That's directly related to the post. It's literally what the argument in it is:
1. If we bring them into US, they get "extended constitutional rights" (basically, due process) 2. If they get due process treatment, we'll have to let most of them go because there's not enough evidence to lock them up. 3. But they're bad guys who want to hurt us! I want them locked up. 4. Therefore, keep them at Gitmo where we can keep them locked forever without bothering with proving their guilt.
And yes, I'm well aware that the poster who made it does indeed think that this is a good thing. All it takes is looking at his comment history.
Bosnia is a bit of a special case in a sense that Bosniaks there were targeted by Christian Serbs and Croats - so it would still be natural for them to see it as a fundamentally religious war (which is in an of itself quite sufficient to get radicalized), but furthermore to see US as generally "in the same camp" on account of also being Christian.
But even if they do get radicalized, the question is who becomes their primary target.
So basically what you're saying is that due process is just "too good" for some people, and would let them walk even though they're "bad guys". Shoving them into military detention centers that operate outside of rule of law is a workaround.
Are you also one of those people who always complain about how federal govt doesn't respect your Constitutional rights these days, by chance?
There is a value in speaking to the audience face to face, as opposed to online discussions etc. Such speaking always requires venues.
I am not a speaker, so I do not speak for them and their desires. I am a listener, and I don't want other people to be able to block venues just because they don't like the message that is transmitted in that venue, and deprive me from the ability to attend, listen, and engage.
And if we don't do research like that, we never will know how to make it work, nor what it'll actually cost then.
$5 billion is chump change. US has been spending ~$100 billion each year for the past ten years in direct costs of war in Iraq and Afghanistan alone - and they might as well have burned all that money given what we got out of it.
If we have to have "free speech zones", universities are supposed to be at the extreme end of that scale. So I don't think a request to find another venue is appropriate in this case. I also don't see why it's even a valid thing to ask unless it's unanimous - if you don't like the message, don't go and listen to it, but why are you trying to prevent other people who would like to attend from doing so?
And if it is unanimous, then a far more efficient form of protest is for no-one to turn up.
So "captive audience" is also not relevant here - no-one is captive, and no-one is forced to listen. The only thing that's forced on them is the knowledge of the fact that someone nearby is listening to those things.
I would classify actively trying to shut someone up because you don't like what they have to say as a supremely antisocial act, one that unambiguously identifies that person as an asshole. This is true even if the target is an asshole.
Would you agree, then, that those perpetually offended students who are trying to make others shut up and go away so that they don't have to hear or see offensive things are assholes?
For the same reason why someone saying that they're personally offended by gay marriage is bullshit. I mean, they quite possibly are, and it's a genuine emotion, but it's not the one that requires any action to deal with by anyone other than themselves.
Also, because virtually everything can be construed in this manner. For example, the mere fact that history classes mostly focus on male historical figures (because males have been dominant in that society) could be seen as a "trigger". Should we warn about that, too? What else should we warn about? Basically, where do we stop? Surely you can see where this ends if there's no filter whatsoever on what can be unilaterally declared as a "trigger"?
My music history class never touched on either of those. Perhaps not every history class is the same, and people should know in advance what the class will cover?
For one thing, are you sure that a music history class wouldn't touch on it, even in passing? Did you guys study the history of blues, say?
And do you think it is really appropriate to demand that a music history class should explicitly say that somewhere in it, in passing, it will mention something about slavery? Or is it more reasonable to say that people for whom it is such a touchy topic that it "triggers" them are themselves responsible for avoiding it in whatever manner they see fit (e.g. by proactively inquiring about their particular "trigger" before taking the class, and not taking it if they can't get an unambiguous answer)?
I would have hoped that a general syllabus would suffice otherwise. Trigger warnings are things above and beyond that.
Not that it has. Cleese was complaining about colleges, not stand-up comedy shows. Which is like a college professor complaining about stand-up shows. Maybe they should stick to worrying about their own jobs?
He is complaining because he can't do (or perceives it too risky to do) a show on campus in the current atmosphere. And he's not the first comic to voice that opinion. Of course, as any self-respecting smart person, he's not going to just say "I don't like this", but try to analyze it and present his conclusion.
Also, in case you haven't noticed, plenty of college professors have spoken out before in concurrence on this matter. They're not happy about having to teach to classrooms that are actively trying to find new ways to be offended, either.
Either way, generally speaking, deflecting valid criticism with "it's none of your business" is not a valid counter-argument. In this case it's even less so, because we're talking, in most cases, about public colleges that are funded with our tax money, and are subject to control by the politicians that we elect. If there's something about them that we don't like, we absolutely have the right to criticize it, without having to be professors or students. But even setting money aside, the quality of the education system is important to everyone - the people being educated there today are the people who we will work with and otherwise interact with tomorrow.
Cleese was saying that they shouldn't even be allowed to ask for it to be shut down
I don't see where he's saying that specifically, but if so, he is, of course, wrong. They should be allowed to ask for it, it's just that the response should always be "grow up already" from those who already did, rather than pandering or even paying attention to such demands in general. If those same students then start to stage protests that are actively disrupting other people's activities (e.g. blocking the venues) - that shouldn't be allowed and should result in disciplinary action.
Then again, the guy is a Brit, and they generally aren't into that whole unrestricted freedom of speech thing. In particular, many European countries (can't say specifically about UK) are of a mind that censoring those who call for censorship is kosher, in line with Popper's "we should not tolerate intolerance". I personally disagree, and obviously there's a big difference between country-wide censorship via laws and institution-wide censorship on campuses, but still.
It depends on the triggers in question. Trigger warnings about rapes and such - yes, they're a good thing. Trigger warnings about things like mentioning slavery, because supposedly someone is "forced to relive the suffering of their ancestors" and is "traumatized" by it, are bullshit.
In many cases, those trigger warnings are also implicit. In a sense that if you're going to go to a history class, then, yeah, you can be expected to deal with historical topics such as slavery or treating women as property - this shouldn't require a trigger warning. Similarly, if you're going to a stand-up comedy, you can expect to hear jokes involving ethnic stereotypes and gender roles, for example - and this shouldn't require a trigger warning, either.
Either way, college kids who want their university to shut down an event because they dislike an invited guest is a situation where we can assume that they know what they expect to hear (and be offended by) in advance. If they don't actually know but still want to shut it down because they don't like the person specifically, then it's pure ad hominem on their part, and should be dismissed with prejudice without wasting any time on it.
People should be allowed to ask for such things. But they shouldn't force it on other people. Which is what they do when they try to shut down those events entirely.
You know what's an easy way to avoid "triggering" and offensive terms? Don't go to stand-up comedy. Especially when you know in advance that the comic in question is offensive to you.
The solution is to stop trying to shut down other people's criticisms and instead respond to them.
I have two questions for you.
First, why aren't those very same students who (as you claim, unfairly) accused of being SJWs don't practice this maxim? After all, this whole thing is basically about how exclusionary campuses have become to speech that they view as hostile. And I don't mean students just refusing to attend events involving people or ideas whom they dislike (though that is already the "not responding" part), but they actively try to prevent others from attending by shutting those events down outright.
Second, do you also extend the same courtesy of "instead respond to them" to people who, for example, claim that same-sex marriage deeply offends them and harms their family values? If you are dismissive of such claims (I am), then why can't you similarly be dismissive of people whose criticisms boil down to the same contrived subjective feeling of being offended for no good reason, just because those people are on the left rather than on the right?
Whether a standup comedian comes across as offensive or not is really simple. If it seems to an audience member that they might actually believe what they're saying about a group, then they come across as offensive. If it's clear to the audience member that they don't, then it doesn't.
The problem is that we've been training said audience members to actively seek out "microaggressions" everywhere. And this doesn't require the speaker accused of such to even be consciously aware of it being one, much less "believe what they're saying" - all that matters is that someone has assumed an interpretation of their words that results in a "microaggression". Given that, according to the same people who promote the term, a "microaggression" is e.g. hanging a portrait of a any past white president of the USA on the wall of your office (because it sends a subconscious message that only whites can be presidents, see?), this is a wire so thin that it's virtually impossible to avoid stepping on it. Literally everything can potentially be offensive. Even not saying things can be offensive.
The only thing that you can do as an "ally" that does not risk offending anyone is basically just agreeing whenever you're asked to agree by someone purporting to represent the offended community.
It's 5 billion to complete the research and engineering to build the first such thing. In other words, it's mostly R&D, not the per-unit manufacturing cost.
It's not really moving them meaningfully. If you cut it out, nothing changes in practical terms.
Not so with Bitcoin. It actually does offer a meaningful service that is backed by all that compute power, and it has features that are unique to it and not covered by any other alternatives.
Gender in general is a protected class. You don't really need a lawyer to tell you this - the classes are explicitly enumerated in the law:
"(a) Employer practices It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer— (1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin;"
+1 to Markdown, and with code-centric extensions, ideally, a la StackOverflow or Github. This is a site for geeks. By its very nature it does (or should) invite posts with code, console output etc.
Because they have terms of service that explicitly prohibit the kinds of things that he has been posting, and they have censored other users for posting such things.
I don't care how they do it - I would actually prefer no filtering at all, actually - but the rules should be the same for everyone.
Twitter is a private platform that is not obligated by law to not censor, and so can censor, and does censor. They do, in fact, have a lengthy document that describes what exactly they censor. And they do apply that document to other users rather meticulously - but for some reason, not to Trump. They're not legally obligated to treat everyone the same, either, but it's rather hypocritical of them to post rules regarding prohibited content, enforce them and defend them, and then not apply them in one particular instance.
"Isn't really a Republican" is not really a meaningful things. The party has changed a lot from 20 years ago, and then it was very different from what it was 20 years before, and before. The new change is happening right before our eyes. It's the Republican voters who are supporting Trump and are going to give him the nomination in a landslide. So, effectively, the Republican party, as it exists today, is the party of Trump. That everyone around it, and many in it, assumed that it's something else, has been a delusion for quite a while now.
Did I say it was an "everyday occurrence"? No, of course not.
What I said is that even if you teach kids to handle guns properly, by virtue of being kids, they will still not handle guns properly. Not all kids will do that, but enough of them will do for it to matter, as that experiment clearly shows. And not all kids that will do that will actually cause the gun to go off, much less hurt or kill someone - but, again, enough that it is a concern.
Claiming that "many people I know do it and nothing happens" is meaningless - anecdotes are not data. Data - i.e. statistics - shows that kids killing or maiming themselves or others with unsecured guns is a real problem in this country. And the experiment that I've linked to shows that self-deluded gun owners who think that their kids are well-trained and wouldn't never ever do such a thing are part of that problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Unrelated: the link in your sig is broken (404).
That's directly related to the post. It's literally what the argument in it is:
1. If we bring them into US, they get "extended constitutional rights" (basically, due process)
2. If they get due process treatment, we'll have to let most of them go because there's not enough evidence to lock them up.
3. But they're bad guys who want to hurt us! I want them locked up.
4. Therefore, keep them at Gitmo where we can keep them locked forever without bothering with proving their guilt.
And yes, I'm well aware that the poster who made it does indeed think that this is a good thing. All it takes is looking at his comment history.
Bosnia is a bit of a special case in a sense that Bosniaks there were targeted by Christian Serbs and Croats - so it would still be natural for them to see it as a fundamentally religious war (which is in an of itself quite sufficient to get radicalized), but furthermore to see US as generally "in the same camp" on account of also being Christian.
But even if they do get radicalized, the question is who becomes their primary target.
So basically what you're saying is that due process is just "too good" for some people, and would let them walk even though they're "bad guys". Shoving them into military detention centers that operate outside of rule of law is a workaround.
Are you also one of those people who always complain about how federal govt doesn't respect your Constitutional rights these days, by chance?
There is a value in speaking to the audience face to face, as opposed to online discussions etc. Such speaking always requires venues.
I am not a speaker, so I do not speak for them and their desires. I am a listener, and I don't want other people to be able to block venues just because they don't like the message that is transmitted in that venue, and deprive me from the ability to attend, listen, and engage.
And if we don't do research like that, we never will know how to make it work, nor what it'll actually cost then.
$5 billion is chump change. US has been spending ~$100 billion each year for the past ten years in direct costs of war in Iraq and Afghanistan alone - and they might as well have burned all that money given what we got out of it.
If we have to have "free speech zones", universities are supposed to be at the extreme end of that scale. So I don't think a request to find another venue is appropriate in this case. I also don't see why it's even a valid thing to ask unless it's unanimous - if you don't like the message, don't go and listen to it, but why are you trying to prevent other people who would like to attend from doing so?
And if it is unanimous, then a far more efficient form of protest is for no-one to turn up.
So "captive audience" is also not relevant here - no-one is captive, and no-one is forced to listen. The only thing that's forced on them is the knowledge of the fact that someone nearby is listening to those things.
I would classify actively trying to shut someone up because you don't like what they have to say as a supremely antisocial act, one that unambiguously identifies that person as an asshole. This is true even if the target is an asshole.
Would you agree, then, that those perpetually offended students who are trying to make others shut up and go away so that they don't have to hear or see offensive things are assholes?
Why is that bullshit?
For the same reason why someone saying that they're personally offended by gay marriage is bullshit. I mean, they quite possibly are, and it's a genuine emotion, but it's not the one that requires any action to deal with by anyone other than themselves.
Also, because virtually everything can be construed in this manner. For example, the mere fact that history classes mostly focus on male historical figures (because males have been dominant in that society) could be seen as a "trigger". Should we warn about that, too? What else should we warn about? Basically, where do we stop? Surely you can see where this ends if there's no filter whatsoever on what can be unilaterally declared as a "trigger"?
My music history class never touched on either of those. Perhaps not every history class is the same, and people should know in advance what the class will cover?
For one thing, are you sure that a music history class wouldn't touch on it, even in passing? Did you guys study the history of blues, say?
And do you think it is really appropriate to demand that a music history class should explicitly say that somewhere in it, in passing, it will mention something about slavery? Or is it more reasonable to say that people for whom it is such a touchy topic that it "triggers" them are themselves responsible for avoiding it in whatever manner they see fit (e.g. by proactively inquiring about their particular "trigger" before taking the class, and not taking it if they can't get an unambiguous answer)?
I would have hoped that a general syllabus would suffice otherwise. Trigger warnings are things above and beyond that.
Not that it has. Cleese was complaining about colleges, not stand-up comedy shows. Which is like a college professor complaining about stand-up shows. Maybe they should stick to worrying about their own jobs?
He is complaining because he can't do (or perceives it too risky to do) a show on campus in the current atmosphere. And he's not the first comic to voice that opinion. Of course, as any self-respecting smart person, he's not going to just say "I don't like this", but try to analyze it and present his conclusion.
Also, in case you haven't noticed, plenty of college professors have spoken out before in concurrence on this matter. They're not happy about having to teach to classrooms that are actively trying to find new ways to be offended, either.
Either way, generally speaking, deflecting valid criticism with "it's none of your business" is not a valid counter-argument. In this case it's even less so, because we're talking, in most cases, about public colleges that are funded with our tax money, and are subject to control by the politicians that we elect. If there's something about them that we don't like, we absolutely have the right to criticize it, without having to be professors or students. But even setting money aside, the quality of the education system is important to everyone - the people being educated there today are the people who we will work with and otherwise interact with tomorrow.
Cleese was saying that they shouldn't even be allowed to ask for it to be shut down
I don't see where he's saying that specifically, but if so, he is, of course, wrong. They should be allowed to ask for it, it's just that the response should always be "grow up already" from those who already did, rather than pandering or even paying attention to such demands in general. If those same students then start to stage protests that are actively disrupting other people's activities (e.g. blocking the venues) - that shouldn't be allowed and should result in disciplinary action.
Then again, the guy is a Brit, and they generally aren't into that whole unrestricted freedom of speech thing. In particular, many European countries (can't say specifically about UK) are of a mind that censoring those who call for censorship is kosher, in line with Popper's "we should not tolerate intolerance". I personally disagree, and obviously there's a big difference between country-wide censorship via laws and institution-wide censorship on campuses, but still.
It depends on the triggers in question. Trigger warnings about rapes and such - yes, they're a good thing. Trigger warnings about things like mentioning slavery, because supposedly someone is "forced to relive the suffering of their ancestors" and is "traumatized" by it, are bullshit.
In many cases, those trigger warnings are also implicit. In a sense that if you're going to go to a history class, then, yeah, you can be expected to deal with historical topics such as slavery or treating women as property - this shouldn't require a trigger warning. Similarly, if you're going to a stand-up comedy, you can expect to hear jokes involving ethnic stereotypes and gender roles, for example - and this shouldn't require a trigger warning, either.
Either way, college kids who want their university to shut down an event because they dislike an invited guest is a situation where we can assume that they know what they expect to hear (and be offended by) in advance. If they don't actually know but still want to shut it down because they don't like the person specifically, then it's pure ad hominem on their part, and should be dismissed with prejudice without wasting any time on it.
People should be allowed to ask for such things. But they shouldn't force it on other people. Which is what they do when they try to shut down those events entirely.
You know what's an easy way to avoid "triggering" and offensive terms? Don't go to stand-up comedy. Especially when you know in advance that the comic in question is offensive to you.
So is the charge of political incorrectness, then.
The solution is to stop trying to shut down other people's criticisms and instead respond to them.
I have two questions for you.
First, why aren't those very same students who (as you claim, unfairly) accused of being SJWs don't practice this maxim? After all, this whole thing is basically about how exclusionary campuses have become to speech that they view as hostile. And I don't mean students just refusing to attend events involving people or ideas whom they dislike (though that is already the "not responding" part), but they actively try to prevent others from attending by shutting those events down outright.
Second, do you also extend the same courtesy of "instead respond to them" to people who, for example, claim that same-sex marriage deeply offends them and harms their family values? If you are dismissive of such claims (I am), then why can't you similarly be dismissive of people whose criticisms boil down to the same contrived subjective feeling of being offended for no good reason, just because those people are on the left rather than on the right?
Whether a standup comedian comes across as offensive or not is really simple. If it seems to an audience member that they might actually believe what they're saying about a group, then they come across as offensive. If it's clear to the audience member that they don't, then it doesn't.
The problem is that we've been training said audience members to actively seek out "microaggressions" everywhere. And this doesn't require the speaker accused of such to even be consciously aware of it being one, much less "believe what they're saying" - all that matters is that someone has assumed an interpretation of their words that results in a "microaggression". Given that, according to the same people who promote the term, a "microaggression" is e.g. hanging a portrait of a any past white president of the USA on the wall of your office (because it sends a subconscious message that only whites can be presidents, see?), this is a wire so thin that it's virtually impossible to avoid stepping on it. Literally everything can potentially be offensive. Even not saying things can be offensive.
The only thing that you can do as an "ally" that does not risk offending anyone is basically just agreeing whenever you're asked to agree by someone purporting to represent the offended community.
It's 5 billion to complete the research and engineering to build the first such thing. In other words, it's mostly R&D, not the per-unit manufacturing cost.
It's not really moving them meaningfully. If you cut it out, nothing changes in practical terms.
Not so with Bitcoin. It actually does offer a meaningful service that is backed by all that compute power, and it has features that are unique to it and not covered by any other alternatives.
HFT is even more useless. At least Bitcoin has some utility insofar as it can actually be used to move money.
Gender in general is a protected class. You don't really need a lawyer to tell you this - the classes are explicitly enumerated in the law:
"(a) Employer practices
It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer—
(1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin;"
I'd pay just to get the comment limit ("You have exceeded the maximum number ...") and the rate limiter both go away.
What hasn't become an echo chamber?
Personally, to me, Slashdot feels like less echo'y than average today.
+1 to Markdown, and with code-centric extensions, ideally, a la StackOverflow or Github. This is a site for geeks. By its very nature it does (or should) invite posts with code, console output etc.
Because they have terms of service that explicitly prohibit the kinds of things that he has been posting, and they have censored other users for posting such things.
I don't care how they do it - I would actually prefer no filtering at all, actually - but the rules should be the same for everyone.
No, they really hate unequal treatment.
Twitter is a private platform that is not obligated by law to not censor, and so can censor, and does censor. They do, in fact, have a lengthy document that describes what exactly they censor. And they do apply that document to other users rather meticulously - but for some reason, not to Trump. They're not legally obligated to treat everyone the same, either, but it's rather hypocritical of them to post rules regarding prohibited content, enforce them and defend them, and then not apply them in one particular instance.
"Isn't really a Republican" is not really a meaningful things. The party has changed a lot from 20 years ago, and then it was very different from what it was 20 years before, and before. The new change is happening right before our eyes. It's the Republican voters who are supporting Trump and are going to give him the nomination in a landslide. So, effectively, the Republican party, as it exists today, is the party of Trump. That everyone around it, and many in it, assumed that it's something else, has been a delusion for quite a while now.
Did I say it was an "everyday occurrence"? No, of course not.
What I said is that even if you teach kids to handle guns properly, by virtue of being kids, they will still not handle guns properly. Not all kids will do that, but enough of them will do for it to matter, as that experiment clearly shows. And not all kids that will do that will actually cause the gun to go off, much less hurt or kill someone - but, again, enough that it is a concern.
Claiming that "many people I know do it and nothing happens" is meaningless - anecdotes are not data. Data - i.e. statistics - shows that kids killing or maiming themselves or others with unsecured guns is a real problem in this country. And the experiment that I've linked to shows that self-deluded gun owners who think that their kids are well-trained and wouldn't never ever do such a thing are part of that problem.