There's a lot of misunderstanding pertaining to the phrase 'cultural relativism' floating about. It's original intent was very specific and had nothing to do with 'moral relativism' either.
A brief intro read on the subject, worth a glance as it leads to other interesting readings. You can indeed arrive at a 'universal' sense of morals through logical processes. However this does not mean that humanity will keel over and accept it. (Slightly off topic even the US has yet to ratify certain wartime treaties that nearly every other country in the world has ratified.)
As a starting point, humanity does share the 'golden rule' as an idea, as it has been observed across cultures throughout recorded history. Of course this rule never applied globally, but only to one's immediate tribe, and still within the confines of that particular culture.
As Bob Page says, "their... ethical inflexibility has allowed us to make progress in areas they refuse to consider." (a quote from the opening of Deus Ex that has stayed with me over the years). As a side note, the military has been using performance-enhancing drugs like dextroamphetamine for decades so in a way there is nothing new here. When it comes down to the crunch, humans will use any enhancement they can get their hands on. Competition driving technological development.
When we have the technology, we've the desire to test it out, see what it can do, see what its effects are. From a purely practical standpoint this would be the driving reason -why-. Much like how in racing, it isn't just skill, it's also the engineering that is being tested.
This may sound strangely immoral, and I agree the morals can be debated, but I don't think the answers will turn out to be as simple as 'doping is always wrong' (queue controversial studies about caffeine and athleticism) or alternately 'well the athletes are consenting' (when you factor in potential societal pressures, long term side effects and other things--for example fighting in hockey is always under debate, as it is an expectation from some of the fans, but is over time being documented as causing a lot of harm both physically and psychologically to the players, aka the hockey suicides over the past couple years).
Laws, legality, morality, perception of right and wrong sadly don't always line up so well. It's true that Facebook and other services give us the illusion of privacy, doesn't mean we actually have it.
The slippery slope, as a fallacy, implies that two unrelated things, X and Y can lead from one to the other through a series of intermediary steps. Gay marriage is about consenting adults having the right to make the choice to marry as consenting adults. Therefore it is fallacious to draw a slippery slope comparison to it leading to necrophila as dead people cannot consent. This slippery slope is usually drawn by people who find homosexuality to be against their moral standards and hence they claim that tolerance of one 'immoral' thing is a slippery slope that will lead to other 'immoral' practices being tolerated. From our perspective, this is fallacious, because the argument is about the rights of consenting adults to live together and look after each other as they wish. From their perspective, they see, moral slippage.
A fallacy is only a fallacy when the conclusion is not supported by the premise. A slippery slope does not always have to be fallacious and does not automatically lose the argument--if it can be proven that all the intermediary steps link. In this case, the poster is only responding to the claim that since private companies do not have to respect our privacy rights, they can do anything they want with our data. This is of course incorrect because one form of communication is protected by law and the other one isn't. I'm not even sure if this is a slippery slope argument.
Both forms of communication are frequently owned by private companies, so one can't argue that private companies can do whatever they want. Private companies can only do what they are legally entitled to do. You might say this brings to light the question: if cell phone communications via private companies are protected, why aren't our chats and emails? And since we have privacy settings, or rather the illusion of privacy, it isn't exactly like it is easily made apparent that our private correspondence is anything but private.
It isn't a slippery slope to point out what happens when one's illusion of privacy is invaded. We've seen countless examples of this over the years.
Thing is, Square remains profitable. FFXIII, as much as I think it's a pile of doggy doo-doo sold incredibly well and now has a sequel coming out. However Square is losing us gamers who want good gameplay AND good stories (stories about angsty, stereotyped 'teenagers 'spending lengthy bad drama sequences blaming each other for stupid things don't appeal to me, I'm talking about you, FFXIII).
I would say if they don't get it right soon, it's not that they will go broke, but the Final Fantasy line will be delegated to the likes of the Transformers film franchise. Brain-dead high budget movies that make their money on fancy visuals for the kids, while the rest of us who want a bit of a hearty meal rather than another plate of potato chips (made from pressed starch, not real potatoes) look elsewhere.
Actually I take that back, what has happened to Final Fantasy is maybe more akin to what Lucas did to Star Wars. He had something so ludicrously profitable that he could make three genuinely terrible high budget films and still make a killing off of them, while retaining the popularity of the franchise.
I don't even care about nostalgia. I just want solid RPGs that are enjoyable to play. FFX for example wasn't perfect, but it had a fast-paced battle system and went out of its way to keep things varied and hold my interest with everything from the in-battle character swapping, the constant banter of the characters, the grid system that let you plan char development in advance, little touches like a wide variety of battle music.. so it succeeded in holding my attention. (It did the minigame thing far better than VII IMO). At least that game had some substance to it. And it did fairly well overall in terms of reception and response. FFXIII though... shudder.
Hardware indeed. It's not even just the specs, it's the quality control. After 15 years of attempting to record and produce music/sound design on PCs, I've had nothing but problems with piss poor hardware, chipsets (making the simple act of recording audio often fraught with difficulty), horrid firewire implementation, and stability. Things that gamers (of which I am one but not exclusively) would never notice. Since buying a Mac, I've never had a problem. Software side, OSX has lots of useful features built right into the OS, like the ability to send MIDI time sync over wifi. There's lots of reasons most of us who create media content end up switching to Mac in the end. My troubleshooting time has dropped to a fraction of what it was when I created content on PCs.
Actually I take it back. PCs are good. I like PCs because their inferior quality control keepeth me gainfully employed:
I administer about ~80 PCs (laptops and desktops, HPs, Lenovos and Dells) at my day job (and have been for about 7 years now) We also have about ~30 Macs that are used pretty much every day for media creation. I can unequivocally say that in my experience we've usually had to give away our mac hardware or recycle it once it gets to be about 7-8 years old. It refuses to die. I've lost count of the number of PCs that we've had bizarre hardware problems on right out of the box, and I can't remember the last time we had to send a Mac back for servicing. I'm pretty sure we did once, but it's pretty rare.
"Society recognizes important biological functions of women like pregnancy and makes allowances for them, even though they may have a real and detrimental impact on their companies and coworkers. Why shouldn't we tolerate the actions of men that may be detrimental to some coworkers?"
Let's break down this analogy into it's components.
1. Woman getting pregnant, takes sick leave. Replaced by temporary replacement, comes back to company weeks or months later depending on location. Loss to company==rather minimal, perhaps some training for replacement. Long term net gain to company==greater than short term loss. Good relations between company and experienced employee, employee, contributes to a good work environment and relations.
2. "actions of men that may be detrimental" by this I assume you mean repeatedly hitting on women after they have said no or other kinds of harassment. It's simple intent, cause and effect and consequence. The man is directly and willingly causing discomfort to a co-worker when he does not have to. Being pregnant is not harassing fellow co-workers after they have said no. It is not touching them inappropriately. It is not directed at anyone. Someone harassing someone else is not comparable in any way to a woman being pregnant.
"Making a joke, flirting, having "inappropriate" screensavers.. all of that leads to men being terminated when it's actually rather harmless."
Actually no it's not things like that in themselves, I've seen plenty of work environments with such things happening all the time. It's when they go beyond the borders of tolerability and start to more or less bully others who have typically usually already asked that the harassment cease.
"How you connect something like that to lack of free will is beyond me. Similarly, men can obviously stop themselves from flirting, making suggestive eye contact, watching girls walk by, etc. But they still want to. Why shouldn't they be allowed to?"
Once again a good chunk of the above activities can be done in ways that don't actually harass the other person. It's really easy to do if the guy actually cares at all at how his actions affect others. Otherwise he comes off as a social troglodyte.
Men's traits can absolutely provide benefits to society but they still have to be tempered with intelligence and awareness. Aggressiveness in itself is a neutral thing, it can be constructive or destructive, it depends on how it is directed. Also, not all men are aggressive, and a lot of women are naturally quite aggressive. There's rules of thumb for the sexes but they are bell curve averages, not iron-clad rules.
I pointed out two obvious ad hominem statements and denying them doesn't mean they aren't there. Firstly, which branch of feminism are you concocting a straw man of? Sex-positive feminism, the kind that in many ways contributed to the legality of sex work and pornography? Second-wave feminism, the kind that brought to light the false popular belief that women did not have orgasms? Or how about the suffragettes that fought for the right to vote?
If you're running the 100 meter sprint and the person in the lane next to you has to run 150 meters just because she's a woman, you've no reason to feel proud of the chevrons you've earned, and when you decry the other person as entitled because the crowd says 'Boo! Unfair! Give her a 50-meter head start!" you've not a leg to stand on. The only bias that exists right now is a bias that makes women have to work twice as hard as men to get anywhere. Denying it does not make the mountain of empirical evidence that shows it exists, not exist, any less. It's as plain as day to the rest of us that it exists. Even this entire board is full of expressions of that systemic bias: men who think women owe them sex, men who think women still belong in the kitchen, men who think it's perfectly ok to harass women, while women are sexually abused and harassed at rates far higher than men. Women are discouraged from getting anywhere throughout their lives. It is systemic. That is reality. Because you have not had to endure it does not make it cease to exist.
You're also forgetting that it is both men and women who have come to these conclusions, because we have seen the evidence, rather than getting all childish and prissy when evidence offends our sensibilities (like Intelligent Designers). Men still frequently run the higher-up positions that make the kinds of decisions that impact women. Women by far are not in the majority of higher leadership roles.
Until the race is fair your cries come of suspiciously like "let them eat cake."
If you're arguing there's a multiplicity of issues then yes of course there is. It's perfectly possible to hit on someone and not have it be harassment, if both are OK with it. It's absolutely possible to glimpse at someone whose totally hot without staring at them like a creep. A simple 'good morning!' can work wonders. There's a huge difference between that and the extremes of harassment.
What this argument forgets is that there are two human beings involved. If someone is hitting on a female and she has clearly said 'No' and expressed her discomfort, when he continues to hit on her, he reveals this: 1. That he really does not care less that he makes her uncomfortable, therefore why on earth would she want to have anything to do with him? 2. By continuing to make her uncomfortable, he is revealing that it is all about his own personal gratification, hence, he is using her. In other words, he is not empathizing with the woman, just projecting himself.
Also, in saying that men must be free to do the above, you're claiming that men really cannot help themselves in the face of their urges, which is basically claiming that men cannot control themselves, that is, they have no free will. Fact is, the majority of men and women do agree that they both can control themselves. That is why we now have laws regarding harassment, and we have laws that issue restraining orders. At the same time neuroscience has demonstrated that there are a percentage of people who are missing the part of their brains that allow them to understand how their actions affect others or those areas of the brain are severely reduced--we call these personality disorders. All the more reason to have protection from those kind of people.
Lastly, when a woman can't be expected to get anywhere in life except by sleeping with guys, she is indeed being used as a sexual object, because the kind of guys who treat her that way really don't give a rat's feces about her as a human being, they simply expect her to give them pleasure. Once again, claiming that this is what makes a man a man and a woman a woman is a false claim, because that is not actually how all men and women behave. Still though there is enough men out there who treat women this way that it is a very common problem.. they fail to realize that one can appreciate attractive women without using them or making them feel uncomfortable, but they fail to realize this because they don't actually care about what the women feel, they only really care about themselves, and it's as clear as day to everyone else.
That argument about pregnancy is a faulty analogy, because a job exists to provide mutual benefit between employer and employee--employers invest time and training and benefits into their employees in the hope they will stay around and contribute to the company. Harassment only exists because it is a one way street that gratifies the one doing the harassment.
The saddest thing is, knowing as many female victims as I do, and knowing how high the percentages are, your comment tells me you place your own emotional comfort above the real physical discomfort women endure
You have only dodged my argument and facts by employing an obvious logical fallacy, you took offense when called out on your logical fallacy and claim your taking offense 'proves' that men have it rough. Your tactics are identical to that of fundamentalist creationists who take offense and claim the science world us out to get them, when called out on their obvious fallacies and denial of facts. Until you have the ability to refute my facts directly rather than dodge them by playing the victim card, you do not have an argument.
Sums up what? A girl wearing a tshirt is exactly how the same as the iron clad evidence showing the high rates of sexual harassment, and worse, employment inequality, etc?
Nice attempt to change the subject by employing an obvious argument from ridicule btw.
Love how you once again try to make the Piltdown man into something that it is not, when it was publicly discredited so long ago, and was already under suspicion because it didn't even fit into evolutionary models.. of course you can find people who wrote phds on the subject.. big deal.. evolutionary theory does not, and never hinged on the existence of the Piltdown man, a few theses written on it mean nothing other than that scientists were doing their jobs exploring every nook and cranny.. or some scientists like the hoax's creator were more profiteers than scientists.. man these fallacious arguments are so old and tired...
You seem to be confusing people, politics and human nature with scientific methodology to prove a point that is obvious-- there's lots of corrupt opportunistic human beings out there, there are fanatics and fundies, liars with agendas, and crackpots. That's why we have the tool of the scientific method to weed the nonsense from the useful facts. If science disproves and discards, that is because it is doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing. Even the methodology itself changes with time, such is the job of philosophy and critical analysis.
Interesting, I wonder if it largely depends on the location, after all liberal and conservative can mean quite different things depending on where you are.
No, the AC is saying men cannot control themselves. That's the lack of free will bit. It's not just rape, it can be harassment, really, any idiotic behaviour from some guy who claims he cannot 'help himself'. There's s huge difference between asking someone out on a date and acting like a douchebag.
Secondly what I mean is, I know what it means to have a high drive, and guess what, I don't blame women just because I get turned on, nor do I harass them or annoy them. I make no excuses for men who do either.
There's nothing wrong with asking someone out on a date. There's everything wrong with treating other human beings with disrespect and using them as objects for one's own gratification. Urges are no excuse.
I've a low tolerance for logical fallacies. Science is about falsifiability. It's about finding models that work better than other models. That some might treat it as a religion is human nature, not science. Also, if it moves slowly that is because it is cautious and methodical.
I have a low tolerance for obvious logical fallacies and misrepresentation. For example the ad hominems, the tu quoque in claiming AGW is false because Al Gore lives in a big house, is irrelevant to whether AGW is true or false. I've never watched his movie because scientific journalism does not appeal to me. I read studies. Second fallacy, appeal to false authority. What Al Gore thinks is irrelevant to whether AGW is true or not.
Final fallacy, misreading Climategate, an error that is trivial in the face of the whole and has no impact in the bulk of evidence, something that AGW deniers have blown into a mountain. Anyway this debate is pointless. Straw men of scientific methodology, of theories, and fallacies and conspiracy theories and are boring. I've better things to do.
Yep, that's how it works with humans, sad but true. All things being equal it amazes me everyday that the majority of us aren't out skinning each other alive and beating each other over the head with sticks to solve problems. Maybe humanity slowly learns something? I await, with baited breath.
Assuming that a woman dressed in a certain way is sending a 'mating signal' basically reveals that you think men have no free will whatsoever. You speak for sociopaths who cannot control themselves, not for me.
You clearly remain wilfuly uninformed on the issue by belittling the sexual assault problem, considering the ridiculously high percentage of women who are raped and sexually assaulted. I assume that the reason you remain uninformed on the issue is that you actually don't care less, and want to blame women, for your assumptions of what 'men' are and your assumptions of a male lack of simple self control,
When you use the word 'men' you assume that males have no free will whatsoever, that they are absolutely helpless when confronted by some girl who looks sexy. You assume provocation, much like a medieval nitwit assumes that because the stranger entered the village during the neap tide and Aunti Emma's crops died, clearly it is the fault of the STRANGER and her WITCHCRAFT.
As someone who is both male and hypersexual, I find this kind of presupposition laughable. Blaming others for one's own personal issues is what sociopaths do. If you want to be a 'real man' then take responsiblilty for your own issues and stop blaming women for your own ineptitude and lack of self control,
Of course people were correct in criticizing the piltdown man. It's scientifically inaccurate. Therefore it was scientifically discarded. That's how scientific methodology works.
"How can one begin to understand that it was wrong when only a few had access to ALL the data on the damn thing?"
A fallacious argument given that Creationists still use it as proof, decades later, and well the information is at our fingertips now, and even before the internet there was a plethora of information available at one's local library. The error made by creationists is in assuming that evolutionary theory in any way hinged on it, or that it was even relevant. The entire creationist appropriation of the 'piltdown man' turns an inconsequential molehill into a mountain.
Mandarin is a perfect analogy in the context in which I used it. Evolutionary theories do indeed have a structure. A lazy outsider who cannot be bothered to take the time to understand the structure is liable to cherry pick and draw fallacious conclusions from a lack of understanding of the structure. Ignorance of a theory does not justify bad arguments. If one is ignorant of a subject, all the better reason to restrain one's self until one takes the time to come to a better grasp of an argument. AGW is a perfect example. The internet is at your fingertips and an understanding of scientific methodology is but a few clicks away. There is no excuse nowadays for scientific ignorance other than that of laziness. I put in the work by myself on my own time and anyone else can too. The 'ivory tower' is a fallacious genetic ad hominem fallacy, also known as an intellectual lie, the hallmark of the Creationist.
I think you might be inventing my straw man, by inventing an argument I never said. My criticism was of Creationists and their fallacious arguments, nothing more. Nowhere in my argument did I even mention the word 'Christianity', and I'm curious as to why you saw what wasn't there. I've plenty of friends who embrace different religious faiths including Christianity, from many backgrounds and across the political spectrum, and they embrace the sciences as well. I'm well aware of your arguments.
Personally, I have after many years found no value or use for the majority of the tenants of Christianity in my life, other than perhaps some of its philosophy.. the golden rule for example, although to be fair it is present in most religions and cultures worldwide and dates back through recorded history.
Sometimes there are a multiplicity of positions on an issue and sometimes there are not. For example there is no middle ground between creationism and evolutionary theory. The two are incompatible. One can believe in God and Evolution, but no creationist would accept that kind of belief. The peer-reviewed widespread scientific consensus on man-made global warming is another example, one can argue the details and the effects but the theory is established. When empirical evidence is denied due to ideology, there is no middle ground.
I've noticed that from time to time some Liberals do indeed exhibit the same kind of behaviour as the Creationists I grew up with. It likewise shows up in their arguments, the same 'plot holes', er, fallacies so to speak.
After moving from a profoundly conservative climate to a profoundly liberal climate I have certainly noticed though, that there are overall differences that cannot be denied. In Liberal circles, peer review and empirical evidence is far more valued.. You won't find Conservatives in my country running around standing up for gay kids who are being bullied because they do not experience empathy with these kids, they think they are 'sick' and will ignore what is happening. You won't find them taking the time to understand climate change or proper management of natural resources, rather, when peer-reviewed science conflicts with their ideology, they fire all the climate scientists and the environmentalists who warn that if we don't manage our fisheries we will be out of fish. In many ways I see far more similarities with that kind of behaviour and my old Creationist circles.
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There's a lot of misunderstanding pertaining to the phrase 'cultural relativism' floating about. It's original intent was very specific and had nothing to do with 'moral relativism' either.
A brief intro read on the subject, worth a glance as it leads to other interesting readings. You can indeed arrive at a 'universal' sense of morals through logical processes. However this does not mean that humanity will keel over and accept it. (Slightly off topic even the US has yet to ratify certain wartime treaties that nearly every other country in the world has ratified.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_relativism#Comparison_to_moral_relativism
As a starting point, humanity does share the 'golden rule' as an idea, as it has been observed across cultures throughout recorded history. Of course this rule never applied globally, but only to one's immediate tribe, and still within the confines of that particular culture.
As Bob Page says, "their... ethical inflexibility has allowed us to make progress in areas they refuse to consider." (a quote from the opening of Deus Ex that has stayed with me over the years). As a side note, the military has been using performance-enhancing drugs like dextroamphetamine for decades so in a way there is nothing new here. When it comes down to the crunch, humans will use any enhancement they can get their hands on. Competition driving technological development.
When we have the technology, we've the desire to test it out, see what it can do, see what its effects are. From a purely practical standpoint this would be the driving reason -why-. Much like how in racing, it isn't just skill, it's also the engineering that is being tested.
This may sound strangely immoral, and I agree the morals can be debated, but I don't think the answers will turn out to be as simple as 'doping is always wrong' (queue controversial studies about caffeine and athleticism) or alternately 'well the athletes are consenting' (when you factor in potential societal pressures, long term side effects and other things--for example fighting in hockey is always under debate, as it is an expectation from some of the fans, but is over time being documented as causing a lot of harm both physically and psychologically to the players, aka the hockey suicides over the past couple years).
Laws, legality, morality, perception of right and wrong sadly don't always line up so well. It's true that Facebook and other services give us the illusion of privacy, doesn't mean we actually have it.
The slippery slope, as a fallacy, implies that two unrelated things, X and Y can lead from one to the other through a series of intermediary steps. Gay marriage is about consenting adults having the right to make the choice to marry as consenting adults. Therefore it is fallacious to draw a slippery slope comparison to it leading to necrophila as dead people cannot consent. This slippery slope is usually drawn by people who find homosexuality to be against their moral standards and hence they claim that tolerance of one 'immoral' thing is a slippery slope that will lead to other 'immoral' practices being tolerated. From our perspective, this is fallacious, because the argument is about the rights of consenting adults to live together and look after each other as they wish. From their perspective, they see, moral slippage.
A fallacy is only a fallacy when the conclusion is not supported by the premise. A slippery slope does not always have to be fallacious and does not automatically lose the argument--if it can be proven that all the intermediary steps link. In this case, the poster is only responding to the claim that since private companies do not have to respect our privacy rights, they can do anything they want with our data. This is of course incorrect because one form of communication is protected by law and the other one isn't. I'm not even sure if this is a slippery slope argument.
Both forms of communication are frequently owned by private companies, so one can't argue that private companies can do whatever they want. Private companies can only do what they are legally entitled to do. You might say this brings to light the question: if cell phone communications via private companies are protected, why aren't our chats and emails? And since we have privacy settings, or rather the illusion of privacy, it isn't exactly like it is easily made apparent that our private correspondence is anything but private.
It isn't a slippery slope to point out what happens when one's illusion of privacy is invaded. We've seen countless examples of this over the years.
'company that owns the means of communication'
So Google has the right to monitor your chats and emails?
'the government would be monitoring the service you run as well'
Without a warrant?
..on Facebook outsourcing moderation of content. Chat isn't such a stretch from this.
http://yro.slashdot.org/index2.pl?fhfilter=worst+paid+job+on+facebook
Thing is, Square remains profitable. FFXIII, as much as I think it's a pile of doggy doo-doo sold incredibly well and now has a sequel coming out. However Square is losing us gamers who want good gameplay AND good stories (stories about angsty, stereotyped 'teenagers 'spending lengthy bad drama sequences blaming each other for stupid things don't appeal to me, I'm talking about you, FFXIII).
I would say if they don't get it right soon, it's not that they will go broke, but the Final Fantasy line will be delegated to the likes of the Transformers film franchise. Brain-dead high budget movies that make their money on fancy visuals for the kids, while the rest of us who want a bit of a hearty meal rather than another plate of potato chips (made from pressed starch, not real potatoes) look elsewhere.
Actually I take that back, what has happened to Final Fantasy is maybe more akin to what Lucas did to Star Wars. He had something so ludicrously profitable that he could make three genuinely terrible high budget films and still make a killing off of them, while retaining the popularity of the franchise.
I don't even care about nostalgia. I just want solid RPGs that are enjoyable to play. FFX for example wasn't perfect, but it had a fast-paced battle system and went out of its way to keep things varied and hold my interest with everything from the in-battle character swapping, the constant banter of the characters, the grid system that let you plan char development in advance, little touches like a wide variety of battle music.. so it succeeded in holding my attention. (It did the minigame thing far better than VII IMO). At least that game had some substance to it. And it did fairly well overall in terms of reception and response. FFXIII though... shudder.
Hardware indeed. It's not even just the specs, it's the quality control. After 15 years of attempting to record and produce music/sound design on PCs, I've had nothing but problems with piss poor hardware, chipsets (making the simple act of recording audio often fraught with difficulty), horrid firewire implementation, and stability. Things that gamers (of which I am one but not exclusively) would never notice. Since buying a Mac, I've never had a problem. Software side, OSX has lots of useful features built right into the OS, like the ability to send MIDI time sync over wifi. There's lots of reasons most of us who create media content end up switching to Mac in the end. My troubleshooting time has dropped to a fraction of what it was when I created content on PCs.
Actually I take it back. PCs are good. I like PCs because their inferior quality control keepeth me gainfully employed:
I administer about ~80 PCs (laptops and desktops, HPs, Lenovos and Dells) at my day job (and have been for about 7 years now) We also have about ~30 Macs that are used pretty much every day for media creation. I can unequivocally say that in my experience we've usually had to give away our mac hardware or recycle it once it gets to be about 7-8 years old. It refuses to die. I've lost count of the number of PCs that we've had bizarre hardware problems on right out of the box, and I can't remember the last time we had to send a Mac back for servicing. I'm pretty sure we did once, but it's pretty rare.
"Society recognizes important biological functions of women like pregnancy and makes allowances for them, even though they may have a real and detrimental impact on their companies and coworkers. Why shouldn't we tolerate the actions of men that may be detrimental to some coworkers?"
Let's break down this analogy into it's components.
1. Woman getting pregnant, takes sick leave. Replaced by temporary replacement, comes back to company weeks or months later depending on location. Loss to company==rather minimal, perhaps some training for replacement. Long term net gain to company==greater than short term loss. Good relations between company and experienced employee, employee, contributes to a good work environment and relations.
2. "actions of men that may be detrimental" by this I assume you mean repeatedly hitting on women after they have said no or other kinds of harassment. It's simple intent, cause and effect and consequence. The man is directly and willingly causing discomfort to a co-worker when he does not have to. Being pregnant is not harassing fellow co-workers after they have said no. It is not touching them inappropriately. It is not directed at anyone. Someone harassing someone else is not comparable in any way to a woman being pregnant.
"Making a joke, flirting, having "inappropriate" screensavers.. all of that leads to men being terminated when it's actually rather harmless."
Actually no it's not things like that in themselves, I've seen plenty of work environments with such things happening all the time. It's when they go beyond the borders of tolerability and start to more or less bully others who have typically usually already asked that the harassment cease.
"How you connect something like that to lack of free will is beyond me. Similarly, men can obviously stop themselves from flirting, making suggestive eye contact, watching girls walk by, etc. But they still want to. Why shouldn't they be allowed to?"
Once again a good chunk of the above activities can be done in ways that don't actually harass the other person. It's really easy to do if the guy actually cares at all at how his actions affect others. Otherwise he comes off as a social troglodyte.
Men's traits can absolutely provide benefits to society but they still have to be tempered with intelligence and awareness. Aggressiveness in itself is a neutral thing, it can be constructive or destructive, it depends on how it is directed. Also, not all men are aggressive, and a lot of women are naturally quite aggressive. There's rules of thumb for the sexes but they are bell curve averages, not iron-clad rules.
I pointed out two obvious ad hominem statements and denying them doesn't mean they aren't there. Firstly, which branch of feminism are you concocting a straw man of? Sex-positive feminism, the kind that in many ways contributed to the legality of sex work and pornography? Second-wave feminism, the kind that brought to light the false popular belief that women did not have orgasms? Or how about the suffragettes that fought for the right to vote?
If you're running the 100 meter sprint and the person in the lane next to you has to run 150 meters just because she's a woman, you've no reason to feel proud of the chevrons you've earned, and when you decry the other person as entitled because the crowd says 'Boo! Unfair! Give her a 50-meter head start!" you've not a leg to stand on. The only bias that exists right now is a bias that makes women have to work twice as hard as men to get anywhere. Denying it does not make the mountain of empirical evidence that shows it exists, not exist, any less. It's as plain as day to the rest of us that it exists. Even this entire board is full of expressions of that systemic bias: men who think women owe them sex, men who think women still belong in the kitchen, men who think it's perfectly ok to harass women, while women are sexually abused and harassed at rates far higher than men. Women are discouraged from getting anywhere throughout their lives. It is systemic. That is reality. Because you have not had to endure it does not make it cease to exist.
You're also forgetting that it is both men and women who have come to these conclusions, because we have seen the evidence, rather than getting all childish and prissy when evidence offends our sensibilities (like Intelligent Designers). Men still frequently run the higher-up positions that make the kinds of decisions that impact women. Women by far are not in the majority of higher leadership roles.
Until the race is fair your cries come of suspiciously like "let them eat cake."
If you're arguing there's a multiplicity of issues then yes of course there is. It's perfectly possible to hit on someone and not have it be harassment, if both are OK with it. It's absolutely possible to glimpse at someone whose totally hot without staring at them like a creep. A simple 'good morning!' can work wonders. There's a huge difference between that and the extremes of harassment.
What this argument forgets is that there are two human beings involved. If someone is hitting on a female and she has clearly said 'No' and expressed her discomfort, when he continues to hit on her, he reveals this: 1. That he really does not care less that he makes her uncomfortable, therefore why on earth would she want to have anything to do with him? 2. By continuing to make her uncomfortable, he is revealing that it is all about his own personal gratification, hence, he is using her. In other words, he is not empathizing with the woman, just projecting himself.
Also, in saying that men must be free to do the above, you're claiming that men really cannot help themselves in the face of their urges, which is basically claiming that men cannot control themselves, that is, they have no free will. Fact is, the majority of men and women do agree that they both can control themselves. That is why we now have laws regarding harassment, and we have laws that issue restraining orders. At the same time neuroscience has demonstrated that there are a percentage of people who are missing the part of their brains that allow them to understand how their actions affect others or those areas of the brain are severely reduced--we call these personality disorders. All the more reason to have protection from those kind of people.
Lastly, when a woman can't be expected to get anywhere in life except by sleeping with guys, she is indeed being used as a sexual object, because the kind of guys who treat her that way really don't give a rat's feces about her as a human being, they simply expect her to give them pleasure. Once again, claiming that this is what makes a man a man and a woman a woman is a false claim, because that is not actually how all men and women behave. Still though there is enough men out there who treat women this way that it is a very common problem.. they fail to realize that one can appreciate attractive women without using them or making them feel uncomfortable, but they fail to realize this because they don't actually care about what the women feel, they only really care about themselves, and it's as clear as day to everyone else.
That argument about pregnancy is a faulty analogy, because a job exists to provide mutual benefit between employer and employee--employers invest time and training and benefits into their employees in the hope they will stay around and contribute to the company. Harassment only exists because it is a one way street that gratifies the one doing the harassment.
The saddest thing is, knowing as many female victims as I do, and knowing how high the percentages are, your comment tells me you place your own emotional comfort above the real physical discomfort women endure
You have only dodged my argument and facts by employing an obvious logical fallacy, you took offense when called out on your logical fallacy and claim your taking offense 'proves' that men have it rough. Your tactics are identical to that of fundamentalist creationists who take offense and claim the science world us out to get them, when called out on their obvious fallacies and denial of facts. Until you have the ability to refute my facts directly rather than dodge them by playing the victim card, you do not have an argument.
Sums up what? A girl wearing a tshirt is exactly how the same as the iron clad evidence showing the high rates of sexual harassment, and worse, employment inequality, etc?
Nice attempt to change the subject by employing an obvious argument from ridicule btw.
Love how you once again try to make the Piltdown man into something that it is not, when it was publicly discredited so long ago, and was already under suspicion because it didn't even fit into evolutionary models.. of course you can find people who wrote phds on the subject.. big deal.. evolutionary theory does not, and never hinged on the existence of the Piltdown man, a few theses written on it mean nothing other than that scientists were doing their jobs exploring every nook and cranny.. or some scientists like the hoax's creator were more profiteers than scientists.. man these fallacious arguments are so old and tired...
You seem to be confusing people, politics and human nature with scientific methodology to prove a point that is obvious-- there's lots of corrupt opportunistic human beings out there, there are fanatics and fundies, liars with agendas, and crackpots. That's why we have the tool of the scientific method to weed the nonsense from the useful facts. If science disproves and discards, that is because it is doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing. Even the methodology itself changes with time, such is the job of philosophy and critical analysis.
Interesting, I wonder if it largely depends on the location, after all liberal and conservative can mean quite different things depending on where you are.
Interesting, thanks for posting, every now and then I hear from someone with a similar experience..
No, the AC is saying men cannot control themselves. That's the lack of free will bit. It's not just rape, it can be harassment, really, any idiotic behaviour from some guy who claims he cannot 'help himself'. There's s huge difference between asking someone out on a date and acting like a douchebag.
Secondly what I mean is, I know what it means to have a high drive, and guess what, I don't blame women just because I get turned on, nor do I harass them or annoy them. I make no excuses for men who do either.
There's nothing wrong with asking someone out on a date. There's everything wrong with treating other human beings with disrespect and using them as objects for one's own gratification. Urges are no excuse.
I've a low tolerance for logical fallacies. Science is about falsifiability. It's about finding models that work better than other models. That some might treat it as a religion is human nature, not science. Also, if it moves slowly that is because it is cautious and methodical.
I have a low tolerance for obvious logical fallacies and misrepresentation. For example the ad hominems, the tu quoque in claiming AGW is false because Al Gore lives in a big house, is irrelevant to whether AGW is true or false. I've never watched his movie because scientific journalism does not appeal to me. I read studies. Second fallacy, appeal to false authority. What Al Gore thinks is irrelevant to whether AGW is true or not.
Final fallacy, misreading Climategate, an error that is trivial in the face of the whole and has no impact in the bulk of evidence, something that AGW deniers have blown into a mountain. Anyway this debate is pointless. Straw men of scientific methodology, of theories, and fallacies and conspiracy theories and are boring. I've better things to do.
Yep, that's how it works with humans, sad but true. All things being equal it amazes me everyday that the majority of us aren't out skinning each other alive and beating each other over the head with sticks to solve problems. Maybe humanity slowly learns something? I await, with baited breath.
Assuming that a woman dressed in a certain way is sending a 'mating signal' basically reveals that you think men have no free will whatsoever. You speak for sociopaths who cannot control themselves, not for me.
You clearly remain wilfuly uninformed on the issue by belittling the sexual assault problem, considering the ridiculously high percentage of women who are raped and sexually assaulted. I assume that the reason you remain uninformed on the issue is that you actually don't care less, and want to blame women, for your assumptions of what 'men' are and your assumptions of a male lack of simple self control,
When you use the word 'men' you assume that males have no free will whatsoever, that they are absolutely helpless when confronted by some girl who looks sexy. You assume provocation, much like a medieval nitwit assumes that because the stranger entered the village during the neap tide and Aunti Emma's crops died, clearly it is the fault of the STRANGER and her WITCHCRAFT.
As someone who is both male and hypersexual, I find this kind of presupposition laughable. Blaming others for one's own personal issues is what sociopaths do. If you want to be a 'real man' then take responsiblilty for your own issues and stop blaming women for your own ineptitude and lack of self control,
Of course people were correct in criticizing the piltdown man. It's scientifically inaccurate. Therefore it was scientifically discarded. That's how scientific methodology works.
"How can one begin to understand that it was wrong when only a few had access to ALL the data on the damn thing?"
A fallacious argument given that Creationists still use it as proof, decades later, and well the information is at our fingertips now, and even before the internet there was a plethora of information available at one's local library. The error made by creationists is in assuming that evolutionary theory in any way hinged on it, or that it was even relevant. The entire creationist appropriation of the 'piltdown man' turns an inconsequential molehill into a mountain.
Mandarin is a perfect analogy in the context in which I used it. Evolutionary theories do indeed have a structure. A lazy outsider who cannot be bothered to take the time to understand the structure is liable to cherry pick and draw fallacious conclusions from a lack of understanding of the structure. Ignorance of a theory does not justify bad arguments. If one is ignorant of a subject, all the better reason to restrain one's self until one takes the time to come to a better grasp of an argument. AGW is a perfect example. The internet is at your fingertips and an understanding of scientific methodology is but a few clicks away. There is no excuse nowadays for scientific ignorance other than that of laziness. I put in the work by myself on my own time and anyone else can too. The 'ivory tower' is a fallacious genetic ad hominem fallacy, also known as an intellectual lie, the hallmark of the Creationist.
I think you might be inventing my straw man, by inventing an argument I never said. My criticism was of Creationists and their fallacious arguments, nothing more. Nowhere in my argument did I even mention the word 'Christianity', and I'm curious as to why you saw what wasn't there. I've plenty of friends who embrace different religious faiths including Christianity, from many backgrounds and across the political spectrum, and they embrace the sciences as well. I'm well aware of your arguments.
Personally, I have after many years found no value or use for the majority of the tenants of Christianity in my life, other than perhaps some of its philosophy.. the golden rule for example, although to be fair it is present in most religions and cultures worldwide and dates back through recorded history.
Sometimes there are a multiplicity of positions on an issue and sometimes there are not. For example there is no middle ground between creationism and evolutionary theory. The two are incompatible. One can believe in God and Evolution, but no creationist would accept that kind of belief. The peer-reviewed widespread scientific consensus on man-made global warming is another example, one can argue the details and the effects but the theory is established. When empirical evidence is denied due to ideology, there is no middle ground.
I've noticed that from time to time some Liberals do indeed exhibit the same kind of behaviour as the Creationists I grew up with. It likewise shows up in their arguments, the same 'plot holes', er, fallacies so to speak.
After moving from a profoundly conservative climate to a profoundly liberal climate I have certainly noticed though, that there are overall differences that cannot be denied. In Liberal circles, peer review and empirical evidence is far more valued.. You won't find Conservatives in my country running around standing up for gay kids who are being bullied because they do not experience empathy with these kids, they think they are 'sick' and will ignore what is happening. You won't find them taking the time to understand climate change or proper management of natural resources, rather, when peer-reviewed science conflicts with their ideology, they fire all the climate scientists and the environmentalists who warn that if we don't manage our fisheries we will be out of fish. In many ways I see far more similarities with that kind of behaviour and my old Creationist circles.