I think I wrote about the 68 parallel before, these guys are influential in college campuses but they are not going to 'rule society' - the ones who will go on to be influential are going to adjust their opinions to match the real world. I mean those guys are what, 19? My dad believed in a violent socialist revolution for a while when he was a teenager - in Norway. Then he matured and realized that's fucking retarded. When I read stuff I wrote when I was 19, it's the most cringy thing ever, that guy was a moron as well. I find it likely that your opinion has matured in most ways, too.

that said, I actually think Shapiro gets a lot of undeserved hate. I don't agree with him on much politically, but he's the type of conservative debater that must be faced in honest debate, he's far from some Milo-ish troll, but I see people treat those two the same way. I mean the guy opines on everything so I'm sure it's possible to find some area where he's just flat out factually wrong and that he should probably recant some stuff, but overall I see him as reasonable, and I definitely think he's a really sharp guy.

Also, I don't really care about the american constitution either. Free speech, totally, but american conservatives treat it as a holy scripture, which is a nonsense position. So I mean I disagree with that guy when he seemingly doesn't care about free speech, but I agree with him that 'I don't feel that document is relevant' or whatever he said. :D

I was also retarded at that age, and you are right many will age and get out of it, but the difference between 68 and this is that 68 was a movement that was born in the student groups, this is a movement adoctrinated by academia, its not students ideology against campuses, its campuses teaching this ideology to students.

Perhaps I worry of something that isnt a real threat, or perhaps you take a real threat lightly, hard to say.


and yeah american's perception of their constitution like some holy scripture is funny, they actually say that their rights are "god given" lol, I obv dont care about it, the guys that wrote most of it were absolutely brilliant and ahead of their time tho.

It's easy to see where those college students went wrong. They just dislike what the right is saying, therefore they think the right shouldn't speak and will accept that freedom of speech is invalid. Which is not a good response, tactically and morally. Firstly, everyone should have the right to speak, that's just a human right we should accept as being morally right (not getting into metaethics here). secondly, it doesn't make sense tactically. if you just let people debate shapiro, everyone will see that he is wrong. by attacking him i think it increases his influence.

I wouldn't call quite call it indoctrination, just from my experience of being at university for a while and interacting with a range of leftist groups, the majority of students are not going deep into political activism, and will have standard liberal political views, and support freedom of speech. there are sects on the left that essentially rather live in their own bubbles rather than do the hard work of trying to find common ground and agreement with the right and being honest with themselves, will take the easy road of attacking the right because it feels good. But a lot of it is also just making mistakes like the guy in that video, and i dont see the incentive from the powerful to indoctrinate students not to want freedom of speech, since the powerful value freedom of speech themselves. it is more likely they would want to indoctrinate students to want freedom of speech. I think the reaction from the left college students is partially caused by different forms of indoctrination. They don't get a full understanding of society from the university, so they don't know how to deal with the right and try to understand them. won't go into this but that's my basic view.

Freedom of speech is rarely understood, by anyone. you won't learn much about it in school. Why it exists in our society, and why it is valued. It is more valued more in America than perhaps anywhere else in the world, because corporate power essentially grew in America first. and the powerful, from the corporate sector, value freedom of speech very highly because they can purchase a lot of it. (in public relations, the media, holywood, research grants, and now political finance). This has been true since the 1920's, and it's very clear that the powerful support it because you see the 'conservatives' non stop raving about it. The liberal elite's also have several publications from the 1920's up until the 1970's that talked about how freedom of speech could be used for social control and could be used for propaganda, or public relations, as it is now called. This was effective for massacring the third world and establishing an empire, but also to squash ideas of socialism and make people hate dissidents from the radical left.They documented how much they influenced the media with propaganda, it's quite interesting stuff. There was a historian on industrial psychology called alex carey who wrote the first history book on all of this.

free speech can be used as a tool for oppression if it is severely unequally distributed, and set up in a way that only those who agree with the powerful, or make money for advertisers, get it. The more speech you have the more propaganda you can produce, and the rich don't want the state interfering with their own propaganda systems. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't stop wanting it as a basic human right.

You got it comically backwards, usually the "powerful" does NOT want freedom of speech, it is the stamp of every single authoritarian to supress freedom of speech.

Do you think Hitler allowed people to speak against the jewish genocide? do you think Stalin let people print propaganda in favour of capitalism? Did Pinochet let communist speak their minds?

Freedom of speech can be used as tool for opression but also for liberation thats the whole fucking point, FREEDOM to speak and exchange ideas without authority silencing people.

Also indoctrination does have to be a machiavellian plan from powerful people, parents indocrinate their kids into their stupid faiths in a never-ending cycle of stupidity thinking they are doing the right thing, the same thing happens in certain areas of many universities.

On October 24 2017 09:02 Loco wrote: I agree that it's interesting, but obviously if we're studying the nature/nurture relationship in other animals, we can't just easily extrapolate the results to our own species. Not only are there intraspecies biological differences, but the retroactive effects of our environment/society on our biology itself are ignored (epigenetic mechanisms). There is a sense in which obsessing over what is programmed and what is learned is misguided: we are programmed to learn. Problem is that if we insist on only seeing this dichotomy, then engaging in extrapolation always happens when these studies get mediatized. I saw that JP retweeted that article you just linked and obviously he's not doing that out of a concern for people's intellectual curiosity. He also lazily dismissed David Benatar's anti-natalism book today on his Twitter. Along with his recent climate change denial and his advocacy of Atkins dieting, I hope you realize he's much more full of shit than you first imagined. Btw, 17 weeks later, there's still been 0 arrests in Canada from the passing of Bill C-16. And yet his alarmism over this is what propelled him to fame!

is heterosexuality also nurture loco?

I find low-hanging fruit picking boring and distasteful

I find lack of sense of humor boring and distatesful

If it's funny (which it is), it belongs in the ROFL thread. You posted it here after quoting me.

Oh cmon Loco, he s simply provoking you and you take the bait. You can't possibly be that uptight

I can be pretty uptight, however, I think it was just a misplaced joke tbh. The image is funny on its own, but I fail to see how it's funnier when he's asking me that question along with it. Provoke me how? I don't even see the relevance to the text quoted. I wonder if that picture is making the rounds in alt-right/"classical liberal" circles atm. THIS IS THE RESULT OF POSTMODERNISM. WE NEED AN AI TO BEAT THEM NAO!!

wtf the link doesn't work for some reason

I figured the smiley would clear any doubt if it was seriouis or not, I suppose it wasnt and apparently there is no room for any humor outside the ROFL thread even if its within context, good to know lol.

On November 10 2017 03:35 Baalim wrote: You got it comically backwards, usually the "powerful" does NOT want freedom of speech, it is the stamp of every single authoritarian to supress freedom of speech. Do you think Hitler allowed people to speak against the jewish genocide? do you think Stalin let people print propaganda in favour of capitalism? Did Pinochet let communist speak their minds? Freedom of speech can be used as tool for opression but also for liberation thats the whole fucking point, FREEDOM to speak and exchange ideas without authority silencing people.

I didn't get it round backwards at all, since i wasn't talking about hitler and stalin. I agree with you on that point that those dictators suppress freedom of speech to maintain power. but the powerful arn't hitler and stalin or any sort of facism in our society, rather its concentrated corporate/private power merged with a semi-liberal state that runs the show. I was talking about them. and yes i agree it is machevalien to a large extent, but propaganda is very casual in our society. You can take courses in it at university, such as marketing courses and applied psychology, which leads to a career in public relations. Manipulating the public mind has basically become socially acceptable, whereas maybe 80 years ago there were campaigns to get rid of advertising, and people trying to find ways to get rid of advertising on the radio. actually this is true today to some extent, since internet nerds in the 90's tried hard to keep the internet free of advertising, but unfortunately lost this battle.

On November 15 2017 11:35 Stroggoz wrote: I didn't get it round backwards at all, since i wasn't talking about hitler and stalin. I agree with you on that point that those dictators suppress freedom of speech to maintain power. but the powerful arn't hitler and stalin or any sort of facism in our society, rather its concentrated corporate/private power merged with a semi-liberal state that runs the show.

States are vastly more powerful than corporations, the US spends every year in just military far more than the net worth of all major corporation combined, yes they lobby to get a say in legislation and that has to stop, but the perception that corporations run the world is simlpy wrong.

I was talking about them. and yes i agree it is machevalien to a large extent, but propaganda is very casual in our society. You can take courses in it at university, such as marketing courses and applied psychology, which leads to a career in public relations. Manipulating the public mind has basically become socially acceptable, whereas maybe 80 years ago there were campaigns to get rid of advertising, and people trying to find ways to get rid of advertising on the radio. actually this is true today to some extent, since internet nerds in the 90's tried hard to keep the internet free of advertising, but unfortunately lost this battle.

advertizing =/= propaganda, advertizing is neccesary in a capitalistic societ and the internet without advertizing would become very expensive quickly, do you want to pay for Facebook, Youtube and pretty much any free platform? I think I prefer the ads.


What kind of argument is this, are you saying that the state should limit free speech so corporations dont advertize or what?

i said coporations are merged with state power. they work together. they are both very powerful and people who work at the top of the private sector often go to the powerful positions of the public sector as well and vice versa, like the revolving door thing im sure you've heard about.

advertising is a form of propaganda. propaganda is defined on page 6 of a journal article written in 1927 by harold lasswell, a political scientist. called the 'theory of propaganda', as the use of symbol management by a group of individuals to manipulate the thoughts of other groups of people or individuals. That's the best definition of propaganda i've seen and i've read a ton of material by propagandists and those who study propaganda. All of the propagandists in the early 1920's saw advertising as a form of propaganda. If you look at the book 'propaganda' by one of the greatest manipulators of all time, edward bernays, he divides the book up into different groups and ways that people like him can control the public mind, like how to use it in schools/media, advertising, public relations, ect.

personally i value freedom of speech quite high, i don't think there should be limits to it. I'm just giving a history lesson on it because i'm well read on the topic. But I think if we had a close look at the political economy of the media, academia, ect, think tanks, it's easier to get research grants if you say things that rich people or statesmen want to hear. speech is free but you your voice is only really given a platform in the media as long as you don't disagree with neoliberal economic system that has come to dominate the world over the last 30-40 years. If you disagree with that, you lose your job, that's basically how speech is repressed in our society. Actually bertrand russell said in 1922 in a speech he gave on the role of propaganda in our society that this was now the main form of thought control in our society. through economic restrictions rather than imprisoning people in jail. Again, not applicable to totalitarian societies, he was talking about Britain.

As for getting rid of advertising. we could certainly get rid of the manipulate variety, simply by getting people to think about what we are doing and educating each other. But getting rid of corporate power would go a long way in getting rid of the worst advertising, or climate change denial for example. if exxon mobil, koch brothers, ect were in jail for their crimes instead of being rich, they wouldnt be able to pump hundreds of millions into their climate change denial promoting think tanks. That is not limiting free speech, that's straight justice with a positive side effect.

I think we are misunderstanding each other:

free speech can be used as a tool for oppression if it is severely unequally distributed

Firing people, activly boycotting, denying platform in public institutions etc is NOT freedom of speech obviously, freedom of speech is allowing people to exchange and discuss ideas, not manipulating or coercion

So Drone and others thought Bill C-16 was absolutely fine since it only extended gay rights to trans ppl and it wasnt about controlling speech at all, however apparently just dicussing gender pronouns in an university class is simply not tolerated by the administration:

https://globalnews.ca/video/3867811/e...r-university-grad-student-and-faculty

One university has inept leadership.
There will be a third-party investigation (An Ontario university that has raised eyebrows among those concerned with questions of academic freedom has engaged a third-party investigator to probe an incident involving one of its teaching assistants. - that's from a newspaper which seems pretty neutral.

I expect the people who objected to Lindsay Shepherd's tutoring to be reprimanded. My own academic experience is one where we've often discussed controversial topics like this.

but its not an isolated event, looks at this: https://www.campusreform.org/


obviously its a biased site but still

There's nothing in there that demonstrates that it was the passing of the bill that was the main causal factor in their decision-making process. The bill is simply referenced by someone. But if that's the worst you can find as a negative consequence of the passing of C16 then that's a clear argument for the bill, considering how much suffering it actually prevented. That woman's had a rough couple days and she's now an internet hero and a pseudo-martyr, I'm not too worried about her, I think she'll be ok. I'm curious also why a Peterson video would find its way on a critical thinking curriculum? He's not a philosopher. And to choose such a delicate subject in order to teach critical thinking? It does seem a bit irresponsible to me. Are we to believe that she was truly neutral and didn't care whether people would become fans of Peterson or not? I find that a bit unlikely. I'd like to know which clip(s) she showed. If it was anything like his usual shtick of saying that every gender non conforming person who wants to be addressed by a specific pronoun is on the vanguard of a murderous ideology, then I'm ok siding with the university even though they have dealt with this quite poorly.

I also don't buy the whole "the university's purpose is to challenge yourself, therefore pretending like every idea has equal merit is necessary." You can challenge yourself every day without having to do that. Ironically, this is also exactly what Peterson was trying to do with his harassment campaign that seeks to destroy entire fields of study because he disapproves of them.


edit: So this article in VICE was just published on this story. I guess I'm largely in agreement there and a content warning would have been an acceptable compromise. I'm still skeptical that this woman is as innocent as she's made out to be. If she is, it sucks for her, but her recording of the conversation to be brought to journalists leads me to suspect she had an agenda.