As a general rule: does the behaviour make or cost the company money. If a company is not willing to lose money for a cause its not acting on any principal beyond personal gain. The best you can then hope for is that whatever nobel goal you are pursuing continous to align with their revenue goals. Hardly a reliable alliance.
I must dissagree with you - and state categorically that whether the laws are good or not is not a relevant consideration, The single greatest risk to peace, freedom, democracy and human life in the world today is corporations flagrantly ignoring the rule of law. If the people of those countries feel those laws are bad, they can - through the democratic process - try to change the law. If Facebook believes those laws are bad - it can try to encourage people to use the democratic process to change the law. But it sure as hell should not get to flaunt a law, that is on the books, while it is on the books.
There is no situation where we should allow corporations to get away with a policy of "we'll ignore the law unless we can't get away with it".
Yes, in a democracy there is a place for civil disobedience and sometimes that's crucial form of protest against bad laws. But that privilege belongs ONLY to real citizens, not funny made up ones like corporations - and ESPECIALLY not when those funny made up beings aren't EVEN citizens of the country but foreigners just doing business there. I think banning alcohol is an evil law - but I sure as hell will refrain from drinking in Saudi Arabia. I, as a foreigner, cannot claim to be engaging in civil disobedience when I break the law in a country where I am a visitor - even if I'm there on business. And that's for me, an actual human being. A corporation MUST have lesser rights because it's NOT a person.
As a South African - go fuck yourself with your racist stereotypes.
South Africans mostly consider climate change a serious risk to our lives, and one of the nasty impacts of climate change is to raise food prices - by much more than combating it ever could. South Africa has huge investments in renewable energy and these are growing (And make up the ENTIRETY of private sector energy investment). The only deniers in South Africa are conservatives and they make up about erm 1% of the population - they're a loud minority but they are about as influential on the country's culture and politics as pissing in the ocean is on it's salt level.
And while the medieval warm period was, in fact, a thing (with parts, notably the coastal regions, of Greenland being rather greener than today)- it was so incredibly localized that it did not affect global average temperatures at all.
>It seems pretty selective when the left is so tolerant of Islam. The left is nothing of the kind. What we ARE committed to is not punishing groups for the actions of some people within those groups. We won't call blacks 'criminals' because some criminals are black, nor will we condemn muslims as a whole because some Muslims have committed acts of terror, and we sure as fuck won't refuse to help refugees because... actually there is absolutely no reason we would ever consider good enough to not help refugees.
>Islam is the most intolerant ideology, Purple is the heaviest distance. That sentence makes about as much sense as yours. Islam is NOT an ideology. It's a religion - and like every other religion it has, within it, as many diverse ideologies as you can imagine. There are all sorts of Islamic sects and they have no more in common than Greek Orthodox Christians have in common with the Amish. This is a diverse group of 1.5 billion people - with all sorts of ideologies. Some of those sects are oppressive and intolerant, just like some sects of Christianity are. Some believe in separation of church and state, some believe that the religion should rule the country (just like the dominionist movement of Christians in the USA do). When you base your conclusions on a massive generalization like that - it's no wonder they are all, entirely, wrong - and in fact the MOST intolerant ideology is the ideology of stereotyping and prejudice. That is to say, what you just did, is just as bad as the worst sects of Islam. There are majority Muslim countries that are ruled by theocratic dictators (and most of those were installed by the USA against the wishes of their people - including the Taliban and Saddam and the crazies running Iran). There are also majority Muslim countries that are democracies where freedom of religion is constitutionally protected. In India in 2003 a group of Hindus tried to commit an act of genocide against Muslims - the man who led that evil act is now the prime minister of India ! Should we condemn all Hindus over what a fairly small number in one state of India did ? On the Isle of Java as we speak Muslims are being murdered in an attempted genocide by Budhist Monks ! Shall we condemn all Budhists over their actions despite the fact that most Budhist sects are pacifist and would certainly claim that behavior is against the religion ? There's nothing about Islam that isn't also true of every other religion. Religion itself is, of course, entirely evil as a concept - but while I believe that, I also believe that trying to prevent people from being religious through anything other than pursuasion is no less evil than what religion itself does - and I've seen no evidence that Islam is particularly worse than any other kind. The terror levels in the UK today is far lower than it was during IRA days (just 20 years ago) - and those were Christian terrorists. The only terrorist act to happen in Norway in decades was by a Christian man who hated refugees, migrants and liberals- (or as one Norwegian described him) "basically a typical Fox viewer" !
You're basing your conclusions on statements which are not only utterly untrue - but so devoid of any real meaning as to be senseless.
Because dehumanizing people, or as he was intending to do at Berkeley - actively encouraging others to run them out of town - is not 'offensive' - it's something else. Pretending that's the same thing as fart jokes and porn is flagrantly dishonest.
Most people probably are not triggered. To be triggered by something you must have PTSD first. People are being protective of vulnerable people - that has even less to do with triggering than your previous post. Is it possible you are becoming MORE ignorant of what you're critiquing ? If you are going to be critical of something, you have a responsibility to understand what it is first.
>Can you link me to the essay?
Here's the whole book it's from: http://archive.org/details/Ope... But it looks like that link is not working anymore - could be that somebody has made a recent copyright claim against it.
This discussion represents it pretty well and relates it to the same events we are discussing: https://medium.com/@parkermoll... the quotes are accurate, the caveats included. It's sufficient for the purpose.
None of that has anything to do with 'offensiveness'. You should read the rest oft he post, I kind of explain the difference at length.
The whole POINT was that it's a strawman to call the things we are concerned about 'offensive'.
And you also have no fucking idea what trigger warnings are, hint they are not censorship - in fact they are the OPPOSITE of censorship because they not only allow the discussion to happen but enable MORE people to participate IN that discussion than otherwise could have.
But let's back up a moment and be utra generous and assume you were right about everything AND that what happened to Milo counts as "banning". None of that is true but let's pretend. It STILL does NOT prove me wrong because NOBODY CARED if Milo was offensive. Nothing that happened to Milo, right or wrong, at the hands of the left was in any WAY related to him being 'offensive'. Hell most leftist, certainly me, don't think he WAS offensive at all.
He was however dehumanising people - and that is an entirely different thing. That's the point you missed. Offensiveness has NOTHING TO DO WITH HATE SPEECH. It has nothing to do with the protest. That's a right wing strawman to pretend that we care about 'hurt feelings' or 'offence' - which has NOTHING to do with it. Offending people does not harm them. Dehumanising people KILLS them.
If you're having trouble with the difference -I suggest you read Karl Popper's 1932 essay: "The paradox of tolerance" and learn something. Don't bother replying unless you have done so (it doesn't take long and is available for free online). Because any further conversation will be waste of time otherwise. If you aren't wiling to know what you're debating against - then it's impossible for you NOT to attack a strawman and I won't bother with you.
Why do you think it matters WHICH state is the 50th ? Yes, the one state that does not allow this defense is California. Just another case, yet again, of California being the most civilized state in America.
If the content of that person's speech is: "Here is a list of people who deserve to have their lives fucked up, but don't actually harass them or be violent to them or fuck their lives up to them nudge-nudge-wink-wink* then yeah - the guy who beat me up, who is on that list, is acting in self defense. And that was the content of Milo's speeches. In a previous speech he outed a Trans girl - leading to such severe abuse, harassment and threats she was forced to drop out of college- the fucker destroyed her future. At berkeley - the stated purpose of his speech was to out a list of undocumented students and encourage other students to keep reporting them to the INS until they got deported.
But then - like I said -this is where the issue gets really, really complex. Should Milo's actions be considered a crime ? Do they count as 'incitement' ?
I think they obviously do. You apparently think the do not. But that doesn't mean you're automagically right, it doesn't even mean the LAW is automagically correct and nobody has any real idea if a judge would think they do since none of those liberals you think hate free speech so much ever laid a charge of incitement against him - none of them sought to use the government to punish Milo even though there is a potential case of direct incitement to harm. All they did was say "Not in my house motherfucker".
It means the issue is complex.
I started this all by admitting I don't know exactly what the best balance of rights is - admitting I don't have a solution, but pretending your do - means you are much further the truth than me. Nothing makes a person MORE wrong than thinking they know a simple answer to a complex issue.
But in case you were wondering. Saying "Not in my house motherfucker" to a neo-nazi piece of shit, punching a dickbag like Richard Spencer in the face, or protesting an inciter of harm like Milo makes somebody a fucking hero. That's not how freedom dies (as you seem to think) that's how it's preserved. Milo just had to learn, like all people, that free speech does not mean freedom from consequences. If you act like a dick - I still get to treat you like a dick.
Saying "Get the fuck out of MY HOUSE" is not a ban, has fuckall to do with the first ammendment or the law and has fuckall to do with censorship.
>Milo is offensive and a lot of people have tried to ban him Nope and not a single one of your sources are correct about this - because that's not what 'ban' means.
However, as a proud leftist liberal, I will now tell you to go fuck yourself and I won't feed the troll anymore.
Hell he was never even prevented from going anywhere he wanted to go. He got protested, but he was never banned. And asking that his invitation be revoked is NOT A BAN.
You want to know what a 'ban' means ? Ask Beyers Naude - Milo is a fucking crybaby who has no idea what real banning implies and who isn't not worthy to suck the dicks of ACTUAL free speech champions.
Ultimately the simplest way to think about the Fermi paradox is this: Why are we not sending message out to every star we can see ? Why are we not trying to send messages to other species ?
Because it costs a LOT more to send messages far away than to listen. Because it's hard to justify spending a lot of money on spending a message whien, if there's a reply, nobody who remembers it being sent will be alive anymore when that reply comes. Hell the protocols we use will likely have changed so much our progeny probably could not understand the reply if they figured it out and used it for the reply.
We're not hearing from other civilizations for the EXACT SAME reason they aren't hearing from us. They are listening, like we are, but nobody is TALKING - because in this case, talk is not cheap - it takes an inordinate amount of resources with no guarantee of getting anything whatsoever for it and absolute guarantee that if there IS a reward you won't get to experience it.
No BIOLOGY dictates communication. Physics provides a medium - but what you DO with it is dictated by earlier biology. Nobody would send the radio signals WE send if not for the fact that the recievers and senders alike have ears and eyes. Without translating those signals, ultimately, to things that can be interpreted by those senses - they make no sense whatsoever. They are just garbled, excessively regular, things.
And yeah - who says radio waves is what aliens would use ? Their limited to light speed, it sure as fuck wouldn't be my first choice for interstellar communication - you want something FTL for that, or if FTL comms is truly impossible that alone resolves the paradox - we haven't heard from them because there is no practical, physically possible, way to send a useful message when the turn-around time is thousands of years !
>Legitimate, but you still have insufficient evidence to make such a claim. And that, right there, is what is wrong with all your thinking and why I hope no university was insane enough to call you a graduate. Nowhere did I, or the scientists who are studying this, make such a claim or any claim what-so-fucking-ever. Nobody made any claims at all.
We merely listed possible hypotheses which fit the observations. Unlike you - we did not try to exclude some of them without evidence to back that up because we have a personal bias against that hypotheses. No astronomer ANYWHERE has said this is a sign of life. All that's been said - is what is absolutely sound science: this COULD be a sign of life and we'll know better when we have more data.
Absolutely. And that, right there, is the one and only thing Trump does NOT have in common with Hitler. Trump is an incompetent buffoon. Hitler was a competent and shrewd.
Where exactly has anybody called for Milo to be jailed ? Where has anybody called for him to be arrested, or for government to censor his columns ?
That he got himself fired by saying stupid shit isn't anybody's fault but his own.
Nobody tried to ban Milo. Some people protested against him. That's not censorship. That IS free speech and it's AS PROTECTED as his speech is.
And that was the ONLY thing that ever happened to him. He was protested against. Boohoo. Poor little snowflake couldn't handle people having a different opinion from him.
But since you apparently stopped reading after my first sentence, you don't know how your post actually PROVED my point. That whole bit about 'complex issue' with no 'simple answers' - you presented an attempt
Dementia ? Nah, I'd bet the farm on syphilis. Similar symptoms - but his lifestyle makes him a grade-A risk candidate and there are other symptoms (moodswings, paranoia) which are more pronounced with syphilis and clearly shown by Trump and less so with dementia.
Compared to Trump - GWB *was* relatively benign. But only in the sense that pre-metastatic cancer is relatively benign compared to metastatic cancer.
Dick Cheney may have been a child of satan but at least his brain had mastered skills beyond "construct elaborate conspiracy theory" which appears to be the only thing anybody in the current administration is any good at. Seriously, it's as if the whole corrupt lot of them went to Alex Jones university.
Not to mention that Laffer himself repeatedly stated that exploiting the curve to grow revenue is ONLY possible if it's coupled with austerity measures. You can't just cut taxes, you HAVE to cut spending enough to offset it until the growth comes.
The idea is that, at around 60% you could grow revenues over-all by instituting a combination of spending cuts and tax cuts. No republican ever does the spending cuts part - because it's impossible to do the cuts Laffer describes without HUGELY cutting the military budget. Even if you flat out remove EVERYTHING ELSE from the budget it wouldn't be enough without also cutting defense.
Then comes the other factors - generally spending cuts INCREASE deficits and debts because they cost more revenue than they save in expenses (austerity in general is about as sensible as trying to save money on your heating bill by burning your paycheck for warmth). The only time austerity measures can safely be introduced is EXACTLY the opposite of when conservatives tend to push them: during boom times. Cutting spending in a recession is a great way to make the recession worse and the government poorer. You cut spending, if it needs cutting, during boom times when there is enough revenue that you can afford to carry the losses it cause.
So to successfully use the Laffer curve three conditions MUST hold: 1) Marginal tax rates needs to be at the peak of the curve, that's around 60% usually. 2) Spending cuts must match every tax cut 3) It must be during an already-in-progress boom cycle when there's lots of economic growth already happening and you can afford to take a medium term, but severe, shock to the system.
Even then you're likely to trigger a short to medium term recession - you may come out ahead at the end, but make no mistake - getting there is going to be painful. To get the promised holy land you will need to walk barefoot through a field of broken glass.
Republicans however, they don't much care for these facts. They just like to pretend that Laffer said "Tax cuts lead to economic growth which raises revenue" and ignore everything else he said and everything every other economist said so they can keep doing the exact same set of policies they always do - even though they NEVER work, and in fact, consistently produce exactly the outcomes that economists predict: deficits get worse, debts increase, the economy slumps and people suffer.
Nobody on the left has ever called for anything offensive to be banned or restricted. That's a flagrant strawman - and banning offensive things is very much a conservative habit. What many on the left DOES call for is banning actual harm to vulnerable people EVEN if that harm happens to be in the form of speech.
There's a huge difference between offending somebody and using words which dehumanize them - nobody ever got killed because somebody else said something offensive about them, but lots of people get killed every DAY because somebody else said something dehumanizing about them.
The gay couple getting married may offend you - but it is not, in any way, affecting you - it's not directed at you, it does not involve you and in no way does it reduce your humanity. Calling them slurs over it, calling for their marriage not to be legally recognized, saying god hates them... this however DOES affect them - it's directed at them personally (after all, every group is made up of individuals and an insult to the group is a PERSONALLY DIRECTED insulted at every member) - and it tends to cause other people to kill them.
Now it's debateable if the government should stop at catching and convicting the murderers or if it should also punish the speech that incite them. Moreso since those who make that speech can convincingly claim that they had no intention to incite. It's certainly a complex issue which requires a great deal of nuance. But saying it's about 'banning offensive speech' is the exact opposite of considering the issue with the nuance it requires. I don't pretend to know what the best balance of rights is here - I do know that I am far closer than you since I recognize the complexity of the issue. The final thing that makes it complex is that even punishing the murderers is not reliable ! In 49 US states it is, essentially, legal to murder a trans woman ! Surprise to find out a woman was once a man is a legal defense against murder charges in 49 fucking states. Kill a trans women, claim you were surprised she had a penis and you get off scott free.
It's hard to argue we don't need to protect vulnerable people from inciting speech - just from violence if it occurs - when we're not EVEN protecting them from violence, hell we're not even punishing the people who kill them.
By the way, why do you assume that, if it is life, that it has to be intelligent, technologically advanced life ?
It could just as easily be a single organism - unfathomably huge by our standards - plantlike growing in orbit around that star and living off solar energy. Or a colony of micro-organisms building what ammounts to a Dyson sphere one dead body at a time the way choral does on earth.
Now both these ideas have some problems - mostly a case of where do they find additional matter, solar energy alone can't (easily) produce mass -but those objections only exist if we assume "life" has to work the way it works here. That is not a viable assumption. The way life works here has CHANGED more than once in history, it seems to be largely determined by local conditions. If abiogenesis occurred in orbit of a star, with no planet, could life evolve not to need material resources ? To rely only on the energy of that star ? Perhaps then it is actually MORE likely that it evolved very little, reaching whatever form gives it a decent equilibrium in this ultimate sparse environment and just stayed there because there was simply no other resources to take advantage off - hell it may not have DNA and whatever evolutionary process it uses may be far slower than life here. It may not have anything we would recognise as "cells".
Yes, this is pure speculation - but it is entirely possible. The reason I mention it is not because I am jumping to that as 'likely' - we don't have the data to call anything likely yet, merely because in a universe this big, and with the sheer resilience of life we've observed, the logical assumption becomes that you cannot safely discount life as an explanation until and unless you have evidence to the contrary.
No my friend - the extraordinary claim is not that it might be life, the extraordinary claim is that life is the unlikely answer. Scientists certainly don't work that way - huge scientific resources are spent searching for evidence of extra-terrestrial life, thus far most of it is limited to our solar system - but that tells you one thing: scientists are looking because they think there are good odds of finding something. It's not a few cranks chasing a long-shot whom we'll be surprised if they turn out right (which, while it does happen on occasion, is exceedingly rare - most cranks are just cranks) it's a huge swath of limited research resources being directed by many of the most respected scientists in their fields - constantly looking because they think the odds justify the search. If NASA had unlimited budgets we'd already be building a drilling drone carefully designed not to risk destroying what it's meant to find and go look for life in the underground oceans of Europa. Some scientists have discovered that the red lines on Europa have a virtually identical infrared signal to certain Earthbound bacteria. They also had to admit that some salts would have very similar signals - so nobody is saying we've FOUND life there, but nobody familiar with the field is denying the possibility either. The fact that respected scientists were willing to posit that - suggests that scientists are not as closed to the idea as you are. As we speak a team of scientists is designing the next generation Mars rover - and it's designed for a very specific purpose: to find life. Almost every scientific device being crammed onto the limited weight they can give it, is looking for some kind of sign of life. A mars rover is an extremely expensive project, and according to you, their wasting the whole thing because they are building it to find life ? Maybe it won't - but clearly they were able to justify looking.
Perhaps the biggest concern in our search is that we have a tendency not to bring the right people. Evolutionary biologist Jack Cohen went to a convention in the late 1990s where a number of phycisists and astronomers were discussing possibilities of extraterestrial life - and stood up and asked: "How would you feel if you went to a convention on planetary formation an
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As a general rule: does the behaviour make or cost the company money. If a company is not willing to lose money for a cause its not acting on any principal beyond personal gain.
The best you can then hope for is that whatever nobel goal you are pursuing continous to align with their revenue goals. Hardly a reliable alliance.
I must dissagree with you - and state categorically that whether the laws are good or not is not a relevant consideration,
The single greatest risk to peace, freedom, democracy and human life in the world today is corporations flagrantly ignoring the rule of law.
If the people of those countries feel those laws are bad, they can - through the democratic process - try to change the law. If Facebook believes those laws are bad - it can try to encourage people to use the democratic process to change the law.
But it sure as hell should not get to flaunt a law, that is on the books, while it is on the books.
There is no situation where we should allow corporations to get away with a policy of "we'll ignore the law unless we can't get away with it".
Yes, in a democracy there is a place for civil disobedience and sometimes that's crucial form of protest against bad laws. But that privilege belongs ONLY to real citizens, not funny made up ones like corporations - and ESPECIALLY not when those funny made up beings aren't EVEN citizens of the country but foreigners just doing business there.
I think banning alcohol is an evil law - but I sure as hell will refrain from drinking in Saudi Arabia. I, as a foreigner, cannot claim to be engaging in civil disobedience when I break the law in a country where I am a visitor - even if I'm there on business. And that's for me, an actual human being. A corporation MUST have lesser rights because it's NOT a person.
As a South African - go fuck yourself with your racist stereotypes.
South Africans mostly consider climate change a serious risk to our lives, and one of the nasty impacts of climate change is to raise food prices - by much more than combating it ever could. South Africa has huge investments in renewable energy and these are growing (And make up the ENTIRETY of private sector energy investment).
The only deniers in South Africa are conservatives and they make up about erm 1% of the population - they're a loud minority but they are about as influential on the country's culture and politics as pissing in the ocean is on it's salt level.
And while the medieval warm period was, in fact, a thing (with parts, notably the coastal regions, of Greenland being rather greener than today)- it was so incredibly localized that it did not affect global average temperatures at all.
>It seems pretty selective when the left is so tolerant of Islam. ... actually there is absolutely no reason we would ever consider good enough to not help refugees.
The left is nothing of the kind. What we ARE committed to is not punishing groups for the actions of some people within those groups. We won't call blacks 'criminals' because some criminals are black, nor will we condemn muslims as a whole because some Muslims have committed acts of terror, and we sure as fuck won't refuse to help refugees because
>Islam is the most intolerant ideology,
Purple is the heaviest distance.
That sentence makes about as much sense as yours. Islam is NOT an ideology. It's a religion - and like every other religion it has, within it, as many diverse ideologies as you can imagine. There are all sorts of Islamic sects and they have no more in common than Greek Orthodox Christians have in common with the Amish. This is a diverse group of 1.5 billion people - with all sorts of ideologies. Some of those sects are oppressive and intolerant, just like some sects of Christianity are. Some believe in separation of church and state, some believe that the religion should rule the country (just like the dominionist movement of Christians in the USA do).
When you base your conclusions on a massive generalization like that - it's no wonder they are all, entirely, wrong - and in fact the MOST intolerant ideology is the ideology of stereotyping and prejudice. That is to say, what you just did, is just as bad as the worst sects of Islam. There are majority Muslim countries that are ruled by theocratic dictators (and most of those were installed by the USA against the wishes of their people - including the Taliban and Saddam and the crazies running Iran). There are also majority Muslim countries that are democracies where freedom of religion is constitutionally protected. In India in 2003 a group of Hindus tried to commit an act of genocide against Muslims - the man who led that evil act is now the prime minister of India ! Should we condemn all Hindus over what a fairly small number in one state of India did ? On the Isle of Java as we speak Muslims are being murdered in an attempted genocide by Budhist Monks ! Shall we condemn all Budhists over their actions despite the fact that most Budhist sects are pacifist and would certainly claim that behavior is against the religion ?
There's nothing about Islam that isn't also true of every other religion.
Religion itself is, of course, entirely evil as a concept - but while I believe that, I also believe that trying to prevent people from being religious through anything other than pursuasion is no less evil than what religion itself does - and I've seen no evidence that Islam is particularly worse than any other kind. The terror levels in the UK today is far lower than it was during IRA days (just 20 years ago) - and those were Christian terrorists.
The only terrorist act to happen in Norway in decades was by a Christian man who hated refugees, migrants and liberals- (or as one Norwegian described him) "basically a typical Fox viewer" !
You're basing your conclusions on statements which are not only utterly untrue - but so devoid of any real meaning as to be senseless.
Because dehumanizing people, or as he was intending to do at Berkeley - actively encouraging others to run them out of town - is not 'offensive' - it's something else. Pretending that's the same thing as fart jokes and porn is flagrantly dishonest.
Most people probably are not triggered. To be triggered by something you must have PTSD first. People are being protective of vulnerable people - that has even less to do with triggering than your previous post. Is it possible you are becoming MORE ignorant of what you're critiquing ?
If you are going to be critical of something, you have a responsibility to understand what it is first.
shouting somebody down is not censorship.
>How did Milo dehumanize anyone?
Seriously ? You can't see it ? How did he NOT ?
>Can you link me to the essay?
Here's the whole book it's from: http://archive.org/details/Ope...
But it looks like that link is not working anymore - could be that somebody has made a recent copyright claim against it.
This discussion represents it pretty well and relates it to the same events we are discussing: https://medium.com/@parkermoll... the quotes are accurate, the caveats included. It's sufficient for the purpose.
Read the rest of the comment. I'm not denying that leftists want to ban things. I'm denying that it's because those things are offensive.
None of that has anything to do with 'offensiveness'.
You should read the rest oft he post, I kind of explain the difference at length.
The whole POINT was that it's a strawman to call the things we are concerned about 'offensive'.
And you also have no fucking idea what trigger warnings are, hint they are not censorship - in fact they are the OPPOSITE of censorship because they not only allow the discussion to happen but enable MORE people to participate IN that discussion than otherwise could have.
But let's back up a moment and be utra generous and assume you were right about everything AND that what happened to Milo counts as "banning". None of that is true but let's pretend.
It STILL does NOT prove me wrong because NOBODY CARED if Milo was offensive. Nothing that happened to Milo, right or wrong, at the hands of the left was in any WAY related to him being 'offensive'. Hell most leftist, certainly me, don't think he WAS offensive at all.
He was however dehumanising people - and that is an entirely different thing. That's the point you missed. Offensiveness has NOTHING TO DO WITH HATE SPEECH. It has nothing to do with the protest. That's a right wing strawman to pretend that we care about 'hurt feelings' or 'offence' - which has NOTHING to do with it.
Offending people does not harm them.
Dehumanising people KILLS them.
If you're having trouble with the difference -I suggest you read Karl Popper's 1932 essay: "The paradox of tolerance" and learn something. Don't bother replying unless you have done so (it doesn't take long and is available for free online). Because any further conversation will be waste of time otherwise. If you aren't wiling to know what you're debating against - then it's impossible for you NOT to attack a strawman and I won't bother with you.
Why do you think it matters WHICH state is the 50th ?
Yes, the one state that does not allow this defense is California. Just another case, yet again, of California being the most civilized state in America.
If the content of that person's speech is: "Here is a list of people who deserve to have their lives fucked up, but don't actually harass them or be violent to them or fuck their lives up to them nudge-nudge-wink-wink* then yeah - the guy who beat me up, who is on that list, is acting in self defense. And that was the content of Milo's speeches. In a previous speech he outed a Trans girl - leading to such severe abuse, harassment and threats she was forced to drop out of college- the fucker destroyed her future. At berkeley - the stated purpose of his speech was to out a list of undocumented students and encourage other students to keep reporting them to the INS until they got deported.
But then - like I said -this is where the issue gets really, really complex. Should Milo's actions be considered a crime ? Do they count as 'incitement' ?
I think they obviously do. You apparently think the do not. But that doesn't mean you're automagically right, it doesn't even mean the LAW is automagically correct and nobody has any real idea if a judge would think they do since none of those liberals you think hate free speech so much ever laid a charge of incitement against him - none of them sought to use the government to punish Milo even though there is a potential case of direct incitement to harm. All they did was say "Not in my house motherfucker".
It means the issue is complex.
I started this all by admitting I don't know exactly what the best balance of rights is - admitting I don't have a solution, but pretending your do - means you are much further the truth than me.
Nothing makes a person MORE wrong than thinking they know a simple answer to a complex issue.
But in case you were wondering. Saying "Not in my house motherfucker" to a neo-nazi piece of shit, punching a dickbag like Richard Spencer in the face, or protesting an inciter of harm like Milo makes somebody a fucking hero. That's not how freedom dies (as you seem to think) that's how it's preserved.
Milo just had to learn, like all people, that free speech does not mean freedom from consequences. If you act like a dick - I still get to treat you like a dick.
None of those things count as a "ban".
Saying "Get the fuck out of MY HOUSE" is not a ban, has fuckall to do with the first ammendment or the law and has fuckall to do with censorship.
>Milo is offensive and a lot of people have tried to ban him
Nope and not a single one of your sources are correct about this - because that's not what 'ban' means.
However, as a proud leftist liberal, I will now tell you to go fuck yourself and I won't feed the troll anymore.
Hell he was never even prevented from going anywhere he wanted to go. He got protested, but he was never banned. And asking that his invitation be revoked is NOT A BAN.
You want to know what a 'ban' means ? Ask Beyers Naude - Milo is a fucking crybaby who has no idea what real banning implies and who isn't not worthy to suck the dicks of ACTUAL free speech champions.
Ultimately the simplest way to think about the Fermi paradox is this:
Why are we not sending message out to every star we can see ? Why are we not trying to send messages to other species ?
Because it costs a LOT more to send messages far away than to listen. Because it's hard to justify spending a lot of money on spending a message whien, if there's a reply, nobody who remembers it being sent will be alive anymore when that reply comes. Hell the protocols we use will likely have changed so much our progeny probably could not understand the reply if they figured it out and used it for the reply.
We're not hearing from other civilizations for the EXACT SAME reason they aren't hearing from us.
They are listening, like we are, but nobody is TALKING - because in this case, talk is not cheap - it takes an inordinate amount of resources with no guarantee of getting anything whatsoever for it and absolute guarantee that if there IS a reward you won't get to experience it.
It's not a paradox. It's basic accounting.
Damn, so much stupid assumption.
No BIOLOGY dictates communication. Physics provides a medium - but what you DO with it is dictated by earlier biology. Nobody would send the radio signals WE send if not for the fact that the recievers and senders alike have ears and eyes. Without translating those signals, ultimately, to things that can be interpreted by those senses - they make no sense whatsoever. They are just garbled, excessively regular, things.
And yeah - who says radio waves is what aliens would use ? Their limited to light speed, it sure as fuck wouldn't be my first choice for interstellar communication - you want something FTL for that, or if FTL comms is truly impossible that alone resolves the paradox - we haven't heard from them because there is no practical, physically possible, way to send a useful message when the turn-around time is thousands of years !
>Legitimate, but you still have insufficient evidence to make such a claim.
And that, right there, is what is wrong with all your thinking and why I hope no university was insane enough to call you a graduate. Nowhere did I, or the scientists who are studying this, make such a claim or any claim what-so-fucking-ever.
Nobody made any claims at all.
We merely listed possible hypotheses which fit the observations. Unlike you - we did not try to exclude some of them without evidence to back that up because we have a personal bias against that hypotheses. No astronomer ANYWHERE has said this is a sign of life. All that's been said - is what is absolutely sound science: this COULD be a sign of life and we'll know better when we have more data.
Absolutely. And that, right there, is the one and only thing Trump does NOT have in common with Hitler. Trump is an incompetent buffoon. Hitler was a competent and shrewd.
Oh bullshit. Milo DISPROVES your claim !
Where exactly has anybody called for Milo to be jailed ? Where has anybody called for him to be arrested, or for government to censor his columns ?
That he got himself fired by saying stupid shit isn't anybody's fault but his own.
Nobody tried to ban Milo. Some people protested against him. That's not censorship. That IS free speech and it's AS PROTECTED as his speech is.
And that was the ONLY thing that ever happened to him. He was protested against. Boohoo. Poor little snowflake couldn't handle people having a different opinion from him.
But since you apparently stopped reading after my first sentence, you don't know how your post actually PROVED my point. That whole bit about 'complex issue' with no 'simple answers' - you presented an attempt
Dementia ? Nah, I'd bet the farm on syphilis. Similar symptoms - but his lifestyle makes him a grade-A risk candidate and there are other symptoms (moodswings, paranoia) which are more pronounced with syphilis and clearly shown by Trump and less so with dementia.
Compared to Trump - GWB *was* relatively benign.
But only in the sense that pre-metastatic cancer is relatively benign compared to metastatic cancer.
Dick Cheney may have been a child of satan but at least his brain had mastered skills beyond "construct elaborate conspiracy theory" which appears to be the only thing anybody in the current administration is any good at. Seriously, it's as if the whole corrupt lot of them went to Alex Jones university.
There's another joke in there somewhere, something about the *fruit* of Trump's loins...
And of course, this is why Newt Gingrich can't win re-election after cheating on the fourth spouse in a row... oh wait.
Not to mention that Laffer himself repeatedly stated that exploiting the curve to grow revenue is ONLY possible if it's coupled with austerity measures. You can't just cut taxes, you HAVE to cut spending enough to offset it until the growth comes.
The idea is that, at around 60% you could grow revenues over-all by instituting a combination of spending cuts and tax cuts. No republican ever does the spending cuts part - because it's impossible to do the cuts Laffer describes without HUGELY cutting the military budget. Even if you flat out remove EVERYTHING ELSE from the budget it wouldn't be enough without also cutting defense.
Then comes the other factors - generally spending cuts INCREASE deficits and debts because they cost more revenue than they save in expenses (austerity in general is about as sensible as trying to save money on your heating bill by burning your paycheck for warmth). The only time austerity measures can safely be introduced is EXACTLY the opposite of when conservatives tend to push them: during boom times. Cutting spending in a recession is a great way to make the recession worse and the government poorer. You cut spending, if it needs cutting, during boom times when there is enough revenue that you can afford to carry the losses it cause.
So to successfully use the Laffer curve three conditions MUST hold:
1) Marginal tax rates needs to be at the peak of the curve, that's around 60% usually.
2) Spending cuts must match every tax cut
3) It must be during an already-in-progress boom cycle when there's lots of economic growth already happening and you can afford to take a medium term, but severe, shock to the system.
Even then you're likely to trigger a short to medium term recession - you may come out ahead at the end, but make no mistake - getting there is going to be painful. To get the promised holy land you will need to walk barefoot through a field of broken glass.
Republicans however, they don't much care for these facts. They just like to pretend that Laffer said "Tax cuts lead to economic growth which raises revenue" and ignore everything else he said and everything every other economist said so they can keep doing the exact same set of policies they always do - even though they NEVER work, and in fact, consistently produce exactly the outcomes that economists predict: deficits get worse, debts increase, the economy slumps and people suffer.
Trump is evil in the most basic sense of the word - authoritarian dictator-wannabe evil.
Luckily he is also stupid.
It's probably a stroke of good luck that when the USA finally elected an authoritarian, fascist demagogue it elected one who is utterly incompetent.
The last thing you want is for your wannabe-dictator to be GOOD at it.
So Hanlon doesn't apply here: this is both malice AND stupidity.
Nobody on the left has ever called for anything offensive to be banned or restricted. That's a flagrant strawman - and banning offensive things is very much a conservative habit.
What many on the left DOES call for is banning actual harm to vulnerable people EVEN if that harm happens to be in the form of speech.
There's a huge difference between offending somebody and using words which dehumanize them - nobody ever got killed because somebody else said something offensive about them, but lots of people get killed every DAY because somebody else said something dehumanizing about them.
The gay couple getting married may offend you - but it is not, in any way, affecting you - it's not directed at you, it does not involve you and in no way does it reduce your humanity.
Calling them slurs over it, calling for their marriage not to be legally recognized, saying god hates them... this however DOES affect them - it's directed at them personally (after all, every group is made up of individuals and an insult to the group is a PERSONALLY DIRECTED insulted at every member) - and it tends to cause other people to kill them.
Now it's debateable if the government should stop at catching and convicting the murderers or if it should also punish the speech that incite them. Moreso since those who make that speech can convincingly claim that they had no intention to incite. It's certainly a complex issue which requires a great deal of nuance. But saying it's about 'banning offensive speech' is the exact opposite of considering the issue with the nuance it requires. I don't pretend to know what the best balance of rights is here - I do know that I am far closer than you since I recognize the complexity of the issue.
The final thing that makes it complex is that even punishing the murderers is not reliable ! In 49 US states it is, essentially, legal to murder a trans woman ! Surprise to find out a woman was once a man is a legal defense against murder charges in 49 fucking states.
Kill a trans women, claim you were surprised she had a penis and you get off scott free.
It's hard to argue we don't need to protect vulnerable people from inciting speech - just from violence if it occurs - when we're not EVEN protecting them from violence, hell we're not even punishing the people who kill them.
By the way, why do you assume that, if it is life, that it has to be intelligent, technologically advanced life ?
It could just as easily be a single organism - unfathomably huge by our standards - plantlike growing in orbit around that star and living off solar energy. Or a colony of micro-organisms building what ammounts to a Dyson sphere one dead body at a time the way choral does on earth.
Now both these ideas have some problems - mostly a case of where do they find additional matter, solar energy alone can't (easily) produce mass -but those objections only exist if we assume "life" has to work the way it works here. That is not a viable assumption. The way life works here has CHANGED more than once in history, it seems to be largely determined by local conditions. If abiogenesis occurred in orbit of a star, with no planet, could life evolve not to need material resources ? To rely only on the energy of that star ? Perhaps then it is actually MORE likely that it evolved very little, reaching whatever form gives it a decent equilibrium in this ultimate sparse environment and just stayed there because there was simply no other resources to take advantage off - hell it may not have DNA and whatever evolutionary process it uses may be far slower than life here. It may not have anything we would recognise as "cells".
Yes, this is pure speculation - but it is entirely possible. The reason I mention it is not because I am jumping to that as 'likely' - we don't have the data to call anything likely yet, merely because in a universe this big, and with the sheer resilience of life we've observed, the logical assumption becomes that you cannot safely discount life as an explanation until and unless you have evidence to the contrary.
No my friend - the extraordinary claim is not that it might be life, the extraordinary claim is that life is the unlikely answer. Scientists certainly don't work that way - huge scientific resources are spent searching for evidence of extra-terrestrial life, thus far most of it is limited to our solar system - but that tells you one thing: scientists are looking because they think there are good odds of finding something. It's not a few cranks chasing a long-shot whom we'll be surprised if they turn out right (which, while it does happen on occasion, is exceedingly rare - most cranks are just cranks) it's a huge swath of limited research resources being directed by many of the most respected scientists in their fields - constantly looking because they think the odds justify the search.
If NASA had unlimited budgets we'd already be building a drilling drone carefully designed not to risk destroying what it's meant to find and go look for life in the underground oceans of Europa.
Some scientists have discovered that the red lines on Europa have a virtually identical infrared signal to certain Earthbound bacteria. They also had to admit that some salts would have very similar signals - so nobody is saying we've FOUND life there, but nobody familiar with the field is denying the possibility either. The fact that respected scientists were willing to posit that - suggests that scientists are not as closed to the idea as you are.
As we speak a team of scientists is designing the next generation Mars rover - and it's designed for a very specific purpose: to find life. Almost every scientific device being crammed onto the limited weight they can give it, is looking for some kind of sign of life. A mars rover is an extremely expensive project, and according to you, their wasting the whole thing because they are building it to find life ? Maybe it won't - but clearly they were able to justify looking.
Perhaps the biggest concern in our search is that we have a tendency not to bring the right people. Evolutionary biologist Jack Cohen went to a convention in the late 1990s where a number of phycisists and astronomers were discussing possibilities of extraterestrial life - and stood up and asked: "How would you feel if you went to a convention on planetary formation an