Cities are not a need. Cities do need some form of sanitization system which would likely include flushable toilets if at modern population densities.
But also note that older cities existed without them. Good things are not necessarily needs. You need food, but you don't need cheeseburgers or Organic salads.
*I* wouldn't say the school shouldn't allow it though. But neither should they be quiet about distancing themselves from it IMHO.
Then we're agreed that silencing is not necessary. Now, why would you avoid trying to silence people, if you think it justified? I think your recognize that it's a declaration of total war - and that's not going to be pleasant, even if the "right side" wins.
There is such a thing as "scientific consensus" which is much more than opinion or majority rule. It's the expert accepted view based on evidence and science. If you are arguing against the consensus then you are very likely wrong. I'm not sure I'd call "you" (them) an idiot though - it takes a lot of intellect to convince oneself that something so wrong can be right. And I don't mean that in a flippant way - it's true.
The "idiot" standard is pulled from the post I responded to.
That you think high intelligence is required to hold such wrong beliefs should give you pause on trusting a consensus of experts. What are experts, if not highly intelligent people on a subject matter?
In military history, how many upsets have we seen where the experts were utterly wrong in a way that cost thousands to millions of lives? It's not limited to warfare. How many financial experts lost their shirts in the economic crashes throughout the past century? Expertise does not equal correct. Even you're not willing to go past "likely wrong/correct".
"silence the dissenting opinion" (two can play the hyperbole game)?
Also note that "silencing the opposing view" is what the previous poster said, not me. He thinks there are circumstances where it is justified to silence a viewpoint, as long as it's called something else, and used against "idiots".
An important part of progress is in being able to determine which ideas no longer bear fruit and abandoning them.
Is progress based on destroying opposing ideas, or promoting better ideas? Does the latter depend on the former?
Or do you really think that a physics class should invite a flat-earther to give a talk rather than "silence the dissenting opinion" (two can play the hyperbole game)?
I don't think a physics class _needs_ to invite a "flat-earther" to give a talk, but neither do I think that "idiots" need to be prevented from using a public university's facilities when they pay for it.
How do you decide "idiocy"? Majority opinion, a board of appointed people, or an "anti-idiot" supervisor? Do all facility requests need to go through this process, or only for the "obvious" idiots?
The post I responded to said that creationist premises could be dismissed as logically inconsistent.
I asked him what was logically inconsistent. You now tell me they are (or can be) logically consistent, after a long segue on how the premises are unpersuasive.
I am not conflating anything. Why are you making unjustified accusations of me? Is it asking too much to get a simple straight answer to a simple question?
The closest science has to belief is to "postulate", in other words, "If we assume this is true, then...".
In any case, all three must has some rational basis for the postulate/hypothesis/theory.
"Assume this is true" is founded on a belief that there is truth and that the scientific method is able to narrow down what is true.
You conceded the point and haven't even noticed. If you have no beliefs, you cannot have knowledge, including scientific knowledge.
No one can actually have no beliefs. At best, they can believe they have no beliefs, which is a contradiction and utterly foolish.
You act as though we have no process for determining which ideas are useful and which are not? This is exactly the point of the scientific method - to weed out the useful and fruitful theories from the crap.
So do you think silencing dissenting opinions "because they're idiots" is a part of the scientific method?
My argument, however, relates to the inconsistency in accepting this premise to be true, as opposed to a premise that, for example, assumes the physical evidence found in the natural world to be "true". It seems inconsistent to give such arbitrary benefit-of-the-doubt (understatement of the day) to one text while failing to extend it to other equally-plausible premises.
Premise #1 is "The Bible is true".
Premise #2 is "Physical evidence that contradicts the Bible is false"
What is logically inconsistent there? The premises are agreed. Arbitrary is not inconsistent - though I doubt you'd find creationists who would agree that their belief is arbitrary.
Creationists and Intelligent Design advocates assume God exists, that the Bible is God's literal word handed down through a succession of prophets, and that everybody who wrote, compiled, and translated the texts contained in the Bible was endowed with divine guidance that precludes any human error that may distort God's word.
Creationists believe many of those things, but are those the premises, or the conclusions?
Accepting that some creationists hold those as premises, what is logically inconsistent about them? Note that logical consistency is a separate issue from being right or wrong. One can be right for an illogical reason, and wrong for logical reasons.
Some creationists dismiss the fossil record, geological evidence, and other physical evidence of the claims made by modern science as decoys, an elaborate ruse created by some god in order to mislead those who lack faith. However, few of these same people are willing to acknowledge that a very similar argument could be used against the existence of their god, holy text(s), and/or prophet(s).
What is the premise?
That all evidence not explained by their religion is an elaborate hoax from their god?
Do all creationists believe this premise, or just a subset? Do you think a creationist would agree with your summary of his position?
If girls start losing interest in STEM, then should we not try to discover why? Saying that they should be allowed to skip it implies that the status quo is ok, and I disagree thinking we need _more_ women in STEM not fewer.
Finding out why is interesting, but I think the existing understanding of male/female mindsets sufficiently explains the difference.
But what do you do when you only need 50% (or less) of the available people to actually work?
We already "need" less than 50% of the available people to actually work. Food and shelter is the bare minimum. Culture and community are "free".
On the other hand, our "wants" are employing the rest of the workers out there.
If you think about it, things like flushable toilets are a luxury, not a need. And that's before we even start looking at other nifty toys like the Internet and smartphones.
So the correct question is - "Is there a limit to human want?" The answer looks to be an obvious, "no".
All the elements you called out are things that would keep women from staying in a CS position for a long duration. Very little of what you listed would be something that a freshman entering CS would be exposed to or have any knowledge of.
You don't think students research the careers they're spending tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars to prepare for?
The problem starts much earlier. Girls start losing interest in STEM topics at a much younger age.
Given the other poster's accurate observations, why should they want to have interest in STEM topics? Should they not have the choice to avoid STEM if they don't want a career in it?
Gender stereotyping is a massive aspect of where women end up going. Same with boys.
Perhaps we should consider that that gender stereotyping serves a very important purpose. Are there any physical or mental differences between the sexes?
There is no way you can honestly answer "no" to that question. So given the innate differences, what roles is each sex better equipped to fill?
One very obvious difference is that men have greater physical strength. Compare the top athletes for either gender, and you find that women compete on the level of high school boys.
So that general physical advantage tells us that men are better suited to crappy (but hopefully well-paid) physical jobs. Construction, military, etc.
We've identified a useful gender stereotype based on physical differences. Now what mental differences can be observed between the sexes, and what useful stereotypes can be taken from that?
Buying a handgun, will not defend you from an over militarised police. It won't even defend you from normal police. There are lots more of them around. You may shoot one but they will get you.The same could be said about any weapons system less than the maximum force your chosen foe can point back at you.
Haven't paid attention to the last few people who went on cop-shooting sprees, have you? When a few lone gunmen can throw an area's police force into chaos, that doesn't bode well for your "easily overwhelmed" scenario. (What happens when it's 2 gunmen? 3? Pissed off militia?)
When you talk about how easily the US military will win, consider its record against guerillas. Weapons systems like an aircraft carriers really aren't an effective weapon against a dispersed opponent. Intimidating, for sure, but how often do you think you can use it to bomb US civilians without affecting military morale or the tax money used to keep the weapons system running?
The definition of "gamer" has never been limited to the subset of wargames.
The modern "gamer" is not limited to those who play wargames.
But when talking about the "gamer" community, it most definitely has inherited aspects of the wargaming communities. The obsession with the hobby and the development and exploitation of detailed and complex rules is more related to wargames than Monopoly.
I'll also note that the Monopoly "gamer" isn't the one fueling million dollar gaming events we see today. (LOL, DotA2, fighting games, etc)
And when I'm referring to modern economic warfare I'm not talking about the monopolistic practices of standard oil, but the much more recent war on the middle class over the last 40 years, where the middle class lost its economic clout, and hasn't had a real increase in income, despite productivity increasing over 100% during that time period.
Accumulating power and exploiting it is hardly the invention of a 1933 boardgame. Monopoly is no economic simulator.
Monopoly was certainly a "gamer" game for its' time.
Nope, competitive, but still not a wargame. I used the word "wargame" for a reason. Words mean things, and you have made a habit of making substitutions without comment.
Do you think blockbuster video games such as CoD and ME3 and the like find their roots in Monopoly? Roll the dice and loop around the board => stats and guns and shooting enemies?
Monopoly is a game where you try to bankrupt your opponents. It presages modern economic warfare.
You've got to be kidding me on "presaging" modern economic warfare. Do you know what a tariff is? Do you know when anti-monopolistic legislation was created?
And that "observation" was clearly wrong. It wasn't an observation because anyone observing would have seen that the D&D contingent was miniscule in terms of overall gaming at the time. It employs the "No true Scotsman" fallacy. "No true gamer would play Monopoly or Risk." And yet tens of millions, of both sexes, did every year.
Interesting.
Monopoly is not a wargame. Risk came 40 years after the Little Wars was published. Even accepting your un-sourced numbers, that an equal number of girls may have played Risk does not negate an observation made in a previous era.
On that of that, "gamer" is more than just, "I played Risk/foo-game a couple of times". It's a passion and hobby. Men formed clubs for this past-time. The women gamers, as far as they existed, did not.
Because the implication is, as the original quote made clear, that reading a book is something boys do, or intelligent girls.
Not at all. The book specifically refers to the female readers of a boys' book. The author thinks liking a boys' book is something an intelligent sort of female would do. It doesn't say that all intelligent females like boys' books; which would imply that no intelligent female dislikes boys' books. Since the statement does allow for an intelligent sort of female who dislikes boys' books, the only way to take offense is to create it.
BTW, I didn't have any problem with the sentence, "intelligent sort of boy who likes girls' games and books". It does take a special mindset to appreciate some things. I don't like girls' games and books, but I don't find it insulting if I'm not included in a particular set of "intelligent people" - especially when I'm not in the targeted audience!
But the original article is also wrong about gamers, and falls into the trap of sexism by assuming that the original gamers were more than 99% males, because D*amp;D attracted that audience.
An observation that gaming was mainly interesting to guys is not a sexist assumption. The book did not claim any percentages, just generally observed that most girls didn't care for the activity.
It's this sort of utter bullshit that offends me. I hear it constantly from the left - all arguments are ad-hominum. "If you disagree, you can only be a racist." "If you disagree, you can only be sexist." "If you disagree, you must be a Nazi". And on and on like that for decades.
PopeRatzo's bio labels himself as an "leftwing extremist", so go figure.
"the more intelligent sort of boy_ , the one _ who likes girl's games and books"
You butchered the quote to add an emphasis that wasn't there. It's not that hard to do a search/replace for girl/boy.
for that more intelligent sort of boy who likes girls' games and books
Second, the quote is not attempting to describe "intelligent girls", but "the intelligent sort of girl". What difference does it make? The quote does not say any thing about the "intelligent sort of girl" who doesn't like boys' games and books. The author is not saying they do not exist or that they are inferior - they're just not part of his intended audience and so he doesn't refer to them at all.
If you're a gaming girl who's reading the book, essentially you're being complimented by the author as being intelligent. Do you usually get upset at people who pay you compliments?
Are you going to hold it against me if I call you clever, since there exist girls I won't be calling clever in that same statement? Do I need to say ALL GIRLS ARE CLEVER instead, to avoid possibly giving offense to anyone?
Slashdot Mirror
Cities are not a need. Cities do need some form of sanitization system which would likely include flushable toilets if at modern population densities.
But also note that older cities existed without them. Good things are not necessarily needs. You need food, but you don't need cheeseburgers or Organic salads.
*I* wouldn't say the school shouldn't allow it though. But neither should they be quiet about distancing themselves from it IMHO.
Then we're agreed that silencing is not necessary. Now, why would you avoid trying to silence people, if you think it justified? I think your recognize that it's a declaration of total war - and that's not going to be pleasant, even if the "right side" wins.
There is such a thing as "scientific consensus" which is much more than opinion or majority rule. It's the expert accepted view based on evidence and science. If you are arguing against the consensus then you are very likely wrong. I'm not sure I'd call "you" (them) an idiot though - it takes a lot of intellect to convince oneself that something so wrong can be right. And I don't mean that in a flippant way - it's true.
The "idiot" standard is pulled from the post I responded to.
That you think high intelligence is required to hold such wrong beliefs should give you pause on trusting a consensus of experts. What are experts, if not highly intelligent people on a subject matter?
In military history, how many upsets have we seen where the experts were utterly wrong in a way that cost thousands to millions of lives? It's not limited to warfare. How many financial experts lost their shirts in the economic crashes throughout the past century? Expertise does not equal correct. Even you're not willing to go past "likely wrong/correct".
I explicitly caveated my response to your initial query with the claim that I am "not sure what GP had in mind".
But without answering the explicit and simple question I asked.
"I find the premises consistent, but unpersuasive because X" would have been fine as a response.
"Unpersuasive because X" does not answer the question about logical inconsistent premises. Hence the follow up question.
Thank you for your answer.
"silence the dissenting opinion" (two can play the hyperbole game)?
Also note that "silencing the opposing view" is what the previous poster said, not me. He thinks there are circumstances where it is justified to silence a viewpoint, as long as it's called something else, and used against "idiots".
An important part of progress is in being able to determine which ideas no longer bear fruit and abandoning them.
Is progress based on destroying opposing ideas, or promoting better ideas? Does the latter depend on the former?
Or do you really think that a physics class should invite a flat-earther to give a talk rather than "silence the dissenting opinion" (two can play the hyperbole game)?
I don't think a physics class _needs_ to invite a "flat-earther" to give a talk, but neither do I think that "idiots" need to be prevented from using a public university's facilities when they pay for it.
How do you decide "idiocy"? Majority opinion, a board of appointed people, or an "anti-idiot" supervisor? Do all facility requests need to go through this process, or only for the "obvious" idiots?
What is logically inconsistent there?
Nothing. The premises are agreed
The post I responded to said that creationist premises could be dismissed as logically inconsistent.
I asked him what was logically inconsistent. You now tell me they are (or can be) logically consistent, after a long segue on how the premises are unpersuasive.
I am not conflating anything. Why are you making unjustified accusations of me? Is it asking too much to get a simple straight answer to a simple question?
The closest science has to belief is to "postulate", in other words, "If we assume this is true, then...". In any case, all three must has some rational basis for the postulate/hypothesis/theory.
"Assume this is true" is founded on a belief that there is truth and that the scientific method is able to narrow down what is true.
You conceded the point and haven't even noticed. If you have no beliefs, you cannot have knowledge, including scientific knowledge.
No one can actually have no beliefs. At best, they can believe they have no beliefs, which is a contradiction and utterly foolish.
You act as though we have no process for determining which ideas are useful and which are not? This is exactly the point of the scientific method - to weed out the useful and fruitful theories from the crap.
So do you think silencing dissenting opinions "because they're idiots" is a part of the scientific method?
My argument, however, relates to the inconsistency in accepting this premise to be true, as opposed to a premise that, for example, assumes the physical evidence found in the natural world to be "true". It seems inconsistent to give such arbitrary benefit-of-the-doubt (understatement of the day) to one text while failing to extend it to other equally-plausible premises.
Premise #1 is "The Bible is true".
Premise #2 is "Physical evidence that contradicts the Bible is false"
What is logically inconsistent there? The premises are agreed. Arbitrary is not inconsistent - though I doubt you'd find creationists who would agree that their belief is arbitrary.
Creationists and Intelligent Design advocates assume God exists, that the Bible is God's literal word handed down through a succession of prophets, and that everybody who wrote, compiled, and translated the texts contained in the Bible was endowed with divine guidance that precludes any human error that may distort God's word.
Creationists believe many of those things, but are those the premises, or the conclusions?
Accepting that some creationists hold those as premises, what is logically inconsistent about them? Note that logical consistency is a separate issue from being right or wrong. One can be right for an illogical reason, and wrong for logical reasons.
Some creationists dismiss the fossil record, geological evidence, and other physical evidence of the claims made by modern science as decoys, an elaborate ruse created by some god in order to mislead those who lack faith. However, few of these same people are willing to acknowledge that a very similar argument could be used against the existence of their god, holy text(s), and/or prophet(s).
What is the premise?
That all evidence not explained by their religion is an elaborate hoax from their god?
Do all creationists believe this premise, or just a subset? Do you think a creationist would agree with your summary of his position?
If girls start losing interest in STEM, then should we not try to discover why? Saying that they should be allowed to skip it implies that the status quo is ok, and I disagree thinking we need _more_ women in STEM not fewer.
Finding out why is interesting, but I think the existing understanding of male/female mindsets sufficiently explains the difference.
Why does STEM need more women?
Do you think the USA should have protected the Nazis in WW2 ?
No.
Now please answer my questions. I'll clarify it a little: Do you think laws and rules should not protect fellow citizens you sufficiently dislike?
If yes, do you see any possible downsides to this position?
2. Listen to their premises and reject them for being logically inconsistent.
If you don't mind, what are the logically inconsistent premises of the creationist?
At some point, it's not "silencing a dissenting view", it's refusing to waste time and lend credibility to idiots.
I'm sure that'll provide comfort to you if you're ever silenced because the silencer thinks you're an idiot.
Do you think laws and rules should not protect people you sufficiently dislike? Have you considered any possible downsides to that?
But what do you do when you only need 50% (or less) of the available people to actually work?
We already "need" less than 50% of the available people to actually work. Food and shelter is the bare minimum. Culture and community are "free".
On the other hand, our "wants" are employing the rest of the workers out there.
If you think about it, things like flushable toilets are a luxury, not a need. And that's before we even start looking at other nifty toys like the Internet and smartphones.
So the correct question is - "Is there a limit to human want?" The answer looks to be an obvious, "no".
All the elements you called out are things that would keep women from staying in a CS position for a long duration. Very little of what you listed would be something that a freshman entering CS would be exposed to or have any knowledge of.
You don't think students research the careers they're spending tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars to prepare for?
The problem starts much earlier. Girls start losing interest in STEM topics at a much younger age.
Given the other poster's accurate observations, why should they want to have interest in STEM topics? Should they not have the choice to avoid STEM if they don't want a career in it?
Gender stereotyping is a massive aspect of where women end up going. Same with boys.
Perhaps we should consider that that gender stereotyping serves a very important purpose. Are there any physical or mental differences between the sexes?
There is no way you can honestly answer "no" to that question. So given the innate differences, what roles is each sex better equipped to fill?
One very obvious difference is that men have greater physical strength. Compare the top athletes for either gender, and you find that women compete on the level of high school boys.
So that general physical advantage tells us that men are better suited to crappy (but hopefully well-paid) physical jobs. Construction, military, etc.
We've identified a useful gender stereotype based on physical differences. Now what mental differences can be observed between the sexes, and what useful stereotypes can be taken from that?
Buying a handgun, will not defend you from an over militarised police. It won't even defend you from normal police. There are lots more of them around. You may shoot one but they will get you.The same could be said about any weapons system less than the maximum force your chosen foe can point back at you.
Haven't paid attention to the last few people who went on cop-shooting sprees, have you? When a few lone gunmen can throw an area's police force into chaos, that doesn't bode well for your "easily overwhelmed" scenario. (What happens when it's 2 gunmen? 3? Pissed off militia?)
When you talk about how easily the US military will win, consider its record against guerillas. Weapons systems like an aircraft carriers really aren't an effective weapon against a dispersed opponent. Intimidating, for sure, but how often do you think you can use it to bomb US civilians without affecting military morale or the tax money used to keep the weapons system running?
The definition of "gamer" has never been limited to the subset of wargames.
The modern "gamer" is not limited to those who play wargames.
But when talking about the "gamer" community, it most definitely has inherited aspects of the wargaming communities. The obsession with the hobby and the development and exploitation of detailed and complex rules is more related to wargames than Monopoly.
I'll also note that the Monopoly "gamer" isn't the one fueling million dollar gaming events we see today. (LOL, DotA2, fighting games, etc)
And when I'm referring to modern economic warfare I'm not talking about the monopolistic practices of standard oil, but the much more recent war on the middle class over the last 40 years, where the middle class lost its economic clout, and hasn't had a real increase in income, despite productivity increasing over 100% during that time period.
Accumulating power and exploiting it is hardly the invention of a 1933 boardgame. Monopoly is no economic simulator.
Monopoly was certainly a "gamer" game for its' time.
Nope, competitive, but still not a wargame. I used the word "wargame" for a reason. Words mean things, and you have made a habit of making substitutions without comment.
Do you think blockbuster video games such as CoD and ME3 and the like find their roots in Monopoly? Roll the dice and loop around the board => stats and guns and shooting enemies?
Monopoly is a game where you try to bankrupt your opponents. It presages modern economic warfare.
You've got to be kidding me on "presaging" modern economic warfare. Do you know what a tariff is? Do you know when anti-monopolistic legislation was created?
And that "observation" was clearly wrong. It wasn't an observation because anyone observing would have seen that the D&D contingent was miniscule in terms of overall gaming at the time. It employs the "No true Scotsman" fallacy. "No true gamer would play Monopoly or Risk." And yet tens of millions, of both sexes, did every year.
Interesting.
Monopoly is not a wargame. Risk came 40 years after the Little Wars was published. Even accepting your un-sourced numbers, that an equal number of girls may have played Risk does not negate an observation made in a previous era.
On that of that, "gamer" is more than just, "I played Risk/foo-game a couple of times". It's a passion and hobby. Men formed clubs for this past-time. The women gamers, as far as they existed, did not.
Because the implication is, as the original quote made clear, that reading a book is something boys do, or intelligent girls.
Not at all. The book specifically refers to the female readers of a boys' book. The author thinks liking a boys' book is something an intelligent sort of female would do. It doesn't say that all intelligent females like boys' books; which would imply that no intelligent female dislikes boys' books. Since the statement does allow for an intelligent sort of female who dislikes boys' books, the only way to take offense is to create it.
BTW, I didn't have any problem with the sentence, "intelligent sort of boy who likes girls' games and books". It does take a special mindset to appreciate some things. I don't like girls' games and books, but I don't find it insulting if I'm not included in a particular set of "intelligent people" - especially when I'm not in the targeted audience!
But the original article is also wrong about gamers, and falls into the trap of sexism by assuming that the original gamers were more than 99% males, because D*amp;D attracted that audience.
An observation that gaming was mainly interesting to guys is not a sexist assumption. The book did not claim any percentages, just generally observed that most girls didn't care for the activity.
It's this sort of utter bullshit that offends me. I hear it constantly from the left - all arguments are ad-hominum. "If you disagree, you can only be a racist." "If you disagree, you can only be sexist." "If you disagree, you must be a Nazi". And on and on like that for decades.
PopeRatzo's bio labels himself as an "leftwing extremist", so go figure.
Let;'s turn it on it's head:
"the more intelligent sort of boy_ , the one _ who likes girl's games and books"
You butchered the quote to add an emphasis that wasn't there. It's not that hard to do a search/replace for girl/boy.
for that more intelligent sort of boy who likes girls' games and books
Second, the quote is not attempting to describe "intelligent girls", but "the intelligent sort of girl". What difference does it make? The quote does not say any thing about the "intelligent sort of girl" who doesn't like boys' games and books. The author is not saying they do not exist or that they are inferior - they're just not part of his intended audience and so he doesn't refer to them at all.
If you're a gaming girl who's reading the book, essentially you're being complimented by the author as being intelligent. Do you usually get upset at people who pay you compliments?
Are you going to hold it against me if I call you clever, since there exist girls I won't be calling clever in that same statement? Do I need to say ALL GIRLS ARE CLEVER instead, to avoid possibly giving offense to anyone?