I can't prove a negative, and I won't presume the positive without some convincing evidence that rises above the mere fact that the kid is brown and Muslim. Being brown and Muslim doesn't make every bad thing that happens to you racially motivated.
He doesn't seem to have been "railroaded" though. If this account of what happened is correct, he took it to school, showed it to a bunch of teachers, most of whom ignored it until in a later class period an English teacher asked him to put it away, at which time he refused, and was sent to the principal. When the principal didn't get an adequate answer as to why he brought it to school, the cops were called in based on the thinking that it was an attempt to scare the teachers with a hoax. He was handcuffed (which I too think was unnecessary, and for which he deserves an apology) for a time during the police questioning, where it was determined that no laws were broken and he was finally released after 2 hours.
I think we can atone for the indignity Ahmed suffered without believing the myth that he did anything remarkable for a 14 year old. I think we can apologize for the misidentification of what he brought to school without embracing the presumption that his teachers were racists or islamophobes.
Racism in general can exist in the same reality where Ahmed Mohamed was not a victim of racism but of silly zero tolerance policies. Anti-Muslim sentiment can exist in the same reality where Ahmed Mohamed pulled a stunt that pranked even the President.
You're right that individual cases don't by themselves disprove aggregate phenomena, but aggregate phenomena also doesn't mean all individual cases can be explained in the same way.
Absolutely agree with the basis of your sentiment. There ought to be an apology for his being arrested and put in cuffs. There just doesn't seem to be a case for us lionizing him as a genius.
We can apologize and atone for mistakes without constructing myths.
I kind of expected this. Let me say again my position:
1. He doesn't seem to be dangerous, which is why I think the cuffs and arrest were an overreaction 2. He doesn't seem to be a boy genius as the media has been touting, which is why I think the public response (NASA, MIT, and Obama included) were also an overreaction 3. As the article demonstrates, the OTHER (unconsidered) explanation is that he pranked everyone.
I'd like to highlight a part of the article that I thought made some good points:
[...]Teachers are taught to be suspicious and vigilant. Ahmed wasn’t accused of making a bomb – he was accused of making a look-alike, a hoax. And be honest with yourself, a big red digital display with a bunch of loose wires in a brief-case looking box is awful like a Hollywood-style representation of a bomb. Everyone jumped to play the race and religion cards and try and paint the teachers and police as idiots and bigots, but in my mind, they were probably acting responsibly and erring on the side of caution to protect the rest of their students, just in case. “This wouldn’t have happened if Ahmed were white,” they say. We’re supposed to be sensitive to school violence, but apparently religious and racial sensitivity trumps that. At least we have another clue about how the sensitivity and moral outrage pecking order lies.
Because, is it possible, that maybe, just maybe, this was actually a hoax bomb? A silly prank that was taken the wrong way? That the media then ran with, and everyone else got carried away? Maybe there wasn’t even any racial or religious bias on the parts of the teachers and police.
I don’t know any of these things. But I’m intellectually mature enough to admit I don’t know, and to also be OK with that. I don’t feel a need to take the first exist to conclusionville. But I do like to find facts where I can, and prefer to let them lead me to conclusions, rather than a knee jerk judgement based on a headline or sound bite.
Submitter here. Since partisan accusations were quickly thrown when I mentioned this elsewhere, I'd like to just clarify my own view regarding this case: I think Ahmed didn't deserve to be handcuffed, he very clearly wasn't a danger to anyone. I also think he didn't deserve to be glorified and cast as a heroic genius with all this acclaim in the media, as the new evidence suggests.
My takeaway? Reality is complex (in this case perplexingly so), and the media doesn't do well with complexities.
What are your own thoughts about the sexist manner in which you were banned from/r/gamerghazi? Is the misogynistic toxicity of that community reflective of the anti-gamergate faction?
From that article, it seems people were being excluded for having certain opinions (ostensibly right-leaning ones) by others who thought of themselves as "liberal". But I don't see how anyone willing to enact such a policy of judging the messenger could be considered "liberal" by any measure.
Is there a word for the illiberal who nonetheless see themselves as liberal?
The order to take the videos offline was sent to all media companies. These orders are always secret, but a worker at the office of a Shanghai media company decided to leak the document. In this document, the Public Relations Department (literally Propaganda Dept, but "propaganda" doesn't have negative connotations in Chinese) orders the video taken down and that all media organizations must cease covering the topic. It cites the upcoming Lianghui ("Meeting of Two") government conference, and a pressing need for "online harmony" to precede those governmental deliberations as the reason, saying the public debate has gotten too popular/heated. So it looks like they had a change of mind after seeing the massive response. Report also says the worker has been suspended. http://www.ftchinese.com/story... http://www.boxun.com/news/gb/c...
8chan was basically what happened when moot (who was 4chan's admin until his retirement a few weeks ago) banned #gamergate and fucked with/pol/
No, only the/gg/ board, and later/gamergate/ board came to be as you have described. 8chan itself (or infinitechan, the 8 representing a lemniscate) started over a year ago, which was many months before gamergate, when Brennan, having seen the many other *chans sprout up over the years in the aftermath of repeated censorship on 4chan, decided to create a hybrid of Reddit and 4chan.
Here's the quote with the context that was omitted by Salon and by the submitter
“We vaccinate ours, and so, you know that’s the best expression I can give you of my opinion. You know it’s much more important what you think as a parent than what you think as a public official. And that’s what we do. But I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well, so that’s the balance that the government has to decide.”
So it seems it's not so much an issue of scientific illiteracy as it is one of political hedging and cowardice. That the media chose to run with the former as its narrative is revealing, both of the political allegiances of those media outlets and of Christie's complete naivete.
Actually, 4chan, to this day is still dealing with a pedo problem on its/sp/ Sports board. It's the reason why none of the *chan archival sites out there are willing to archive/sp/. The vast majority of those now on 8chan first went there when Gamergate became banned on the whole of 4chan -- even just posting the word got you banned. A few months after that, word filters were implemented on/pol/ Politically Incorrect, turning it into a playground for/b/, resulting in a second wave of migration.
4chan's "intolerance" of certain subjects/people remains selective and capricious, and in no way accurately portrayed in your post.
Open-minded people are more accepting of diversity, and will in the aggregate have relatively more diverse teams. Open-minded people are more accepting of different ideas, and will in the aggregate have relatively more ways of solving a problem.
This does not mean having a diverse team will result in having more ways of solving a problem. Gathering a bunch of like-minded dogmatists from different races/genders is unlikely to result in any benefit.
It's the JOB of the media to hold these companies accountable and to be transparent when they cooperate with these kinds of things. When the media does its job properly, as in this instance, you don't need Gamergate to do anything.
The fault in your reasoning lies in that you're expecting Gamergate to take over the job of these news outlets and to do their work for them. ABSOLUTELY NOT. Gamergate will continue to scrutinize the media for wrongdoing, and point them out when they abandon their responsibilities.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't prove a negative, and I won't presume the positive without some convincing evidence that rises above the mere fact that the kid is brown and Muslim. Being brown and Muslim doesn't make every bad thing that happens to you racially motivated.
/. removed the time, I think, or maybe I didn't copy/paste right. Mark Cuban's second hand account starts at ~1:40 in that video
He doesn't seem to have been "railroaded" though. If this account of what happened is correct, he took it to school, showed it to a bunch of teachers, most of whom ignored it until in a later class period an English teacher asked him to put it away, at which time he refused, and was sent to the principal. When the principal didn't get an adequate answer as to why he brought it to school, the cops were called in based on the thinking that it was an attempt to scare the teachers with a hoax. He was handcuffed (which I too think was unnecessary, and for which he deserves an apology) for a time during the police questioning, where it was determined that no laws were broken and he was finally released after 2 hours.
I think we can atone for the indignity Ahmed suffered without believing the myth that he did anything remarkable for a 14 year old. I think we can apologize for the misidentification of what he brought to school without embracing the presumption that his teachers were racists or islamophobes.
Racism in general can exist in the same reality where Ahmed Mohamed was not a victim of racism but of silly zero tolerance policies. Anti-Muslim sentiment can exist in the same reality where Ahmed Mohamed pulled a stunt that pranked even the President.
You're right that individual cases don't by themselves disprove aggregate phenomena, but aggregate phenomena also doesn't mean all individual cases can be explained in the same way.
Absolutely agree with the basis of your sentiment. There ought to be an apology for his being arrested and put in cuffs. There just doesn't seem to be a case for us lionizing him as a genius.
We can apologize and atone for mistakes without constructing myths.
I kind of expected this. Let me say again my position:
1. He doesn't seem to be dangerous, which is why I think the cuffs and arrest were an overreaction
2. He doesn't seem to be a boy genius as the media has been touting, which is why I think the public response (NASA, MIT, and Obama included) were also an overreaction
3. As the article demonstrates, the OTHER (unconsidered) explanation is that he pranked everyone.
I'd like to highlight a part of the article that I thought made some good points:
[...]Teachers are taught to be suspicious and vigilant. Ahmed wasn’t accused of making a bomb – he was accused of making a look-alike, a hoax. And be honest with yourself, a big red digital display with a bunch of loose wires in a brief-case looking box is awful like a Hollywood-style representation of a bomb. Everyone jumped to play the race and religion cards and try and paint the teachers and police as idiots and bigots, but in my mind, they were probably acting responsibly and erring on the side of caution to protect the rest of their students, just in case. “This wouldn’t have happened if Ahmed were white,” they say. We’re supposed to be sensitive to school violence, but apparently religious and racial sensitivity trumps that. At least we have another clue about how the sensitivity and moral outrage pecking order lies.
Because, is it possible, that maybe, just maybe, this was actually a hoax bomb? A silly prank that was taken the wrong way? That the media then ran with, and everyone else got carried away? Maybe there wasn’t even any racial or religious bias on the parts of the teachers and police.
I don’t know any of these things. But I’m intellectually mature enough to admit I don’t know, and to also be OK with that. I don’t feel a need to take the first exist to conclusionville. But I do like to find facts where I can, and prefer to let them lead me to conclusions, rather than a knee jerk judgement based on a headline or sound bite.
Submitter here. Since partisan accusations were quickly thrown when I mentioned this elsewhere, I'd like to just clarify my own view regarding this case: I think Ahmed didn't deserve to be handcuffed, he very clearly wasn't a danger to anyone. I also think he didn't deserve to be glorified and cast as a heroic genius with all this acclaim in the media, as the new evidence suggests.
My takeaway? Reality is complex (in this case perplexingly so), and the media doesn't do well with complexities.
if they haven't already
What are your own thoughts about the sexist manner in which you were banned from /r/gamerghazi? Is the misogynistic toxicity of that community reflective of the anti-gamergate faction?
Were you always this handsome?
But Google Shopping isn't a retailer, it's a product aggregator for online retailers. It functions not much differently from a search engine.
Mods killed it
Why bother?
From that article, it seems people were being excluded for having certain opinions (ostensibly right-leaning ones) by others who thought of themselves as "liberal". But I don't see how anyone willing to enact such a policy of judging the messenger could be considered "liberal" by any measure.
Is there a word for the illiberal who nonetheless see themselves as liberal?
The order to take the videos offline was sent to all media companies. These orders are always secret, but a worker at the office of a Shanghai media company decided to leak the document. In this document, the Public Relations Department (literally Propaganda Dept, but "propaganda" doesn't have negative connotations in Chinese) orders the video taken down and that all media organizations must cease covering the topic. It cites the upcoming Lianghui ("Meeting of Two") government conference, and a pressing need for "online harmony" to precede those governmental deliberations as the reason, saying the public debate has gotten too popular/heated. So it looks like they had a change of mind after seeing the massive response. Report also says the worker has been suspended.
http://www.ftchinese.com/story...
http://www.boxun.com/news/gb/c...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
You didn't tell them how long it would REALLY take did you?
8chan was basically what happened when moot (who was 4chan's admin until his retirement a few weeks ago) banned #gamergate and fucked with /pol/
No, only the /gg/ board, and later /gamergate/ board came to be as you have described. 8chan itself (or infinitechan, the 8 representing a lemniscate) started over a year ago, which was many months before gamergate, when Brennan, having seen the many other *chans sprout up over the years in the aftermath of repeated censorship on 4chan, decided to create a hybrid of Reddit and 4chan.
Your attempts to inject your own Gamergate propaganda into your submissions might fool the editors, but it doesn't fool everyone.
... and the quality of human-written crap dipped low enough to converge with previously distinct computer-written crap.
Here's the quote with the context that was omitted by Salon and by the submitter
“We vaccinate ours, and so, you know that’s the best expression I can give you of my opinion. You know it’s much more important what you think as a parent than what you think as a public official. And that’s what we do. But I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well, so that’s the balance that the government has to decide.”
So it seems it's not so much an issue of scientific illiteracy as it is one of political hedging and cowardice.
That the media chose to run with the former as its narrative is revealing, both of the political allegiances of those media outlets and of Christie's complete naivete.
Actually, 4chan, to this day is still dealing with a pedo problem on its /sp/ Sports board. It's the reason why none of the *chan archival sites out there are willing to archive /sp/. The vast majority of those now on 8chan first went there when Gamergate became banned on the whole of 4chan -- even just posting the word got you banned. A few months after that, word filters were implemented on /pol/ Politically Incorrect, turning it into a playground for /b/, resulting in a second wave of migration.
4chan's "intolerance" of certain subjects/people remains selective and capricious, and in no way accurately portrayed in your post.
Open-minded people are more accepting of diversity, and will in the aggregate have relatively more diverse teams.
Open-minded people are more accepting of different ideas, and will in the aggregate have relatively more ways of solving a problem.
This does not mean having a diverse team will result in having more ways of solving a problem. Gathering a bunch of like-minded dogmatists from different races/genders is unlikely to result in any benefit.
.. and these SJWs loved Steve Jobs. Idolized him, even.
It's the JOB of the media to hold these companies accountable and to be transparent when they cooperate with these kinds of things. When the media does its job properly, as in this instance, you don't need Gamergate to do anything.
The fault in your reasoning lies in that you're expecting Gamergate to take over the job of these news outlets and to do their work for them. ABSOLUTELY NOT. Gamergate will continue to scrutinize the media for wrongdoing, and point them out when they abandon their responsibilities.