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[Maric]

Did I do a good job? I think you can clearly see I do not take this very seriously. She's hot.

If you're just here to troll the people actually trying to talk, then why bother?

Read top of my post, not aimed at you.

However now that you bring it up, I am not trolling. I am simply stating the obvious, its not a serious matter, not the magazines fault, sure they portray women in a light that isn't "realistic" but thats not the whole point of magazines.

Like the whole point of a game isn't realism, it wouldn't be fun if a game a truly realistic.

[G-Flex]

You don't think it's a serious matter because you're ignorant of the social problems related to it. And when you're ignorant about something and apathetic, it's easy to remain so.

[Jude]

Oh, they're not; they're role models within their specific roles. Being a role model doesn't seem that you're someone to look up to in general; that's why the word "role" is in there to begin with. When I say "role model" I mean they're there to provide examples within the realm of fashion and attractiveness; when it comes to those things, those models are what is presented to strive for. They're role models when it comes to being attractive and looking good. Obviously they don't mean as much outside of that.

And movie stars are also role models of fashion and attractiveness, not to mention skills and physical prowess. Would you not argue the same things of the heroes of mostly-realistic action movies when they're able to take out a couple of armed soldiers with just their kung-fu skills? All the distinctions you could draw at this point seem artificial and just made after the fact to protect a logically inconsistent position you've already taken.

You can say that, "well, men aren't realistically expected to be that good at martial arts and fighting" but let's be honest, women aren't realistically expected to look like they could pose for Playboy, either.

The effects (which I think I've established already, but feel free to do your own research, if you care) are a part of a larger system at work. It's not just magazine covers, it's the entire industry and how our society views attractiveness in general.

I think it's been established well-enough that the way media portrays women does in fact harm women especially by promoting unhealthy body image and unreasonable self-expectation, and when an industry/company produces something that they know has significantly harmful effects for the sake of their own profit, that's both socially irresponsible and morally wrong.

But that can go for SO many forms of media and art and reporting and so on, and just about any form of speech can be seen as portraying a worldview that could be harmful to some. I can't buy any argument that merely publishing something as inane as a fashion magazine is morally wrong, especially since that leads down a slippery slope to the conclusion that all manner of other forms of speech are also morally wrong. This gets back to personal responsibility again; the people receiving speech have as much to do with it as the people creating it.

Of course, but there are a couple issues with that:

• Those parents were also raised in a society that taught them to be like that, so there's a good enough chance they won't be liable to teach their own children differently; it's self-perpetuating in this way, like most of culture is. Of course, there are still other influences on children, so you'd have to look at and encourage those to do the right thing as well here.

Well, again, personal responsibility vs. environmental determinism. You can't just wave away people's faults by saying, "well, they weren't raised to do the right thing in this situation." Otherwise child abusers wouldn't be at fault for what they do since so many of them were abused themselves, and Islamic fundamentalists couldn't have their views criticized since they were raised that way, right?

• If society were made of people with a good sense of self-worth, with a lesser tendency to idolize these things, those magazines wouldn't sell to begin with. This is sort of beside the point, though.

That is not necessarily true in any way whatsoever. You think people aren't capable of looking at fashion magazines without changing their standards of beauty and feeling inferior? I have female friends who do that all the time...

• Encouraging parents to raise their children correctly in this way necessitates admitting that these things can have a negative effect in the first place.

Not necessarily

That's interesting, but you'd have to look at the converse of that too: Would men do exactly the same? It's possible that men simply haven't looked for economic status in women as much because that hasn't really been in an issue in a lot of societies due to how traditional gender roles have tended to work. As we get used to women having more of that, who's to say men won't look for it as well in their relationships?

Well, me. I hereby predict that men's interest in women will stay primarily focused on looks, and on personality in long-term relationships, and that the wealth of the woman will remain a minor factor, which if anything, is a NEGATIVE if the woman makes significantly more than the man.

The basic effect you described seems relatively obvious to me, though: If someone is looking for economic status, and their own is higher, then they'll have higher standards to start.

People do usually marry within their own status, but as for mating, it's also common that a woman can mate up in status based on her looks, but a man has to GET the status some other way. Also, that ignores the prediction that men AREN'T looking for economic status in a mate, and women are, which has been borne out by plenty of research.

I'm considering current trends and their possible outcomes as well. Traditional gender roles have obviously been around for a long time and have been similar in most places (to a fairly high degree), so a lot of things would seem like universals, but in modern times, these things are changing in ways that they typically haven't changed before, so I don't want to make many assumptions, since a lot of the differences between what men and women look for in mates can still easily be ascribed to culture, especially gender roles.

Well, as long as a feature is present in all societies then it's a universal. If it disappears from one society then it's not a universal. That's why differential sexual preferences between men and women are a universal, but socially sanctioned sequestration of females is not (alliteration not intended). And the fact of something being a universal is reason to believe that it is linked strongly to innate factors of human behavior, even if the phenomenon itself is not an evolved behavior.

It depends. There are a lot of factors involved, and it's not a trivial problem to think about. You have to consider what uses the product has, how it influences social problems, and how serious those problems are.

SUVs fuck up the environment and promote an ideal of self-indulgence at the cost of giving a shit about the common good. Computer games can be addicting. Pornography can cause marital problems. how are these things not as bad or worse than fashion magazines?

Cigarettes, for example, contribute to some pretty hefty, seriousy, and common problems without providing a hell of a lot in return; I'd call advertising cigarettes morally wrong, yes.

OK but personal responsibility again. Is BUYING cigarettes wrong? SMOKING them? Also, plenty of people smoke cigarettes occasionally and in low amounts and with little to no negative effects (like me). It's not as if cigarettes invariably kill you. So when some product has such a disparate range of effects on people, it's just dishonest to say the product is automatically bad; you should instead be looking at what factors cause it to have bad effects. In this case, a major such factor would be chain-smoking or pack-a-day habits. In that case, getting lung cancer from smoking turns into more the equivalent of killing yourself driving drunk: it's a failure of personal responsibility, not the fault of Philip Morris or Johnny Walker.

The thing about the current subject is that bad self-image is a common and serious problem itself, even amongst those who don't necessarily have an eating disorder or other incredibly serious effects from it. Like someone else in this channel said, it's also largely unconscious: Even girls who know that it's all bullshit can still be affected by it; such is the power of social pressure.

Yeah, but you have to draw the line somewhere. ALL forms of media and speech affect people. And on this topic, there are certainly more things causing bad body image than just Cosmo and Vogue. Among those things are pressure from other people, friends, parents, whatever. Are you going to assign them equal responsibility? Are you going to assign men equal responsibility for being attracted to a certain type of women in the first place? Your moral argument is built on sand.

So yeah, when thinking about the kind of stuff you're mentioning, you have to consider what uses the product has, what negative effects it has (and how serious they are and what problems they feed into), and whether or not the industry is doing what it can to contribute the product and its uses to society while at least attempting to do so in a way that doesn't contribute to serious problems.

Here's the thing, ALL products can have bad effects. Remember that gag about "dihydrogen monoxide?" If you ingest too much of it you'll die! It can cause all these other problems if it's released into your home and not properly contained! Oh God! Ban it!

Food makes you fat if you don't eat right and exercise. Computer games make you an addict if you don't have the willpower to stop playing or a life that makes you want to stop playing. Sad movies can make you depressed and maybe even push a suicidal person over the edge.

That's why any argument that the maker of some product is at fault for all its negative effects becomes so shaky as soon as you apply it to all its logical analogues.

Now, if there were a huge issue with violent activity amongst children in this country and there were significant studies showing that videogames incite this in them, and that the videogame companies were trying to sell it to these people with that goal as an implicit part of the process, it would be more similar.

OK, so video games and addiction. Who's at fault for WOW addicts? Blizzard, or basement-dwellers who choose to play WOW instead of going outside and looking for jobs or friends?

unfortunately; how many people listen to talk radio, after all?

Deluded space cadets, which is the point I made....

[/list]

[Cyx]

Seeing companies as societal tools is clever, and I hadn't thought of it. I still have an objection to permitting any group to be considered amoral, though : to claim that a tool can be beneficial, you must first establish what the goal is. Companies, like Capitalism now that I think of it, are tools that give humans means to product a gigantic amount of things but have no other use. Without capitalism, without any economy, we wouldn't have got to the moon, and wouldn't before a long time. But I'd argue that we don't need any of this as a species ; who said we were supposed to go to the moon in the first place ? If the actual goal of society was still to make everyone happy, we wouldn't have, or need, this kind of production for anything anymore (as far as I know). From there, having companies would be like giving a gun to an elephant, alone in captivity : this gives him power he doesn't have much use for, and he'll most likely end up harming himself.

I also think that any kind of advertisement, or images / text on products that doesn't just describe the thing is useless - and pretty repulsive. Has it ever brought you anything ? It certainly hasn't done me any good, ever : if I happen to desire something, I'll look for it. What's wrong with word-of-mouth and the simple fact that if a product is good enough, people will buy it ?
Artists have been getting by for centuries ; it wouldn't by any means be a good thing if they lost one more way to, but art, like science, ultimately hasn't much to do with money. It will be done pretty much no matter what.

On to the less « my fantasy world » part.

I don't agree with your definition of companies because I think it implies that, as soon as a group is held together by revenue generation instead of interests and common ground, the people forming it somehow have less moral responsibilities than others. I don't know whether or not this is exactly what you meant, but it would be hiding people behind words. The day parts of a company are not aware of what the system is doing, like some sort of ant colony, then it might not be true anymore, but I think it currently is. You're right on the fact than we are responsible for what is happening around us. But I think that companies wouldn't be anything but moral if those behind them followed this principle.

You're also right on the fact that restrictions are better served by the company gaining more knowledge of the market than by a total ban. And I admit that the « messing with people's heads » thing cannot be turned into a fixed rule. Companies still do what sells. And people don't avoid things that hurt them more than they avoid naked ladies if the company is clever enough. Making people aware tends to take time and letting everything slowly sort itself out may not be the best solution, especially given that depending on how successful the company is, people won't get a clue for a long time. Cigarettes are a good example for everything in this paragraph.
And then, when pretty much everyone is aware of a given problem, I guess it's fine since it doesn't hurt anyone. But it's getting there that's difficult, and the fact that companies, along with everyone who bought into the thing (in this case, « thin is beautiful »), are actively working against it, doesn't help.


And Jude, it's not that cigarettes invariably kill you. It's that there has certainly been a time in your life where you would have started smoking unhealthily if you had had just the right commercial attempt to convince you. If this isn't true, maybe people convinced by commercials might still have convinced you, at this time, with just the right approach, or if they were just the right people. And if this still isn't true, well, this is true for some. Now, if you just happened to have a personality prone to addiction, and a lung prone to malignant tumor, you would be screwed, and I'd say that this isn't your fault. Wouldn't you ?

[G-Flex]

Well, again, personal responsibility vs. environmental determinism. You can't just wave away people's faults by saying, "well, they weren't raised to do the right thing in this situation." Otherwise child abusers wouldn't be at fault for what they do since so many of them were abused themselves, and Islamic fundamentalists couldn't have their views criticized since they were raised that way, right?

I already responded to this very long ago. There are reasons to hold someone responsible for someone and react to the harm they do in a meaningful fashion even if what they've done was indirectly caused by poor influences on them, as well as ways to do it. I'm not going to restate them.

That is not necessarily true in any way whatsoever. You think people aren't capable of looking at fashion magazines without changing their standards of beauty and feeling inferior? I have female friends who do that all the time...

I'm saying the industry would be different, not that fashion magazines wouldn't exist. They currently rely on the sort of idolization that would lead to people taking them too seriously in the first place. If this weren't true, then yeah, they'd still exist, but they'd be different and wouldn't be as popular with the general public.

Not necessarily

Care to back that up?

Well, me. I hereby predict that men's interest in women will stay primarily focused on looks, and on personality in long-term relationships, and that the wealth of the woman will remain a minor factor, which if anything, is a NEGATIVE if the woman makes significantly more than the man.

I've provided reasons why this assumption could easily be based in history alone and needn't be true in the future given how current trends are and how they compare to what's happened before. You're stating predictions as brute fact here.

People do usually marry within their own status, but as for mating, it's also common that a woman can mate up in status based on her looks, but a man has to GET the status some other way. Also, that ignores the prediction that men AREN'T looking for economic status in a mate, and women are, which has been borne out by plenty of research.

Again, I consider this largely an artifact of traditional gender roles, which still exist to a large degree, as do their effects, yet will not necessarily always exist and are already starting to dissipate to some degree.

Well, as long as a feature is present in all societies then it's a universal. If it disappears from one society then it's not a universal.

There are reasons why something may have been "universal" in all cultures prior to a certain point in history, yet may not be universal for all time. The world hasn't even been industrialized for that many generations yet.

SUVs fuck up the environment and promote an ideal of self-indulgence at the cost of giving a shit about the common good.

Yet they also have a legitimate market for people who actually need them. However, I do consider it harmful for them to be marketed towards people who don't, or for people to buy them who don't.

Computer games can be addicting.

So can a lot of entertainment and other behaviors; it still serves a valid art/entertainment function. A lot of things can be harmful when used improperly or in the wrong hands; what matters is whether or not the producer is irresponsible about it, encourages this effect, and if that effect is related to serious widespread social ills to begin with.

Pornography can cause marital problems.

I'm not really sure where this comes from. I mean, I guess it can have some issues with it if you have problems separating fantasy from reality, but that's a whole other problem that isn't encouraged by porn (or other fantasy) itself.

OK but personal responsibility again. Is BUYING cigarettes wrong? SMOKING them? Also, plenty of people smoke cigarettes occasionally and in low amounts and with little to no negative effects (like me).

Did you try to understand what I was typing?

I'm aware that some people smoke recreational, on an occasional basis, but it's no secret that cigarette addiction is serious fucking business, is extremely widespread (moreso in the past), and that the habit has been glorified in the past. We've had tobacco representatives testify that cigarettes don't cause cancer, and tobacco companies have had ad campaigns designed to try to get people hooked on them as early as they can (I already mentioned this). None of this is a secret; the cigarette industry is an extremely dirty one, and they've knowingly and willfully exploited the addictive potential of the stuff for decades while denying it left and right. This isn't even controversial information.'

So, is selling tobacco in itself wrong? Some people might say so, just because of the addiction potential; I don't think I'd go that far. But the way the companies have treated it is quite wrong, and they've been busted on this account several times in the past, to the point where they've had to tone it down drastically. So yes, tobacco companies have acted very, very morally reprehensibly in the past (and to some degree in the present, surely; they've still got lobbyists about!), and that's the point I'm making, not a point so much about cigarettes themselves.

Yeah, but you have to draw the line somewhere. ALL forms of media and speech affect people. And on this topic, there are certainly more things causing bad body image than just Cosmo and Vogue. Among those things are pressure from other people, friends, parents, whatever.

Of course.

Are you going to assign them equal responsibility?

Of course I'm going to assign people responsibility for encouraging bad body image or anything else that's harmful. I'll also blame whatever influences helped cause them to think that way in the first place.

Are you going to assign men equal responsibility for being attracted to a certain type of women in the first place?

That's trickier. Obviously you can't really blame someone for being attracted to something, but I've seen men act pretty horrible towards women before. You can only hear people of completely normal weight get called "fat" so many times before you just want to hit the guys. In that sense, yeah, a lot of guys act morally irresponsible too. For that matter, there's a lot of pressure placed on them to be attracted to the "right" type of girl, even if they only play up the fact that they do for peer acceptance.

Here's the thing, ALL products can have bad effects. Remember that gag about "dihydrogen monoxide?" If you ingest too much of it you'll die! It can cause all these other problems if it's released into your home and not properly contained! Oh God! Ban it!

Food makes you fat if you don't eat right and exercise. Computer games make you an addict if you don't have the willpower to stop playing or a life that makes you want to stop playing. Sad movies can make you depressed and maybe even push a suicidal person over the edge.

That's why any argument that the maker of some product is at fault for all its negative effects becomes so shaky as soon as you apply it to all its logical analogues.

Except you didn't take into account most of my argument, where you have to actually consider how responsibly the producer of the product is handling it, and whether or not they're exploiting whatever detrimental effects might exist.

OK, so video games and addiction. Who's at fault for WOW addicts? Blizzard, or basement-dwellers who choose to play WOW instead of going outside and looking for jobs or friends?

Blizzard arguably encourages that with the game design, but on the other hand, they seem to be aware of the fact that people do this, and take at least some measures to prevent it or make people aware of it.

From TVtropes:

World Of Warcraft rewards time logged out with a short period of increased XP after you log back in. A loading screen tip reads, "Take all things in moderation, even World of Warcraft." In addition, raid dungeons can only be done once every few days by a given group.

This sort of thing at least shows that they're trying to be responsible about it, know that some people are being stupid about it, realize it might be a problem for some of these people, and try to do what they can to not make it worse (or make it better). So I think they're doing a better job of it than I would have though at first glance.

unfortunately; how many people listen to talk radio, after all?

Deluded space cadets, which is the point I made....
[/quote]

Thing is, it's actually a surprising number of people now who buy into things like the Obama conspiracy theories and so forth. Normally stuff like that is way out on the fringe, but between the "Obama's a Muslim" crap, the "Obama's not a natural-born US citizen" crap, and so forth, it's amazing how many people can wind up buying into what, for whatever that's worth.

So really, it seems like the number of "space cadets" isn't even static; people can certainly become more or less gullible or influenced depending on circumstances affecting/around them.



Honestly, part of me feels like you're trying to have a decent discussion of this, but the other part of me feels like you're misrepresenting my arguments (see above) in order to say I don't have a leg to stand on, because you seem to missing my points a lot, intentionally or not. If I'm going to have to continually repeat myself just to get my point across - which I've been doing for long enough - I don't really see the point in continuing this. It's getting tiresome anyhow.

[Jude]

Now, if you just happened to have a personality prone to addiction, and a lung prone to malignant tumor, you would be screwed, and I'd say that this isn't your fault. Wouldn't you ?

What

That's like saying "if you had a personality prone to serial killing, and a body prone to hacking bodies into little pieces, you would be a serial killer, and I'd say it isn't your fault."

If you start smoking heavily, yes it's your fault. The buck has to stop somewhere.

Care to back that up?

I don't really see what isn't clear about it, but your original statement was "Encouraging parents to raise their children correctly in this way necessitates admitting that these things can have a negative effect in the first place."

which is just an illogical statement if you take it down to P's and Q's; it is possible to encourage parents to raise their kids to have minds of their own without admitting that fashion magazines have negative effects on people

You're stating predictions as brute fact here.

are you reading, cause at the beginning were the words I PREDICT

Again, I consider this largely an artifact of traditional gender roles, which still exist to a large degree, as do their effects, yet will not necessarily always exist and are already starting to dissipate to some degree.

Saying that it's an "artifact of traditional gender roles" is a meaningless statement, however if you are saying they're accidents of history and circumstance rather than effects that we would expect from the way men and women are wired up to have different mating behaviors, then you're on really thin empirical ice since all the evidence favors the latter conclusion

There are reasons why something may have been "universal" in all cultures prior to a certain point in history, yet may not be universal for all time. The world hasn't even been industrialized for that many generations yet.

Nobody's saying it's universal for all time just for all societies that exist

Also the parts of the world that have and have not been industrialized still share many features with each other and THESE ARE CALLED UNIVERSALS

and I already said that if a society got rid of some feature that was universal then by definition it would no longer be a universal

but the point of universals isn't to prove that they're identical everywhere it's to point out common behavioral tendencies that appear in humans in diverse circumstances, which can be illustrative of the way humans are built to act

    Pornography can cause marital problems.

I'm not really sure where this comes from. I mean, I guess it can have some issues with it if you have problems separating fantasy from reality, but that's a whole other problem that isn't encouraged by porn (or other fantasy) itself.

Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhh

but yet, this does not apply to the issue of women and cover girls

I see I see

Of course I'm going to assign people responsibility for encouraging bad body image or anything else that's harmful. I'll also blame whatever influences helped cause them to think that way in the first place.

But at what point does responsibility go to the bad-body-image hypothetical woman in question, for not choosing to ignore fantasized images of beauty and let them make her feel inferior?

That's trickier. Obviously you can't really blame someone for being attracted to something, but I've seen men act pretty horrible towards women before. You can only hear people of completely normal weight get called "fat" so many times before you just want to hit the guys. In that sense, yeah, a lot of guys act morally irresponsible too. For that matter, there's a lot of pressure placed on them to be attracted to the "right" type of girl, even if they only play up the fact that they do for peer acceptance.

Well, if there's one factor that drives female desire to be attractive, it's the male sex drive. If you castigate fashion magazines for making normal women feel bad, you should also castigate men for making ugly women feel bad by not being interested in them, which is a significantly more real and relevant source for self-esteem than magazine covers....

This sort of thing at least shows that they're trying to be responsible about it, know that some people are being stupid about it, realize it might be a problem for some of these people, and try to do what they can to not make it worse (or make it better). So I think they're doing a better job of it than I would have though at first glance.

What about Philip Morris doing ads that discourage underage smoking? Does that seem disingenuous to you or not?

So really, it seems like the number of "space cadets" isn't even static; people can certainly become more or less gullible or influenced depending on circumstances affecting/around them.

By my definition, being a space cadet is defined by believing wacky things that have no basis in reality whether it's creationism or that Obama was born in Mecca or that the human mind can be molded into any shape you want by exposing it to the proper environment...

[Maric]

You don't think it's a serious matter because you're ignorant of the social problems related to it. And when you're ignorant about something and apathetic, it's easy to remain so.

That may be true but at least I ain't stupid and media controlled.

Is there any other magazines that did this by the way?

[G-Flex]

which is just an illogical statement if you take it down to P's and Q's; it is possible to encourage parents to raise their kids to have minds of their own without admitting that fashion magazines have negative effects on people

If you don't believe that the media can have an effect on a person, then you'll be less likely to teach your kid to be well-equipped to deal with it. It's not really stunning logic here; you can't teach your kid to deal with things that you don't think exist.

You're stating predictions as brute fact here.

are you reading, cause at the beginning were the words I PREDICT

Yes, I wouldn't have used the word "prediction" if I haven't seen that. Putting "I predict" before something might be an indicator that you aren't 100% certain, but it doesn't make what you're saying any more substantiated.

Saying that it's an "artifact of traditional gender roles" is a meaningless statement

How is it meaningless? Stating that current differences between male and female behavior have largely to do with traditional gender roles isn't "meaningless"; in fact, it's obvious that they should have an effect.

Also the parts of the world that have and have not been industrialized still share many features with each other and THESE ARE CALLED UNIVERSALS

That's why I brought up the fact that the world hasn't been industrialized for a terribly large number of generations. Social change takes a long time to happen, especially when you're talking about things that are rather deeply ingrained, so much so that it's part of religion, political power structures, etc. Hell, women weren't even allowed to vote in the US until a time within living memory, and look at how much things have changed since then; they will continue to, and in many ways.

and I already said that if a society got rid of some feature that was universal then by definition it would no longer be a universal

You're confusing two types of "universals" here: The kind that exist because they're inextricable parts of human nature, and the kind that exist due to conditional similarities between all the cultures examined.

but the point of universals isn't to prove that they're identical everywhere it's to point out common behavioral tendencies that appear in humans in diverse circumstances, which can be illustrative of the way humans are built to act

Yes, but it's still unclear how much of that is due to hard genetic programming of whichever sort (which is pretty shaky grounds) or due to environmental influence, and human environments have been similar in a lot of ways throughout history, especially as far as division of labor/gender roles are concerned.

but yet, this does not apply to the issue of women and cover girls

I see I see

I'm repeating myself again here, but the reason it doesn't apply to "women and cover girls" is because the cover girls are presented as reality, not fantasy. This is important enough to my argument that if you cared to be rational about this, you hopefully would have noticed my saying it by now. There, I added two text decorations, just in case.

But at what point does responsibility go to the bad-body-image hypothetical woman in question, for not choosing to ignore fantasized images of beauty and let them make her feel inferior?

They're also responsible, in their own ways. Social trends follow lots of feedback loops between individuals, social systems, etc. and you can't exactly just blame a single entity for most things like this. Blame rests with anyone who knowingly perpetuates a social ill (or knowingly remains ignorant of them).

Well, if there's one factor that drives female desire to be attractive, it's the male sex drive. If you castigate fashion magazines for making normal women feel bad, you should also castigate men for making ugly women feel bad by not being interested in them, which is a significantly more real and relevant source for self-esteem than magazine covers....

Did I not already say that I do chastise men with unrealistic expectations and derisive behavior towards women? Right in what you quoted? I believe I did, so I don't even know what you're arguing there. Of course those men are at fault, not for being attracted to some body type or another (which isn't even really a conscious thing), but if they act in the manner I described. The same goes for women who act ultracompetitive with other women to the point of putting them down or making them feel terrible about themselves, or with men who do the same to each other in their own ways.

What about Philip Morris doing ads that discourage underage smoking? Does that seem disingenuous to you or not?

Usually, I do find it disingenuous, because when companies do things like that, it's normally to get people off their backs. I wouldn't be surprised if they get government kickbacks for doing this, and sometimes, when things like that happen, it's simply to repair reputation after controversy, or get the government to stop hassling them, or part of some sort of court/government deal. It's not as if the tobacco companies have shown themselves to be genuine about health and safety or reasonable advertising in the past. They're in it to make money, and they've shown time and time again that they'll do what it takes to make the most, up to and including misleading the public or intentionally attempting to make cigarettes appear appealing to minors.

By my definition, being a space cadet is defined by believing wacky things that have no basis in reality whether it's creationism or that Obama was born in Mecca or that the human mind can be molded into any shape you want by exposing it to the proper environment...

Thank you for the personal insult. I appreciate that a lot.

And I never said that the mind can be "molded into any shape you want", just that environmental effects are extremely profound, which isn't even a controversial opinion.

[Cyx]

Yeah, or saying "if you had a personality prone to pedophilia and raping women, you would be a sexual predator, and I'd say it isn't your fault."
Except sometimes the law agrees. Because it really isn't.

You see, some medical cases kind of prove it, having things placed badly inside your skull can alter your comportment. Except, like some scientific studies seem to indicate, you don't necessarily need a tumor or a metal bar to have things badly placed up there ; what is the difference between a brain naturally badly wired, and one that became so after an accident ? We aren't at the point of negating your own willpower completely, of course, but the concept of a "personality prone to various things due to chemical or neurological factors one has no control over" isn't exactly ridiculous either.

[G-Flex]

Never mind how much wiring is actually done by our environment. The natural development of even basic things like our senses is highly subject to a proper environment, never mind complex social structure. There's a reason why feral children are so messed up, although that's obviously a pretty extreme example of a total lack of human social influence. Then again, there have been a couple cases of kids who literally wound up living with wolves and acting like them instead.

[Jude]

which is just an illogical statement if you take it down to P's and Q's; it is possible to encourage parents to raise their kids to have minds of their own without admitting that fashion magazines have negative effects on people

If you don't believe that the media can have an effect on a person, then you'll be less likely to teach your kid to be well-equipped to deal with it. It's not really stunning logic here; you can't teach your kid to deal with things that you don't think exist.

You're missing the point what I was saying is that "In order to teach a child to take everything in the media with a grain of salt, you must believe that it is harmful" or whatever, is an illogical statement, which is why I originally said "not necessarily"

Yes, I wouldn't have used the word "prediction" if I haven't seen that. Putting "I predict" before something might be an indicator that you aren't 100% certain, but it doesn't make what you're saying any more substantiated.

Are you high? A prediction is me PREDICTING what is going to happen. It can turn out true or false. A prediction, by definition, is not substantiated because otherwise it would be a statement of opinion or fact and not a prediction

Of course, my prediction is the one made by evolutionary theory and based on past findings

How is it meaningless? Stating that current differences between male and female behavior have largely to do with traditional gender roles isn't "meaningless"; in fact, it's obvious that they should have an effect.

It's meaningless in the context we were talking about because it doesn't distinguish between the ways in which gender roles are influenced by innate behavioral factors, and the ways they are influenced by accidental circumstances of history

You're confusing two types of "universals" here: The kind that exist because they're inextricable parts of human nature, and the kind that exist due to conditional similarities between all the cultures examined.

And how exactly do you tell one from the other

Also, if something IS universal to all societies, there are two possible explanations: one, that it reflects something about innate human tendencies; the other, that it is present in all societies because historical accidents led to its development and preservation throughout the past twenty thousand years in all those societies. Obviously, the first is more parsimonious in the absence of any evidence pointing to the second. And if evolutionary theory predicts that the patterns should appear in behavior then we have even more reason to believe the first.

Yes, but it's still unclear how much of that is due to hard genetic programming of whichever sort (which is pretty shaky grounds) or due to environmental influence, and human environments have been similar in a lot of ways throughout history, especially as far as division of labor/gender roles are concerned.

See above

I'm repeating myself again here, but the reason it doesn't apply to "women and cover girls" is because the cover girls are presented as reality, not fantasy.

I don't see where you're getting this from; there's nothing explicit about fashion magazines that says "this is how real life should be for all women" any more than pornography says "this is how real life sex should be for all people"
I think there's an understanding by all intelligent people that both of those examples are NOT meant to represent reality

What about Philip Morris doing ads that discourage underage smoking? Does that seem disingenuous to you or not?

Usually, I do find it disingenuous, because when companies do things like that, it's normally to get people off their backs. (snip)[/quote]
So the same doesn't apply to Blizzard putting notices in to discourage people from poop-socking?

In both cases, I blame the user of the problem-causing product, not its producer or purveyor.

Thank you for the personal insult. I appreciate that a lot.

Huh? Are you a creationist?

And I never said that the mind can be "molded into any shape you want", just that environmental effects are extremely profound, which isn't even a controversial opinion.

Huh? That wasn't directed at you that was just an example of space cadet belief which some people hold

"personality prone to various things due to chemical or neurological factors one has no control over" isn't exactly ridiculous either.

Oh, if you mean we don't have free will, absolutely. There's no coherent argument than can be made against determinism, given the laws of the universe and given what we know of biology and neuroscience. Still, functioning societies and relationships need the construct of personal responsibility just as much as American law needs the (ultimately intangible and imaginary) construct of inalienable human rights.

[Cyx]

Not exactly. Society can do with simply preventing any further crime from a person ; whether someone is guilty or not is and has always been irrelevant, except in the mind of those who see law as an instrument of vengeance instead of one of order.
Necessary in relationships ? I'd argue that it's not indispensable, because there is no difference between dealing with what a person is, and what a person supposedly wants to be. Though you are right about the fact that people wouldn't like to part with it.

Still, if you think that someone has to be responsible for everything, why would it be the addict, having started drugs at a bad time in his life and being stuck with a bad decision, instead of the dealer coldly making conscious decisions to make people poor and miserable ? I mean, either you are responsible for what you do, or you aren't. You can't be responsible only of what you do to yourself, while other people are free game. (I pushed the example a little further, but I think it still applies to cigarettes and everything)

And if you think that ultimately no one is to blame, human logic says suffering must still be ended somehow, doesn't it ? Wouldn't it be far more practical to act on the company and prevent it from creating new miserable people, than to help every single miserable people who comes up because of the company ?

[Jude]

No

My belief in personal responsibility as a necessary construct flies in the face of my belief that free will does not exist but personal responsibility is a necessary construct

[zchris13]

You're both insane.  The law does no good if you get the wrong man, Cyx.  If you can simply dodge the law, it's no sort of law at all. It's a means of terrorizing your citizenry, used by evil empires as some sort of insane perversion of justice, or it's a joke, if you indiscriminately lash out.  The law is a precision instrument.  Also, the law is no instrument of order. Society is an instrument of order.  The law is an instrument of justice.

I'm too lazy to deal with your other, seemingly separate, statements.  Make one, complete logical argument people.

[G-Flex]

No

My belief in personal responsibility as a necessary construct flies in the face of my belief that free will does not exist but personal responsibility is a necessary construct

You can encourage people to try to rationally examine all their options and stay within the confines of the law or otherwise make good decisions, because this is useful no matter what your ideas regarding determinism vs. free will are.

"Personal responsibility" needn't mean whatever you seem to think it does. I've also outlined methods to deal with and examine people's decisions (including unethical ones) as a society without needing to resort to anything that contradicts what I've been saying whatsoever.


I didn't respond to your longer post above because if your response to something has to be "Are you high?" then I really doubt you're in this to try to get anything out of what I'm saying. I just didn't really feel the need to read any further than that at the moment. To that end, I have no idea why I'm responding to the post I'm responding to, but whatever. I think I'm out of this for now; I've said what I've had to say and you keep arguing in circles around it while not actually understanding the big picture of what I'm getting at, at all.