No Safe Spaces
Nietzsche wrote that God is dead and we have killed him.
Stephen Hawking said that Philosophy is dead. Science has killed it.
[i]Speaking to Google’s Zeitgeist Conference in Hertfordshire, the author of ‘A Brief History of Time’ said that fundamental questions about the nature of the universe could not be resolved without hard data such as that currently being derived from the Large Hadron Collider and space research. “Most of us don’t worry about these questions most of the time. But almost all of us must sometimes wonder: Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead,” he said. “Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.”
Prof Hawking went on to claim that “Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.” He said new theories “lead us to a new and very different picture of the universe and our place in it”.[/i]
Finally people have evolved and proclaimed that even your opinions are dead. They have given you the right to remain silent until you are reeducated. Don't try and hide; just shut up. There are no safe spaces for you if you insist on arguing. God is dead, philosophy is dead, and now your opinions are as good as dead. It is just a matter of time and education. You have the right to remain silent. Be happy for that. With your attitude you could be eliminated or canceled out. If you don't believe me, watch the trailor to the movie. Only the opinions of your big brother matter. All additional thoughts will be canceled
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uKabyhUid8
Stephen Hawking said that Philosophy is dead. Science has killed it.
[i]Speaking to Google’s Zeitgeist Conference in Hertfordshire, the author of ‘A Brief History of Time’ said that fundamental questions about the nature of the universe could not be resolved without hard data such as that currently being derived from the Large Hadron Collider and space research. “Most of us don’t worry about these questions most of the time. But almost all of us must sometimes wonder: Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead,” he said. “Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.”
Prof Hawking went on to claim that “Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.” He said new theories “lead us to a new and very different picture of the universe and our place in it”.[/i]
Finally people have evolved and proclaimed that even your opinions are dead. They have given you the right to remain silent until you are reeducated. Don't try and hide; just shut up. There are no safe spaces for you if you insist on arguing. God is dead, philosophy is dead, and now your opinions are as good as dead. It is just a matter of time and education. You have the right to remain silent. Be happy for that. With your attitude you could be eliminated or canceled out. If you don't believe me, watch the trailor to the movie. Only the opinions of your big brother matter. All additional thoughts will be canceled
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uKabyhUid8
Comments (108)
Are you describing inquisition times? witch hunting?
Nikolas, I don't know where you live but I suppose you live in a western country. You live in the most liberal and free society of all times in history. Don't you agree? Or you think in an idyllic past that was better?
Quoting Nikolas
Let me explain you what Prof. Hawking's was saying with an example: if you take Galileo or Kelpler or the famous Copernico, etc. they were what we call today scientists/astronomists that had to fight again philosophers and religion mainly to defend their scientific ideas. Some of them died in poverty or deep suffering because of not acceptance.
After a few decades their scientific demonstrations prevailed and the old questions or theories that were defended by the old powers that put them in disgrace and that were assuming the Earth was the center of the universe or thinking the Earth was flat... those theories and thinkers disappeared, so philosophy and religion had to adapt their theories to this new reality that paradoxically was not discovered thanks to great theologists (blind because of power of religion) or philosophers (some of them -onlysome of them- blind because of egocentrism) but they were discovered by what we call today scientists.
It is this science the main trigger of technologies that guarantee goods and well being to masses of population like ever in the past, but over all, a social substrate for education and free-speech and democracies.
There is a dark side as it has always been in history, unfortunately we have to deal with our human condition, that has not changed at all, our brains are always as dangerous as in the past. But today is better in any sense to the past.
Remember many scientists, too many, have died because of their discoveries going against mainstream thinking and their theories were right ... so we owe them a lot.
Hope it makes sense.
That said, "cancel culture" is overstated. No one is obliged to give you a platform for your opinions, and every employer is free to fire someone who represents them ill. This has always been the case. You would have struggled to keep a media job in the west throughout most of the 20th century if you were openly a Nazi. It's just now society has moved on to not being pro-racist, pro-sexist, pro-homophobic.
As for science and philosophy, I don't read enough philosophy or theology to have a strong opinion on their death. It's probably exaggerated. I do more reading in the sciences than philosophy.
Quoting Nikolas
Have people just recently "evolved" or "devolved"? As for opinions being dead... not so much.
Maybe. But you are quite correct: when it comes to speech, there is no such thing as the right to free speech at work. One can speak as freely as one wishes, but then might be ushered out the front door.
That's different. You're getting paid. You represent the company - and they have a right to project an image, and protect that image from the expression of opinions that might damage business.
It looks an interesting documentary, but I suspect it is already dated, considering the political climate and the topic.
The major point is, democratic freedom entails responsibility, and the main responsibility is to acknowledge facts. 'Everyone has a right to their own opinions, but nobody has a right to their own facts', a statesman said. If that was understood, 90% of the problems would be solved.
Well, mostly.
The same belief that brought prosperity, peace, and individuality to the Western world had destroyed its very foundation by its own perverted decay...
We live after the "Pax Romana", but I'm still not sure when:
Beginning of Commodus's reign - 180 AD -;
Beginning of Septimius Severus's reign - 193 AD - ;
Ending of Severus Alexander's reign - 222 AD -;
Start of the Crisis of the Third Century - 235 AD -;
Start of Diocletian's reign - 284 AD -.
But one thing is certain: - The "Dominatus" is already inside us and consuming us. There is no more difference between "Princeps Civitatis" and "Dominus" as much as "Respublicus" is frowned upon as "Rex".
One must accept the darkness as quickly as possible, so that a new day will emerge...
— Kenosha Kid
I'm cautiously pessimistic about this. True, most people no longer openly express crudely racist, sexist and anti-gay statements, which is progress. What is not very different now, than in the past, is that people still spend their money in ways which help keep past unjust and unfair discriminations in place.
For instance, most people buying houses tend to look for homogeneous neighborhoods that reflect themselves and their aspirations. For whites, the means pretty much white neighborhoods. Whites who buy houses in black neighborhoods are, more likely than not, looking for a good deal, with the expectation that eventually the blacks will be priced out of the neighborhood (gentrification).
Wage discrimination by sex is less severe, and less common than it was in the past. It hasn't disappeared, but it is better. (This applies to the US: what conditions apply in Britain, Europe, and other places, I don't know.)
In most of the G20 countries, anti-gay policies have apparently been mostly repealed, but that doesn't mean that nobody has strong negative feelings about homosexuality -- their own or others'.
Advertising Media in particular project images of the non-existent post racial America. Advertising images reveal a lot about where we are, and where we are not. TV shows like Grey's Anatomy have a high rate of POC in authority positions, and feature a lot of lesbian relationships. Gay men appear too in GA, but not in the hot sexual scenes that lesbians and straights appear in (which are tediously frequent). I can't think of a gay man who has been as central as lesbian characters or POC, or a gay couple that has done more than hold hands and kissed quickly. (I'm picking on Grey's Anatomy because it's the only TV show that I have watched much of, recently.)
You are more accommodating to the interests of employers than I am.
Workers are paid to perform a service or produce a product. When it's convenient, under 'employment at will' law, an employer can fire a worker without explanation. In holy symmetry, a worker can quit without an explanation too. That makes it fair and square (sarcasm). My view is that IF employers want me to align my loyalty and interests with theirs, THEN they will have to align their loyalty and interests with mine. And hop to it!
Some organizations are engaged in genuine good works. It's advisable to speak well of organizations that are doing good work, provided they aren't also engaged in unfair labor practices. (Mother Teresa was a wretched boss.) For the huge remainder of organizations who are in business for no purpose ,ore august than making a profit for shareholders, unconditional positive regard is altogether misguided.
[i]There is a dark side as it has always been in history, unfortunately we have to deal with our human condition, that has not changed at all, our brains are always as dangerous as in the past. But today is better in any sense to the past.
Remember many scientists, too many, have died because of their discoveries going against mainstream thinking and their theories were right ... so we owe them a lot.[/i]
Plato described the human condition as like living in Plato’s cave attached to the shadows on the wall. If true, it must include the continual struggle between an objective universal perspective and fragmentation. (wholeness vs parts) Religion has the ideal of freedom from the delusions of cave mentality and fragmentation or the domain of science is concerned with establishing partial truths. The human condition prevents the natural unification of universalism and fragmentation since cave life keeps humanity living in imagination. As a result society as a whole cannot see the forest for the trees. The movie suggests that for those caught up in this Marxist agenda there is only one tree worth looking at and rest should be eliminated.
I see this obsession with fragmentation as opposed to a universal perspective as a loss.
http://esoteric.msu.edu/Reviews/NicolescuReview.htm
[i]After reading Nicolescu's Manifesto of Transdisciplinarity, it is hard to imagine how any thinking person could retreat to the old, safe, comfortable conceptual framework. Taking a series of ideas that would be extremely thought-provoking even when considered one by one, the Romanian quantum physicist Basarab Nicolescu weaves them together in a stunning vision, this manifesto of the twenty-first century, so that they emerge as a shimmering, profoundly radical whole.
Nicolescu’s raison d’être is to help develop people’s consciousness by means of showing them how to approach things in terms of what he calls “transdisciplinarity.” He seeks to address head on the problem of fragmentation that plagues contemporary life. Nicolescu maintains that binary logic, the logic underlying most all of our social, economic, and political institutions, is not sufficient to encompass or address all human situations. His thinking aids in the unification of the scientific culture and the sacred, something which increasing numbers of persons, will find to be an enormous help, among them wholistic health practitioners seeking to promote the understanding of illness as something arising from the interwoven fabric—body, plus mind, plus spirit—that constitutes the whole human being, and academics frustrated by the increasing pressure to produce only so-called “value-free” material.[/i]
I agree with you that the way to objective meaning or the attraction of philosophy is made impossible in Plato’s Cave but I suggest it doesn’t have to be. A human being can leave the cave. Do you agree?
Quoting Bitter Crank
I think it fair minded. Your average employee turns up, and contributes his labour - takes his wages and goes home. The employer rents buildings, buys resources, tools, and finds customers for the products produced. If there's an unequal power dynamic it's because there's an unequal burden of responsibilities. The behaviour of the employee may bear directly on the ability of the employer to discharge his responsibilities. Thus, it's fair to require employees refrain from untoward behaviour on company time.
The problem for me is when employers interfere in their employees personal lives. I'm thinking mostly about opinions expressed online, or photos on instagram, coming back to haunt people. The employer is overstepping the mark. Outside of company time, it's no business of the company what a person says or does.
I forfeit the right to consult with attorney before posting...
In my opinion it’s a good thing that marginalized groups are depicted in high status positions, such as surgeons, because it may alter general perception to some degree, and to be fair, hot male gay sex only appeals to a small percentage of consumers whereas hot lesbian sex has wider appeal (and I confess to that myself). Years ago I remember being on a nude beach where a couple of hot half dressed girls were making out. Incredibly sexy!
Not any more. If you're not actively "anti-racist" then you're racist. Silence will not protect you from the mob.
That said, "cancel culture" is overstated. No one is obliged to give you a platform for your opinions, and every employer is free to fire someone who represents them ill. This has always been the case. You would have struggled to keep a media job in the west throughout most of the 20th century if you were openly a Nazi. It's just now society has moved on to not being pro-racist, pro-sexist, pro-homophobic.[quote="]
Does maintaining a free society require indoctrination or is rule by blind justice sufficient? Is their another way? If I want to open a men's only tavern do I have to allow women? It is a platform for my opinions
Mob rule has replaced Lady Liberty's ideal of blind justice under the law. My how we have sunk.
Sure. It's a good thing.
Quoting praxis
I'll take your word for it's great appeal. I just hope they don't show up at my favorite all male nude beach.
I’ve visited beaches like that and further confess that they have their own unique appeal.
Nude beaches with their attendant sex-on-offer feature serve a similar function. They are places to get in touch with some basic human animal urges. Because gays have been outsiders, or outliers, in the past these venues have been primary. So do other places for other people -- like Mardi Gras, or Carnival, just for example.
It's unfortunate that many straight folks have nothing similar--no place to serve as a place to get in touch with one's most basic urges, without strings attached.
Maybe such a thing not only does not, but can not exist for most people. Civilization depends on sublimating those basic human urges into productive activities.
Yes, that's true. At least this is at a somewhat more fuzzy level than, say, the landlords of the 60s refusing to rent to black people who could afford it, or lenders refusing mortgages: a black person can buy a house or rent anywhere they can afford. But yes the economic gradient between white and non-white people rather robs the latter of the ability to capitalise on that. In the UK, I'm not sure that it's, say, black areas whose properties are valued down so much as poor areas, with black communities overwhelmingly stuck in those poor areas. Then again, I am always surprised by how overt racism often is, so my optimism might be misplaced.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes, better here in Britain too. Last time I checked, women in their twenties earned more than men in their twenties. Women still lose out after childbirth, but that will probably change some once feminists realise that paternity leave is a feminist issue.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I find that the biggest issue here is not representation so much as people thinking it's reasonable to complain about black or gay people being on their favourite shows. I get that sometimes it can be done in a box-ticking way which isn't good (Doctor Who has a female Doctor \o/, a female Indian companion \o/, a black companion \o/ who is also a bit disabled :|, and an elderly companion :yawn: ), but I find that a lot of people pretend that the presence of any non-white, non-heteronormative person or -- God forbid -- a mixed race couple is the same as shoving PC agendas down their children's throats. So yeah I agree there's a strong underbelly of hate still. A lot of that is pushed by the right-wing press here, without which I suspect the hate would largely die off with my parents' generation.
Quoting Bitter Crank
God, I hate this. Same here. TV producers have been much happier to jump on the gay bandwagon when it means having two women lez off for the dads. We do have quite a lot of queer representation but it is rather segregated still.
Censorship is a huge problem, and will continue to proliferate as the means of expression become more widespread. But I think there is hope. As soon as the cowardly fear of words and voices is proven to be illusory (which, given the ease with which we can communicate, is only a matter of time), the fashionable idea that articulated sounds, marks on paper, or pixelated letters can be the same as violence will become increasingly untenable, and its believers increasingly silly.
The recent Capital insurrection suggests that words, specifically words that compose a big lie in that particular case, can have serious consequences. Ignorance can be exploited by unscrupulous influencers.
:up:
Could you use your words to guide me like a marionette to this or that action? Let’s give it a try.
He already has.
The Nazis were routinely censored in Weimar. Worse, Hitler himself used their own censorship to justify the Enabling act. After that Nazi Germany became a huge safe-space for Nazi ideas, with all critics censored in some manner or other.
How?
Ignorance is easily manipulated, it’s as simple as that. Would you deny it?
I doubt the physics and biology of such an assertion, but I am aware that such folk psychology exists and do not completely disagree.
Also, Hawking by stating philosophy is dead isn't claiming that philosophy or philosophers must be silenced. All in all, using his example to introduce or as representative of what's referred to in the trailer is confusing at best.
As to the trailer. For a lawyer, the right to free speech applies only where government or its representatives seek to restrict it. The right itself is subject to restriction in the law; it isn't absolute. The right to free speech being referred to in the trailer, and by others, therefore, isn't a legal right. It merely happens there are people who think people should be free to say anything they want, and generally they claim that this should be the case because, e.g., we otherwise would never learn and people shouldn't stop other people from thinking or speaking, and that we should have diversity in thought and speech. J.S. Mill used to speak of the good results of having a "marketplace of ideas" or words to that effect, where views compete and bad ones fall to the side through the workings of a kind of invisible hand of communication.
It's difficult, however, to claim that people should be allowed to communicate hateful, bigoted, violence-inducing claims and ideas, for example promoting genocide or slavery or inferiority of races and such things. Mill notwithstanding, I wonder if anyone really does claim this. Instead, they claim "free speech" is being restricted whenever it's maintained that people shouldn't be allowed to do so.
The fact is that some speech is inappropriate. But the determination whether it is or not isn't a simple thing, and such devices as the creation of "safe spaces" treats it as a simple thing.
Once acknowledged, we are able to manage the consequences. Take Trump's speech on January 6, 2020 and the immediate subsequent trashing of Congress as an example: had the Capitol security force been proactively alert to the potential for a forceful attack, appropriate measures could have / should have been taken to prevent what happened.
Shutting down free speech in Minneapolis on Memorial Day 2020 would not have been the appropriate response (referencing the riots that followed George Floyd's death). What would have been appropriate was a more forceful response to looting and arson. Instead, the police and fire departments withdrew from the area, ceding control to rioters.
A free society, where free speech is plentiful, will see political skirmishes in the streets because speech has consequences. Plentiful free speech doesn't mean that all consequences have to be tolerated.
Who defines ideal moral standards? Initially God did nd we killed God. Now science proves facts but is ignorant as far as moral standards. So the next possibility is Man itself.
[i]“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
? George Orwell, 1984[/i]
The movie explains how these forces that be are attempting to control the past which will be the attempt to create the future and the. supremacy of its enforced marxist one opinion through "might makes right". Are there enough people and institutions left in America to defend the value of freedom of thought and expression of ideas? My guess is that a free society must hit bottom before it can realize the error of its ways and strive to regain the value of freedom. Hitting bottom is not a pleasant perspective to look forward to.
No, NOS is a wily fucker. :razz:
I refuse to acknowledge the notion that “speech has consequences” beyond the immediate physical effects, for instance the movement of breath from the mouth or the application of ink to paper. Since no one but myself can control my motor cortex, I believe the activities you described are the consequence of other, more personal factors. But I can understand the folk psychology of the notion.
The problem with this notion, as I see it, is that if speech is to be blamed for political skirmishes or violence, it can be blamed for any and all opposite effects. If you and I hear the same speech, but you go out and riot while I go home and read a book, we remain ignorant to the real reasons why you did one thing and I did another. Free speech becomes the innocent victim.
Should fraud be illegal? It's often only speech after all.
Personal factors are exploited in order to ultimately result in particular actions. It’s not folk psychology.
The issue with social media is that it has empowered a very small minority to have a very large voice, it's really got not much to do with larger society. Even though your OP is fearmongering, most of the responses to you just go the other way and pretend like there's fairness in the way Twitter mobs treat people, which is silly. It's not the state that's trying to silence you, it's random people but I don't think there's anything which can be done about that. People have a right to call you a racist homophobe and demand you be fired - free speech has to allow that and if your employer sacks you because thousands of people said they'd boycott the business or because it's bad publicity otherwise then that's their decision.
Do you have an intelligent solution for us to consider or are you just going to complain generally about an exaggerated concern? Also, how often does this happen?
You are taking an extreme position here, and of course you have company. It's a rare idea, indeed, that only one person holds it. A whole folk/pop-psychology school--holding that individuals are entirely responsible for their ideas, reactions, feelings, and so forth, and that no one can influence anyone else--agrees with you. You proclaim the sovereign individual.
We have to agree to disagree, because there is only a small patch of common ground. I hold that we are, in the end, social animals and are influenced by each other. You proclaim the sovereign individual.
How is obvious - a simple causal chain from the sound of the words hitting your eardrum, their firing through various networks of neurons to the ones which caused you to type your answer. That's the easy and trivial bit.
What's far more interesting is your explanation for the opposite. If the words weren't (could never be) part of the causal chain - along with all other external influences - then whence the signal which caused you to type your response?
I'm only talking about rather boring neuroscience which can be be read about in any textbook, so I don't see much point in me expanding on it here.
You, however, have clearly uncovered nothing short of pure magic, the signals telling your body to type your response spontaneously came from nowhere - it's this new magic I'm sure we all want to hear about. What substance is this magical realm made from? How does it interact with our realm? Does it only affect humans or does it sometime cause rocks to do things spontaneously? How on earth did you arrive at this mystical wisdom (was it an ancient text buried in an Aztec tomb - I do hope so, those are always the best)? Do tell.
Precisely why we should prosecute on the basis of intent. I personally don't believe Trump incited an insurrection, but that's what he's charged with: not giving unwanted opinion but manufacturing violence. In the UK we have laws about specifically inciting violence. The intelligence community will intervene if you're planning a terrorist attack, even though planning is technically just speech.
Laws against inciting violence are useful, and the censorship aspect irrelevant. In principle, one could imagine instances where it is right to plan violence, such as in the French resistance, but then the law itself is irrelevant.
People only cast it as a free speech issue when it affects their side of some conflict. They are unlikely to champion the rights of Islamic terrorists discussing an imminent attack on US soil on free speech grounds, but will champion the rights of MAGA-hatted domestic terrorists doing exactly the same. It's not a position that needs to be taken seriously.
The thing is that it is the other way around already: People at large judge a company by its employees. If you know a guy who works for such and such company, and you don't like him, chances are you're going to hire some other company for some work you need done.
So it makes sense that a company's employees act in line with company policy 24/7 and that the company has some overview and control over it.
Well, it was text. I looked at the screen, I read the words, I interpreted the symbols, and I typed the response. How, in your neuroscientific view, is the word causing me to do any of this?
You repeat that the words are causing my response, telling my body to type, and in the same breath accuse me of magical thinking. But I’ve also seen a few posts in this thread which seem to be unable to cause a single response, not only from me but from others. Were these pixels, arranged as they were, lacking the causal force? Did they cause people not to respond? Did the “signals” travel down the wrong neurons?
So far all you’ve done is written about me in the passive voice and the words in the active one. I think it should be the other way about.
Then why won’t you persuade me, Tim? Surely you know some of these arts.
I just explained that. It's not complicated. The sound (or image) stimulates a neuron sufficiently for it to stimulate one to which it is proximate. At the end of that chain is the instruction to your muscles to type. What is it you're not understanding about that?
Quoting NOS4A2
Yes. Again, not seeing what's in the least bit difficult to understand here.
Quoting NOS4A2
Yes. You have billions of them, trillions of possible paths just in a single cortex.
Quoting NOS4A2
What you think should be the case is totally immaterial to what actually is the case.
And you're here to tell him what actually is the case?
What is your aim for yourself and for society in general? I believe in the rights as recorded in the Declaration of Independence and the freedoms that make these rights possible.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are universal rights and not established by Man. If people want these rights they will have the obligation to perform the voluntary obligations necessary to sustain these rights. Of course if people want the slavery of socialism or communism then all this is unnecessary. The state will decide your obligations and define your happiness. Simone Weil describes our situation:
[i]The notion of obligations comes before that of rights, which is subordinate and relative to the former. A right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds, the effective exercise of a right springing not from the individual who possesses it, but from other men who consider themselves as being under a certain obligation towards him. Recognition of an obligation makes it effectual. An obligation which goes unrecognized by anybody loses none of the full force of its existence. A right which goes unrecognized by anybody is not worth very much.
It makes nonsense to say that men have, on the one hand, rights, and on the other hand, obligations. Such words only express differences in point of view. The actual relationship between the two is as between object and subject. A man, considered in isolation, only has duties, amongst which are certain duties towards himself. Other men, seen from his point of view, only have rights. He, in his turn, has rights, when seen from the point of view of other men, who recognize that they have obligations towards him. A man left alone in the universe would have no rights whatever, but he would have obligations.[/i]
Do you and I as individuals further the right of free speech or do we believe in “might makes right” as does BLM and Antifa and get away with intimidation? If our aim is to further the ideology of statist slavery, then intimidation is the best. If our aim is a free society, then a person has the obligation to support free speech even if it opposes my beliefs. It boils down to our aim for ourselves and for society in general.
It’s not that I don’t understand it. I just think it’s kind of ridiculous because I am being treated as a passive object, the words acting upon me as if I was silly putty. I think it’s the other way about: I act upon the words.
All the activity you describe, from hearing a word on down to responding, is performed by and caused by me. Just as you chose your words and manifested them, it is I who chose to read them. It is I who learned the language. It is I who differentiated between your text and the general noise of other sense data. It is I who interprets the data and supplies the meaning to the symbols. It is I who formulates and delivers the response.
I don't know about that, but last time I checked, Stephen Hawking was certainly dead. Maybe philosophy had the last word after all.
Not entirely, no. For a small and literally iconic example take the Apple logo. Did you give that symbol its meaning? Millions have been spent in attempting to control the meaning of this brand. When you see the logo do you think cheap unaesthetic or low quality? There's a chance that you do but there's a far better chance that you don't.
We're all conditioned beings and our conditioning can be hacked.
Am I to understand that your solution is to... demand that people behave themselves? BLM and Antifa are using free speech too, what do you suggest be done about it?
I suggest that whenever you hear that someone has been unfairly criticised for being politically incorrect or whatever, go write to that business or person showing your support. That's something you can do.
Mmmm.
Philosophy 1 -- Hawking 0
NO. For a free society to sustain itself the majority must recognize and support the value of free speech and oppose a minority which would be against it. Obviously it isn't happening. Opposing free speech in schools, the media, political correctness etc. is instead rewarded. Since this is obviously true, a free society isn't wanted and willingly sacrificed for the security of imagined safety
"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin
Liberty is dead. The idea of liberty is for an advanced society. America i not there yet. We have proven America no longer deserves liberty nor safety and prefers a form of statist slavery..
How about a little redneck advice in my very best redneck voice...?.
Don't worry about it.
They got the numbers.
But we got space.
We own this place.
...until ALL of it is taken away.
Those woke folks have every right to think and say whatever they want. Their opinions have nothing to do with anything or anybody but themselves. Right on! As long as they keep their hands to themselves...
...but that's just me ...I grew up feral.
A lil som’em som’em from Eleanor:
Perhaps also a frightening prospect for those who fancy themselves as the arbiters of virtue, because no one welcomes the realization that they’re superfluous, or just plain silly.
If you care so much about what others expect of you, you will never be free. Rewards from society are not necessary to live well. Your own personal freedom to say whatever you want may not agree with other people's expectations that you're going to stick to "proper language", but then, don't you also expect things from others? And do you feel like you restrict their freedom when you expect something from them?
...not going to stick to that contract you signed, then.
If you were to put this doctrine into practice, I strongly suspect things would go badly for you. So I suspect it is the sort of thing said but not done.
Unless you are posting from a prison cell. Or an island.
Hawking should have known that philosophy cannot die -- she's a goddess after all -- but that she can hide from her enemies alright.
Or here.
If you don't care much about what others expect of you, you put yourself at risk of their anger and their revenge.
A slick sales pitch (fraud) has always been used by whoever needs it and thinks they can get away with it. I hear the words, I consider them, in context, and weight them against what I know, what makes sense, and ultimately, what I want. If I elect to ignore logic and experience and go only with what I want, and how I want them to support something I already wanted, that result is on me; not the speech maker.
I tell you to stop paying taxes because the government is too busy to notice...First off, Are you actually going to believe me? Secondly, if you do, should I be held accountable for your actions? Is there no such thing as personal responsibility? Or personal accountability?
I make a shit call: my error. I make a great call: my success. Not sure where the narrator comes in.
And if I am getting paid 24/7 I will be more inclined to follow company policy 24/7. Outside of that, pass on policy. I do not require my employees to follow policy on their off time, unless they are running around in company clothing and company trucks. Simple as that. It's called off time for a reason. A good employee is one who does their job well, is reliable, and lets me know what is frustrating them about the company before they tell others about it. A good boss will listen to what is frustrating the employees and will try to solve the issues before the employees feel so frustrated that they bad mouth the company while off work. If I treat my people well they will be protective of their jobs and the company: no policy required. If I treat them poorly, no policy will protect me from myself.
Wow. You're not a typical capitalist!
Pay them poorly, make them feel disposable and always wonder when you will have to close your doors.
I suppose that's true for small companies, but I'm not so sure about the bigger ones.
It was always kinda fucked up if you asked me, with “the fall of man” jazz.
Sooooo scary.
The implications are dire, I admit.
This is where Wayfairer works. He has a VPN.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps
Personal liberty is not the same as societal liberty. They require different qualities of obligations. I may demand the right to kill you to enhance my personal freedom. However societal liberty demands the respect for life. Personal liberty may give a woman the right to kill her fetus while societal liberty demands the attitude of respect for the life process from birth to death.
Societal obligations require voluntary obligations individuals in this day and age are likely to ignore. They require an awareness beyond selfish attitudes.
Mark 12: 17 Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”
It seems that Man as a whole, living in Plato's cave, has forgotten what belongs to God and what belongs to Caesar and cannot distinguish between them. If we can't, liberty by definition is only a potential for Man. As we are, we are incapable of it and some form of psychological slavery is the lawful result of ignorance for a society.
What I mean is, the meaning isn’t in the symbol. I carry it around with me so that when I come across a symbol I can understand what it means. Obviously I must first learn what it means.
Their original logo was a complex drawing of Isaac Newton under an apple tree:
So no, it’s not THAT apple (which if anything was more likely meant to be a pomegranate anyway).
Companies rebrand. Of course you've noticed the bite in the Apple logo, so whatever sublimated meaning was being attempted with Newtons apple was replaced with something of more biblical proportions.
My point is that others deliberately try to control the meaning of symbols etc. in order to manipulate.
That's a totally different topic. My point is you cannot be a free spirit if you keep anguishing to no end about what others will think of what you say. Of course if you want the folks on twitter to love you, you may have to give them what they expect, but what's the point of that?
You don't actually need to conform to PC in real life.
But sometimes a person's voluntary obligations learned by experience is hated by normal people. They will have to drink the hemlock. They can avoid these obligations and be happy or be hated by the educated. What are the obligations of a real human being aware of the human condition? Do they drink the hemlock? From Plato's Cave allegory:
[Socrates] And if there were a contest, and he had to compete in measuring the shadows with the prisoners who had never moved out of the cave, while his sight was still weak, and before his eyes had become steady (and the time which would be needed to acquire this new habit of sight might be very considerable) would he not be ridiculous? Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.
What to do?
Oh really? I thought Socrates was sentenced to death because he was what we call today a pedophile. Also I am not aware of any present day philosopher forced to drink any hemlock...
No, Socrates was more concerned with the minds of the young rather than their bodies. Pedophilia was common practice in those days and nothing to be killed over.
Socrates was a disruptive influence and his ideas corrupted the youth of Athens so had to be killed. In these times a philosopher on the level of Socrates would have to be banned from teaching with the goal of killing him on the inside. They wouldn't understand that his death was intentional. Such a philosopher would be canceled out for the masses but a life giving influence for a minority..
The phrase "to corrupt the youth of Athens" has more than one meaning. The charge may have refered to something far more mundane than philosophy. We know next to nothing about Socrates.
In any case, the point was that philosophers today are not sentenced to death for their ideas. Go easy with the drama.
No but the ideas are: "Who were the fools who spread the story that brute force cannot kill ideas? ... And once they are dead they are no more than corpses." Simone Weil
Socrates was killed because he threatened ideas based on and justified by imagination established in Plato's cave. Now laws don't allow for killing philosophers but the great perennial ideas at the source of philosophy like the essence of Christianity can be condemned and canceled out of society.
What can be more insulting then person acquiring some respect asserts that "I know Nothing"? We are intelligent and assumed to have knowledge and now Socrates asserts that he knows nothing. Residents of Plato's cave must kill such ideas. They inspire thought which is simply offensive and intolerable for educated people.
If we can't kill at least make sure these ideas have no safe spaces with no freedom other than to remain silent.
‘ “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.” ’
Peace is assured
There will be no need for safe spaces. Your government and censorsip will make them unnecessary. Your government will teach you the correct words to use. In this way peace is assured.
We have Xenophon’s Memorabilia, alongside Plato’s Dialogues, as another source, sometimes more powerful than Plato, of the details of Socrates’ life.
Secondly, The charges against Socrates were twofold: corrupting the youth, and teaching gods other than the official gods of Athens.
...as a matter of fact, in all the Dialogues, Socrates steers his audience away from sex toward an, anachronistically, “Platonic” relationship.
At any rate, in Ancient Athens, pedophilia was a practice countenanced quite openly; to have sentenced one to death for it would have decimated the aristocracy.
What was offensive to the authorities was exactly what was stated in the charges: that he corrupted the state religion...
...and the images on the wall, the ones we must come to see as false if we ever escape the cave, represent those gods.
That' strikes me as naïve. In any case, he accepted his sentence, and that is the central point: he realised that one can't be free and expect others to like it.
What you want is more than just freedom of speech. You want to speak freely AND be listened to and agreed with. But people have the freedom not to listen to your speech, and usually that's what they do.
Anyone that thinks they can pay their taxes with Google Play cards....there is just no fixing that.
The chief prohibitions in the guidelines of this forum, the ones which condemn the transgressors of them to banishment, are exactly these same societal prohibitions, the PC ones I just referred to, namely, that one profess no idea or sentiment that is either sexist or racist or homophobic.
Now, let me ask you this; indeed, let me ask this entire forum, and I ask also that the moderators allow you, the members, to be my jurors, and not banish me without a proper trial—for I would accept the majority of you, should you condemn me, as my proper judges; nor would I wish to be a member of a club the majority of whose members does not accept me: were I to argue that homosexuality is against nature because two men or two women, by means of coitus, cannot produce offspring, and that that is the obvious teleological purpose of coitus, namely, to produce offspring, would that sentiment constitute homophobia on my part?
It is as though I hear now an uproar, and loud calls for conviction and banishment. But I beseech you to hear me out, fellow members, for I have more to say that may temper your indignation, and I hope to convince you that I am not a hater of gays or lesbians. Indeed, I have known many homosexuals throughout my too long life, and some of them have been close friends. I always treated them as human beings, just as I would treat any heterosexual... and one of them was my dearest friend.
Furthermore, I believe the evidence suggests that sexual desire for the opposite sex is inborn and perfectly natural...something which, I suspect, coming from me, is surprising to you. How then do we reconcile these disparate natures, the teleological one and the evidentiary one?...
...for now, I hold my cards close to my chest. If any of you are interested in hearing my opinion, I would be glad to express it; but, as the popular phrase goes, “let me be perfectly clear”: if rational statements against PC opinions are automatically assumed to emanate from hate, without consideration for the source or motive, then full philosophical discussion and consideration of the most important things to us is impossible, either in this forum or any other.
My bad!...
Hope I got it right this time.
I encourage you to cancel cancel culture. Simplify your life. You are free to say whatever you want, and other people are free to like or dislike it. Where's the problem?
Let me take an example. Surgery on genitals is something that makes me cringe. I find people who surgically switch sex kinda gross (cross dressing is something else, it's fine and even funny). I don't hate them, just find them crazy. Now, I'm not gonna say that to any and all gender confused people out there just for the sake of hurting them. That would be mean, and very tiring. But if one wants to know, I disapprove of changing one's biological sex via surgery. At any age. Of course now some people will call you transphobic for saying that, but they are entitled to think whatever they want about me. I don't give a flying rat's ass.
Would you cringe at the surgery on your genitals that would remove a malignant tumor? Even if you cringed at it, wouldn’t you approve of it? Yet you don’t approve of a similar sort of surgery whose intention is to change sex. Doesn’t this show that what you really cringe at is related to the reason for the surgery, not it’s object or location?
You describe ppl willing to undergo surgery to change their sex as “gross” and “crazy”. But if a man feels he has the soul of a woman, and wishes his body to conform to his soul, and therefore conceives of his nads as a sort of malignant tumor, why do you cringe at the notion of his having them excised? Or, though you vicariously cringe at it, why wouldn’t you empathetically approve of it, just as you would approve of having yours cut out if they were malignantly cancerous?
Finally, if you agree with the above analysis, and admit that what is cringe-worthy about sex-change is not explained by grossness or craziness, on what rational basis, other than visceral repugnance, do you base your disapproval of it? For you have stated that you disapprove of it. Come now! As a philosopher or student of her, on what rational basis do you rest your opposition to the changing of sex?
None. And I said as much: I don't oppose to it on theoretical grounds; I just find it gross and repellent, emotionally. IOW I don't like it. Even circumcision is a bit untoward in my view, and I routinely advise parents against it.
Furthermore (and I am reluctant to ask this further question for fear that you focus in on it alone and thusly fail to answer the above, which I prefer you do rather than answer this one), when you say that you “routinely advise parents against” circumcision of their children, I can only assume that you hold some public position which carries the authority to give such advice; and, racking my brain, the only such office I can think of is that of physician. Are you indeed a physician?
If not a physician, perhaps someone who has partial knowledge of medicine, such as a physician’s assistant, or a nurse?
Or, since you “routinely advise parents”, are you maybe a general counselor of sorts? at a school or mental health, a children’s sports clinic or club?
I don't object to medical surgery, but I do object to genital mutilations on children.
...but that is immaterial to our discussion. What is more material is your confession that you advise your American friends to “let their kids’ genitals [be] the way nature or God made them.”
Now, before, you said your opposition to non-medical surgery was based on pure squeamishness, not on any theoretical grounds. But now you seem to advance a philosophic reason for that repugnance: that is against either God or nature. That is what I was trying to point out earlier, that since you were not opposed to medical surgeries, such as the removal of a tumor, your opposition to non-medical ones, like sex-change operations, must be based on something other than that you simply find them gross or cringe-worthy. Aren’t all surgeries cringe-worthy, if you think about it? Someone cutting into your body for whatever reason? To “mutilate” it, or remove a foreign, potentially harmful object or unnatural growth, etc?
In fine, Mr. Olivier, may we accept your statement that the reason you object to non-medical surgeries is that they are against God and nature? Or would you like to amend that sentiment?
As to whither we should go from here, I like the distinction you made between medical and non-medical surgeries; may we expand that to include all such procedures? In other words, a doctor might treat you for various things: he might, for example, stitch up a wide wound that nature herself is insufficient to heal because of its width, and therefore the wound would be subject to infection without human intervention. Wouldn’t we call that a medical procedure?
And if a human being suffer such severe pain that the quality of their life be diminished, wouldn’t the physician justly prescribe painkillers that correct this? And wouldn’t that be a medical-, as opposed to non-medical, procedure?
As for the latter, the non-medical ones, wouldn’t a face-lift be an appropriate example? For, as we age, the tissue of our skin weakens, and becomes therefore prone to the force of gravity; yet certain vain ppl, knowing or learning that a physician, due to his peculiar knowledge, can surgically lift the skin, contrary to nature, and make us look young again, hire him to do just that.
And they also hire him to excise the praeputium, for a different reason; not a medical one, but a religious one, and now they even want him, ppl who are not afraid of losing pleasure during sex, to mutilate their genitalia so that they become a female instead of a male, or vice versa.
But let me ask you this: the argument those in severe pain make, that they deserve to be prescribed special painkillers because their extreme pain compromises the quality of their life; how is that different from those whose quality of life is compromised because they cannot enjoy intercourse in the way their souls feel it ought to be enjoyed due to their gender-identity?
I guess my general question is, what is the difference between medical and non-medical interventions or procedures, and can we make clear definitions for each that separate them difinitively?
I would say it is very much different. A pain is an objective fact, and the relief brought by painkillers too. But ‘enjoy intercourse the way it ought to be enjoyed’ defines nothing clear. How is intercourse supposed to be enjoyed? And how the fuck will surgery help you get there?
If pain is objective, then why do doctors ask us patients things like, “What is your pain-level on a scale from zero to ten, zero being no pain at all and ten being the worst pain you’ve ever experienced”? If it were objective, why would they ask this? Wouldn’t they just determine it by some test, rather than a questionnaire?
What if a radiologist brought you the x-ray images of your body he just took, and asked you, “OK, do you see anything here? Do you think the bone is fractured?” Yet, apparently, no neurologist can scan your brain and determine how much pain you are in...and indeed I’m not sure at all WE know, even in our subjective selves...
I recall a psychological study that was done, apparently of the difference in pain tolerance among groups of various religious leanings. Differing strengths of electrical shock were administered to both Catholics and Protestants, and their reports of the degree of pain they felt were recorded, but with this caveat: the Protestants were told that the Catholics reported lower levels of pain for the same amount of shock...low and behold! It turned out that the Protestants could tolerate a whole lot more pain than their Catholic brethren.
Another anecdote: my brother, a man fearful by nature and preternaturally squeamish about his health, who rushes to the doctor if he feels his heart skip a beat, was stationed as a Marine officer in Diego Garcia back in the 90s. A contest arose b/w the British and American officers about who could run a marathon the quickest, and he, being a very able distance runner, signed up. I think they had to wear their fatigues and boots and all, for, as he related to me, after he crossed the finish-line victorious (he beat the Brits), he found, after removing his boots, that he had lost every one of his toenails due to chaffing.
It seems to me that these examples, and many others that could be brought to bear, show conclusively that pain is a subjective, not an objective, affair. If you have any evidence to the contrary, I would like to hear it.
Penny-wise philosophers abound. They can get the tiny tiny details right, but the big picture will forever escape hem. They just lose the plot, like you do here, moving from cancel culture to genital mutilations to painkillers to what not, like a philosophical headless chicken running around the yard...
I will speak again now, though I suspect you have already walked away, never to return. I beseech you: remind me of the “plot”, the “big picture”, that you obviously can see and I have lost sight of.
For if I recall correctly, this all started when I questioned your reason for disapproving of sex-change operations. First you said it was because of pure squeamishness; then you eventually conceded that it was because it is against either God or nature. But then you backed away from that, and said it was because you thought it might diminish sexual pleasure...
If I am a chicken running around with it’s head cut off, then you must be a chameleon!
But, in case I am wrong, and you are willing to pursue our discussion further, let me propose to you a definition of what a medical procedure is, as opposed to a non-medical one, for your approval or disapproval: a medical procedure is one which makes the body better, while a non-medical one is one which makes it either worse, or no better. May we agree to this?