To clarify my point - the incident was that my workmate's flatmate was dumped by his girlfriend for a boy ("Mike"). He entered his status on his facebook account as "I want to kill Mike". She saw it, and showed Mike. A month and a half later he called the police because the flatmate accused him of being a drug dealer.
The point here is that if Mike was genuinely frightened or distressed (i.e. if the flatmate was a violent man who had killed before and owned a gun), then phoning the police would be the right thing to do. But the motive seems to have been "Oh, why can't you get over it and leave us alone... I'll teach you", which makes it a missuse of police time. In some instances, the motive could even be to perpetrate harassment (i.e. "Whoo-hoo, you've said a dumb thing, it's just hot air, but I'm going to get you a visit from the police"). So the action of complaining about "harassment" is actually an act of harrassment.
So how can you eliminate the impact on the victim as a factor? Because you'll never outlaw people from writing (or saying) idiotic things, and nor should you try.
The essay raises some excellent points - and from a psychological point of view, the basic argument seems sound. But... I'm curious as to how harassment/bullying laws (of any sort) could work if the distress of the victim was not taken into account? And wouldn't it create another problem if it was not - I could claim that I was being harassed if someone reply to this that I was an idiot and I should kill myself, even though it would affect me not one little bit. This means that people could sue for harrassment where they had suffered absolutly no harm or detriment at all. And if there isn't harm then is it really a crime?
BTW, a workmate's house was visited by the police because her flatmate had made a claim on his net program which resulted in a warrent issue for the house to be raided. His computer and mobile phone was confiscated. So that's my first experience in this type of thing (in Australia).
Men are more likely to choose more violent means, but women are much more likely to suffer from major depression, bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder (the big three for suicide apart from physical pain associated with diseases). Women are also much more likely to seek help (professional or otherwise) or have supportive social networks. So women try more often, but fail more often.
So the collector had resisted the temptation to view the poem? I wasn't quite clear about that. I once went to an exhibit which had a parcel (wrapped up) from the 1920's which hadn't been opened due to the death of the person to whom it was intended. The person was famous, although I had never heard of her and don't recall the name. It reminded me of Agrippa. It's not the contents that matter, it's the decision (if you owned the parcel or the disc) of do I open it or not. I, of course wouldn't have been able to resist. So hat's off (maybe) to the fortitude of the collector.
Maybe you can answer this question. I'm having a lot of difficulty finding details about this protest. It can't seriously be a FOUR HOUR protest? I'm trying to encourage friends, family and collegues to go, but there is no way that people in Brisbane (which is in the middle of a heat wave) are going to be standing around on a Saturday in the sun for that long. Should I tell them they can drop in at some point between 11.00 and 3.00 and sign a petition? Or is there a march? I've gone to the GetUP website but can't find anything so a link would be good if you know of one.
Here in Australia, some child support agencies are coming out against the filtering, so that will help reduce the "protesters are paedophile sympathisers" taint. Their main point is that child support is very underfunded and, since the overwhelming majority of child sexual abuse happens in the home, and the filtering won't really work anyway, the money being spent on this falls into the ineffective "we need to be seen to be doing something" basket.
Yes, because artists like Trent Reznor can find ways to avoid record companies because they already have a considerable fan base and resources to do this. The problem is that the record companies sucked too hard for too long and got used to ripping off the public and artists alike.
Your comment that the "argument that people "check out" the music via torrents then for some reason reacquire the music via legit means" is not really valid is absolutely correct, particularly when it comes to songs with high novelty and low longevity. Their appeal exhausts long before you bother to buy the CD.
That might be true if the balance of power between the artists and the record executives was equitable, but the way things stand most young bands would agree to sticking their heads in mucky water and being used as a mop if it meant they could get a contract. As for merchandising as another source of revenue, apart from the odd t-shirt bough by the die-hard, who buys that crap?
Re:Halfway through the book, and ...
on
Anathem
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· Score: 1
But why bother making up a word like "Fraa" when "Brother" is a perfectly good English word? It smacks of poor 1940s sci-fi when everyone's name began with "Z" and every device had a "-tron" or "-ator" stuck on the end just to make it sound spacey. It irritates me no end. Gibson (who used to be my favourite sci-fi writer) has become unreadable because of all the invented jargon. Occasionally, it is necessary, but alot of the time it's just poor writing.
Re:Nerds will be nerds
on
American Nerd
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· Score: 1
"Nerds... don't care about their image"
But nerds all dress nerd-style! Surely it must be planned? I mean they can't all simultaneously dress the same by coincidence can they? Please explain.
Yes, what a nonsense he has created by using the word "soul" and then saying it's synonomous with consciousness. A soul (from the Oxford English dictionary) is "The spiritual or immaterial part of the human being often regarded as immortal". Consciousness is not immaterial, spiritual or immortal - it is an emeregnt property of the human brain. Sure, if we take apart the human brain we'll get a pile of grey matter, a pile of neurons and so on, but we'll never get a pile of consciousness. But if we take apart a car we'll never get a bucket of speed, either. This doesn't mean that speed (or consciousness) can't be measured and accounted for in terms of material science - which a soul couldn't be. The brain is a perceptual organ, which percieves information from the body and the environment; consciousness is the brains' perception of a subset of it's own operation, a sort of meta-perception, if you like. It's not mysterious. Between biological reductionism (we can't see consciousness under a microscope so it's not material) and mumbo jumbo (if we can't see it under a microscope it must be oooo-eeee-ooooo...) is sense. Of course a computer could have consciousness if it had the range of perceptual abilities humans had. Lordy, I can't cope with mystics.
The problem of America to people outside America is that while you are just a country like any other, you are so big economically that decisions made by your government and corporations affect our lives. Yet we have utterly no power to change your goverment in terms of the ballot box. We took a great deal of interest in your election, it was constantly in our news and we watched the results come in. That never happens with any other election anywhere and in itself shows how the whole world is, in some ways, living in America, even when we aren't. This is probably why so many people world dislike the US - you appear (like every other country) to be self-obsessed, and only interested in your own gains (and again, that's like most countries most of the time). Couple this with the fact that the rest of us are in some way or other ruled by you and we arrive at US=arrogance.
I hasten to add that, of course, individual Americans are just like the rest of us. It's the gestalt.
Well, I would feel sympathy if someone got robbed, even if they left their door open. Just because a victim was an easy target doesn't diminish that for me. If fact the more vulnerable the victim, the greater my sympathy, in some ways. Idiots included.
So intelligence is a virtue now? And stupidity a vice? Seems like a lot of the comments I'm reading are the result of nerd-alienation-at-school-effect still lingers.
Agree, though, about the smuggling. And about the fact that she seems to have ripped off her family.
There seems to be confusion in these discussions about the difference between a "false belief" and a delusion. The ability to believe something which is not true is adaptive. We have self-protective psychological mechanisms (we're not all under our desks screaming about our impending deaths) and are geared to believe our perceptions ("That cup is red" not "That redness is an artifact of my visual system interacting with light waves"). Superstition and religion are not delusions, either. The human brain is so good at making causal links, but, lacking good information, garbage links are made. The religious and cultural beliefs of our society (micro as well as macro) define where this inate capacity goes in terms of outcome ("Jesus" not "Buddah", "Individualism is good" not "Collectivism is good") - but holding any of these beliefs does not make you deluded per se, even if they are false. And hence the need to exculude culturally specific beliefs from the delusion definition. If you are believing it against all explanation (there is nothing in my culture of upbringing to explain why I think that the mafia is after me) or if there is some perceptual malfunction ("The voices are telling me I'm a horse") then I meet part of the explanation of mental illness. (If my family was a mafia family, or some ritual in my religious culture explained my ability to become a horse, then I'm not). It's the plasticity of our minds that explains this.
Is the internet a "culture" in this sense when it comes to paranoid mind beliefs? I'd say not - it's a communication tool that allows people with similar delusions to link up. It should surprise no one that people who share a mental illness might like to get together, the same way that we all like to hang with those who are similar. But just because two people who think that Martians are trying to kill them sit together in the waiting room doesn't make them a culture which creates a plausible explanation for a delusion. I could read "car number plates are coded messages" stuff all day and not come to believe it.
The creation of these sites is potentially positive as well as negative. Sure, they allows a bunch of parasites to sell tin foil hats to vulnerable people, and the reinforcing effect is hardly helpful. On the other hand, the sites might be the one social network for some people - and social networks mean so very much in terms of people quality of life and psychological health.
Slashdot Mirror
To clarify my point - the incident was that my workmate's flatmate was dumped by his girlfriend for a boy ("Mike"). He entered his status on his facebook account as "I want to kill Mike". She saw it, and showed Mike. A month and a half later he called the police because the flatmate accused him of being a drug dealer. The point here is that if Mike was genuinely frightened or distressed (i.e. if the flatmate was a violent man who had killed before and owned a gun), then phoning the police would be the right thing to do. But the motive seems to have been "Oh, why can't you get over it and leave us alone ... I'll teach you", which makes it a missuse of police time. In some instances, the motive could even be to perpetrate harassment (i.e. "Whoo-hoo, you've said a dumb thing, it's just hot air, but I'm going to get you a visit from the police"). So the action of complaining about "harassment" is actually an act of harrassment.
So how can you eliminate the impact on the victim as a factor? Because you'll never outlaw people from writing (or saying) idiotic things, and nor should you try.
The essay raises some excellent points - and from a psychological point of view, the basic argument seems sound. But ... I'm curious as to how harassment/bullying laws (of any sort) could work if the distress of the victim was not taken into account? And wouldn't it create another problem if it was not - I could claim that I was being harassed if someone reply to this that I was an idiot and I should kill myself, even though it would affect me not one little bit. This means that people could sue for harrassment where they had suffered absolutly no harm or detriment at all. And if there isn't harm then is it really a crime?
BTW, a workmate's house was visited by the police because her flatmate had made a claim on his net program which resulted in a warrent issue for the house to be raided. His computer and mobile phone was confiscated. So that's my first experience in this type of thing (in Australia).
Men are more likely to choose more violent means, but women are much more likely to suffer from major depression, bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder (the big three for suicide apart from physical pain associated with diseases). Women are also much more likely to seek help (professional or otherwise) or have supportive social networks. So women try more often, but fail more often.
So the collector had resisted the temptation to view the poem? I wasn't quite clear about that. I once went to an exhibit which had a parcel (wrapped up) from the 1920's which hadn't been opened due to the death of the person to whom it was intended. The person was famous, although I had never heard of her and don't recall the name. It reminded me of Agrippa. It's not the contents that matter, it's the decision (if you owned the parcel or the disc) of do I open it or not. I, of course wouldn't have been able to resist. So hat's off (maybe) to the fortitude of the collector.
Maybe you can answer this question. I'm having a lot of difficulty finding details about this protest. It can't seriously be a FOUR HOUR protest? I'm trying to encourage friends, family and collegues to go, but there is no way that people in Brisbane (which is in the middle of a heat wave) are going to be standing around on a Saturday in the sun for that long. Should I tell them they can drop in at some point between 11.00 and 3.00 and sign a petition? Or is there a march? I've gone to the GetUP website but can't find anything so a link would be good if you know of one.
Here in Australia, some child support agencies are coming out against the filtering, so that will help reduce the "protesters are paedophile sympathisers" taint. Their main point is that child support is very underfunded and, since the overwhelming majority of child sexual abuse happens in the home, and the filtering won't really work anyway, the money being spent on this falls into the ineffective "we need to be seen to be doing something" basket.
You need to patent that process quick smart before McDonalds does.
Yes, because artists like Trent Reznor can find ways to avoid record companies because they already have a considerable fan base and resources to do this. The problem is that the record companies sucked too hard for too long and got used to ripping off the public and artists alike. Your comment that the "argument that people "check out" the music via torrents then for some reason reacquire the music via legit means" is not really valid is absolutely correct, particularly when it comes to songs with high novelty and low longevity. Their appeal exhausts long before you bother to buy the CD.
That might be true if the balance of power between the artists and the record executives was equitable, but the way things stand most young bands would agree to sticking their heads in mucky water and being used as a mop if it meant they could get a contract. As for merchandising as another source of revenue, apart from the odd t-shirt bough by the die-hard, who buys that crap?
But why bother making up a word like "Fraa" when "Brother" is a perfectly good English word? It smacks of poor 1940s sci-fi when everyone's name began with "Z" and every device had a "-tron" or "-ator" stuck on the end just to make it sound spacey. It irritates me no end. Gibson (who used to be my favourite sci-fi writer) has become unreadable because of all the invented jargon. Occasionally, it is necessary, but alot of the time it's just poor writing.
"Nerds ... don't care about their image"
But nerds all dress nerd-style! Surely it must be planned? I mean they can't all simultaneously dress the same by coincidence can they? Please explain.
Yes, what a nonsense he has created by using the word "soul" and then saying it's synonomous with consciousness. A soul (from the Oxford English dictionary) is "The spiritual or immaterial part of the human being often regarded as immortal". Consciousness is not immaterial, spiritual or immortal - it is an emeregnt property of the human brain. Sure, if we take apart the human brain we'll get a pile of grey matter, a pile of neurons and so on, but we'll never get a pile of consciousness. But if we take apart a car we'll never get a bucket of speed, either. This doesn't mean that speed (or consciousness) can't be measured and accounted for in terms of material science - which a soul couldn't be. The brain is a perceptual organ, which percieves information from the body and the environment; consciousness is the brains' perception of a subset of it's own operation, a sort of meta-perception, if you like. It's not mysterious. Between biological reductionism (we can't see consciousness under a microscope so it's not material) and mumbo jumbo (if we can't see it under a microscope it must be oooo-eeee-ooooo ...) is sense. Of course a computer could have consciousness if it had the range of perceptual abilities humans had. Lordy, I can't cope with mystics.
The problem of America to people outside America is that while you are just a country like any other, you are so big economically that decisions made by your government and corporations affect our lives. Yet we have utterly no power to change your goverment in terms of the ballot box. We took a great deal of interest in your election, it was constantly in our news and we watched the results come in. That never happens with any other election anywhere and in itself shows how the whole world is, in some ways, living in America, even when we aren't. This is probably why so many people world dislike the US - you appear (like every other country) to be self-obsessed, and only interested in your own gains (and again, that's like most countries most of the time). Couple this with the fact that the rest of us are in some way or other ruled by you and we arrive at US=arrogance. I hasten to add that, of course, individual Americans are just like the rest of us. It's the gestalt.
Well, I would feel sympathy if someone got robbed, even if they left their door open. Just because a victim was an easy target doesn't diminish that for me. If fact the more vulnerable the victim, the greater my sympathy, in some ways. Idiots included.
So intelligence is a virtue now? And stupidity a vice? Seems like a lot of the comments I'm reading are the result of nerd-alienation-at-school-effect still lingers. Agree, though, about the smuggling. And about the fact that she seems to have ripped off her family.
There seems to be confusion in these discussions about the difference between a "false belief" and a delusion. The ability to believe something which is not true is adaptive. We have self-protective psychological mechanisms (we're not all under our desks screaming about our impending deaths) and are geared to believe our perceptions ("That cup is red" not "That redness is an artifact of my visual system interacting with light waves"). Superstition and religion are not delusions, either. The human brain is so good at making causal links, but, lacking good information, garbage links are made. The religious and cultural beliefs of our society (micro as well as macro) define where this inate capacity goes in terms of outcome ("Jesus" not "Buddah", "Individualism is good" not "Collectivism is good") - but holding any of these beliefs does not make you deluded per se, even if they are false. And hence the need to exculude culturally specific beliefs from the delusion definition. If you are believing it against all explanation (there is nothing in my culture of upbringing to explain why I think that the mafia is after me) or if there is some perceptual malfunction ("The voices are telling me I'm a horse") then I meet part of the explanation of mental illness. (If my family was a mafia family, or some ritual in my religious culture explained my ability to become a horse, then I'm not). It's the plasticity of our minds that explains this. Is the internet a "culture" in this sense when it comes to paranoid mind beliefs? I'd say not - it's a communication tool that allows people with similar delusions to link up. It should surprise no one that people who share a mental illness might like to get together, the same way that we all like to hang with those who are similar. But just because two people who think that Martians are trying to kill them sit together in the waiting room doesn't make them a culture which creates a plausible explanation for a delusion. I could read "car number plates are coded messages" stuff all day and not come to believe it. The creation of these sites is potentially positive as well as negative. Sure, they allows a bunch of parasites to sell tin foil hats to vulnerable people, and the reinforcing effect is hardly helpful. On the other hand, the sites might be the one social network for some people - and social networks mean so very much in terms of people quality of life and psychological health.