It's not just the legal definition. In our society we commonly refer to acts of intimidation as violence even if no one is physically harmed. Most people would consider having a gun pointed at them as an act of violence, even if the only damage was psychological.
So, sitting around with legally owned and carried firearms is violent, as far as you're concerned?
No, it's the part about threatening to use it on people.
Do you carry a multi-tool or a pocket knife (with which you could, at any moment, cut someone's throat)?
Yes, I do, and I have never threatened to use it to harm anybody.
For that matter, have you ever sat in a restaurant SURROUNDED by people with steak knives? That must have been terrifying for you.
I have yet to experience anybody in a restaurant proclaiming that they will use their knife to kill me if they have to. If anybody did make such a proclamation, I think calling the cops would be appropriate.
So it seems as though the part you are missing is the *threat* part I mentioned.
My point was that the threat of violence *is* violence. This group of people threatened to use violence against law enforcement. And furthermore the leadership of this group were recently apprehended after a gun fight with law enforcement.
Violence is not just the physical harm that results from a violent action.
It already lost it's meaning when it was used for people who kill innocent civilians for ideological reasons.
There are many ways to terrify people that don't involve killing civilians nor ideological goals.
It's like when we shortened "automobiles" (i.e. things that move by themselves) to "autos" (selfs), their label really stopped making sense.
I don't think the word terrorist ever made sense from a linguistic perspective. And the definition has been changing to suit whoever is using it for as long as I can remember.
The new word for a "terrorist" should wither have a name that suggests it's meaning (i.e. someone that is willing to intentionally kill innocent civilians for ideological reasons), or it should just be a new word that doesn't come with any semantic baggage.
As controversial as the term "enemy combatant" was, it was very descriptive. It's an enemy that is fighting against you, that doesn't include the implications of a "soldier".
"All I did was point a gun at the shopkeepers head and say that I would murder him in front of his family if he didn't give me all the money in the register. I didn't commit any violence. I was just exercising my right to freedom of speech."
No, I'm saying that since 75% of lions are bad, the chance that any random lion is bad is about three in four.
And 3/4 is high enough to make the claim that "taking out the lions is probably OK".
No monkey with desirable traits have been observed for more than 100 years. Scientific consensus say they are extinct.
This is a bit disingenuous. Are you saying that *no* monkeys have *any* desirable traits for the last 100 years? As someone who is not a monkey fan, I think this is pretty irrational.
If you are going to fall back to a lesser claim of "Most monkeys have qualities that are net undesirable", I would say that this is true of the humans and donkeys as well.
In all honesty, as much as I don't like monkeys, I don't see all that much difference between humans and monkeys. They have nearly the same DNA, and the differences are largely cosmetic.
There was no generalization. If a stray pack of Lions attack, and those lions are financed by a significant number of other lions, and 75% of all lions support their actions, taking out the lions is probably OK.
That's a generalization. You're saying that since 75% of lions are bad, lions are bad.
Furthermore, I was talking about the generalizing the actions of "lions, zebras, giraffes, and rhinos" as a single group, which you have specifically separated into different animals (for a good reason).
This is a distinction you do not afford the monkeys.
By choosing the classification system you are implicitly choosing which groups of people are generalized.
They should stick a small section of hardcore pornography somewhere in the middle, to make sure that the censors actually watch the whole thing. If it comes out rated G, then you know they skipped it. Or better yet you can claim that they rated it G because they want kids to be exposed to hardcore pornography because they hate children.
So what you are saying is that it was wrong to generalize the actions of a few stray lions to all lions (especially if used to justify retaliation), but it is pretty safe to assume that the actions of a few monkeys can be generalized to all monkeys?
I agree that some monkeys should go to jail, but I don't think this means all monkey are bad. In fact it seems that there are quite a few corrupt non-monkeys out there as well. I would advocate putting all the corrupt animals in animal jail (which can't be the zoo for this analogy, because the zoo is the USA), and treating every animal equally not based on their species, but the content of their character.
Wait, are you saying 3000 Republicans died on 9/11? That's the craziest 9/11 truth conspiracy theory I've ever heard.
I will agree that I don't think it was a literary masterpiece. I actually "read" (listened to the audio version), in my twenties because I felt it was an important piece of our culture, and I wanted to be able to speak about it as a person who has actually read it, rather than a person who knows all about it based on what other people have said.
And yes, on the surface it proclaims selfishness as a virtue, but all throughout the book there is definitely an appeal to the greater good of society, it just advocates a certain brand of selfishness (rational self interest), as a way to do whats best for society. I find this rationale rather incoherent, but there is definitely a difference between the "selfishness" of the protagonists whose rational self interest is working toward a better society, and the "selfishness" of the antagonists whose selfishness is the cause of the downfall of society.
Does the book provide protagonists for actually selfish people to relate to? Sure. The problem with this book is that it doesn't reflect reality. It depicts a fictional black and white world that doesn't have a "tragedy of the commons". It depicts a society where the vast majority of the people are dependent on a handful of hardworking people, which I assume is a reflection of Rand growing up in the soviet union.
I would certainly agree that Lord of the Rings is a better story than Atlas shrugged. But I don't agree that Atlas shrugged advocates what people normally think of when they think of "selfishness". I would argue that what the book is trying to articulate is that true altruism doesn't exist (which I agree with). I just don't think Rand was a good enough author to accomplish this.
The good guys being "selfish" in just ways helped others, and the antagonists being selfish in unjust ways harmed others. This is like comparing a doctor that gets paid money to cure people of diseases and a criminal who robs people at gunpoint. One might say "Well if the doctor really wanted to help people he/she wouldn't want money in return", and I think this is what Rand is arguing against, but the problem I think is that no one is really arguing for that position (or at least not in our society).
When a regular person thinks of selfishness they are probably thinking of the mugger and not the doctor who charges money for his/her services. In atlas shrugged what happens is the politicians force "the doctor" to work for free in order to get votes from people who want free medical services and stay in power (replace doctor with productive member of society, etc). It's not the selfish actions of the protagonists that people should have a problem with. People should have a problem with the comparison of Rand's fictional society with our current society, as an inaccurate comparison. But this completely bypasses the selfishness stuff.
To summarize... No I do not think Atlas Shrugged was a good book. Yes, I still think it is mischaracterized by both the left and right.
I guess where you really run into problems is when you try to elect anti-government republicans to office and they turn out to be RINOs and just use the office to give themselves more money through bribes. Although that's really just a regular Republican.
Lots of people with privilege don't realize how much their privilege benefits them. Your paternalistic view may have lead to your assumption that because you have been running the zoo, that no one else can. This is reminiscent of southerners claiming that slaves wouldn't know what to do with their freedom if they had it, with similar arguments opposing their right to vote, etc.
Unfortunately the teachers in Oklahoma are not universally qualified to know the strengths and weaknesses of a scientific theory. Maybe one day we will live in a society where the vast majority of science teachers are qualified and such restrictions against teachers spreading disinformation to children will no longer be a big enough problem to require regulation.
That would work really well if the tests were good, and improvements in performance and/or retention of high performance were not ignored. There seems to be this general backlash against testing, but that's really the only way you can ever know anything. All of the criticisms of testing are actually criticisms of bad testing.
If we had good testing, for example, "teaching to the test" would involve giving kids the tools useful for real life, because that's what a good test requires.
The best (and hardest) tests I've ever had were open book tests. Making an open book test requires a lot of thought on the part of the test maker, and the grader. This is very expensive and requires a large commitment to education that I don't think we as a nation really have.
Just because the attempts to quantify a child's performance to score have been failures in the past doesn't mean that it is impossible to do if done well.
I'm not sure giving more tax money to the idiot politicians they've elected will do much good. If there was ever a place that should be cutting taxes, it's a place where the politicians are ruining everything.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not just the legal definition. In our society we commonly refer to acts of intimidation as violence even if no one is physically harmed. Most people would consider having a gun pointed at them as an act of violence, even if the only damage was psychological.
the unlawful exercise of physical force or intimidation by the exhibition of such force.
They are not the same thing. One is a sub-category of the other. Threat of violence is violence, but violence is not a threat of violence.
So to you pointing a gun at someone's head is not violent?
So, sitting around with legally owned and carried firearms is violent, as far as you're concerned?
No, it's the part about threatening to use it on people.
Do you carry a multi-tool or a pocket knife (with which you could, at any moment, cut someone's throat)?
Yes, I do, and I have never threatened to use it to harm anybody.
For that matter, have you ever sat in a restaurant SURROUNDED by people with steak knives? That must have been terrifying for you.
I have yet to experience anybody in a restaurant proclaiming that they will use their knife to kill me if they have to. If anybody did make such a proclamation, I think calling the cops would be appropriate.
So it seems as though the part you are missing is the *threat* part I mentioned.
My point was that the threat of violence *is* violence. This group of people threatened to use violence against law enforcement. And furthermore the leadership of this group were recently apprehended after a gun fight with law enforcement.
Violence is not just the physical harm that results from a violent action.
It already lost it's meaning when it was used for people who kill innocent civilians for ideological reasons.
There are many ways to terrify people that don't involve killing civilians nor ideological goals.
It's like when we shortened "automobiles" (i.e. things that move by themselves) to "autos" (selfs), their label really stopped making sense.
I don't think the word terrorist ever made sense from a linguistic perspective. And the definition has been changing to suit whoever is using it for as long as I can remember.
The new word for a "terrorist" should wither have a name that suggests it's meaning (i.e. someone that is willing to intentionally kill innocent civilians for ideological reasons), or it should just be a new word that doesn't come with any semantic baggage.
As controversial as the term "enemy combatant" was, it was very descriptive. It's an enemy that is fighting against you, that doesn't include the implications of a "soldier".
"All I did was point a gun at the shopkeepers head and say that I would murder him in front of his family if he didn't give me all the money in the register. I didn't commit any violence. I was just exercising my right to freedom of speech."
Only Russians and Muslims use AK-47s. This is a fashion show afterall.
A $1000 rifle is good enough for playing dress up and getting shot.
It seems as though a few in the latest standoff have been lying about their military careers.
No, I'm saying that since 75% of lions are bad, the chance that any random lion is bad is about three in four.
And 3/4 is high enough to make the claim that "taking out the lions is probably OK".
No monkey with desirable traits have been observed for more than 100 years. Scientific consensus say they are extinct.
This is a bit disingenuous. Are you saying that *no* monkeys have *any* desirable traits for the last 100 years? As someone who is not a monkey fan, I think this is pretty irrational.
If you are going to fall back to a lesser claim of "Most monkeys have qualities that are net undesirable", I would say that this is true of the humans and donkeys as well.
In all honesty, as much as I don't like monkeys, I don't see all that much difference between humans and monkeys. They have nearly the same DNA, and the differences are largely cosmetic.
There was no generalization. If a stray pack of Lions attack, and those lions are financed by a significant number of other lions, and 75% of all lions support their actions, taking out the lions is probably OK.
That's a generalization. You're saying that since 75% of lions are bad, lions are bad.
Furthermore, I was talking about the generalizing the actions of "lions, zebras, giraffes, and rhinos" as a single group, which you have specifically separated into different animals (for a good reason).
This is a distinction you do not afford the monkeys.
By choosing the classification system you are implicitly choosing which groups of people are generalized.
Sorry, I guess I should have said "generalize the actions of a few lions to zebras giraffes and rhinos". This zoo analogy is hard to follow.
They should stick a small section of hardcore pornography somewhere in the middle, to make sure that the censors actually watch the whole thing. If it comes out rated G, then you know they skipped it. Or better yet you can claim that they rated it G because they want kids to be exposed to hardcore pornography because they hate children.
So what you are saying is that it was wrong to generalize the actions of a few stray lions to all lions (especially if used to justify retaliation), but it is pretty safe to assume that the actions of a few monkeys can be generalized to all monkeys?
I agree that some monkeys should go to jail, but I don't think this means all monkey are bad. In fact it seems that there are quite a few corrupt non-monkeys out there as well. I would advocate putting all the corrupt animals in animal jail (which can't be the zoo for this analogy, because the zoo is the USA), and treating every animal equally not based on their species, but the content of their character.
Wait, are you saying 3000 Republicans died on 9/11? That's the craziest 9/11 truth conspiracy theory I've ever heard.
I will agree that I don't think it was a literary masterpiece. I actually "read" (listened to the audio version), in my twenties because I felt it was an important piece of our culture, and I wanted to be able to speak about it as a person who has actually read it, rather than a person who knows all about it based on what other people have said.
And yes, on the surface it proclaims selfishness as a virtue, but all throughout the book there is definitely an appeal to the greater good of society, it just advocates a certain brand of selfishness (rational self interest), as a way to do whats best for society. I find this rationale rather incoherent, but there is definitely a difference between the "selfishness" of the protagonists whose rational self interest is working toward a better society, and the "selfishness" of the antagonists whose selfishness is the cause of the downfall of society.
Does the book provide protagonists for actually selfish people to relate to? Sure. The problem with this book is that it doesn't reflect reality. It depicts a fictional black and white world that doesn't have a "tragedy of the commons". It depicts a society where the vast majority of the people are dependent on a handful of hardworking people, which I assume is a reflection of Rand growing up in the soviet union.
I would certainly agree that Lord of the Rings is a better story than Atlas shrugged. But I don't agree that Atlas shrugged advocates what people normally think of when they think of "selfishness". I would argue that what the book is trying to articulate is that true altruism doesn't exist (which I agree with). I just don't think Rand was a good enough author to accomplish this.
The good guys being "selfish" in just ways helped others, and the antagonists being selfish in unjust ways harmed others. This is like comparing a doctor that gets paid money to cure people of diseases and a criminal who robs people at gunpoint. One might say "Well if the doctor really wanted to help people he/she wouldn't want money in return", and I think this is what Rand is arguing against, but the problem I think is that no one is really arguing for that position (or at least not in our society).
When a regular person thinks of selfishness they are probably thinking of the mugger and not the doctor who charges money for his/her services. In atlas shrugged what happens is the politicians force "the doctor" to work for free in order to get votes from people who want free medical services and stay in power (replace doctor with productive member of society, etc). It's not the selfish actions of the protagonists that people should have a problem with. People should have a problem with the comparison of Rand's fictional society with our current society, as an inaccurate comparison. But this completely bypasses the selfishness stuff.
To summarize... No I do not think Atlas Shrugged was a good book. Yes, I still think it is mischaracterized by both the left and right.
I guess where you really run into problems is when you try to elect anti-government republicans to office and they turn out to be RINOs and just use the office to give themselves more money through bribes. Although that's really just a regular Republican.
Lots of people with privilege don't realize how much their privilege benefits them. Your paternalistic view may have lead to your assumption that because you have been running the zoo, that no one else can. This is reminiscent of southerners claiming that slaves wouldn't know what to do with their freedom if they had it, with similar arguments opposing their right to vote, etc.
Unfortunately the teachers in Oklahoma are not universally qualified to know the strengths and weaknesses of a scientific theory. Maybe one day we will live in a society where the vast majority of science teachers are qualified and such restrictions against teachers spreading disinformation to children will no longer be a big enough problem to require regulation.
I know some minorities that believe in evolution. Why are you racist against them?
That would work really well if the tests were good, and improvements in performance and/or retention of high performance were not ignored. There seems to be this general backlash against testing, but that's really the only way you can ever know anything. All of the criticisms of testing are actually criticisms of bad testing.
If we had good testing, for example, "teaching to the test" would involve giving kids the tools useful for real life, because that's what a good test requires.
The best (and hardest) tests I've ever had were open book tests. Making an open book test requires a lot of thought on the part of the test maker, and the grader. This is very expensive and requires a large commitment to education that I don't think we as a nation really have.
Just because the attempts to quantify a child's performance to score have been failures in the past doesn't mean that it is impossible to do if done well.
Maybe you should try a little harder. It's not the best sentence I've ever seen, but it's meaning is still pretty clear.
Skepticism is still important. For every good theory skepticism delays, there are countless bad theories prevented from existing.
I'm not sure giving more tax money to the idiot politicians they've elected will do much good. If there was ever a place that should be cutting taxes, it's a place where the politicians are ruining everything.