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[SalmonGod]

Have a lot of catching up to do, which I won't be able to accomplish until Tuesday, most likely.  I just want to say one thing on the "tolerance of intolerance" concept.

Tolerance of intolerance isn't acceptable.  Tolerance means being able to co-exist even while in disagreement.  Being tolerant of intolerance is, as counter-intuitive as it may sound, a complete contradiction of what it means to be tolerant.  To be permissive of a refusal to co-exist by others is to betray one's own harmonious efforts.

Now I'm not saying that we should witch hunt for the blood of all prejudiced people.  I'm only saying that it is, in fact, justified to villianize prejudiced beliefs (or if an entire culture is defined by its prejudice, to villainize that culture, as in the case of Naziism) and to obstruct or dissolve prejudiced attempts to cause harm.

[Vector]

All I'd say to her is that before you assume a man who's talking condescendingly to a woman is sexist, you should see how that man talks to other men. Need I say more?

I think you need to read the article harder, bro, and stop talking before you've checked your reading comprehension.

Do any of them display that delightful mixture of privilege and ignorance that leads to condescending, inaccurate explanations, delivered with the rock-solid conviction of rightness and that slimy certainty that of course he is right, because he is the man in this conversation?

This is talking about instances in which the man treats dudes with respect and women like they Just Don't Get It.

I.e., it invalidates that case you're talking about, need you say more.

Jegus.

-snip-

Thank you.

[sonerohi]

Oh god, I know so many people who are like that, on both genders, just all the way around. Those finicky people who assume that they are the show-runner all the time. My friend will point out the most obvious shit while I'm driving, as if though I needed her godly levels of perception to realize I was parked. My dad does the same thing, especially when I'm working in the garage, as if seven years of low-end mechanic work has failed to teach me what a screwdriver is.

[Sheb]

Well, maybe I'm wrong then, but to me EvPsych isn't only bad science, it's no science at all. It's identifying a behavior and inventing a reasons why it may have been selected for by evolution.

But how can you disprove it? Well, you can't. And with enough imagination, you can invent evolutionaries stories for anyting.

Of course, I may be wrong, but all the EvPsych I've seen so far sucked. Maybe you could link a few "good" EvPsych paper so I could see what it's like?

P.S. And maybe we could continue by P.M.? This isn't the thread for this, so I won't talk about EvPsych in it again.

[Truean]

Yeesh, I go away for a few hours and come back to how many new pages? Yeah, perhaps it's because my brain is fried from studying but I don't even know where to begin catching up.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Although before I forget in a video game forum thread talking about female characters in literature I can't imagine how no one brought up poor, faithful to a fault: Sarah Kerrigan. Especially given when she dates to, she's rather well written, she wasn't even really fan service, but rather unbelievably competent. We also never know why her commander Arcturus screws his best Lieutenant over royally. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBR3doYRick Her only offense was faith in him.... To the extent she needs "rescued," it's only because Arcturus screwed her over beyond all belief and reason, and she trusted the bastard.... I find it especially easy to relate to her.

Evolution and why Humanity Fails at it:
Yeah, look, while evolution is true, we suck at it, understanding it, and applying it. I say again, people are bastards. This has lead to Eugenics, genocide, "social darwinism" ( aka: "I'm justified in screwing you over"). We take "only the strongest will survive," to absurdity in order to "justify" our basest impulses. Ask men to achieve anything, love, hate, perversion, revenge, the murder of an entire continent, anything at all except respecting themselves and others and they will do so. Evolutionary theories provide a way to paint ourselves and our failings as "natural" and we love it for that. Just as we loved killing "in the name of God(s)...." (What's even sadder is that multiculturalism is guilty of this too, but in reverse)

Like most of psychology, biology and other evolutionary views, it also really doesn't address the human condition in ways it really should.... According to this incomplete theory, I am a dead end who cannot influence the gene pool as I will never pass on my own genes. In its haste to achieve superiority at all costs, Evolutionary Theories tried to separate "nature and nurture:" this is a fallacy. While I will never procreate, I most certainly can influence the gene pool, by helping children. My helping them both shapes those who will reproduce and increases their chances of doing so.... It doesn't involve a single shred of passing my DNA down either.

Foresight is only as far as you can peer into the past. Unfortunately one of science's greatest strengths is also one of its greatest flaws, it only looks forward and never back. If it did, it might have kept from making some of its greatest mistakes.

From Siquo

On that "right in the kisser" stuff, it's funny because she doesn't care. His "right in the kisser" isn't funny, the fact that he's posing as a badass and she just looks at him with that "oh you poor deluded man"-look, that bravado-that-covers-impotence, that's what makes it funny. It's quite a feminist show, that way. She's obviously the one who ultimately decides what happens, while he is desperately grasping on to old macho values.

Actually no. This is the single furthest thing from a feminist show, ever. It was meant to be literal, not dramatic irony, or satire, or mockery. "The Honeymooners" really wasn't as sexist as it appears even, it was worse. She actually NEVER decided what happened in any form. He did and it almost always ended badly. Her role was to be the devoted wife "for better or worse" and do whatever she could with what her husband gave her. It was unthinkable for her to sincerely expect to challenge him. O sure, she could whine, because "clearly" women just do that and never shut up and isn't it funny when they do? You can't look at this through the eyes of someone in 2011. This was made in the 1950s and it was literal.

    How are they contributing to a culture where the butts of your joke are victimized?
    Is somebody you're speaking to likely to be offended?
    Are you making the joke to express actual contempt for the subject, or are you just doing it as a means of small talk?

Don't care, Don't know and Neither. I'm kind of oblivious to society and the group around me.

Meh, we're not going to get anywhere like this. I could say this is negligent or reckless of you, but really where would that get us?

"Transgirl gets beaten in a McDonald's "

I normally just lurk, but I had to say something when I saw this.
Only one person stepped in, and it was an older woman. Seriously?
No one in the -ENTIRE FUCKING RESTAURANT- felt that someone being beaten merited intervention of some kind?

Amazing. Simply amazing. In the worst possible sense, obviously.


I would love to discuss some of the other things presented in the thread, but I'm not exactly the most eloquent of persons.
I would like to say 'Thank You' to Vector for starting the thread to begin with: Lot of interesting subjects being covered, and an interesting read in general.

Yeah, this is how people are unfortunately. Even if they didn't want to get directly involved, they could've called the police or something. It wasn't just that they sat back and watched her get the shit kicked out of her, it was that they didn't even do anything afterwords. It was the old woman (the only one who tried to help) who called the police. No one else did... ever....

More later today.... It's 2 AM and I'm tired.

[Sheb]

Evolution and why Humanity Fails at it:
Yeah, look, while evolution is true, we suck at it, understanding it, and applying it. I say again, people are bastards. This has lead to Eugenics, genocide, "social darwinism" ( aka: "I'm justified in screwing you over"). We take "only the strongest will survive," to absurdity in order to "justify" our basest impulses. Ask men to achieve anything, love, hate, perversion, revenge, the murder of an entire continent, anything at all except respecting themselves and others and they will do so. Evolutionary theories provide a way to paint ourselves and our failings as "natural" and we love it for that. Just as we loved killing "in the name of God(s)...." (What's even sadder is that multiculturalism is guilty of this too, but in reverse)

Like most of psychology, biology and other evolutionary views, it also really doesn't address the human condition in ways it really should.... According to this incomplete theory, I am a dead end who cannot influence the gene pool as I will never pass on my own genes. In its haste to achieve superiority at all costs, Evolutionary Theories tried to separate "nature and nurture:" this is a fallacy. While I will never procreate, I most certainly can influence the gene pool, by helping children. My helping them both shapes those who will reproduce and increases their chances of doing so.... It doesn't involve a single shred of passing my DNA down either.

Foresight is only as far as you can peer into the past. Unfortunately one of science's greatest strengths is also one of its greatest flaws, it only looks forward and never back. If it did, it might have kept from making some of its greatest mistakes.

Well, Evolutionaries Theories do take in account the fact that the best way to pass on your gene may be not to procreate yourself but helps other's kids. That's the mechanism behing ants for exemple.

Honestly, I think you're missing the point: Evolution is quite a complete theory, and science is perfectly able to look backward too (How could we do paleontology otherwise?) but no matter what Science says, it should bears no weight on our morale code. What's natural isn't good or bad, it's natural and that's it.

[KaelGotDwarves]

Evolution and why Humanity Fails at it:
Yeah, look, while evolution is true, we suck at it, understanding it, and applying it. I say again, people are bastards. This has lead to Eugenics, genocide, "social darwinism" ( aka: "I'm justified in screwing you over"). We take "only the strongest will survive," to absurdity in order to "justify" our basest impulses. Ask men to achieve anything, love, hate, perversion, revenge, the murder of an entire continent, anything at all except respecting themselves and others and they will do so. Evolutionary theories provide a way to paint ourselves and our failings as "natural" and we love it for that. Just as we loved killing "in the name of God(s)...." (What's even sadder is that multiculturalism is guilty of this too, but in reverse)

Like most of psychology, biology and other evolutionary views, it also really doesn't address the human condition in ways it really should...

Completely shameless plug, Zygmunt Bauman's Modernity and the Holocaust. It's perfect for your argument.

Wiki:

The stranger, because he cannot be controlled and ordered, is always the object of fear; he is the potential mugger, the person outside of society's borders who is constantly threatening. Bauman's most famous book, Modernity and the Holocaust, is an attempt to give a full account of the dangers of these kinds of fears. Drawing upon Hannah Arendt and Theodor Adorno's books on totalitarianism and the Enlightenment, Bauman developed the argument that the Holocaust should not simply be considered to be an event in Jewish history, nor a regression to pre-modern barbarism. Rather, he argued, the Holocaust should be seen as deeply connected to modernity and its order-making efforts. Procedural rationality, the division of labour into smaller and smaller tasks, the taxonomic categorisation of different species, and the tendency to view rule-following as morally good all played their role in the Holocaust coming to pass. And he argued that for this reason modern societies have not fully taken on board the lessons of the Holocaust; it is generally viewed - to use Bauman's metaphor - like a picture hanging on a wall, offering few lessons. In Bauman's analysis the Jews became 'strangers' par excellence in Europe;[9]  the Final Solution was pictured by him as an extreme example of the attempts made by societies to excise the uncomfortable and indeterminate elements existing within them. Bauman, like the philosopher Giorgio Agamben, contended that the same processes of exclusion that were at work in the Holocaust could, and to an extent do, still come into play today.

And he was right with say... the Khmer Rouge.

If we take progress within society to it's natural, modern, entirely extreme side of "progress" conclusions, we would end up with a world where we simply eliminate all dissidents, liquidate the mentally unstable and slow, purge emotions, destroy the very things that make us human in the first place.

This is why any extremism is intolerable, and we should make sure to maintain our sense of humanity as we progress forward.

[Siquo]

She actually NEVER decided what happened in any form. He did and it almost always ended badly.

I must admit I never saw the show and only read the wiki, but even from the clip you showed it's obvious she usually replies with "Mehh, shut up", every time he threatens her. That's not a devoted wife. That's an equal. In a stereotypical role, of course, but an equal nonetheless. She's not an Edith Bunker.
From the wiki and hence my interpretation, emphasis mine:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Alice (née Alice Gibson), [...] is Ralph's patient but sharp-tongued wife of roughly 15 years. She often finds herself bearing the brunt of Ralph's insults, which she returns with biting sarcasm. She is level headed, in contrast to Ralph's pattern of inventing various schemes to enhance his wealth or his pride; in each case, she sees the current one's unworkability, but he becomes angry and ignores her advice. (And by the end of the episode, her misgivings are almost always proven to have been well-founded.) She has grown accustomed to his empty threats

Meh, we're not going to get anywhere like this. I could say this is negligent or reckless of you, but really where would that get us?

You could, and it probably is. I'm liberal (read: egoistic/autistic/insensitive) like that, and get criticised for it in real life enough.

[Africa]

All I'd say to her is that before you assume a man who's talking condescendingly to a woman is sexist, you should see how that man talks to other men. Need I say more?

I think you need to read the article harder, bro, and stop talking before you've checked your reading comprehension.

Do any of them display that delightful mixture of privilege and ignorance that leads to condescending, inaccurate explanations, delivered with the rock-solid conviction of rightness and that slimy certainty that of course he is right, because he is the man in this conversation?

This is talking about instances in which the man treats dudes with respect and women like they Just Don't Get It.

I.e., it invalidates that case you're talking about, need you say more.

Jegus.

As far as I can tell, the only criteria she would use to identify said "delightful mixture" is the fact that the guy comes off as condescending. All I'm saying is, if a guy acts like a condescending dick to a woman, you should first make sure he's not just an all around condescending dick, before concluding that he's a sexist. A lot of people like to feel smart, and since people generally base their self-worth off comparison to others, a great way to feel smart is to talk down to other people. If it's only women that he consistently talks down to, then you've got something to go on. If you just dismiss everything a man says as sexism just because he come off rude, that's almost as ignorant as you're accusing him of being.

Basically, it's back to that giving-people-the-benefit-of-the-doubt I was talking about earlier.

According to this incomplete theory, I am a dead end who cannot influence the gene pool as I will never pass on my own genes. In its haste to achieve superiority at all costs, Evolutionary Theories tried to separate "nature and nurture:" this is a fallacy. While I will never procreate, I most certainly can influence the gene pool, by helping children. My helping them both shapes those who will reproduce and increases their chances of doing so.... It doesn't involve a single shred of passing my DNA down either.

I've definitely seen evolutionary discussion of things like that. The first thing that comes to mind is some speculation (I don't know if it's more than that) that humans have such a long post-fertility lifespan because having old people around was helpful for raising kids and passing on knowledge, thus leading to something kind of resembling group selection. In any case, the point of evolutionary theory is that natural selection is an arbiter of what is the best at reproducing itself, and no more. It's kinda tautological in that sense. It's certainly not an arbiter of what's more valuable. If it were, the Social Darwinists would have been right. I mean, I'm crazy about evolutionary theory, but I may well decide to adopt kids instead of having my own, because I figure instead of making more resource-sucking humans, I can instead reduce the number of orphaned, homeless humans. If evolution imparted moral value, that would be a patently absurd decision. Luckily, it doesn't.

Sheb:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Yeah, this thread isn't the place for it and I don't feel like getting into it much, but a few good books to get to know EP are "The Moral Animal" and "How the Mind Works." Some good papers would be Cosmides and Tooby's stuff on cheater detection modules, and a collection of papers I referenced a bunch in my senior thesis, whose names I can't recall at the moment, but they were attempting to explore evolutionary sensible alternatives to a theory which posited that behavioral changes following exposure to death-related stimuli were due to attempts to cope with an (inherently unobservable, evolutionary nonsensical) existential fear. The evolutionary hypothesis was that if threatening prompts other than death could elicit the same effects (which included increased in-group bias) then a more likely scenario was that people respond to threats by becoming more attached to groups they belong to. Then "The Origins of Virtue" is a great one by Matt Ridley. I'm pretty rusty on all this psych stuff since I've been out of the game for a couple years now...reminds me that once I get into grad school I'm going to have to beef up again :\

As for the "making up ridiculous stories," well yeah. I'm sure you know the blonde thing was satire; but even that is "science" in that it presents falsifiable propositions. Psychology as a whole has to deal with a lot of wacky theories and crackpots (see: Freud still being considered an authority today) and I think it's because while it takes a very specific kind of person to get excited about quarks and photons, basically everybody is interested in the human mind, and it seems so much more accessible that people are pretty eager to jump in and think they've figured everything out. Applying the good old scientific method is still the way to go.

On the McDonald's beating, once again psychology can shed a little light. The "bystander effect", and diffusion of responsibility, which a lot of people have heard of even outside psychology, describes the inverse relationship between the number of people witnessing some event which seems to require intervention, and the likelihood that any person will actually help. The classic case is a woman who was noisily murdered over some ridiculous extended period of time in the courtyard of a big apartment building. Apparently, everyone who heard the screams rationalized that if it were something worth getting worried about, other people would be panicking. As a lifelong city denizen, I know exactly how this goes. Loud gunshot-sounding noises, sirens, screams, and other shady shit is so commonplace that you don't even go to look at it unless other people cue you to first.

So again, giving people the benefit of the doubt, we don't have to conclude that people are bigoted because they see a trans person getting beaten and don't help. Past observation shows that no matter who was getting beaten, it's very likely that out of a large crowd of people, nobody would do anything. And of course, if just one person happened to witness it, there's a very good chance they would do something. Weird stuff.

[Phmcw]

I don't get what you people are arguing over : Those theories are not relevant in the current debate.

The evolution theory doesn't decide what is right, and a system under his constraint isn't guaranteed to work. Something "designed" by evolution won't be perfect and genetic evolution only work on very wide timescale. There is a reason why most species aren't surviving the environmental constraint imposed by men (and women).

Therefore whatever the differences imposed over us by evolution, first they justify nothing, and second the individual difference among the population will render them irrelevant anyway.

Men may be stronger on average, my little sister can still beat the hell out of most of them.
Men and women will differ of the norm, thus the no individual should be forced to follow the norm. The very act of seeing strength as a masculine trait expose any strong women and any weak men. Strength is strength, seduction is seduction, and we're all grown human. We shouldn't expect anything from anyone because of it's gender (And if God doesn't agree he can go fuck Himself).

[Siquo]

I don't get what you people are arguing over : Those theories are not relevant in the current debate.

Correction: should not be relevant. Alas, too often they're used as arguments for "how things should be".

Spoiler: Not relevant to the discussion (click to show/hide)

I'm guilty of it myself: I believe that (and it has already been proven partly untrue for ecosystems) diversity is the only way to get long-term stability. I welcome all crazy people, all mutations and all aberrations, based on my interpretation of evolution theory. Evolution theory is like my job, or democracy, or capitalism, or Amsterdam: It sucks, but right now, there's no better alternative.

[Phmcw]

Evolution theory is like my job, or democracy, or capitalism, or Amsterdam: It sucks, but right now, there's no better alternative.

Meh, evolution just plain suck. Men didn't invent the car by bashing random pieces of metal and taking those who rolled the most.
Evolution is : thing will get acceptable because unaceptable things die. Those who advocate evolution as a way to regulate market are morons : Evolution doesn't care if a specie die, doesn't have any sense of purpose or any pity. And actually never guarantee that the system will go on. Without intelligent design brought by men, all life will die in a few billion year (quite possibly sooner).

[Siquo]

Meh, evolution just plain suck. Men didn't invent the car by bashing random pieces of metal and taking those who rolled the most.

True, but: Evolution is why we don't drive T-Fords anymore: better cars were made, and the old models died off because they were no longer the fittest.

[Phmcw]

Meh, evolution just plain suck. Men didn't invent the car by bashing random pieces of metal and taking those who rolled the most.

True, but: Evolution is why we don't drive T-Fords anymore: better cars were made, and the old models died off because they were no longer the fittest.

Not really. T ford disappeared because engineer considered the new model worthy. Not because of any prevalence of T-ford for the sharing of resources (except in a very remote sense). Don't mistake natural selection for artificial selection.

Edit: more interestingly you make a fundamental mistake : natural selection don't assure the survival of the fittest. It's not because you are fit that you survive, but rather, in a way, because you survived that you are fit. Those who are inapt to survive die, those who lack luck die, and as luck tend to average on an infinite time, things happen. Thing survive and diversify. But thing do not necessarily get better. A lion is not stronger than a T-rex.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Meh, evolution just plain suck. Men didn't invent the car by bashing random pieces of metal and taking those who rolled the most.

True, but: Evolution is why we don't drive T-Fords anymore: better cars were made, and the old models died off because they were no longer the fittest.

Not really. T ford disappeared because engineer considered the new model worthy. Not because of any prevalence of T-ford for the sharing of resources (except in a very remote sense). Don't mistake natural selection for artificial selection.

Except artificial selection runs on the same principles as natural selection. The only real difference is that in artificial selection the blind hand of fate is replaced with a person, who changes the criteria of 'fittest'. Thus, artificial selection is still about the survival of the 'fittest', only that the criteria for 'fittest' is based upon the desires of the person.